Magyar Zoltán

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

Princess Kinga

BIRTH, UPBRINGING

Birth

Angelic voice foretells saint’s birth and holiness to her mother: KI I:4.

Painless childbirth: KI I:4.

Saint is born in perfect cleanliness, needs no bath: KI I:4.

As a baby saint never suckles nor sleeps during mass: KI I:4.

PIETY

Saint prays frequently and zealously: KI I:8.

CONVERSION, SPREADING OF CHRISTIANITY

Spreading of Christianity

Saint carries through the sanctification of the beatified Stanislas: KI I:35.

Saint supports the Church: KI I:9, 25.

Foundations

Saint founds monastery: KI I:15.

Conversion

Due to saint’s prayers and persuasion lewd women decide to lead a virtuous life and enter the convent: KI I:18, 27.

Saint’s commanding presence forces those around her to lead a virtuous life: KI I:17.

HUMILITY

Secrecy

Saint keeps her devotions secret: KI I:33.

Saint keeps the preservation of her chastity secret: KI I:45, 45, 55, 56.

Although saint lived in chastity, she asks ordination as a widow: KI I:45, 56.

PROVISION

Help

Saint provides for the poor: KI I:9, 19.

Saint gives alms: KI I:9.

Saint washes the feet of a poor boy with her tears, dries them with her hair: KI I:9.

Saint provides food for those in need: KI I:34; KI II:20.

Multiplication of food: KI II:20.

Saint provides food and clothes for nuns in need: KI I:34.

Saint seats a leper in her own couch: KI I:7.

Nursing the sick

Saint nurses lepers, kisses their wounds: KI I:7.

PROTECTION

Saint curbs a pack of wild dogs with the sign of the cross: KI I:7.

Saint curbs a herd of wild pigs with the sign of the cross: KI I:7.

Saint stops the attack of highwaymen with the sign of the cross: KI I:7.

Due to saint’s prayers robbers do not dare to attack the convent: KI I:59.

Saint’s prayers protect the nuns from the attack of the Tartars: KI I:34, 39.

Bidding saint’s prayers two warrior saints emerge and chase off the Mongol hordes: KI I:8.

Saint thwarts an attempt on her father’s life (bare-handed, she takes thirty swords out of the assilants’ hands): KI I:10.

Saint’s prayers save a wicked knight from eternal damnation: KI I:42.

HEALING

Saint heals a blind man (drawing the sign of the cross): KI I:52.

Saint cures a man of terminal illness (with her prayers): KI I:31.

Saint cures a nun suffering of eye disease (with her kiss): KI I:28.

Saint heals a leprous swelling with her kiss: KI I:7.

RESURRECTION OF DEAD

Saint resurrects a young girl who suffered a mortal accident (drawing the sign of the cross): KI I:51.

Saint raises her own nephew from death: KI I:20.

Power over life and death. Saint raises her nephew from death and lets him die again, so that he may die freed of all sins: KI I:20.

EXORCISM

Saint drives the demon out of a possessed boy: KI I:49.

Saint drives the demon out of a possessed man (drawing the sign of the cross): KI I:36, 37.

The devil disturbs a nun in her prayers, taking on the shape of man. Saint chases him away with her prayers and threatening him with her staff: KI I:46.

The devil takes on the shape of a giant hag and would not let saint enter the church. Saint chases demon away drawing the sign of the cross: KI I:9.

ASCETICISM, SELF-TORTURE, PENITENCE

Asceticism

Frequent fasting: KI I:4, 6, 43.

Saint lives in chastity even in marriage: KI I:6, 45, 55, 56, 57.

Saint preserves her chastity even against her husband’s will: KI I:8.

Self-torture

Saint mortifies her body: KI I:11, 113.

Saint walks barefoot on thorny ground: KI I:9, 48.

Saint walks barefoot in winter frost, leaving bloodstains behind: KI I:6.

Saint wears cilicium (penitent’s girdle) ever since childhood: KI I:5.

Saint flogs herself with a thorny iron whip: KI I:8.

PUNISHMENT, MALEDICTION, RETRIBUTION

Punishment

Saint flings a lewd woman bare-handed on to her carriage: KI I:17.

Malediction

Saint punishes the nuns for not believing her; she casts illnesses upon them (’Let your sick-room never stay empty!’): KI I:61.

Because the townspeople in the city of her burial-place (Ószandec/Stary Sacz) do not believe in her chastity, her confessor prophesies the decline of the city: KI I:45, 58.

SIGNS OF SANCTITY

Extraordinary beauty: KI I:3.

Saint is born in perfect cleanliness, needs no bath: KI I:4.

Saint is surrounded by divine halo of light during prayer: KI I: 20, 32, 39.

Saint opens the church portals without keys so that she may enter with her suite: KI I:6, 9.

Saint’s crying melts the snow, heats the ice, makes green grass grow in winter on the place where she stands: KI I:9.

Wherever saint walks, bloodstains mark her way: KI I:6.

Saint is hidden by protective mist: KI I:6.

Power over the elements. Fire does not burn the saint: KI I:54.

Heavenly sign (halo of divine light) testifies to her innocence when she is wrongly accused of lechery: KI I:39.

The holy icon talks to saint when she prays in front of it: KI I:21, 22, 32.

Saint fills the small case in front of the holy image of Christ three times with her flowing tears while praying: KI I:44.

