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Tales of Migration in Medieval Hungary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2024
Abstract
Medieval Hungary has been called a “guestland” because of the multiplicity of immigrant peoples living in the realm. Yet the real experiences of immigrants and narrative constructions about immigration were not always in sync. This article explores medieval tales of different types of migration into the Kingdom of Hungary: first, the mythic migration of the entire people (gens) from a supposed original homeland to a new territory; second, the family histories of noble immigrants; and finally representations of mass immigration into the Christian kingdom. To understand how medieval authors constructed such tales, we need to identify the models they used and the purposes such stories served. Biblical and literary sources inspired the story of “the Hungarians,” while noble families sought to increase their prestige by identifying early immigrant ancestors. In neither case can these medieval narratives be used as historical sources without fully engaging with their genesis. The analysis of explicit medieval reflections on the arrival of various groups into the Kingdom of Hungary also reveals how immigration could be seen in both positive and negative ways. Resting on these medieval foundations, tales of migration have persisted into the present, but they have also gained a sharper distinction: old migration is valorized, while new migration is demonized and instrumentalized in a brutally exclusionary way.
Résumé
Si la Hongrie médiévale a été qualifiée de « terre d’accueil » en raison de la multiplicité des peuples immigrés qui y vivaient, les expériences réelles des immigrants et les constructions narratives autour de l’immigration n’ont cependant pas toujours été en phase. Cet article explore les récits médiévaux de différents types de migration vers le royaume de Hongrie : tout d’abord, la migration mythique de l’ensemble du peuple (gens) d’une supposée patrie d’origine vers un nouveau territoire ; ensuite, les histoires des immigrants nobles ; enfin, les représentations de l’immigration de masse dans le royaume chrétien. Afin de comprendre comment les auteurs médiévaux ont élaboré ces récits, il est nécessaire d’identifier les modèles dont ils se sont servis et l’objectif qu’ils poursuivaient en les écrivant. Ainsi, les sources bibliques et littéraires ont inspiré l’invention de l’histoire des « Hongrois » tandis que l’élévation du prestige des familles nobles a motivé la quête des ancêtres ayant immigré à l’époque de la formation du royaume. Il est impossible d’utiliser les récits médiévaux comme des sources historiques sans s’engager pleinement dans l’étude de leur genèse. Les réflexions médiévales explicites sur l’immigration de divers groupes dans le royaume de Hongrie révèlent également pourquoi celle-ci pouvait être perçue de manière tantôt positive, tantôt négative. Reposant sur ces fondements médiévaux, les récits de la migration ont persisté jusqu’à nos jours, mais une distinction plus nette s’est aussi installée entre les migrations anciennes, valorisées, et les migrations plus récentes, diabolisées et instrumentalisées de manière aussi brutale qu’excluante.
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Footnotes
*
* This article was originally published in French as “Les récits de la migration en Hongrie médiévale,” Annales HSS 76, no. 3 (2021): 457–88. I would like to thank the participants at two conferences, “Migration and Persistence: Medieval Discourses,” organized by Nikolas Jaspert and Bernd Schneidmüller at Heidelberg University in July 2017, and “Rethinking Social Spaces in an Epochal Comparison: Concepts and Approaches in Historical Migration Research,” organized by Anne Friedrichs and Bettina Severin-Barboutie at the Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Mainz, in January 2019, for their questions and comments on the paper that formed the basis of this article.
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2 Ibid.
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12 For an English translation of long excerpts from one of Orbán’s speeches, see Jack Montgomery, “Orban: Central Europe Will Be Anti-Globalist Bastion of Christian Culture and National Identity,” Breitbart, July 30, 2018, https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/07/30/orban-central-europe-anti-globalist-bastion-christian-culture-national-identity/; Konrad Sutarski, “A keresztény védőbástya. Lengyelország és Magyarország a hagyományos érdekeket védő európai frontzónában,” Magyar Idők, August 10, 2016, https://www.magyaridok.hu/velemeny/a-kereszteny-vedobastya-680476/.
