Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1979 (7. évfolyam, 19-22. szám)

1979 / 21. szám

ARTICLES & PAPERS (Continued)

of the Hungarian minority in Romania have produced little if any new data on either side of the argument. The present paper is no exception. It summarizes the issues as the author sees them. It discusses the overall frustration that accompanies the attempted resolution of nationality problems in socialist countries, the background of the Hungarian presence in Transylvania, measures in violation of “human rights”, mainly based on an open letter to President Ceausescu by Ka'roly Kira'ly, a former member of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. The significance of this paper lies in the place of its publication: in a journal of the Department of External Affairs of the Government of Canada. O

Solyom-Fekete, William. TRAVEL ABROAD AND EMIGRATION UNDER NEW RULES ADOPTED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF HUNGARY. Law Library, Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20540, 1979. 104 pages. Free copies are available upon request.

This is a thorough legal study of rights and restrictions governing foreign travel and emigration of Hungarian citizens. It is a sequel to the author's earlier work on the same subject (Legal Restrictions on Foreign Travel and Emigration in the Hungarian People’s Republic. Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 20540, 1977. See HSN no. 15, p. 2.) This study covers the new regulations which became effective on January 1,1979. The author presents an English translation of the regulations on travel and passports, as well as of the provisions of the new criminal code related to foreign travel and issuance of passports (not in force yet). Then he compares the old and the new rules by seeking to identify trends in related government policy. All this is done against the background of the Helsinki Agreement and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights of 1966. The author lists liberties and restrictions, which are not very well spelled out in the new regulations, but rather leave substantial discretional power in the hands of lower ranking bureaucrats. For example, a Hungarian citizen could be accused of “obtaining a passport under false pretenses” if he “has met someone abroad who fled from Hungary, or has stayed abroad illegally within the past 5 years.” "A traveler may visit an institution, such as a library or research center abroad without knowing that work is done there that the Hungarian authorities regard as hostile to another socialist country. Again, the traveler may be convicted of crossing the border in an illegal manner on the basis of obtaining his passport by misleading the authorities when he did not reveal that he wanted to visit such an institution.” In general, the author suspects that the new regulations which present minimal changes, and are not uniformly beneficial to individual citizens, were designed to counter American criticism expressed during negotiations of Hungary’s role as a most-favored-nation.

The author is senior legal specialist in the European Law Division of the Library of Congress.

Sweeney, James R. “Innocent III and the Esztergom Election Dispute. The Historical Background of the Decretal Bone Memorie II (X.l.5.4).” Archívum Históriáé Pontificiae (Rome) 15(1977) pp. 113-137.

At the time of Innocent III there were “four alternative procedures for the selection of a bishop, of which the fourth was the method known as postulation. This procedure

initiated by the electoral body took the form of a supplication to the pope to provide to a vacant episcopal or archiepiscopal see a candidate designated by the electors. This candidate could not be elected in the usual way because he was recognized to be canonically ineligible.” The pope alone possessed the authority to set aside canonical impediments. “A canonical text central to the understanding of the postulation process is a letter of Pope Innocent III written in 1205 to the cathedral chapter of Esztergom resolving the nearly fourteen-month-long dispute over the choice of a primate for the Hungarian Church. The present study is an exploration of the historical circumstances which led up to promulgation of this important Innocential decretal.” According to the author, the Esztergom dispute ranks among the important metropolitical contests of this pontificate, founded at the end of the tenth century. The dispute was resolved by Innocent’s decision to transfer the archbishop of Kalocsa to the see of Esztergom. Such action was relatively rare at the time. The first recorded transfer (translation) of an archbishop of York to the see of Canterbury occurred in 1396. The author is prof, of history at Pennsylvania St. U. D

Sweeney, James R. A review of Dietmar Hintner’s Die Ungarn und das byzantinische Christentum der Bulgaren im Spiegel der Register Papst Innozenz’ III [The Hungarians and the Byzantine Christianity of Bulgaria as reflected in the registers of Innocent III]. (Erfurter theologische Studien, 35) Leipzig: St. Benno, 1976. 238 pages, DM 12.50 paper. Speculum 53:4 (October 1978) pp. 813-817.

The registers of Innocent III are of exceptional value forthe study of central and eastern Europe at the turn of the 13th century, mainly because of the relative scarcity of other reliable documents. Hintner’s study of the place of Hungary in the negotiations for the reunion of the Bulgarian Church with Rome is a systematic attempt to exploit the wealth of Innocent's correspondence, says Sweeney. “The basic purpose of the book, and its principal strength, is the exposition of events cited in the papal correspondence. In extensive detail Hintner makes plain the three-cornered nature of the project, indirectly confirming the basic assertions of earlier researchers,” including those of the reviewer. “Methodologically, every text pertaining to the central topic is subjected to a uniform program of discussion. “Themes found in the correspondence are singled out for comment, for example, transit through Hungary and episcopal consecration project." Despite urging caution in accepting at face value the information found in the correspondence, the study uses such information in a largely uncritical way. Thus “the reader who approaches this work in hope of finding clarification of the theoretical significance of papal- Hungarian ties or of the bestowal of the Bulgarian crown in the political thought of Innocent III will be disappointed.”

The reviewer is prof, of history at Pennsylvania St. U. D

Verdery, Katherine, “Internal Colonialism in Austria Hungary.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2:3 (July 1979) pp. 378-399.)

Michael Hechter in his Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development (U. of California Press 1975) developed the theory that the relationship between large industrialized political entities and their cultural subdivisions may resemble that between colonial powers and colonized. Since the peripheries, in the case of Hechter: Scotland, Wales and Ireland; in the case of Verdery: Hungary and Transylvania, did not benefit from industrialism to the

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NO. 21, 1979, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER