Medieval Hungary

Dr. Eleanor Janega sifts through the myths to uncover the foundations of medieval Hungary and its peoples. From the legendary tales of the country's origins to the process of Christianization under King Stephen, Eleanor and Professor Nora Berend discuss how various migrations shaped the kingdom, the devastating impact of the Mongol invasions, and Hungary's intricate relationships with surrounding empires. MORE Genghis Khan's Pax Mongolica > https://open.spotify.com/episode/6KtWTM2HM99H29Aotldkc9 The Habsburgs > https://open.spotify.com/episode/0UBeJfnQ5d1Uoe64ooGbLG Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. It was edited by Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Yanega, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:42Speaker 01

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• 1:20Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanega, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were, and how we got here.

• 1:56Eleanor Janega?

  In the 677th year after the Lord's incarnation, and the 104th year after the death of Attila, the king of the Hungarians, in the time of the Emperor Konstantin III and Pope Zachary, the Hungarians went forth for the second time from Scythia.

• 2:18Eleanor Janega?

  This happened in this way, that in Scythia, a son was born to Elud, and he was given the name of Almosh. For when his mother was big with child, she dreamt that a bird flew towards her, which had the likeness of a hawk, and that from her womb a torrent gushed forth, and spread itself in a land other than hers.

• 2:46Eleanor Janega?

  And so it happened that renowned kings were to be born from his loins.

• 2:52Eleanor Janega?

  Because in Hungarian, a dream is called elon. And since the birth of this child was foretold in a dream, he was called Almosh, who was the son of Elud, who was the son of Ugyek, who was the son of Ed, who was the son of Xaba, who was the son of Attila.

• 3:14Eleanor Janega?

  Thus, the 14th-century chronicle of the deeds of the Hungarians sets out the start of a new dynasty and a new great European kingdom.

• 3:28Eleanor Janega?

  The trouble with this story, as I'm sure you've already guessed, is that nothing this romantic can possibly be the case. And indeed, the pregnant mother with the dream of a hawk is a trope among the medieval nomadic steppe peoples. The same thing happened to Genghis Khan's mother, for example. Another issue is that we are almost certain that the Magyars, who we call the Hungarians in English, were emphatically not Scythian. And that was a bit of a retrofit by medieval writers who were obsessed with Roman history and wanted to write their own versions, even if that meant recycling the names of certain groups of people.

• 4:09Eleanor Janega?

  But when it comes to Hungary and its foundation, we are often left to sift through legends like this in order to get to the heart of exactly how one of the wealthiest and most interesting medieval kingdoms came to be.

• 4:24Eleanor Janega?

  To help sort legend from history and fact from fiction in medieval Hungary, I am joined once again by Nora Barandt, the professor of European history at St Catherine's Cambridge.

• 4:39Eleanor Janega?

  Nora, welcome back to Gone Medieval.

• 4:41Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 4:42Eleanor Janega?

  I'm so excited to have you here today because we are going to talk about one of my very, very favorite medieval kingdoms, which is the Kingdom of Hungary, because I'm telling you, you and I can both agree, I think, that Central Europe simply doesn't get enough love when we're talking about the medieval period.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  No, nor enough knowledge. It's beginning to be incorporated a little bit more, but yeah, not enough.

• 5:05Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely. Is this one of these things, though, do you think this is just kind of an issue that we have? Because we're Anglophones, so we're not ready to deal with the Fidio-Urgic language group. Or is this an issue of sources? You know, when we're looking at medieval Hungary, what sort of sources are we looking to deal with?

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I certainly think that the language issue is very much there. And Western historians, and I don't blame them, obviously cannot learn all the Central European languages. In terms of the sources, there certainly is also an issue for kind of the earlier centuries, so 11th, 12th, 13th centuries. We don't have that many sources. Obviously, this is true of large parts of the region, not just Hungary, but compared to Western Europe or compared to the Iberian Peninsula, there's a real scarcity of sources, unfortunately. We have different types of sources, but just not very many of them.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  So some charters, some chronicles, there's obviously also archaeological material and more and more. So that still is actually an area where one can find sort of new things that will contribute to our knowledge. But in terms of chronicles, for example, it's a handful rather than dozens of them. And then, of course, we also have problems with the interpretation of the sources we had, because many of these texts, especially the narrative texts, are notoriously complicated.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  Think more and more there's a recognition that they're more literature than history. So even the kind of historical chronicles, which supposedly talk about the history of Hungary and the kings and so on. But the actual information, they relay a lot of it. Sometimes it's impossible to know what is fiction and what is fact because we don't have independent other sources for confirmation.

• 6:57Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, it's a really difficult one, isn't it? Because, you know, it's very clear when you have a chronicle, for example, and people say, oh, yeah. And then we were established as a kingdom by people who fled the burning of Troy. And you're like, OK, yeah, sure. Great story, guys. Wonderful job. But it gets much more complex when you're talking about the foundations of kingdoms. How, you know, nobility is relating to royalty or about how other kingdoms are feeling about that. Because that can be really difficult to sift through. You know, it's something that I have trouble with in my sources for Bohemia. You know, who's paying for this is the question. And it tends to be that anyone who's actually paying good money for a chronicle wants you to say something nice about their family.

• 7:41Eleanor Janega?

  You know, wants you to say something nice about their great granddad, that sort of a thing.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  Yes, I think you put your finger on it exactly. And even the Trojans are more relevant, so to speak, because we have that as well. We have these stories of the migration of the Hungarians and there are people who take that as a literal fact. OK, maybe some of it is embroidered, but the basic is fact. And I'm not sure that we can do that. It is definitely exactly in this line of of the origo gentis, of the kind of birth of peoples modeled on the migration of the Israelites, the biblical model. So I think indeed, a lot of these things are much more complicated. And it's been guesswork rather than actual proof in many instances to try to sift through these things.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  And another example is from a later chronicle since the 13th century. We hear in one narrative text that the king, King Bela the Fourth, had all the chairs burned so nobles could not sit down in his presence. OK, so did this really happen? Is this the chronicle's invention for some reason? And when you have nothing else to compare it to, it's just up to the individual historian to, I don't know, based on instinct or likes, dislikes, decide whether this is fact or fiction.

• 9:01Eleanor Janega?

  Can we talk a little bit then about migrations to the area? Because our word for Hungary now, it's coming from the Romans, hungariel. And it is sort of named as a region because of when the Huns move into the area during the age of migration. So kind of like the fourth century or so. Is that the sort of thing that we see reflected in these sources? Or do we kind of skip forward to the Magyars? The actual people who settled in the medieval period?

• 9:31Speaker 03

  This is also complicated. So the name Hungary doesn't really come from the Huns. But part of what became medieval Hungary was indeed an area where the Huns had their short-lived empire. And starting from Western European texts, when they first encountered the Hungarians in the ninth century. So when these people, warriors, appeared and started raiding monasteries and so on. The ecclesiastical authors and Regno of Prum is a key one. Try to identify these people. And of course, for a medieval ecclesiastic, everything must be in the Bible and in patristic authors. So, you know, how do you fit them into this framework?

• 10:16Speaker 03

  And of course, it was a kind of natural solution to say, aha, the Scythians again. And the Huns, of course, were also Scythians. So anybody coming from the east who can be seen as a barbarian because they are raiding us and looting and so on. And using classical knowledge fitted them into this. And the Hungarians themselves then picked up on this and appropriated the idea of the Han Hungarian relationship. And so in the 13th century, you start having Hungarian ecclesiastical authors in their chronicles when they talk about the Hungarian people.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  Say that it's the same people, Huns and Hungarians, or they descended from the same ancestry. And that the Hungarians, when they arrive, which we would call conquest, and in Hungarian is called homeland-taking, quaint little term, they returned. So according to these medieval narratives, of course, it was their rightful land already because they're descended from the Huns and therefore they're just, they had to flee at some point after Attila's death and now they're returning. But historically, there is no real relationship, so between the Huns and the Hungarians. And so when the Hungarians arrive, and even when we talk about the Hungarians, we have to be a little bit careful.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  I wish somebody came up with a better name in a sense, because it projects this idea of some kind of ethnic purity. And of course, that is not the case. So this was a mixed group, warriors who included Turkic speakers. And we know from other such conglomerations that once you have a military leader, the name of that group will come from the leadership, but all sorts of other people can be part of that military grouping. So these, including others, arrived. And then, of course, they also incorporated various local inhabitants, Slavic people, the remnants of our empire. And once they created this kingdom, migration continued.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  So there were many people who arrived afterwards, both from Western Europe and from the East. So you basically have French speakers, all kinds of Romance speakers, German speakers, Jews, Muslims, and various nomadic groups, Pachynyaks, Qumans. So as one historian, Eric Fugati, characterized it, it was a guest land, so a land where people kept migrating to.

• 12:46Eleanor Janega?

  I can't really blame them for migrating to there either. It's a really great and beautiful place, full of nice things. I suppose our medieval sources really kind of begin to pick up around about the year 1000, around about in the High Medieval period. And they sort of focus on the arrival of what, you know, we kind of tend to call the Magyar now. Where did the Magyar come from then?

• 13:09Speaker 03

  So the term some medieval authors thought came from Mogor, who is a kind of eponymous ancestor, but it probably actually comes from just the Hungarian vernacular term. And I should say, Magyar and Hungarian, it's the same. It's just that whether you use the Hungarian term for Hungarian or you use the English term or the kind of versions of the term in Western languages. And yes, I mean, there are sources from around the year 1000, but most of the real narrative sources, including on the arrival of these people, are really from the 13th century and afterwards. So they're very late.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  And that's also why you have these late ecclesiastical authors writing about things that happened hundreds of years before, after an ecclesiastical formation, some of them at Western Italian University, for example. What is it that we have in those accounts? I tend to represent a very skeptical and cautious approach of we should not accept these things at face value.

• 14:20Eleanor Janega?

  All right, okay. We're kind of like in the dark here. You know, we have some sources from hundreds of years after the fact. What is the story that the sources are attempting to tell us about the formation of the medieval kingdom of Hungary then?

• 14:35Speaker 03

  There are interestingly two key stories in a sense. So one is the story of migration, and it's really very much kind of the typical medieval tale of the migration of a people during which they really become a people. So all the military confrontations and the settlement in a kind of promised land. So again, very much the biblical imagery. So that is one story. According to that, you would have this very ancient group who migrates over a very long distance and then finally takes the land that they were promised and then flourished there. But according to another story, it's really the story of Christianization.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  So that there's a change and the arrival of Christianity, the adoption of Christianity really creates the people in a sense. Of course, you can combine the two stories, so they're not mutually exclusive. But I think there are sort of two distinct versions in the medieval period where you have some authors really focus on this story of migration and others being more inclined to see Christianization as the real start.

• 15:44Eleanor Janega?

  Well, can we talk a little bit about the process of Christianization? Because ordinarily, you know, for Central Europeans, especially of the Slavic bent, which is where, you know, my expertise lies, we have the story of Christianization, which is that Cyril and Methodius get sent out by Constantinople to go administer to the Slavs. They show up, give everyone a nice little alphabet and a copy of the Bible and say, "Great job, everybody." And this is kind of the story of how Greater Moravia, which is huge at the time, gets Christianized, and parts of what becomes Hungary are sort of in Greater Moravia at the time. But is this the story that we're telling by the time we hit the 13th century?

• 16:28Eleanor Janega?

  Or are we dealing with a completely different kettle of fish because of these migratory movements?