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14 “Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speech at the 6th Summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking States,” September 3, 2018, http://www.miniszterelnok.hu/prime-minister-viktor-orbans-speech-at-the-6th-summit-of-the-cooperation-council-of-turkic-speaking-states/.
15 Balázs Ablonczy, Keletre magyar! A magyar turanizmus története (Budapest: Jaffa Kiadó, 2016).
16 Erik Fügedi, “Das mittelalterliche Königreich Ungarn als Gastland,” in Erik Fügedi, Kings, Bishops, Nobles, and Burghers in Medieval Hungary, ed. János M. Bak (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986), chapter 8, 471–507.
17 For an overview of medieval Hungarian history, see Pál Engel, The Realm of St Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001).
18 András Pálóczi Horváth, Pechenegs, Cumans, Iasians: Steppe Peoples in Medieval Hungary, trans. Timothy Wilkinson (Budapest: Corvina, 1989); Gyula Kristó, Nichtungarische Völker im mittelalterlichen Ungarn (Herne: Schäfer, 2008); András Pálóczi Horváth, Keleti népek a középkori Magyarországon. Besenyők, úzok, kunok és jászok művelődéstörténeti emlékei (Budapest/Piliscsaba: Archaeolingua/MTA Történettudományi Intézet/Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem Bölcsészettudományi Kar, 2014); Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
19 For examples, see György Székely, “A székesfehérvári latinok és vallonok a középkori Magyarországon,” in Székesfehérvár évszázadai, ed. Alán Kralovánszky, vol. 2, Középkor (Székesfehérvár: István Király Múzeum, 1972), 45–72; Berend, At the Gate of Christendom; Berend, “A Note on the End of Islam in Medieval Hungary: Old Mistakes and Some New Results,” Journal of Islamic Studies 25, no. 2 (2014): 201–206.
20 On the many varieties of immigrant status during the Midde Ages see, for example, Kurt-Ulrich Jäschke and Christhard Schrenk, eds., Vieler Völker Städte. Polyethnizität und Migration in Städten des Mittelalters: Chancen und Gefahren (Heilbronn: Stadtarchiv Heilbronn, 2012); Derek J. Keene, Balázs Nagy, and Katalin G. Szende, eds., Segregation, Integration, Assimilation: Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); Nora Berend, ed., “Minority Influences in Medieval Society,” special issue, Journal of Medieval History 45, no. 3 (2019), in particular Katalin Szende, “Iure Theutonico? German Settlers and Legal Frameworks for Immigration to Hungary in an East-Central European Perspective,” 360–79, and Matthias Hardt, “Migrants in High Medieval Bohemia,” 380–88.
21 Nora Berend, “Noms et origines des immigrants nobles en Hongrie (xiiie siècle). La liste des advenae entre mythe et réalités,” in Anthroponymie et migrations dans la Chrétienté médiévale, ed. Monique Bourin and Pascual Martínez Sopena (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2010), 247–64, here pp. 251–54.
22 Everyman: Three Late Medieval Morality Plays, ed. Godfrey Allen Lester (London: Black, 1990); Florence Bourgne, ed., “Everyman”: lectures critiques et documents (Paris: AMAES, 2009).
23 Most recently, see Steven Vanderputten, “Reconsidering Religious Migration and Its Impact: The Problem of ‘Irish Reform Monks’ in Tenth-Century Lotharingia,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 112, no. 3/4 (2017): 588–618; Larissa J. Taylor et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
24 Bernd Schneidmüller, “Fitting Medieval Europe into the World: Patterns of Integration, Migration, and Uniqueness,” Journal of Transcultural Studies 5, no. 2 (2014): 8–38, here p. 19.
25 For a standard account of Hungarian prehistory see, for example, András Róna-Tas, Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages: An Introduction to Early Hungarian History [1997], trans. Nicholas Bodoczky (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999).
26 Nora Berend, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, c. 900–c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 61–82.
27 R. J. W. Evans and Guy P. Marchal, eds., The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States: History, Nationhood, and the Search for Origins (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
28 Similarly to stories from classical antiquity: Felix Wiedemann, Kerstin P. Hofmann, and Hans-Joachim Gehrke, eds., Vom Wandern der Völker. Migrationserzählungen in den Altertumswissenschaften (Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017).
29 Colette Beaune, Naissance de la nation France (Paris: Gallimard, 1985); André Burguière, “L’historiographie des origines de la France. Genèse d’un imaginaire national,” Annales HSS 58, no. 1 (2003): 41–62.
30 Bernd Schneidmüller, “Medieval Concepts of Migration and Transculturality,” in Engaging Transculturality: Concepts, Key Terms, Case Studies, ed. Laila Abu-Er-Rub et al. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), 79–94. For pertinent criticism of other similar constructs see, for example, Wiedemann, Hofmann, and Gehrke, Vom Wandern der Völker, especially Felix Wiedemann, Kerstin P. Hofmann, and Hans-Joachim Gehrke, “Wanderungsnarrative. Zur Verknüpfung von Raum und Identität in Migrationserzählungen,” 9–37, here p. 18–20; Anca Dan, “The Sarmatians: Some Thoughts on the Historiographical Invention of a West Iranian Migration,” 97–134; and Matthias Jung, “Wanderungsnarrative in der Ur- und Frühgeschichtsforschung,” 161–87. See also Felix Wiedemann, “Völkerwellen und Kulturbringer: Herkunfts- und Wanderungsnarrative in historisch-archäologischen Interpretationen des Vorderen Orients um 1900,” Ethnographisch-Archäologische Zeitschrift 51, no. 1/2 (2010): 105–28.
31 Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “Myths Chasing Myths: The Legend of the Trojan Origin of the French and Its Dismantling,” in The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways: Festschrift in Honor of János M. Bak, ed. Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebők (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), 613–33. On the influence of the Trojan story in formulating alternative origins, see Elizabeth M. Tyler, “Trojans in Anglo-Saxon England: Precedent without Descent,” Review of English Studies 64, no. 263 (2013): 1–20.
32 On Regino of Prüm and Constantine VII Porphyrogenetos, see below.
33 This dating is the most likely; on the arguments and alternatives proposed by scholars in the past, see János M. Bak, introduction to Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum/Anonymus, Notary of King Béla: The Deeds of the Hungarians, in Anonymus and Master Roger, ed. Martyn Rady and László Veszprémy, trans. János M. Bak, Martyn Rady, and László Veszprémy (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010), xvii–xxxviii, here pp. xix–xxii. On the historiography, see Gábor Thoroczkay, “Az Anonymus-kérdés kutatástörténeti áttekintése (1977–1993). I–II,” Fons 1 (1994): 93–149 and Fons 2 (1995): 117–73.
34 Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, 4–5: “Et si tam nobilissima gens Hungarie primordia sue generationis et forcia queque facta sua ex falsis fabulis rusticorum vel a garrulo cantu ioculatorum quasi sompniando audiret, valde indecorum et satis indecens esset. Ergo pocius an non de certa Scripturarum explanatione et aperta hystoriarum interpretatione rerum veritatem nobiliter percipiat. Felix igitur Hungaria, cui sunt dona data varia, omnibus enim horis gaudeat de munere sui litteratoris, quia exordium genealogie regum suorum et nobilium habet, de quibus regibus sit laus et honor regi eterno et sancte Marie matri eius, per gratiam cuius reges Hungarie et nobiles regnum habeant felici fine hic et in evum. Amen” (translation modified).
35 A third-century work, Justin’s Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum Pompei Trogi (itself summarizing a first-century, now lost history); based on this, the seventh-century Exordia Scythica; and the chronicle of Regino of Prüm (d. 915).
36 Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, 6; Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/isidore.html; The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 9.2.27.
37 See, for instance, Magali Coumert, Origines des peuples. Les récits du haut Moyen Âge occidental (550–850) (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 2007), 455–60.
38 Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, 6. Ludwig Fóti, “Gog und Magog. Der anonyme Notar König Bélas,” Ungarische Rundschau für historische und soziale Wissenschaften 1, no. 3 (1912): 618–53; György Györffy, Krónikáink és a magyar őstörténet. Régi kérdések – új válaszok (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 1993), 28–29. On medieval etymological arguments, see Julia Verkholantsev, “Etymological Argumentation as a Category of Historiographic Thought in Historical Writings of Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary,” in Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zones to Lands in Focus, ed. Gerhard Jaritz and Katalin Szende (London: Routledge, 2016), 239–53.
39 Chronici Hungarici compositio saeculi xiv, ed. Alexander Domanovszky, in Scriptores rerum hungaricarum, ed. Emericus Szentpétery, vol. 1 (Budapest: Academia Litterarum Hungarica, 1937; repr. Budapest: Nap Kiadó, 1999), 217–505, here p. 249.
40 Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, 4–9: “Et primus rex Scithie fuit Magog filius Iaphet et gens illa a Magog rege vocata est Moger, a cuius etiam progenie regis descendit … potentissimus rex Athila, qui … de terra Scithica descendens … in terram Pannonie venit et fugatis Romanis regnum obtinuit.” (“The first king of Scythia was Magog, son of Japhet, and this people were called after him Magyar, from whose royal line the most renowned and mighty King Attila descended, who, coming down from Scythia, entered Pannonia … and, putting the Romans to flight, took the realm”).
41 M. Iuniani Iustini Epitoma historiarum philippicarum Pompei Trogi, ed. Otto Seel (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1972), book 2, chapters 1–3; Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, trans. J. C. Yardley (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994). See also Ronald Syme, “The Date of Justin and the Discovery of Trogus,” Historia. Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 37, no. 3 (1988): 358–71.
42 Reginonis abbatis Prumiensis Chronicon cum continuatione Treverensi, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH SS rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 50 (Hanover: Hahn, 1890), 131–33, (under the year 889); History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: The “Chronicle” of Regino of Prüm and Adalbert of Magdeburg, trans. Simon MacLean (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). On these stereotypes, see József Laszlovszky, ed., Tender Meat under the Saddle: Customs of Eating, Drinking and Hospitality among Conquering Hungarians and Nomadic Peoples (Krems: Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 1998). On Regino’s borrowing from Justin, see Max Manitius, “Regino und Justin,” Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 25 (1900): 192–201.
43 Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, 10–11. Such a reason for migration was frequent in medieval chronicles. On other medieval migration tales, see Coumert, Origines des peuples; Alheydis Plassmann, Origo gentis: Identitäts- und Legitimitätsstiftung in früh- und hochmittelalterlichen Herkuntfserzählungen (Berlin: Akademie, 2006).
44 Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, 16–17: “Tunc elegerunt sibi querere terram Pannonie, quam audiverant fama volante terram Athile regis esse, de cuius progenie dux Almus pater Arpad descenderat.” Although Bak and Rady’s English translation gives his name as Álmos, which in modern Hungarian means “sleepy” and is related to álom, “dream”—because the Anonymous author links Almus’ name to the dream foretelling his birth—this is probably a false medieval etymology; the Byzantine rendering of the name is Almudz. I have modified all citations from this translation to reflect my use of the Latin form, Almus.
45 Jenő Szűcs, “Theoretical Elements in Master Simon of Kéza’s Gesta Hungarorum (1282–1285 A.D.),” in Simonis de Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum/Simon of Kéza, The Deeds of the Hungarians, ed. and trans. László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), xxix–cii, here pp. lii–lv; Nora Berend, “How Many Medieval Europes? The ‘Pagans’ of Hungary and Regional Diversity in Christendom,” in The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London: Routledge, 2001), 77–92.
