Magyar Zoltán

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

Bishop Gerald (Gellért, Gerhardus)

Gerald was the son of a patrician family in Venice and he was educated in the city’s Monastery of St. George. He continued his studies at the University of Bologna and upon his return to Venice he was elected abbot of the selfsame monastery. Invited by king Stephen to Hungary to help in the work of founding and church organisation, he arrived there around 1026. The king named him bishop of the freshly created bishopric of Marosvár (southern Hungary). After the death of king Stephen Gerald played an active part in state politics, too: he openly condemned king Aba Sámuel (1041-1044) and in 1046 he was on his way to welcome princes Andrew and Béla, returning from their long exile in Poland, when a group of pagan Hungarians captured and murdered him under the hill which today bears his name on the northern bank of the Danube, present-day Budapest. His remains were buried in Pest and only later unearthed and transported to the seat of the bishopric of which he was in charge [Juhász 1930; Silagi 1967; Kosztolnyik 1969; Magyar Katolikus Lexikon IV. 1998: 34-38].

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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