Issues of the Origins, Dating and Interconnections of the Legends of Saint Gerard
Issues of the Origins, Dating and Interconnections of the Legends of Saint Gerard

Summary/Abstract: The present study revisits known issues related to the time and circumstances of the genesis of the legends of Saint Gerard. Although polemics around the legends ceased in the latter half of the 20th century, several issues related to the dating of the legends remain unresolved. This study covers some disputed points, especially links between the Major Legend of Saint Gerard (Legenda maior) and Hungarian chronicles. Earlier research, which some later works and the latest Latin-English edition of the legends of Saint Gerard did not take into account with respect to this point, have already demonstrated that the Major Legend of Saint Gerard drew some information on the pagan uprising and Gerard’s death from a text which appears in the Hungarian chronicles, not the other way round. The aim of this paper is to clarify these findings and demonstrate that the author of Legenda maior did not pull information from a lost proto-legend or proto-chronicle (“Gesta Ungarorum vetera”) of the 11th century, but from a later text, which was very similar to the Hungarian 14th century chronicles. Moreover, these findings question the—more or less generally accepted—existence of an 11th century proto-legend–a larger volume–of Saint Gerard, which would have been the common source for both surviving legends. The present study takes the opinion that the sources the author of Legenda maior used were the Legenda minor—specifically its earlier, slightly different version—and a lost variant of an earlier chronicle text akin to the works of extant 14th century Hungarian chronicles. The author of the Legenda maior likely incorporated some older tradition about the early history of Marosvár-Csanád and supplemented it with numerous insertions and fabulations, like in the reports on the life and death of Saint Gerard.

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