46 Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, 20–21: “Anno dominice incarnationis DCCCLXXXIIII, sicut in annalibus continetur cronicis, septem principales persone, qui Hetumoger vocantur, egressi sunt de terra Scithica versus occidentem … Venientes autem dies plurimos per deserta loca et fluvium Etyl super tulbou sedentes ritu paganismo transnataverunt et nunquam viam civitatis vel habitaculi invenerunt.” On “leather bags” used in river crossings, see below.
47 Ibid.: “Postquam autem ad partes Rutenorum pervenerunt, sine aliqua contradictione, usque ad civitatem Kyev transierunt.”
48 Ibid., 22–27, here pp. 26–27: “…ut dimissa terra Galicie ultra silvam Hovos, versus occidentem in terram Pannonie descenderent, que primo Athile regis terra fuisset, et laudabant eis terram Pannonie ultra modum esse bonam.” See Judit Csákó, “A rómaiak pannóniai legelője. Megjegyzések egy hagyomány keletkezéséhez (I. rész),” Fons 36 (2019): 147–92.
49 Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, 28–35.
50 Ibid., 34–35.
51 Numbers 13:1–33; Deuteronomy 1:22–40.
52 See Péter László, ed., Historians and the History of Transylvania (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1992), 197–201; János M. Bak, “From the Anonymus Gesta to the ‘Flight of Zalán’ by Vörösmarty,” in Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. János M. Bak, Patrick J. Geary, and Gábor Klaniczay (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 96–107; Bak, introduction to Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, xxvii–xxxiv. On parallel processes of correcting details, but partially taking over invented narratives, see Wiedemann, Hofmann, and Gehrke, “Wanderungsnarrative,” 13–14.
53 On the context, but without engaging with the tale of migration, see Gernot Heiss et al., “Habsburg’s Difficult Legacy: Comparing and Relating Austrian, Czech, Magyar, and Slovak National Historical Master Narratives,” in The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories, ed. Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 367–404.
54 Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, 54–55: “Bene implevit deus in Almo duce et filio suo Arpad propheciam, quam cecinit Moyses propheta a filiis Israel dicens: Et locus, quem calcaverit pes vester, vester erit. Quia a die illo loca, que calcaverunt Almus dux et filius suus Arpad cum suis nobilibus, usque ad presens posteritates eorum habuerunt et habent.”
55 On construing the Hungarians as enemies, see Alexander Sager, “Hungarians as Vremde in Medieval Germany,” in Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen (London: Routledge, 2002), 27–44.
56 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, 9.2.27, 9.2.65–66, 14.3.31, and 14.4.3.
57 Ibid., 14.3.32.
58 For an introduction to these languages, see Daniel Abondolo, “Uralic Languages,” Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935345.013.6.
59 Schneidmüller, “Fitting Medieval Europe into the World,” 26 and 28; Coumert, Origines des peuples, 393; Walter Pohl, “Narratives of Origin and Migration in Early Medieval Europe: Problems of Interpretation,” Medieval History Journal 21, no. 2 (2018): 192–221, here p. 193.
60 Anonymus and Master Roger, ed. Rady and Veszprémy, 20, n. 3.
61 Cornides suggests that tömlő derives from tulbou, and argues it is an inflated animal skin rather than a small boat: Danielis Cornides, Vindiciae Anonymi Belae regis notarii, ed. Johann Christian Engel (Buda: Regia Universitas Pestana, 1802), 306.
62 Anonymus and Master Roger, ed. Rady and Veszprémy, 20, n. 3.
63 László Veszprémy, “More paganismo: Reflections on the Pagan and Christian Past in the Gesta Hungarorum of the Hungarian Anonymous Notary,” in Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History Writing in Northern, East-Central and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200), ed. Ildar H. Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 183–201, here pp. 196–197. William of Rubruk was a Franciscan in the service of King Louis IX who traveled as a missionary in the Mongol Empire.
