Magyar Zoltán

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

Bishop Gerald

BIRTH

Saint’s mother had long been barren, saint is born as a gift from heaven in response to his parents’ prayers: GE II:2.

CONVERSION, SPREADING OF CHRISTIANITY

Spreading of Christianity

At the request of St. Stephen saint remains in Hungary to convert the people: GE I:2; GE II:15-118; AnjouLeg-GE: plate 1.; EC:544.

Saint converts the population of a whole province: GE II:28, 32.; EC:544.

Saint becomes the tutor of prince St. Emeric: GE II:18.; Temesvari:92.26; EC:544.

HUMILITY

As a hermit, saint wears only a sheepskin: GE I:7; GE II:38.

When travelling, saint uses a simple cart only: GE I:7; GE II:38.

Saint’s reluctance to accept nomination as abbot of a monastery; appointed against his will: GE II:7.

Seeing the suffering of sinners punished by him, saint asks for their forgiveness: GE I:8; GE II:39.

ASCETICISM, SELF-TORTURE, PENITENCE

Penitence

Saint spends seven years as a hermit in the wilderness, fasting and praying: GE I:2; GE II:18; AnjouLeg-GE: plate 2.; EC:544.

Self-torture

Saint mortifies his body with a cilicium (penitent’s girdle made of horse-hair and wool): GE I:7; GE II:5, 38, 57.

Frequent self-flagellation: GE II: 57.

Saint carries on his shoulders tree trunks felled in the forest (to ease his servants’ work): GE I:7; GE II:38.; EC:544.

SIGNS OF SANCTITY

A hind with its fawn sits by saint in the forest: GE II:18.; EC:544.

A fawn follows saint everywhere, like a pet: GE:18.; EC:544.

A wounded wolf enters the saint’s hut and remains with him: GE II:19.; EC:544.

HEALING

Saint cures a wounded wolf: GE I:19.

PROVISION

Saint lays a leper into his own bed for the night: GE I:7; GE II:38.

The legend of the ’symphony of Hungarians’. Saint rewards the maid-servant who sings while grinding wheat in a handmill: GE II:42.

PROTECTION

He induces the king to pardon some offenders: GE II:41, 43.

MIRACLES

By divine provision a sea storm breaks out and diverts the saint’s ship, bound for the Holy Land, towards Hungary: GE II:8-15.; EC:543-544.

PUNISHMENT, MALEDICTION, RETRIBUTION

The pagan who profanates the saint’s body becomes possessed by a demon and dies tearing and gnawing at his own flesh: GE I: 16.

PROPHECY

Saint foretells the death by sword, in three years’ time, of the usurper king: GE I:12; GE II: 47-48.; EC:544.

Saint foretells civil strife and pagan insurrection: GE I:12; GE II:46.; EC:544.

Saint foretells his own martyrdom: GE I:12; GE II:48, 51.

Saint foretells the time of his martyrdom: GE II:51.

Saint doesn’t administer the sacrament to a fellow-priest because he would not be martyred: GE II:51.

SAINT’S DEATH, ELEVATION, TRANSLATION OF REMAINS

Saint’s death

Saint foretells his own martyrdom and its time: GE I:12; GE II:48, 51.; EC:545.

Saint is martyred. Heathen Hungarians murder him: they force him onto a cart which they push down from a promontory, transfix his breast with a spear and crush his head on a rock: GE I:14; GE II:52; MA I:III.8; Thuroczy: 67; Bonfini: 2.2.150-155; AnjouLeg-GE: plate 6.

For six years the bloodstains cannot be washed off from the rock where saint’s head was crushed: GE II:52; Thuroczy: 67; Bonfini:2.2.155.; EC:545.

Bloodstains are not even washed off by the spring floods of the Danube: GE II:52; Thuroczy: 67; Bonfini: 2.2.155.; EC:545.

Elevation

Saint’s corpse is preserved intact after seven years: GE I:15, 17; GE II:55.

When saint’s tomb is opened, the coffin gives off a marvellous scent: GE II:56.

Translation of remains

Such multitude gathers to saint’s corpse that it can only be removed during the night: GE II:56.

The oxen pulling the cart with the saint’s body go by themselves, without eating and drinking and without being urged, towards the new burial-place: GE II:56; AnjouLeg-GE: plate 7.

The boat carries the saint’s corpse by itself to the other bank of the river: GE II:56.

Immobility. The boat carrying the saint’s corpse would not set out until the oars are thrown into the water: GE II:56.

Immobility. Saint’s corpse goes to a place of its own choosing. In the first church the attendants cannot put the coffin down; at the saint’s burial-place, however, such weight pulls their arms down that they are forced to place it on the ground: GE II:57.

RELICS

Saint’s garments in which he was murdered: GE II:56, 56, 56, 57.

Saint’s robe: GE II:67.

Saint’s camelhair cloak: GE II: 57, 63.

Saint’s cowl: GE II: 57.

Saint’s cilicium and whip: GE II: 57.

The rock with which saint’s head was crushed: GE II:52, 57.

Hairs from saint’s beard: GE I: 16.

Saint’s blood: GE II:53, 68.

THROUGH SAINT’S MERITS (SAINT HELPS AFTER DEATH)

Diseased are cured through saint’s merits

Blind can see: GE II:56, 62.

People suffering from eye diseases are cured: GE II:59, 61.

Paralytics are healed: GE II:56, 58.

Lame are cured: GE II:56.

Cripples are healed: GE II:56.

A man with smashed and crooked bones is cured: GE II:60.

A man suffering from severe fever is cured: GE II:63.

A paretic canon is cured: GE II:66.

An ulcerous man is cured: GE II:67.

A child bitten by a snake is cured: GE II:64.

Through saint’s merits demonic possession is healed

A woman possessed by the devil is healed: GE II:65.

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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