Magyar Zoltán

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

Princess Elizabeth of Töss

ASCETICISM, SELF-TORTURE, PENITENCE

Asceticism

Frequent, excessive fasting: TE:7.

Saint resists offer to marriage: TE:4.

HUMILITY

Extremely humble in spite of her royal parentage: TE:6.

Saint wears poor, patched, shabby clothes: TE:4.

HEALING

Saint heals a woman’s hand which has been lame for 40 years: TE:10.

SIGNS OF SANCTITY

Extraordinary beauty: TE:4.

Levitation. Saint levitates above ground during prayer: TE:8, 13.

The night-light goes out, then reawakens by itself at saint’s bedside: TE:12.

Saint brings water in a holed tub from a long distance to put out fire: TE:10.

A glass pearl falls into the cups held in the nuns’ hands at every word during prayer. Into Elizabeth’s cup two pearls fall at every word: TE:8.

PUNISHMENT, MALEDICTION, RETRIBUTION

The person who insulted Elizabeth has to atone for his sin in Purgatory: TE:8, 8.

SAINT’S DEATH, ELEVATION, TRANSLATION OF REMAINS

Elevation

When saint’s tomb is opened after 30 years, her body is found intact, undeteriorated: TE:16.

THROUGH SAINT’S MERITS (SAINT HELPS AFTER DEATH)

Diseased are healed through saint’s merits

People suffering from illnesses are cured: TE:14, 14.

People suffering from serious fever are cured: TE:14, 15.

Person suffering from migraine is cured: TE:14.

Person suffering from ear disease is cured: TE:14.

Person suffering from eye disease is cured: TE:14.

APPARITIONS, VISIONS

St. Elizabeth of Töss

Appears after her death to her stepmother: TE:13.

St. Elizabeth of the House of Árpád

Appears to the ill Elizabeth of Töss and heals her: TE:11.

Voice from heaven

A voice instructs an ill person to go to St. Elizabeth of Töss to be healed: TE:10.

A sinner

A person who has insulted the saint appears to her after his death and asks saint to pray for his soul because he is suffering in Purgatory: TE:8, 8.

A bishop

A person resembling a bishop with a book in his hands steps to the altar, reads aloud the legend of St. Elizabeth of Töss and testifies to its truth from the first word to the last (vision of a nun): TE:16.

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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