• 16:34Speaker 03

  The story is definitely not that one. But the reality, I think, is that those earlier Christians, some of them, were incorporated into the sort of new Hungarian polity. And actually, a very large part of the vocabulary of Christianity is Slavic in Hungary, so it comes from Slavic. So that's not just because of the missionaries, probably. It's also because of this Christian population that gets integrated and merges with the Hungarians. But the alternative story... In this 13th century chronicle is that when the Hungarians arrive in this period, it's exactly the Slavic ruler that they encounter.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  And they practice this ruse to get the land. So they take a white horse with beautiful accoutrements and offer it to him, saying, "We give you this and just give us a little water and a little grass and a little earth." And so the ruler, of course, agrees because he thinks he's making a great deal. And then when they get this, they say, "Okay, now that's it. The whole land is ours." So in a sense, there is a kind of narrative response to this other kind of story that you were mentioning. But the other part of that story is Christianization because of a kind of divine plan. So according to this, the ruler already is elected in some sense by God to start this work.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  But his son, Stephen, who is really brought up as a Christian, is of course then the kind of perfect first Christian king, who eventually is canonized as a saint. This story tries to give agency both to the local ruler and to God, who invite missionaries. And then, of course, it's these foreign missionaries, partly from German lands, partly Slavs, who try to convert the population. In terms of archaeology and some other tax sources, it seems that it was a prolonged process. So it wasn't just the first ruler who then miraculously converted everybody to Christianity.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  But Stephen's role is the one that's absolutely emphasized then in later sources and in a lot of modern historiography even, as a kind of apostle of the Hungarians, as somebody who converted the Hungarians.

• 18:58Eleanor Janega?

  So can we talk a little bit about Stephen I then? This very legendary figure, obviously, as all of the founding Christian kings, saints are. But what do we actually know about Stephen I?

• 19:12Speaker 03

  We know some things, although even some of the basic data is missing. So for example, we don't know when he was born. So there are all kinds of hypothetical calculations for that, but in fact, we don't know. But we do know that indeed he issued legislation, including on Christianization. So there's quite a rich material, unlike in many Central European countries from this early period, on requirements and what it meant to be a Christian and the kind of punishments. And they're very heavy on punishments to force people to be Christian.

• 19:44Eleanor Janega?

  Ah, interesting.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  My favorite ones are people have to go to listen to mass on Sunday. And people who murmur in church, so they don't pay attention, they get flogged in front of everyone and their hair is shorn. So yes, it's quite brutal. We have no data whatsoever on was this put into practice? What is the relationship between legislation and real life? But at least there are all these texts on how they envisioned what Christianization meant. He also invited in various people from Western Europe, including of course, his wife, the Bavarian Gisella brought with her and Teresh. So it looks like the production of charters, for example, started on the model of the German chancery.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  And it was probably somebody from there initially who worked for Stephen. There are archaeological traces of forts, so it's earth wooden forts, obviously, in this period. Building of some churches, some kind of rudimentary administrative structures. Money minting, so we have some coins from the period. We know, for example, from one of these coins and also another representation that survives on a chasable that was ordered by Stephen and his wife. That his main symbol of power was a lens. This was a kind of copy of the German Holy Imperial lens.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  So we know that he was also in this kind of Germanic sphere, as many of these rulers were. But there was also Byzantine influence in Hungary. There were Greek monks. Clearly Stephen had a role, of course, in this process. But I think his role is very often exaggerated or is highlighted to the exclusion of everyone else before and after him.

• 21:33Eleanor Janega?

  That is the thing, right? It's very easy to overlook sort of disparate groups of people who have been there the whole time, especially if they don't have a actual written record of what they were doing, which very many people don't. You know, they're just kind of muddling along and trying to get to church on Sunday and then go get the harvest in, right? There's no time to sit around writing aggrandizing things. You have to, you know, establish a wealthy dynasty who have the money to hire chroniclers, right? That's how these things tend to work.

• 22:21Speaker 01

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• 22:55Speaker 04

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• 23:32Eleanor Janega?

  I'm really interested in this because when Stephen comes along and when Hungary starts coalescing into the kingdom that we're more familiar with, at the same time, over in the German lands, we're getting the formation of what will become the Holy Roman Empire, right? This is when Otto I is really doing his thing. But what kind of relations are existing between Hungary and these other medieval kingdoms and indeed the empire at the time?

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Yes, first of all, just relations in terms of not just under Stephen, but in this period, obviously, all sorts, trade, mission, first missionaries coming in, but then eventually missionaries going out from Hungary towards the Kuman's and the Bulgarian heretics, the Bogomils, and marriage. We already mentioned, of course, Gisela, but basically Hungarian kings over the next centuries had wives come in from all over east and west, so Rus as well as Sicilian and German lands and so on and so forth. But to go back to kind of Stephen and the precursor of the Holy Roman Empire, in a sense, it's interesting that for the Ottonians, of course, the defeat of the raiding Hungarians

• 24:44Speaker 03

  was this kind of cornerstone moment. Obviously, it's earlier than Stephen, but by the time of Stephen, they actually have good relations because this marriage wouldn't have happened otherwise with the Bavarian Gisela, whose brother eventually becomes emperor. And according to a hagiographical text, so after Stephen is canonized, he miraculously defends Hungary against German attack. Even today, there are historians who keep saying that Hungary was very lucky, that the German empire didn't have the strength to conquer Hungary, because that would have been their real aim, that they wanted to conquer, but they were unable to. I actually don't think so.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  So there are obviously many border skirmishes, but we have no real evidence that there was any kind of attempted conquest. But it seems that for both sides, in different ways, hostile relations with the other became kind of part of the story, an important part of the story. But I think we have much more evidence for Stephen and later rulers as well, some of them relying on German emperors or kings, both in terms of getting personnel and know-how through this personnel. But also even in political ways, some of Stephen's successors asked for military help against rivals, for example.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  Clearly, there's an important relationship that goes on for quite a while.

• 26:14Eleanor Janega?

  It's so funny when we get to see sources stack up against each other like this. On the one hand, the Germans saying, yeah, and then we repelled those terrible Huns. And then the Hungarians saying, so glad there are no Germans in this area. This is fantastic news. But yeah, good on them to an extent on both sides. You know, the poor Bohemians, we get glommed in very quickly. The Germans are like, oh, we're having that. And we're like, ah, no. You know, you get stuck in the middle of it. And the Hungarians do get to kind of keep a little bit more autonomy, although, you know, the border fighting never stops. But that's true of everywhere in Europe, I would say. I don't think that it's like a specifically unique to Hungary.

• 26:54Eleanor Janega?

  And indeed, in Hungary, I think that you end up having just these constant waves of settlement and these little border skirmishes because we're talking about this incredibly rich landscape. You know, we have really good silver mining in the area. There's great mining in general. You've got really good forests. It's great fertile land. So it tends to be this place where we see lots of waves of migration of Germans moving into the area, not necessarily to take over, but just being like, hey, guys, is it okay if I mine here? You know, that sort of a thing. So we do have this huge crossroads that develops, right?

• 27:34Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And the settlers who come, including German settlers, but not exclusively Germans, are very often invited in. So it's not just even that they ask to be allowed in, but that they're very actively recruited to come, both because of expertise. So for example, you mentioned the miners, and indeed, this is later medieval period especially, but all these silver mines. Or based on sort of German experts who arrive. But earlier already you have merchants, you have various urban dwellers, you have people who till the lands who bring new agricultural methods. And it's a kind of a win-win situation because for the rulers and the lords who settled

• 28:19Speaker 03

  them, they bring revenue or they bring new lands under cultivation. And for these people, it means having a better life. They get these privileges, they don't pay taxes a certain type of taxes or their taxes are smaller, et cetera, et cetera. But basically, everybody benefits.

• 28:38Eleanor Janega?

  Can I ask you then, what is going on in terms of the relationship between the nobility and the royalty here, right? This is very much one of those old stories in the Middle Ages, right? You tend to have it shakedown that kings control cities, nobles control the countryside, everyone hates each other. There are these constant fights back and forth about who controls what, you know? I gotta tell you, the Czechs, nobles and the king, they're constantly at it, you know? And as a result, they're having to have this constant promulgation of bulls from the king that says, okay, knock it off. Here's what your powers are. Here's how the legal entities work. Is that the same sort of situation as what's happening in Hungary?

