Magyar Zoltán

Legends of Early Hungarian Saints: type- and motif-index

3. The Vitas and other sources

The date of birth of king St. Stephen, around 975, and the date of the death of St. Elizabeth of Töss in 1338 are the two chronological ends that delimit the age of the legendary events treated in the motif-index. My collection, however, covers more extensive material: its starting point is the second half of the 11th century, namely the 1060s when Maurus, bishop of Pécs commits to paper the legends of hermits Andrew-Zoerard and Benedict, while the most recent source is the Érdy MS, a codex that was written between 1524 and 1527 in the Carthusian abbey near Veszprém. The first date hardly requires any explanation: this is the first Vita with a distinctly Hungarian subject matter; moreover, the oldest textual fragments of the Vienna Illuminated Chronicle are dated to the same period. The overwhelming majority of historical sources were written between the 12th-14th centuries; in order, however, to grasp the medieval legendry of the different saints in their compactness and variety it was necessary to extend the period of source analysis with a full century (cf: the increase in number of iconographic representations, the body of sermons and the works of the Hungarian humanists). Finally, this was the age when the integrity of the Hungarian state was disrupted by the Turkish conquest and that of the Hungarian Catholic church by the appearance of the Reformation.

The vast majority of the sources are naturally the biographies of saints (the Vitas, legends). As we have already mentioned, the first to be written among these is the legend of hermits Andrew-Zoerard and Benedict, compiled by bishop Maurus, who also appears in the legend of prince Emeric, shortly after 1604. There are three legends treating the historical figure of king Stephen: the so-called Legenda maior was probably written for the occasion of the king’s canonization (1083) and it highlights the saintly, devout image of Stephen. A much more realistic portrait is found in the Legenda minor, written after the canonization; a blending of the two was realized in the first decade of the 12th century by bishop Hartvik who is probably identical with the German Benedictine monk who came to Hungary in 1088 and under the name Alduin became bishop of Győr.

The life of prince Emeric, son of king Stephen is preserved in a single legend that can be dated to the first quarter of the 12th century; its author is a cleric named Filko who had been several times to Constantinople, fact that accounts for the Byzantine references in the legend. About bishop Gerald two legends were compiled in the age of the House of Árpád, the so-called ‘long’ and ‘short’ legends (maior vs. minor). According to recent research, the more detailed, sometimes romantically embellished ‘long’ legend came to be written earlier (in the 12th century), the second version being only an extract of the first, written for liturgical purposes.

Similarly, there are two legend versions on St. Ladislas, although the textual differences between them are minimal. These can be dated to the period immediately following the canonization of the king (1192). The legends appear as relatively plain, sketchy, especially if one considers the overwhelming variety and richness of the tradition centred on Ladislas’s figure, based on other sources. His daughter, Piroska-Irene, is worshipped as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox church under the name Eiréné (king St. Stephen also has an official cult since 2000). Her biography is also preserved in two versions that can be regarded as the textual variants of one another; the earliest possible date of their compilation is the year of the saint’s death in 1134.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary is the Hungarian saint on whom the highest number of biographies were written. Her first vita, which was sent to pope Gregory IX by her confessor, Conrad of Marburg, as an attachment to the official canonization request, dates from 1232, only one year after Elizabeth’s death. This first biography is completed by the two miscellanies that include the texts of the 1232-1233 hearings of witnesses, decreed by the Holy See as part of the investigation process preceding canonization; in total, these two collections relate 106 miracles, to which 24 new were added. Similarly, the ’Booklet of the testimony of the four maid-servants’, the so-called Libellus was written to serve in the process of Elizabeth’s canonization; it lays emphasis on the saintliness of Elizabeth’s life as well as on the miracles that occurred at her burial-place.

This same Libellus was the source of the biography of Elizabeth (the first compact legend of the saint) written by the famous Cistercian author of parables, Caesarius von Heisterbach (Caesarius Heisterbacensis), to the extent that he directly takes over many textual fragments. As a source, however, Caesarius’s sermon, occasioned by the translation of St. Elizabeth’s remains, is more valuable, since it is the most detailed account of the preparations for the ceremony and the miracles linked with it.

In the second half of the 13th century numerous other legends were born about Elizabeth, adding new elements to her hagiography (the ’miracle of the roses’, the ’miracle of the cloak’ as well as the ’miracle of the lepers’). Elizabeth’s life was included into Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea, which in turn served as a source to her Hungarian biographers (Temesvári Pelbárt, Laskai Osvát and the Anonymous Carthusian, author of the Érdy MS). However, the completest and rightfully most popular legend of St. Elizabeth was written around 1290 by a Thuringian Dominican named Dietrich von Apolda, of whose work nearly 50 extant manuscript copies are known to us today.

The legend of the beatified nun Helen only emerged at the beginning of the 15th century, more than 150 years after her death, when its manuscript was sent by Gregory, the Regional Superior of the Dominican order in Hungary, to the Regional Superior of Venice, biographer of St. Catherine of Siena, who was looking for other saints who bore the stigmata (the five wounds of Christ) on their bodies. The text of the legend survived in this version only; in Hungary all its copies were destroyed during the Turkish occupation. Notwithstanding the late date of the manuscript, philological analysis has proved that the text of the legend dates back to the age of the House of Árpád, to the second half of the 13th century.

