Hóman Bálint, az őstörténet és az Árpád-kor kutatója

Abstract

The period of Bálint Hóman's 35-year scholarly achievement in the field early Hungarian history can be divided into two parts. Betweeen 1908 and 1925 he published well-founded analyses on urban history, prehistory, origins of the Szeklers, Hun-myth, charters, narrative sources and monetary history based on minute research. After 1925 he gave up this side of his research, his devoted attitude towards sources, which had been uncondtional, changed completely. He became an ardent follower of Geistesgeschichte historiography, he condemned overdone specialisation, concentration on details, and he voiced his opinion about the need of synthetic summaries of history, in which many would be interested, instead of specialised historiography, which would lack the attention of masses. The product and high quality example of this attitude is his synthesis on Hungarian history, co-authored by Gyula Szekfű, which openly propagates that "Hungarian history is none other than the history of Hungarian soul".