• 29:20Speaker 03

  Not exactly, although there are similarities. So in Hungary, initially, the king is supposed to be the owner of lands. And as long as there are lots and lots of lands that can be newly brought under cultivation, he can give these as donations. But then by the end of the 12th, early 13th century, there's a problem. So there isn't really anything else that can be given away that is new. And so kings start to donate to nobles, royal lands that are actually necessary for revenues. So then they need to raise revenues in some other way. And then there are indeed quite a lot of conflicts. But in Hungary, in the 13th century, it's the nobles who manage to force the king to

• 30:05Speaker 03

  promulgate the golden bull and then various re-ter Of that, which tries to actually regulate the rights of the higher nobility versus the lower nobility. So the lower nobility especially are keen on getting protections against the barons. But there are spectacular problems. And middle of the 13th century, Bela IV, when he comes to the throne, he tries to reform all this. He tries to retake some earlier donations. He tries to restrict the rights of the nobles, but then the Mongol invasion happens.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  And he has to actually just backtrack and give even more rights to the nobles after the invasion to be able to rebuild.

• 30:53Eleanor Janega?

  Well, can we talk about the Mongol invasions? Because, oh, come on, like, it's so exciting. I can't help it. It's not fair to everyone. You know, we finally get some Mongols over in Europe that get into Hungary. And I find it very funny that, you know, Hungary is this place where, you know, I tell you what, a bunch of guys on horses are just going to show up at some point in time. That is, that's kind of the downside, you know, on the one side, you can set up a really great silver mine. But on the other hand, guys on horses are going to show up at any moment.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  They show up before, but they're not really a threat. So there are nomadic incomers, patronex, kumans before, earlier. But they don't come in such numbers and they tend to be either repelled. So there are some attacks repelled, or they come and settle. But the Mongols, indeed, that's very different. The strength of the army, their strategy, everything. It's a new power that the Hungarians have to face. And of course, not just the Hungarians, I mean, they also invade Poland and even Bohemia. So 124142 is the Mongol invasion in Hungary. And there clearly was a lot of devastation, although there are big debates about the exact extent of that.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  And just to show how big these debates are, the estimates about how many people died go from fifteen percent, so one five percent of the population, to fifty percent of the population. One of the problems is how do you extrapolate from what you have? In other words, there are, of course, even archaeological finds of destroyed villages, but it's impossible to have the archaeology of entire thirteenth century Hungary and see what was destroyed. So if you find these villages in one area, does it mean that there was equal destruction in other areas? And historians now tend to think that actually know that the Mongols both practiced calculated terror

• 32:49Speaker 03

  to force people to surrender and stop fighting, and that this destruction was very uneven. But then it's hard to gauge what that means in terms of particular areas. So the royal army lost the battle against the Mongols. The royal couple had to flee, so they actually went all the way to Traut, Trogi, in Dalmatia, and they managed to kind of stick it out on the island where the Mongols couldn't cross. The Mongols did go after them, they finally gave up. And there's a very gripping source of a canon, Roger Rogarius, who afterwards wrote an account.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  And of course, his text is one of the reasons why destruction is so much emphasized, because of course, he writes about that and he writes about how the Mongols tricked people and lured them out of their hiding places by pretending that it was all safe and so on. But again, how much of that is actual factual history? How much of it is exaggerated or we don't again know? What is clear is that the Mongols were not defeated. They left of their own accord and the theory is that maybe it was because they had to elect a new overall leader. Maybe it was for other reasons, but they left. They were expected to return, both the Hungarians,

• 34:11Speaker 03

  but also the Papacy and various Western powers very much were thinking along the lines of they will come back. And there were some raids later on, but nothing comparable to the invasion. And after the invasion, King Bela returned, of course, to Hungary. And he managed to consolidate and rebuild quite quickly, actually. And he even manages to wage successful wars fairly quickly. Of course, he, as I mentioned, has to then grant new powers to the nobles, including, for example, the power to build stone castles. That was a royal monopoly, but now it becomes the right of nobles themselves. He also invites the kumans back. So the kumans actually flee from the Mongols right before the Mongol invasion,

