Gone Medieval - Medieval Hungary

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

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. MOREGenghis Khan's Pax Mongolica >The Habsburgs >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://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss 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 Jarniger, 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 forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica 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. 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 Constantine III and Pope Zachary, the Hungarians went forth for the second time from Skithia. This happened in this way, that in Skithya, a son was born to elude, 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. And so it happened that renowned kings were to be born from his loins. Because in Hungarian, a dream is called Elam.

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 Ugyk, who was the son of Ed, who was the son of Xaba, who was the son of Attila. 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. 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 step-peoples. The same thing happened to Jenghis 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 Skithian.

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. 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 existence. exactly how one of the wealthiest and most interesting medieval kingdoms came to be. To help sort legend from history and fact from fiction in medieval Hungary, I am joined once again by Nora Barand, the professor of European history at St. Catherine's Cambridge. Nora, welcome back to Gone Medieval. Thank you. 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. No, nor enough knowledge. It's beginning to be incorporated a little bit more, but yeah, not enough. 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 Fidot-Uyghuric language group? Or is this an issue of sources? When we're looking at medieval Hungary, what sort of sources are we looking to deal with? 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 sort of scarcity of sources, unfortunately. We have different types of sources, but just not very many of them. 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 we're. 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. I 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. 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, okay, yeah, sure. Great story, guys. Wonderful job. but it gets much more complex when you're talking about the foundations of kingdoms, how 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, you know, wants you to say something nice about their great. grandad, that's sort of a thing. Yes, I think you put your finger on it exactly. And even the Trojans are more irrelevant, 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.

Okay, 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 the Origantis, 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. And another example is from a later chronicles in the 13th century. We hear in one narrative text that the king, King Bela the 4th, had all the chairs burned so nobles could not sit down in his presence. Okay, 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. Can we talk a little bit then about migrations to the area? Because our word for Hungary now, it's coming from the Romans, Hungary. 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, or the actual people who settle in the medieval period? This is also complicated. So the name Hungary doesn't really come from the Hans, but part of what became. medieval Hungary was indeed an area where the Huns had their short-lived empire. And starting from Western European tax, when they first encountered the Hungarians in the 9th century, so when these

people, the warriors appeared and started raiding monasteries and so on. The ecclesiastical authors and Regino 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? And of course, it was a kind of natural solution to say, aha, the Schithians again, and the Huns, of course, were also Schithian, 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, say that it's the same people, Hans 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, a 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 to be a little bit careful. 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 the Ovar Empire. And once they created this kingdom, migration continued.

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, Pachenex, Kuhans. So as one historian, Eric Fugadi characterized it, it was a guest land, so a land where people kept migrating to.

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 we kind of tend to call the Magyar now. Where did the Magyar come from then?

So the term, some medieval author's 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, Moguer and Hungarian, it's the same. It's just 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.

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. 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?

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 flourish there. But according to another story, it's really the story of Christianization.

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 the story of migration and others being more inclined to see Christianization as the real start. 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? Or are we dealing with a completely different kettle of fish because of these migratory movements? 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. And they practice this ruse to get the land. So they take a,

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 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 the 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. 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. So can we talk a little bit about Stephen I, this very legendary figure, obviously,

as all of the founding Christian king saints are? But what do we actually know about Stephen the first? 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. Oh, interesting. 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 Gisela brought with her in Trash. So it looks like the production of charters, for example, started on the model of the German chancery, 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 chesa ball that was ordered by Stephen and his wife, that his main, of power was a lance. This was a kind of copy of the German holy imperial lens. 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.

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. 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 establish a wealthy,

dynasty who have the money to hire chroniclers, right? That's how these things tend to work. 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 was 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? 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 Kumans and the Bulgarian heretics, the Bogomials, and marriage. We already mentioned, of course, Gisela, but basically Hungarian kings over the next centuries, headwives come in from all over eastern 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 Otonians, of course, the defeat of the raiding Hungarians 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 Bering Gisela, whose brother eventually becomes emperor.