64 Cornides, Vindiciae Anonymi Belae regis notarii, 303–307.
65 Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire [1996], trans. Peter T. Daniels (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 374. Incidentally, stories of river crossings using inflated animal skins are found in other sources, including Livy and Cesar, concerning another barbarian people, the Iberians.
66 Johannes de Thurocz, Chronica Hungarorum, ed. Erzsébet Galántai, Gyula Kristó, and Elemér Mályusz, vol. 1, Textus (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1985), 35: “Huni vero, plurima qui iam flumina post discessum ipsorum a Scitia in utrium officio transnatare asueverant, noctis tenebroso sub silentio utribus eisdem inflatis se illorum navigio commiserunt” (“Indeed the Huns, who since leaving Scythia had become used to traversing many rivers using bags made from animal skins, in the silence of the dark night inflated these same bags of skin to reach their boat”).
67 Coumert, Origines des peuples, 157 and 452–60.
68 Chronici Hungarici compositio saeculi xiv, 241–43. Different compositions from the fourteenth century are divided into two families (the family of the Chronicle of Buda and that of the Illuminated Chronicle), with somewhat different versions of the text; details of authorship are debated.
69 Chronici Hungarici compositio saeculi xiv, 243–56, 285–87, and 289, here p. 289: “Retradidit autem Dominus Hungaris Pannoniam, sicut tradiderat filii tempore Moysi terram Seo regis Amorreorum et omnia regna Chanaan in hereditatem.”
70 The historiography is too voluminous to list here. For a recent summary in English, see János M. Bak and László Veszprémy, eds., Studies on the “Illuminated Chronicle” (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2018).
71 Sándor László Tóth, “A honfoglalás,” in Árpád előtt és után. Tanulmányok a magyarság és hazája korai történetéről, ed. Gyula Kristó and Ferenc Makk (Szeged: Somogyi Könyvtár, 1996), 43–54, here p. 46; Zoltán Bálint Takács, “A magyar honfoglalás előzményeiről,” Savaria. A Vas megyei múzeumok értesítője 27 (2002): 201–13, discusses the story about the eagles on p. 205 with further bibliographical references.
72 The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text, ed. and trans. Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953). This is an early twelfth-century Old East Slavic chronicle, reworked several times in the later Middle Ages.
73 Ibid., 196.
74 Johannes de Thurocz, Chronica Hungarorum, vol. 1.
75 Johannes de Thurocz, Chronica Hungarorum, ed. Elemér Mályusz and Gyula Kristó, vol. 2, Commentarii, part 1, Ab Initiis usque ad annum 1301 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1988), 41. John Thuróczy does not identify his sources by name, but the editors provide useful information in their apparatus. The Chronicle of Buda, written during Charles Robert’s reign and covering events up to 1332/1333, starts with chapter 11 of Genesis, the tower of Babel; the Illuminated Chronicle, written under Louis I and covering events to 1349, starts with chapter 10 of Genesis.
76 Thus in the copy printed in Augsburg in 1488: Cambridge, University Library, Inc.5.A.6.18., fol. 27r.
77 Johannes de Thurocz, Chronica Hungarorum, vol. 1, 14–114 and 200–203.
78 Cambridge, University Library Inc.5.A.6.18., fol. 27r.
79 Coumert, Origines des peuples, 510–14; Pohl, “Narratives of Origin and Migration in Early Medieval Europe.”
80 Coumert, Origines des peuples, 511–12.
81 Simonis de Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, 158–75.
82 Chronici Hungarici compositio saeculi xiv, 294–304: “Cum ergo quidam sint hospites isto tempore nobilitate pares Hungaris …” (“Since these days there are some foreign settlers equal to the Hungarians in nobility …”).