The Vita of St. Kinga was written between 1317 and 1329, its author being a Franciscan monk who had a close relationship with the Clarist convent of Ószandec [Stary Sacz] founded by Kinga, probably as the confessor of the nuns. The index of miracles was not originally part of the text, it probably predates it; the two works were compiled into a single manuscript at a later stage. The figure of St. Kinga was also immortalized by the famous Polish historian Jan Długosz; however, since his work may be regarded as a stylistic transcription of a 14th-century vita, it is of no interest for our index of motifs.

The earliest legend of St. Margaret, like that of her aunt, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, was completed shortly after her death (1270); current research attributes it to Margaret’s confessor Marcellus. To this realistic biography (Legenda vetus) - written, as it were, from the viewpoint of a contemporary and a witness – was added the material of the miracles collected during the official investigation of the candidate preceding canonization (1271-1276). This Latin legend was translated into Hungarian in the period between 1300-1320 and this Hungarian text was revised and expanded with its copying, to be dated to the years between 1360 and 1409. This final textual version is extant and known to us through the 1510 manuscript by Lea Ráskai, a scripter and nun who lived in Margaret’s convent.

Another text variant of Margaret’s legend, the Legenda maior, was compiled around 1340 in Italy, its author probably being the Dominican theologian Garinus de Giaco who later became the Superior of the Dominican order in Italy. Garinus de Giaco wasn’t acquainted with the Legenda vetus, he wrote his work using the material of the canonization process that was accessible to him in Avignon. One has to remember that Margaret came to be known in medieval Europe due to this work which is important not so much for its value as a source as for its stylistic virtues and for the way in which its Dominican author ‘modernizes’ Margaret’s life in the spirit of the new (Dominican) ideal of saint. The version of the legend known as ‘the Pisa legend’ after Tibor Klaniczay (Klaniczay-Klaniczay 1994:15-91), portraying the Hungarian princess as stigmatized, as she appears on Italian paintings, is probably a later, 15th-century expanded version of the Garinus de Giaco text.

The legend of the last member of the House of Árpád, St. Elizabeth of Töss, was written before 1360 in Middle High German dialect, probably by a fellow nun of Elizabeth, Elsabeth Stagel. Four extant copies of this work are known to us in 15th century codices. The legend fell into oblivion during the 16th century and was rediscovered in 1865 only.

From among the early Hungarian saints especially the figures of the two saint kings, Stephen and Ladislas are treated frequently in chronicles, adorned sometimes with legendary attributes and elements of legend. The chronicle, completed in its final form by the mid-14th century and known as ‘the chronicle of Hungarians’, the Chronica picta or Vienna Illuminated Chronicle, is one of the richest sources of the St. Ladislas legendry: of its 212 chapters 40 (nearly 20% of the bulk of the writing) narrate the events of Ladislaus’s life. This is due to the fact that this part of the work was originally an independent poetic gesta (Gesta Ladislai Regis) which depicted the age of kings Solomon, Géza I and Ladislas; this text, in its turn, was largely based on contemporary Hungarian heroic songs and lays celebrating Ladislaus’s life and deeds. The later chronicle compilations, as a rule, draw either on the Illuminated Chronicle when treating the events of the House of Árpád (Ransanus, Thuróczy, Bonfini) or on an earlier primary source of Hungarian chronicles, the so-called Buda Chronicle or Chronica Hungarorum. Curiously, in his historical work the humanist Ransanus centres his attention on the life of St. Margaret, being acquainted with the Margaret legend, whereas in the 14th-century gesta of king Louis I Anjou an unparalleled miracle story emerges which shows the influence of the saint’s cult at his Nagyvárad (Oradea) shrine.

Other such data, with no occurrence elsewhere, can be found in the 15th-century Hungarian Annals of Moldavia, known to us today in Romanian transcription only, as well as in the Anonymous Chronicle written in Old Church Slavonic at the outset of the 16th century. Furthermore, several Russian annals (from Tvery, Voshkrensk as well as the Annals of Nikon) include legend motifs and elements that can be traced back to the records of a Serbian scribe, Pahomye, who is documented to have been to Nagyvárad in the mid-16th century. We have already mentioned the medieval Polish historian Jan Długosz in relation to St. Kinga; in his chronicle there appear other Hungarian references as well, among others more legend traditions: for instance, the local legend of the foundation of the monastery of the Holy Cross in southern Poland, connected with St. Emeric.

The textual sources of the 15th-16th centuries are those collections of sermons, highly influential in contemporary Europe, which were composed by two Franciscan theologians, Pelbart of Temesvár and Osvat Laskai. More preachings in their collection tackle the life and saintliness of Hungarian saints (St. Stephen, Emeric, Ladislaus, St. Elizabeth), underlining several hagiographical and folklore motifs undocumented before. Similarly, there are sermons occasioned by the feasts of the Hungarian saints in the work of the Carthusian Anonymous writing in Hungarian, whose collection of legends (in the Érdy MS) may be regarded as the essence of the medieval Hungarian legend tradition; their author drew heavily on the ecclesiastical vitas, on the chronicles, on earlier priechers’ work as well as on oral tradition.