And according to a Hed geographical 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. 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

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. Clearly, there's an important relationship that goes on for quite a while. 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 hunts. And then the Hungarian saying, so glad there are no Germans in this area. This is fantastic news. But yeah, it good on them to an extent on both sides. You know, the poor bohemians, we get glommed in

very quickly. You know, 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. 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? That's that sort of the thing. So we do have this huge crossroads that develops, right? 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 are 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 of bringing new agricultural methods. And it's kind of a win-win situation because for the rulers and the lords who settle 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 as certain types of taxes or their taxes are smaller, et cetera, et cetera. But basically everybody benefits. 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 shake down 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 got to tell you, the Czech nobles and the king, they're constantly at it, you know. And as a result, they're having to have these 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? 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 managed to force the king to promulgate the golden bull and then various reiterations 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, Bala the 4th, 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, and he has to actually just backtrack and give even more rights to the nobles after the invasion to be able to rebuild. 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 that, you know, we finally get some Mongols over in Europe that get into Hungary. And I find it very funny that, you know, Hungary, you know,

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. They show up before before, before, before, but they don't come in such numbers and they tend to be either repelled. So there are some attacks that are repelled or they come in. 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. And they also invade Poland and even Bohemia. So 1241-42 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. And just to show how big these debates are, the estimates about how many people died go from 15%, so 1.5% of the population to 50% 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 13th 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 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 Trow, Trowgir, and 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, but they finally gave up. And there's a very gripping source of a canon, Roger Ruggarius, who afterwards wrote an account. 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, 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 Bella returned, of course, Hungary, and he managed to consolidate it 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 Khuman's back. So the Khomans actually flee from the Mongols, right before the Mongolian.

invasion, 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 Beelho 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 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. 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 the 13th century, very interestingly, also very often, charters and other, some narrative texts as well, use the Mongolivision as a kind of before and after moment. When they talk about something to date it, they might say it was before.

Oh, that makes sense. We're talking about, you know, 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. You know, 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 the second 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 Christian resistance to these powers at the time? Yes, but I think it's very much instrumentalized. King Bela the 4th 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-corps. or he tries to use it as a term card. We are defending Europe against the Mongols. Nobody came to help us and give us this and this, which doesn't always work. 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 defended 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. So after this period there, you know, we've got this great dynasty that's grown up after Stephen. We have the Arapods 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? We were 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? 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 Arpa dynasty, that is, of course, what is used in modern historography, but it's not the medieval name. So basically invented as the name of the dynasty in the late 18th century. So the name Atpad comes from this Byzantine source, Constantine, Seventh-Pergynetus, 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 Atpad as the head of this warrior grouping who conquers Hungary. And so it's based on that name. But in a medieval 13th century medieval Hungarian chronicle, Almosh is the ancestor. And another 13th century chronicle by Simon of Keza talks about Degeneret Turul, 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 Antivans 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. Yeah, I mean, you see everybody swoop in really quickly as well. I think that the grumblings that the royal chancellery are not unfounded because nobody wants to help when there's, when there Mongols outside. But the minute you've got Esquite 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 Luxembourg's 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. 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 acts 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. I mean, it is one of those things, though, where I do think that Hungary, they are incredibly important in the Central European world, you know, and everybody knows that you need to go over and have some form of trade that's happening with either

Buda or Peshd 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, you know, you and I both know that sources at this time, well, all you got to do is read Latin. You 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? 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 Valoons who settle in Hungary and centuries later, they go back to visit and they can still speak a balloon. So there's a lot of mixing linguistic land. Of course, for 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 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. I think that it's just one of these terror-luromantic 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

forth with the papacy. You know, they are very much in and amongst all of the biggest medieval happenings, which you certainly can't say is true of almost anywhere else at the time. Yeah, I don't know if you cannot say it's true. Some things, of course, are specific or specific to a region. But in terms of dealing 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. of things. But it's true that this particular mixture, I think due to the kind of geopolitical location of the country, is fairly specific to the medieval kingdom of Hungary. Look, I've never seen a French person fighting a long goal. That's all I have to say. So, Dara, 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. Thank you. 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 forward slash 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.