Nagy János: Rendi ellenzék és kormánypárt az 1751. évi országgyűlésen - Disszertációk Budapest Főváros Levéltárából 7. (Budapest, 2020)
The opposition of the estates and the loyalists at the Diet of 1750 (summary)
The best source for the study of the status in contemporary public opinion of the other components of the diet (Upper House, deputies of absent magnates, and chapters’ representatives) can best be gleaned from their depiction in the distorting mirror of the age, the satirical poems, or pasquilles. The image of the enemy for the county deputies gradually becoming the opinion leaders of the diet was constructed on the basis of the real or alleged accusations listed in the pasquilles, thus these poems became identity forming for them. They helped mark the moral- and principle-based political boundaries and thus they also played a role in the frontline between the government and the opposition becoming set by the middle of the century. The image of the aristocracy, mostly celebrated and popular back at the diet of 1728-29, now became the subject of not just political but moral and erudition-oriented criticism. Some later authors interpreted the accusations listed in the pasquilles as a sign of the alienation of the Hungarian aristocracy, now living in Vienna, from Hungarian society. As for the pasquilles poking fun of the absent aristocrats and chapters aimed to marginalise them in the discursive space using the available arguments and tropes. All this served to prove that the persons singled out this way were not useful but harmful members of the community of estates, the natio hungarica. Featuring the (mostly Lutheran) deputies of the absent magnates and members of the Catholic clergy side by side in the pasquilles only reinforces the academic conclusion that political camps were no longer defined along confessional lines, but sidestepping the old denominational affiliations, focusing on the issues of tax increases and the privileges of estates. Variations on a theme: case studies on county deputies and the delegating process The case studies dedicated to the delegation of deputies from the individual counties and the deputies themselves bring into focus the county and regional level political and social processes. In my intention, these case studies will help with the interpretation of country level political processes of the period. Some chapters are dedicated to the still decisively important motivations within estates politics, and thus present the family and career strategies of the two leading speakers of the opposition, the confrontative Gáspár Csuzy, vigorously defending the interests of the estates on the one hand, and the more compromiseseeking János Okolicsányi, who was working towards getting a country-level administrative position, both of which strategies can be, in retrospect, termed The deputies of the absent magnates and the chapters’ deputies described in the dietpasquilles 562
