GALICIAN HOSTAGES FROM «GESTA HUNGARORUM»: AN ATTEMPT OF IDENTIFICATION
https://doi.org/10.15330/hal_swc.10.23-41
Keywords:
Anonymous, “Gesta Hungarorum”, Halych, Galician hostages, Béla IV, historiography, Prince, KingAbstract
The article is devoted to a thorough analysis of “Gesta Hungarorum” by the anonymous master P. (presumably a Dominican monk at the court of the “younger king” Béla in Transylvania), where a lot of cases of the transfer to the Magyars (while searching for a honfoglalás) the sons of the conquered by them rulers, such hostages, are noted. Anonymous indicated a clear number of hostages only in the three cases: the Prince of Volodymyr gave to Magyars his two sons, and Galician and Bulgarian – one son each. It is very well known that “Gesta Hungarorum” recreated the legendary arrival of the Magyar tribes in the Danube lowlands, imposing on the events of the late 9th – early 10th centuries certain patterns from later historical events of the establishment of the current royal dynasty from the Adriatic Sea to the Carpathians and Subcarpathia and from the Tatra Mountains to Transylvania. This narrative contained completely real historical events camouflaged as an epic in the origo gentis style characteristic of that time. However, the exceptional specificity in mentioning the Volodymyr, Galician, and Bulgarian hostages in the “Gesta Hungarorum” allows us to see them as contemporary (or well-known) rulers to Anonymous, with whom he could even have met in person. The children of Prince Roman Mstyslavovych – Danylo and Vasylko – can be considered hostages of Volodymyr. The Galician hostage is, rather, Prince Yaroslav Volodymyrkovych, one of his grandchildren, bastards of Volodymyr Yaroslavovych, or the son of Roman Igorevych, while the Bulgarian one is probably the son of Tsar Ivan Asen II, Coloman. In any case, the proposed identifications make it possible to once again doubt on the appearance of “Gesta Hungarorum” during the reign of Béla III, which is most actively written about in Hungarian historiography. The version that the work was prepared at one of the courts of the “younger king” Béla (from 1235 – Béla IV) in Transylvania with the final completion of the text between 1237/8–1241 seems more rational. The logistics of the Magyar march from Scythia to Pannonia were probably corroborated by the text of the Dominican monk Julian, written under the impressions of his second journey in search of “Greater Hungary”.
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