Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interethnic spaces
Between cultural and geographical borders 159 Later, the writer draws the King’s way through Mátyusföld, from Perbete (Pribeta) to Dunaradvány (Radvaň nad Dunajom) via Komáromszentpéter [Dolný Peter) (Lőrinczy undated: 25). Géza Kúr, who dealt with the region during his research on the administration of the Reformed Church, states that: “Beside the area lying from Komárom and the Váh-Danube River to the Little Carpathians, Mátyusföld includes even the neighbourhood of Érsekújvár reaching Párkány, and it is called ‘Desertum Újvár alias Mátyusfölde’” (Kúr 1993: 32). Later on, the area of Mátyusföld defined by the literature continued to shrink. In 1953, the resolution5 of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences concerning József Bakos’s work, Mátyusföldi gyermekjátékok (“Children’s plays”) reads: The term Mátyusfölde is not a widely accepted geographical term: it is known by historical geography as Máté Csák's former "kingdom". This region, since it includes Trencsén county as well, has a majority of Slovak population. During the inter-war years, however, the ethnic Hungarians of Czechoslovakia changed the meaning of the term excluding the western part of the area and adding the neighbouring Kis-Alföld6, east of the original Mátyusföld region. In this way the term started to be used as indicating an area inhabited in majority by ethnic Hungarians. (Határozat 1953: 275) On the other hand, Sándor Vájlok, towards the end of 1930s writes the following: Mátyusföld is a geographical term referring to the area lying south of the Szenc-Nagyfedémes-Nagymácséd [Senec-Vefké Úľany-Veľká Mača] line, between the Small Danube and Váh Rivers. In the south, the region ends at Gúta [Kolárovo], which is already in Csallóköz, at the huge meadowlands of Negyed [Neded\, the hay-scent of which wanders far away. In this area there are 61 villages and towns, resembling an acute angle turned upside down. The 61 localities have 111,635 inhabitants altogether... (Vájlok 1939: 91) In contrast to research based on historical data, the ethnographic approach defines Mátyusföld as a wider region.