Metamorphosis

In saint’s mouth game turns into fish: KI I:12, 13.

In saint’s mouth wine turns into water: KI I:12.

MIRACLES

Help of warrior saints. To Kinga’s prayers Sts. Gervasius and Prothius emerge and destroy the Tartar hordes: KI I:8.

’The ring of Polycrates’. Saint drops her ring into a shaft in a salt-mine in Hungary; the ring is found in a block of salt extracted in Poland: KI I:10.

An illiterate young girl is able to read from Kinga’s psalter: KI I:50.

A sick woman praying to saint is healed by bearing three pups: KI II:21.

PROPHECY

Saint foretells the date of her own death: KI I:61, 62.

Because the townspeople in the city of her burial-place (Ószandec/Stary Sacz) do not believe in her chastity, her confessor prophesies the decline of the city (’There where today red cloth is sold, tomorrow stinging nettles will grow, then you will believe!’): KI I:45, 58.

SAINT’S DEATH, ELEVATION, TRANSLATIO

Saint’s death

Saint foretells the date of her own death: KI I:61, 62.

The Virgin Mary appears to saint and tells her the day of her death: KI I:63.

A voice from heaven wakes up a nun from her sleep to tell her the hour of Kinga’s death: KI I:66.

More saints appear to Kinga before her death: KI I:63, 65.

In the hour of saint’s death the skies open: KI I:63, 65.

In the hour of saint’s death a column of clouds is seen which reaches from the earth up into heaven: KI I: 63, 68.

In the hour of saint’s death a radiating light is seen which illuminates the whole convent: KI I:67.

A nun sees the hands, covered in scarves, of two saints descending in the hour of Kinga’s death: KI I:63.

More persons testify to having seen angels and saints take Kinga’s spirit to heaven: Ki I:63, 64, 65, 67, 68.

Saint’s spirit is carried to heaven by the holy: KI I:63, 65.

Saint’s spirit is carried to heaven by angels: KI I:63, 64, 68.

Saint’s spirit leaves her body in shape of a bright star: KI I:63.

Saint’s spirit leaves her body in the shape of a maiden wearing a jewelled mitre: KI I:65.

Saint’s spirit leaves her body in the shape of the solar disc ascending to heaven: KI I:67.

Saint’s corpse gleams with miraculous white light: KI I:63, 63.

Saint’s corpse gives off a pleasant scent: KI I:63, 63.

RELICS

Relics of saint’s body (healing power): KI I:3.

Two candles burning with miraculous light: KI II:19.

Kinga’s psalter: KI I:50.

Kinga’s staff: KI I:46.

Talking icon (holy image of Christ): KI I:21.

Talking icon of the Virgin Mary: KI I:22, 32.

THROUGH SAINT’S MERITS (SAINT HELPS AFTER DEATH)

Diseased are healed through saint’s merits

Diseased are healed: KI I:30; KI II:5 (seven hundred are cured), 19, 21.

Blind can see: KI II:10, 22 (sixty are healed).

A deaf-mute is healed (by the placing of relics on his body): KI II:3.

A person deaf in one ear is healed: KI II:2.

A man suffering from ear disease is cured: KI II:6.

A lame is healed: KI II:10.

Person suffering from migraine is cured: KI II:8.

Child with burns is healed: KI II:15.

A boy whose entire body is covered with blisters is cured: KI II:8.

A paralytic is healed: KI II:12.

An insane woman is healed: KI II:9.

A person with the rabies is healed: KI II:21.

An epileptic is cured: KI II:19.

A mute can talk: KI II:19.

A man’s gangrenous arm is healed: KI II:19.

Broken limbs are knit: KI II:19.

A man suffering from serious fever is cured: KI II:21.

Dead are risen through saint’s merits

Dead are resurrected due to the prayers of their relatives (80 cases): KI II:1, 4, 11, 13, 17, 18, 22.

Demonic possession is healed through saint’s merits

A girl possessed by the demon is liberated at Kinga’s tomb: KI II:16.

Other miracles through saint’s merits

Kinga appears and chases away ghosts from the bedside of a prince’s wife: KI II:14.

Prisoners are freed through saint’s merits: KI I:29 (the bishop of Cracow: his shackles fall apart); KI II:22 (15 prisoners).

APPARITIONS, VISIONS

St. Kinga

Appears to a bishop and heals him: KI I:30.

Appears to an ill person and foretells that he will be cured: KI II:12.

Appears to the diseased and instructs them to visit her shrine: KI II:9, 19.

Appears by the bedside of a prince’s wife and chases ghosts away: KI II:14.

St. Clara

Appears on behalf of Kinga and tells a captive prince that he will be freed: KI I:29.

The Virgin Mary

Foretells the hour of saint’s death (Kinga’s vision): KI I:63.

St. Francis

Appears before saint’s death (Kinga’s vision): KI I:39, 60.

St. Salome

Appears before saint’s death (Kinga’s vision): KI I:63.

St. Ursula

Comes with her holy companions to receive Kinga’s soul (vision of a nun): KI I:63.

St. Paul

Comes to fetch Kinga’s soul (vision of a nun): KI I:65.

Sts. Gervasius and Prothasius

Appear and defeat the Tartars: KI I:8.

Angel

Beautiful, radiant youths provide wine for those in need: KI I:39, 60.

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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