83 Berend, “Noms et origines des immigrants nobles en Hongrie (xiiie siècle).”
84 On the Hungarian nobility, see Erik Fügedi, Castle and Society in Medieval Hungary (1000–1437) (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1986); Fügedi, Kings, Bishops, Nobles and Burghers; Martyn Rady, Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).
85 Gyula Kristó, “Selbstbewußtsein und Fremdenfeindlichkeit im Ungarn der Árpádenzeit,” East Central Europe 20–23, part 2 (1993–1996): 91–111.
86 Tamás Körmendi, “A Gertrúd királyné elleni merénylet a külhoni elbeszélő forrásokban,” Történelmi Szemle 51 (2009): 155–93. On the broader historical background and various aspects of the murder, see Judit Majorossy, ed., Egy történelmi gyilkosság margójára. Merániai Gertrúd emlékezete, 1213–2013 (Szentendre: Ferenczy Múzeum, 2014).
87 Erik Fügedi, Ispánok, bárók, kiskirályok. A középkori magyar arisztokrácia fejlődése (Budapest: Magvető Kiadó, 1986), 15.
88 Simonis de Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, 162–65; Chronici Hungarici compositio saeculi xiv, 296.
89 According to one view, Wolfger of Erlach, of the Au-Erlach lineage, who arrived in Hungary during the reign of Géza II, is the person named in the chronicle: Simonis de Kéza,Gesta Hungarorum, 164, n. 1.
90 This was the Benedictine abbey of Küszén, today Burg Güssing, in Austria. For the charter, see György Fejér, Codex diplomaticus Hungariae ecclesiasticus ac civilis, vol. 3, t. 2 (Buda: s. n., 1829), 144–45; Fügedi, Ispánok, bárók, kiskirályok, 13.
91 Simonis de Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, 164–65; Chronici Hungarici compositio saeculi xiv, 297–98. In the fourteenth-century chronicles he is “Corardus de Altinburg”; slightly different forms (Pot, Poth) are also used in the two chronicles. Altenburg (Magyaróvár) is a town on the western border of Hungary.
92 Gusztáv Wenzel, Codex diplomaticus Arpadianus continuatus. Árpádkori új okmánytár, vol. 12 (1874; repr. Pápa: Jókai Mór városi könyvtár, 2003), 355; Attila Zsoldos, Magyarország világi archontológiája, vol. 1, 1000–1301 (Budapest: História/MTA Történettudományi Intézete, 2011), 319.
93 János Karácsonyi, A magyar nemzetségek a xiv. század közepéig (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1900; repr. Budapest: Nap Kiadó, 1995), 545–46.
94 Fügedi, Ispánok, bárók, kiskirályok, 33–34. Most recently on the lineage, see Norbert C. Tóth, “A Győr-nemzetség az Árpád-korban,” in Analecta Mediaevalia I. Tanulmányok a középkorról, ed. Tibor Neumann (Budapest: Argumentum Kiadó, 2001), 53–72.
95 Karácsonyi, A magyar nemzetségek, 550.
96 Ibid., 548, 554, and 557; Pál Engel, Magyarország világi archontológiája, vol. 2, 1301–1457 (Budapest: História/MTA Történettudományi Intézete, 1996), 60, 93, and 230.
