Barbu, Violeta (szerk.): In honorem Paul Cernovodeanu (Bukarest, 1998)
Medievalia
Gyula Kristó (József Attila University, Szeged) THE BISHOPRICS OF SAINT STEPHEN, KING OF HUNGARY Medieval Hungarian tradition has preserved two versions about the number of the bishoprics founded by Saint Stephen, ruling Prince (997-1000) and later King (1001-1038) of Hungary. According to Stephen’s greater legend (Legenda maior S. Stephani regis), „the most Christian prince divided his provinces into ten episcopates“1. Gerard’s greater legend [Legenda maior S. Gerhardi episcopi), which comes from the end of the 14th century but contains texts much earlier than that, has King Stephen say these words: „I now want to fill the twelve bishoprics, which I have planned to establish in my realm, with bishops“2. The information in these sources, however, is not necessarily to be trusted. It seems quite certain, on the one hand, that Stephen, regardless of how many bishoprics he intended to establish in his country, did not create them all at the same time, at one sweep. On the other, it is difficult to dismiss the suspicion that the two legends quoted above do not reflect the actual conditions in Stephen’s time, but the real facts at the time of their writing (or the writing of their relevant passages). When Stephen’s greater legend was written, that is around the end of the 11th century, Hungary had indeed ten bishoprics, although not all of them necessarily founded by Stephen. By the time the relevant passage in Gerard’s greater legend was composed the number of episcopal sees in Hungary had gone up to twelve. Since (in the order of foundation) the eleventh bishopric in Hungary was that of Zagreb, founded by King (Saint) Ladislas I (1077-1095) around 1091, and the twelfth that of Nitra founded by King Coloman (1095-1116), it would seem that Stephen’s greater legend was written before 1091, while the relevant passage in Gerard’s greater legend is composed after Coloman’s reign but prior to 1229, since it was in that year that the thirteenth bishopric of Hungary (in the strict sense, i.e. without Dalmatia), that of Sirmium, was founded. (It was also in the mid-1220s that the episcopate of Bosnia, previously under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Spalato, came under the authority of the archbishop of Kalocsa, thus becoming one of the — in the strict sense — Hungarian bishoprics)3. Indeed, authoritative research has established that Stephen’s greater legend had been written before King Stephen’s canonization in 1083, and the basic text of Gerard’s greater legend was composed in the first half of the 12th century4. Thus studies in source criticism have made it possible to relate the numbers ten and 1. Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum I—II. Edendo operi praefuit E. Szentpétery, Budapestini, 1937-1938, (henceforth: SRH) vol. II, p. 383. 2. SRH, II, p. 492. 3. For the bishoprics of Sirmium and Bosnia, see Magyarország története 1/2. Ed. in chief. Székely György, Budapest, 1984, p. 1162, 1341 (the relevant section written by Gy. Kristó). 4. Horváth JÁrpád-kori latinnyelvii irodalmunk stílusproblémái (Stylistic problems in the Latin language literature of Hungary in the Árpád period), Budapest, 1954, p. 136-142; J. 55