OCR Output

258 István M. Szijártó

those coming from recently emerging lesser noble families with no
traditions at all, and those from families, like the Felsőbüki Nagy,
that were traditionally loyal.

Pál Felsőbüki Nagy was not only unigue when contrasted to the
outstanding members of his family, all loyal to the king or the gueen
from the end of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth,
but he was also unigue in his generation in so far as he held no
county office at all. He lost his wealth and the family mansion in
Bük, his marriage to a non-noble bride ended in scandal and his
children were born out of wedlock; still his political stance, that
was sharper and clearer than those five other politicians that fell
into the last sub-section, earned him a name and the reverence of
a whole generation. Up to this day, he is the best-known Felsőbüki
Nagy, the only one who made it into the schoolbooks.

In the final chapter, written by the editor of the volume and the
author of this summary, the lessons of the research done about
members of the Felsőbüki Nagy family will be summed up framed
into a broader investigation (Four generations and what came after¬
wards). It can be established that holding leading royal administrative
and judicial offices in the central royal authorities of Hungary (the
Chancellery, the Hungarian Chamber, the Council of Lieutenancy
and the Royal Court of Justice) opened the gates of the social elite
in front of certain members of the gentry — but this gate was opened
only for a certain period. In contrast to earlier generations, for those
professional office holders, occupying a leading office for at least 25
years, the double of the average period in these offices, who were
brought up already in Maria Theresa’s reign, this gate was already
closed. Members of the gentry who arrived from the counties and
held leading offices in the central royal authorities were gradually
replaced by ‘bureaucrats’, office holders who had no county back¬
ground, were not prone to demonstrate occasional oppositional
behaviours in politics, and who were loyal to the king beyond ques¬
tion. These more general tendencies are mirrored by both the rise
of members of the Felsöbüki Nagy family in the beginning of the
eighteenth century and in the mid-century, a family that was and
remained integrated into the bene possessionati of Sopron county
all along, and its subsequent marginalization.

This volume maps the paths of the Hungarian political elite from
the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth applying a mi¬
crohistorical approach and discovering aspects of family history,