97 Libellus de institutione morum, ed. Iosephus Balogh, in Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum, ed. Emericus Szentpétery, vol. 2 (Budapest: Academia Litterarum Hungarica, 1938; repr. Budapest: Nap Kiadó, 1999), 611–27, here pp. 624–25: “Sicut enim ex diversis partibus et provinciis veniunt hospites, ita diversas linguas et consuetudines, diversaque documenta et arma secum ducunt, que omnia regna [variant: regiam] ornant et magnificant aulam et perterritant exterorum arrogantiam. Nam unius lingue uniusque moris regnum inbecille et fragile est. Propterea iubeo te fili mi, ut bona voluntate illos nutrias, et honeste teneas, ut tecum libentius degant, quam alicubi habitent.” Of the many analyses, see András Kubinyi, “Zur Frage der Toleranz im mittelalterlichen Königreich Ungarn,” in Toleranz im Mittelalter, ed. Alexander Patschovsky and Harald Zimmermann (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1998), 187–206; Jenő Szűcs, “Szent István intelmei: Az első magyarországi államelméleti mű,” in Szent István és kora, ed. Ferenc Glatz and József Kardos (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 1988), 32–53; László Veszprémy, “Megjegyzések Szent István ‘Intelmei’-hez,” in Várak, templomok, ispotályok. Tanulmányok a magyar középkorról, ed. Tibor Neumann (Budapest: Argumentum Kiadó, 2004), 311–25.
98 Előd Nemerkényi, Latin Classics in Medieval Hungary: Eleventh Century (Debrecen: University of Debrecen/Central European University Press, 2004), 31–71. On the genre of king’s mirror, see Sverre Bagge, The Political Thought of the King’s Mirror (Odense: Odense University Press, 1987).
99 Nemerkényi, Latin Classics, 54 and 57–61.
100 Erik Fügedi and János M. Bak, “Foreign Knights and Clerks in Early Medieval Hungary,” in The Expansion of Central Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. Nora Berend (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 319–32.
101 Chronici Hungarici compositio saeculi xiv, 303: “Bohemi, Poloni, Greci, Ispani, Hismahelite seu Saraceni, Bessi, Armeni, Saxones, Turingi, Misnenses et Renenses, Cumani, Latini.” The other chronicle family features an abbreviated list.
102 Magistri Rogerii Epistola in miserabile carmen super destructione Regni Hungarie per tartaros facta/Master Roger’s Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament upon the Destruction of the Kingdom of Hungary by the Tatars, ed. and trans. in Anonymus and Master Roger, ed. Rady and Veszprémy, 133–229, here pp. 138–39.
103 Ibid.: “Rex vero … usque ad confinium terre sue obvius sibi fuit tot eximia et tot honores sibi et suis faciens, quod ab incolis terre illius a tempore, cuius non extabat memoria, factum non fuerat neque visum.”
104 Ibid., 140–41, and 146–47.
105 Ibid., 172–73: “Clamabat totus populus contra eum: Moriatur! Moriatur! … ceperunt eosdem et cunctis in instanti capitibus amputatis ea in populos per fenestras de pallatio proiecerunt.”
106 Ibid., 138: “Erat gens dura et aspera subdi nescia …”
107 Ibid., 154–55: “Si autem Comanos plus, quam Hungaros honorabat, hoc ipsi egre ferre non poterant nec debebant. Nam decebat regiam dignitatem introductos hospites honorare, maxime cum hoc eis promiserit iuramento”; “solum regem habebant in Hungaria protectorem.”
108 Ibid., 138–39.
109 On modern fears and accusations against immigrants, compare Leo Lucassen, The Immigrant Threat: The Integration of Old and New Migrants in Western Europe since 1850 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005).
110 Aranka Csősz et al., “Maternal Genetic Ancestry and Legacy of 10th Century AD Hungarians,” Scientific Reports 6 (2016), https://doi.org/10.1038/srep33446.
111 Magyar Közlöny 17 (2020): 342–52, here p. 345.
112 Compare Schneidmüller, “Medieval Concepts of Migration and Transculturality.”
113 Charles F. Briggs, “History, Story, and Community: Representing the Past in Latin Christendom, 1050–1400,” in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. 2, 400–1400, ed. Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 391–413.
114 Márk Herczeg, “A Kúria elítélte Tóta W. Árpádot, mert büdös magyar migránsokról írt,” !!444!!!, March 24, 2021, https://444.hu/2021/03/24/a-kuria-elitelte-tota-w-arpadot-mert-budos-magyar-migransokrol-irt.