Anonymus and Master Roger

This volume contains two very different narratives: a work of literary imagination on early Hungarian history, and an eye-witness account of the Mongol invasion of 1241/42.

An anonymous notary of King Bela of Hungary (probably Bela III, d. 1196), also Known as P dictus magister, wrote a Latin Gesta Hungarorum, (ca 1200/10), and enigmatic and much disputed work on the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the late ninth century, including a mythical origo gentis, and a history of the Magyars prior to the foundation of the kingdom in 1000 A.D. Additionally, he wove into it stories of heroic ancestors of the great men of his time. Anonymus (as he is commonly referred to) tried to (re)contruct 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. Based on these, he presented a narrative in the style of the popular romances of the siege of Troy and the exploits of Alexander the Great, also utilizing some oral traditions and earlier chronicles. 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 (by Simon of Keza and other chroniclers). Already translated into most Central-European languages, it is here for the first time presented in an updated Latin text with an annotated English translation.

The Italian Master Roger (born around the time the retired notary was writing his Gesta) was canon of the cathedral of Varad/Oradea when the Mongols attacked Hungary. He recorded in great detail and vivid prose his experiences, including his hiding from and falling into the hands of the "Tatars". This he prefaced by an astute observation of political conflicts in mid-thirteenth-century Hungary. His description of the events, together with those of Archdeacon Thomas of Split (CEMT 4), is the basic evidence for the horrible devastation of the country by Batu Khan's armies. The present translation is based on the editio princeps of 1488, as no manuscript has survived.

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).