Anonymus and Master Roger: The Deeds of the Hungarians. Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament upon the Destruction of the Kingdom of Hungary by the Tatars

Martyn C. Rady · Laszlo Veszpremy · Janos M. Bak

Jan 2010 · Central European Medieval Texts Book 5 · Central European University Press

About this ebook

This volume contains two very different narratives; both are for the first time presented in an updated Latin text with an annotated English translation.

An anonymous notary of King Bela of Hungary wrote a Latin Gesta Hungarorum (ca. 1200/10), a literary composition about the mythical origins of the Hungarians and their conquest of the Carpathian Basin. Anonymus tried to (re)construct the events and protagonists—including ethnic groups—of several centuries before from the names of places, rivers, and mountains of his time, assuming that these retained the memory of times past. One of his major “inventions” was the inclusion of Attila the Hun into the Hungarian royal genealogy, a feature later developed into the myth of Hun-Hungarian continuity.

The Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament upon the Destruction of the Kingdom of Hungary by the Tartars of Master Roger includes an eyewitness account of the Mongol invasion in 1241–2, beginning with an analysis of the political conditions under King Bela IV and ending with the king’s return to the devastated country.

About the author

Janos M. Bak, professor emeritus CEU (Budapest) and UBC (Vancouver) is editor in chief of Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae. The Laws of the Mediaeval Kingdom of Hungary (DRMH), 5 vols. (1989- in prog.) and member of the editorial board of CEMT. A selection of his articles (Studying Medieval Rulers and Their Subjects) is to be published by Ashgate (Aldershot, 2010) in the Variorum Series.
Martyn Rady, professor of Central European History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. His books include Medieval Buda: A Study of Municipal Government and Jurisdiction in the Kingdom of Hungary (1985), and Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary (2000). He was also coeditor of DRMH 5, the Tripartitum of Werboczy.
Laszlo Veszpremy, DSc, medievalist, paleographer, visiting professor at CEU, Department of Medieval Studies, director of the Institute of Military History. Books: co-author of the series Mittelalterliche lateinische Handschriftenfragmente (1988-98); editor, among other books, of Simonis de Keza, Gesta Hungarorum (1999 CEMT 1); and (with B. K. Kiraly) A Millennium of Hungarian Military History (2002).