We also encounter legend motifs connected to early Hungarian saints in sacred and secular poetry. The figures of both St. Stephen and Ladislas are frequent themes of verse lays and hymns; in Byzantine synaxaria we may even come across verse compositions celebrating the deeds of empress Irene (the poem composed for the consecration of the Pantokrator monastery in Constantinople, around 1140). A remarkable Renaissance panegyric is the one written by the Polish poet Paulus Crosnensis Ruthenus (Pawel Z. Crosna) celebrating the memory of St. Ladislas (1509); perhaps the work of the highest literary value connected with the saint is the elegy describing the shrine and the saint king’s famous equestrian statue in Nagyvárad by the most important Latin poet of the quattrocento, the Hungarian-born Janus Pannonius (1451).

From the list of historical sources, we could not have ommitted the iconographic works: the explanation for this lies in the losses caused by the 150 years of Turkish occupation in Hungary, which meant the destruction of the vast majority of Hungarian medieval codices and written documents. Among the cultural goods that were destroyed between 1526 and 1686 were also numerous compilations of legends and other related manuscripts and documents. Nevertheless, we still possess a fair number of pictorial representations of legend traditions in codices, on panels or murals in churches built before the 16th century. The Vienna manuscript of the Illuminated Chronicle, for instance, is adorned with a wide range of miniatures that ’fill in the gaps’ of the narrative, completing it, especially as regards the events of the age of St. Stephen and Ladislas.

The representative illuminated manuscript that dates back to the mid-1330s, the so-called Hungarian Anjou Legendry, was commissioned by king Charles Robert (Anjou) to serve as a manual for the religious and moral education of his younger son, prince Andrew. The iconographical program of the codex was elaborated by trained clerics, essentially in the spirit of the Legenda Aurea. As regards the Hungarian saints, the pictorial cycle of the lives of St. Stephen and Elizabeth is lost, but we still have the complete cycles of St. Emeric, Gerald and Ladislas. From the artistical perspective it is the last which is the most remarkable: its 24 images contain many motifs that do not appear in the legends. The existence of another manuscript, the Decretalis of Miklós Vásári, archbishop of Esztergom (1343) and preserved today in the collection of the Biblioteca Capitolare in Padua compensates the loss of the St. Stephen cycle from the Anjou Legendry: this four-part composition dwells on St. Stephen’s crucial role in the conversion of Hungarians.

The extant 14th-15th century altarpieces dedicated to St. Elizabeth in Hungary frequently display, beside iconic images of the saint, also narrative images that relate the story of her life, thus I considered it helpful to provide a list of the Hungarian monuments integrated into the corresponding thematic units. However, to include the list of monuments connected with St. Elizabeth and Margaret abroad would have by far surpassed the scope and aims of the present motif index, therefore I restrained the object of this study to the monuments within the borders of present-day Hungary. Such narrative cycles on polyptychs survive on the figures of St. Stephen and St. Emeric, too.

Finally, one cannot overlook the necessity of surveying the fresco cycles that narrate the events of St. Ladislas’s life, which occur virtually over the whole of medieval Hungary, especially in borderland areas during the 14th-15th century. The most conspicuous feature of these mural cycles is that they usually cover the North wall of churches and are centred on the episode, rooted in the heroic poetry of nomadic (Central-Asian) steppe peoples, in which Ladislas defeats a Cuman warrior who had abducted a Hungarian virgin and liberates her. Nearly 80 representations of this episode are known to us, covering a wide range of pictorial media, from murals to codex miniatures and images on stove tiles. This narrative cycle as iconographic type is unparalleled in the history of European art and may be regarded as a symbol not only of the St. Ladislas legendry, but also of the Hungarian medieval cultural heritage as a whole.

Legends of Early Hungarian Saints: type- and motif-index

Tartalomjegyzék

Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2026

ISBN: 978 963 664 185 6

Művelődéstörténet Idegen nyelvű

The work of folklorist Zoltán Magyar throws light on a relatively little-known segment of the dynastyc cult of saints in Central European cultural history. The hagiographies and legends written on different members of the Árpadian dynasty, ruling in Hungary between the 11th and 13th centuries, and their contemporaries endowed with the aura of sanctity, occur not only in their medieval Hungarian legendry but have also become part of the liturgical tradition and the cult of saints on German, Polish and Byzantine soil. The thematic and generic variety of this legendry and its many folkloric implications show close parallels with another major work of medieval European hagiography: the legends of early Irish saints. The type- and motif-index and generatic catalogue compiled by Zoltán Magyar orders the epic tradition, based on 11rh-16th century written sources, of twelve Hungarian royal saints who have become the subject of legends shortly after their death. Beside classification according to the type of legendd heroes and themes, the book also contains an analysis of the biographical data, of the historical sources and of the primary types and motifs of hagiographies.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/magyar-early-hungarian-saints-type-and-motif-index//

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