• 34:56Speaker 03

  a group of them who arrive in Hungary and ask to be allowed to settle there. But then, when the Mongols arrive, many people at the royal court see the kumans as traitors. They kill the leader of the kumans, the rest of them escape. But Bela actively brings them back because he sees in this military force that would be loyal to him, that unlike the nobles, who are, of course, traditionally the military force medieval kings can mobilize, would be dependent on the king and therefore more loyal. So that is, seems to be his kind of thinking. And of course, the idea is that they will convert to Christianity very quickly. So he brings them back, settles them.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  And even his son, who then becomes eventually king of Hungary, marries the daughter of a kuman leader. But I think the Mongol invasion leaves a lasting mark, to the point that even in modern Hungarian, there's a saying, if somebody is hurrying, you can say, oh, you don't need to hurry. The Mongols are not chasing after you. So it's very clearly an indelible mark in group identity. And the charters from the period, from the later part of 13th century, very interestingly, also very often, charters and other, some narrative texts as well, use the Mongol invasion as a kind of before and after moment. When they talk about something, to date it, they might say, it was before.

• 36:23Eleanor Janega?

  Ah, that makes sense.

• 36:37Speaker 01

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• 37:12Speaker 04

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• 37:48Eleanor Janega?

  We're talking about having cute colloquialisms in the year of our Lord 2025, right? This has got to have been one of these things that really changes the Hungarian psyche. I know, for example, the Czechs are really unimpressed with the Holy Roman Empire as a result of the Mongol invasions, where they're like, what is the point? We've been amalgamated into this empire, and it did absolutely nothing for us when the literal barbarians were at the gate. And so there becomes this question of what's the point of being under imperial control? And of course, the Pope's trying his best, bless him. Everyone's trying to get Frederick II out of Sicily and onto a horse to go fight with the Mongols, obviously. And that just doesn't happen. But do you see a kind of disenchantment on the part of Hungarians with the possibility of some form of...

• 38:35Eleanor Janega?

  Christian resistance to these powers at the time.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Yes, but I think it's very much instrumentalized. King Bela IV writes letters to the Pope, and he especially blames the Pope and Western kings, French and the Emperor. So afterwards, to say that nobody came to help. But he then uses that to ask for all kinds of things. So basically, he's trying to ask for financial help. But even at one point, he wants his own candidate to be accepted as the next Archbishop of Hungary. So no matter what it is, this becomes a kind of trump card, or he tries to use it as a trump card. We are defending Europe against the Mongols. Nobody came to help us and give us this and this, which doesn't always work.

• 39:25Speaker 03

  But again, long term, it really is ingrained into Hungarian identity discourses. And especially in the 20th century, so after the First World War, it becomes a sort of topos of Hungary always defending Europe and is not reciprocated, but indeed betrayed by Europe. So I would say it's impossible to tell what a common person in the late 13th century thought about this. Maybe people thought that there were all these Christians who didn't come to their aid. I don't know. It certainly started to be used at the royal chancery. But as I say, very quickly, really instrumentalized as well.

• 40:06Eleanor Janega?

  So after this period, though, you know, we've got this great dynasty that's grown up after Stephen. We have the the Arapads on the throne and they're doing some pretty good wheeling and dealing. Now, I simply love to see someone try to extort their favorite bishop out of the Pope. You know, it's an investiture controversy, what, you know, we're just doing it, it's fine. But what ends up happening to them in this period? Because it's in the high medieval period that they eventually collapse, is that right?

• 40:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, they finally die out, not in the female line, but the male line in 1301. I should say that the name of the dynasty, so the Arpad dynasty, that is of course what is used in modern historiography, but it's not the medieval name. So basically invented as the name of the dynasty in the late 18th century. So the name Arpad comes from this Byzantine source, Constantine VII or Ferginetus, who tries to collect all the knowledge that might be useful for the Byzantines on enemies and potential allies and so on. And so he writes about the Hungarians and he names Arpad as the head of this warrior grouping who conquers Hungary. And so it's based on that name, but

• 41:17Speaker 03

  in a medieval 13th century medieval Hungarian chronicle, Almosh is the ancestor. And another 13th century chronicle by Simon of Cezar talks about Degenereturul, which is a kind of bird, supposedly kind of ancestor. They didn't call themselves the Arpad dynasty, that's for sure. And even after the last male member of the dynasty dies, of course, in the female line, new kings of the Angevins come in because they can lay a claim through the female line, so through marriage. In fact, the importance of the dynasty, of course, in that sense continues even afterwards in the medieval period.

