The Catholic Bokor Base Community was founded in the late 1960s by a Piarist monk, György Bulányi (1919–2010). Their small community format was modelled on the early Church and they consistently implemented the principle of universal priesthood, rereading and reinterpretating the Gospels in small groups–upholding the idea of the ultimate renewal of the Church’s mission and structure. These tenets together made the practice of this community unique both within the Hungarian Catholic Church and among small Christian communities before the change of regime. The study outlines the group profile of priests who joined the Bokor community: who could identify with the theology and practice of Bokor during the 1970s and 1980s, for longer or shorter periods? How was the first Bokor community of priests formed, how did this type of relational network develop around Bulányi, and what kind of layers did it have? What was the generational distribution of Bokor priests in later years and which seminaries did they come from? What conflicts did they have with their church superiors? Did they remain steadfast in their priestly vocation, or did they eventually choose a secular life?

The study explores police profiles written about county representatives, a source type frequently found in the archives of the Secret Service of the National Assembly which operated in situ at the diets and was led by Leopold Ferstl. Following the adjournment of the assembly sessions, between 1825 and 1840, reports were generated about the participants of four diets. From 1830 onwards the descriptions were becoming increasingly standardised: the individual’s age, marital status, position and religious affiliation were followed by his financial situation, intellectual capacity, qualifications, personal ambitions, and political stance. These documents, written from a governmental perspective, may shed light on previously unexplored aspects in the study of the composition, political orientation, and individual life strategies of county representatives. The present study focuses on the heroes of the government’s narratives of the time, those country legates who stood by the government’s policies and served the royal interests at the diet of 1832–36. They were selected as the subjects of the study because, while ample research has been conducted on the birth of the liberal opposition and its protagonists, the other side of the benches has attracted little scholarly interest to date. In order to see the full picture, however, it is essential to gain insight into the careers of those representatives who unequivocally sided the government’s policies in the second half of the 1830s and chose to leave elected county office behind to serve as royal appointees even if they had formerly held opposing views. The first step in charting this process is to probe this unique source type for the trajectory and change of office of those county representatives – referred to as “well disposed” in the secret service documents of the 1832–36 diet – who subsequently attained high ranking positions in a very short time.