Magyar Zoltán

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

Prince Emeric (Imre, Emericus)

He was the only son of king Stephen I and princess Gisella of Bavaria who lived to adulthood; he died prematurely in 1031 in a hunting accident. The historical sources treat him summarily: we know that in 1030 he participated in the defensive war against the Holy Roman emperor Conrad II. As commander of the king’s Guards he must have been one of the military leaders of the army. A fragment of the Legend of St. Margaret (Legenda vetus) refers to him as a married man whose wife came from the Byzantine court. The tradition of his chastity in marriage, his foremost attribute, is probably no more than a fiction invented by the author of the Legenda. He was buried beside his father in the basilica of Székesfehérvár; this church was one of the main pilgrimage sites in medieval Hungary [Tarnoczi 1680b; Tarczay 1930; Dömötör 1958; Tóth 1962; Bollók 1986; Magyar 2000b].

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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