• 42:00Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I mean, you see everybody swoop in really quickly as well. You know, I think that the grumblings of the royal chancellery are not unfounded because nobody wants to help when there's, when there are Mongols outside. But the minute you've got esque property, you know, and then someone who can get married, suddenly the French are like, oh, yeah, no, we, oh, yeah, we, we were definitely involved. I mean, my lot, the Luxemburgs, get in there eventually and take it over as well. And suddenly, everybody wants to be Hungarian, right? It's when it's up for grabs. It's a fantastic position that you can get, but when things are going wrong. To be fair, very few people showed up in order to help.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was actually a crusade that was being organized, but maybe it's not unfamiliar to modern listeners. By the time they managed to get their act together, it's too late. There is some willingness actually to help. It's not that everyone just turns away, but yeah, they're not particularly efficient.

• 43:00Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, it is one of those things, though, that where I do think that Hungary, they are incredibly important in the Central European world, you know, and everybody knows that, you know, you need to go over and have some form of trade that's happening with either Beuta or Pesht at the time. Everybody understands that this is an incredibly wealthy place and an important place, but it is just a little bit difficult to defend it. It is a little bit difficult because it is so wealthy to kind of get a handle on it. And I mean, I do think that even when you're kind of conducting business in Latin, and you know, you and I both know that sources at this time, it's well, all you got to do is read Latin. You

• 43:41Eleanor Janega?

  are going to have to speak some things that people don't necessarily really speak. So it does make it a bit of a tricky animal, I think, even for people like medieval Europeans who are used to learning seven languages and just kind of getting on with their lives, isn't it?

• 43:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, although from the earlier period, there's very little data, but the later we go, the more it seems that many people were multilingual. And of course, Latin, as you say, was important. German, we have evidence of some Valhuns who settle in Hungary and centuries later, they go back to visit and they can still speak Valhun. So there's a lot of mixing linguistically. And of course, from more modern analogies, we also know that a lot of these Central Eastern European countries into the 20th century were, in fact, multilingual. So maybe it was a little bit less scary than that it might seem. But in terms of the

• 44:37Speaker 03

  difficulty to defend, yeah, obviously, there were no modern border defenses and some areas, of course, the high mountains, the Carpathians provided most of the defense. But if somebody knew how to get through, which is what happened with the Mongols, for example, that they could cross and then once they were inside the country, the actual battle was not on the frontier, but inside.

• 44:58Eleanor Janega?

  I think that it's just one of these terly romantic countries, isn't it, unfortunately? You know, because you have so many circumstances. In many ways, it's kind of like the most medieval that a kingdom can Possibly be because it experiences all of these things that we talk about even on a global scale in terms of what it means to be a sort of a medieval kingdom. There are Mongols and there's Christianization and there are these back and forths with the papacy. They are very much in amongst all of the biggest medieval happenings, which you certainly can't say is true of almost anywhere else at the time.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know if you cannot say it's true. Some things, of course, are specific or are specific to a region. But in terms of dealings with the papacy, you have great things in many other places, like Philip Augustus, the French king, repudiating his wife Ingeborg and then having years of fighting with the papacy. And you can pick out in terms of lots of interactions with Muslims and Jews, the Iberian Peninsula. There are a lot of places with all sorts of things. But it's true that this particular mixture, I think due to the geopolitical location of the country, is fairly specific to the medieval kingdom of Hungary.

• 46:16Eleanor Janega?

  Look, I've never seen a French person fighting a Mongol. That's all I have to say. So, Dora, this has been such an incredible pleasure to have you back once again and talk about one of my favorite kingdoms. Thank you so much for having time for us today.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 46:30Eleanor Janega?

  And thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you were interested in the medieval nomads, why not check out our past episode on the Pax Mongolica? Or if you want to know more about Central European politics, our past episode on the Habsburgs. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film, The Medieval Apocalypse, which are released weekly, as well as ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. And tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.