Századok – 2011
TANULMÁNYOK - Poór János: Egy abbahagyott vita. A magyar jakobinusokról V/1057
1116 POÓR JÁNOS pamphlets but also the most outstanding representatives of scientific historiography who revealed themselves seriously biased in one or the opposite direction. Ignác Martinovics himself, the leader of the movement and author of Jacobin manifestos, emerged in Hungarian historical literature as an envoy from hell, an artist of revolution and a revolutionary with a very poor character alternatively. The synthesis, which summarised the preceding dispute as well, was offered in 1957 by Kálmán Benda in the preface of his monumental three-volume edition of the sources of the Hungarian Jacobin movement. In his interpretation, Ignác Martinovics, a weak and ambitious person, yet educated and good in organisation, merely came to lead a revolutionary movement which had emerged independently with the aim of renewing the country, and with the drastic suppression of which the Court of Vienna set a long-lasting example. This interpretation has stood the trial of time ever since. Although in minor points it was questioned by both historians and literary historians, the only person to raise serious doubts conceptionally was Dénes Szilágyi, writing in Germany in the 1960s. The present study overviews the various historical interpretations of the movement, with a special emphasis on the Benda-Szilágyi dispute, which remained unsettled in the 1970s, and has been practically neglected by the Hungarian historical literature ever since.
