Magyar Zoltán

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

SELF-TORTURE

Self-mortifying practices

Andrew: Mortification of the flesh. When saint dozes off, reeds prick him and he hits his head against rocks: AN:5.

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

Ladislas: Saint sleeps on stone bed ans stone pillows: Madas:7.1.1.2.

Irene: Ascetic self-mortification: PE I:2; PE II:3.

Elizabeth: Saint orders her servants to wake her at night to pray: EL: IV:II.2, 6-8, III.3; EL V:8; EL VII:2.I, II; EL VIII:7.

Kinga: 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.

Margaret: Saint sleeps on a mat beside her bed: MA I:I.66; MA II:I.30. Because of her habit of falling on her knees the skin on her knees gets swollen and sore and is hardened: MA I:VI.23; MA II:I.32, 40. Saint prays in the choir wearing only one shirt even in winter; her body gets blue with cold: MA I:I.35. Saint has her arm bound up with a hemp rope so tight that blood shows: MA I:I.114, VI.30; MA II:I.12.

Birching, flogging, self-flagellation

Gerald: Frequent self-flagellation: GE II: 57.

Elizabeth: Saint orders her servants to flog and birch her: EL IV:II.9, 10, 17; EL V:8; EL VII:2.II, VI; EL VIII:10, 11, 29; Temesvari: 98.21; EC:642. Saint humbly endures that her confessor flogs and birches her: EL: IV:III.14, 16, IV.20, 21; EL V:11, 19, 27; EL VII:6.IV.

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

Margaret: On the eve of major religious festivals saint flagellates herself until blood shows: MA I:I.100. Saint has herself flogged, flagellated with a thorny whip made of hedgehog-skin: MA I:I.100, 118. Saint asks the sisters to flog, flagellate her: MA I:I.101, 103, 105, 118, VI.13, 25; MA II:I.14, 29. Saint asks for such hard flagellation that the nun flogging her is exhausted in it: MA I:I.104, VI.27; MA II:I:13.

Instruments of self-torture:

Andrew: Mortification of the flesh. Saint wears an iron belt around which skin has grown and which reaches deep inside into his intestines: AN: 8.

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

Elizabeth: Saint often wears cilicium (penitent’s girdle): EL VII:2.V.

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

Margaret: Saint, following the example set by St. Thomas Martyr, wears a cilicium (penitent’s girdle made of horse-hair and wool): MA I:I.10-11, 67, 69, 117, VI.6, 14; MA II:I.12, 19; Ransaanus: XVI.6, 9. Beside the cilicium saint also wears an iron belt: MA I:I.67; MA II:I.12. Saint wears a girdle made of hedgehog-skin which she wears with the thorns inside: MA I:I.118; MA II:I.12. Saint wears foot clout covered with small iron nails in her sandals: MA I:I.107; MA II:I.12.

Saint abstains from bathing and washing his/her own clothes

Elizabeth: Saint abstains from bathing: EL IV:IV.16; EL V:23.

Margaret: Saint does not bathe for 18 years: MA I:I.41; Ransanus: XVI.9. Saint rarely washes her clothes, doesn’t clean them at all in Lent time: MA II:I.11. Saint wears verminous clothes in which she can’t sleep at night for the swarming of lice and vermin: MA II:I.11.

Not even during illness does saint desist from self-mortification

Margaret: Saint performs every task and prayer even during her illnesses: MA I:I.87. Saint keeps her illness secret to her fellow-nuns: MA I:I.86. Saint keeps her illness secret in order not to be taken to the sick-room and forced to eat meat: MA II:I.17.

Martyrdom

Margaret: Desire for martyrdom: MA II:I.34.

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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