Stephen I, the First Christian King of Hungary: From Medieval Myth to Modern Legend

Stephen I, Hungary's first Christian king (reigned 997-1038) has been celebrated as the founder of the Hungarian state and church. Despite the scarcity of medieval sources, and consequent limitations on historical knowledge, he has had a central importance in narratives of Hungarian history and national identity. This book argues that instead of conceptualizing modern political medievalism separately as an 'abuse' of history, we must investigate history's very fabric, because cultural memory is woven into the production of the medieval sources. Medieval myth-making served as a firm basis for centuries of further elaboration and reinterpretation, both in historiography and in political legitimizing strategies. In many ways we cannot reach the 'real' Stephen, but we can do much more to understand the shaping of his myths. The author traces the origin of crucial stories around Stephen, contextualizing both the invention of early narratives and their later use. A challenger to Stephen's rule who may be a medieval literary invention became the protagonist of a rock opera in 1983, also standing in for Imre Nagy, a key figure of the 1956 revolution; moreover, he was reinvented as the embodiment of true Hungarian identity. The alleged right hand relic was 'discovered' to provide added legitimacy for Hungary's kings and then became a protagonist of the entanglement of Church and state. A medieval crown was invested with supernatural status, before turning into a national symbol. This book analyses the often seamless flow that has turned medieval myth into modern history, showing that politicisation was not a modern addition, but a determinant factor from the start.

About the Author

Educated at ELTE Budapest, EHESS Paris, and Columbia University, New York, Nora Berend held a Junior Research Fellowship at Cambridge, then taught at Goldsmiths College London before returning to the University of Cambridge in 2000. She has been Professor of European history there since 2018. She received a Humboldt Fellowship at Mannheim, and was an invited Fellow at the K. Hamburger Kolleg Bochum. She was visiting professor at EHESS (Paris), Doshisha (Kyoto), Central European University, the universities of Mannheim, Stockholm, and Trondheim, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Stockholm.