Hungarian Conservative

‘The first units of the First Crusade, and then the main army led by Godfrey of Bouillon, did cross the Hungarian Kingdom, but by then King Coloman was on the throne, the successor of Ladislaus. It was also well known that the only Hungarian-led crusade to the Holy Land was launched in 1217 under King Andrew II. Yet Hungarian medieval narrative sources record one more. They tell an interesting and controversial story about King Saint Ladislaus…Given the fact that the Hungarian king died on 29 July 1095, almost half a year before the first Crusade was announced at the Council of Clermont in November 1095, modern scholarship quickly lost confidence in the historicity of the account.’

Surprisingly, the earliest royal secular knightly order in Europe was founded in 1326 in Hungary, a country just emerging from civil war, by King Charles I, in honour of St George, the patron saint of knights since the crusades.

From the perspective of Europe, the Hungarians’ conversion to Christianity was by no means an unbroken continuation of their raids—the Hungarian people was still considered suspicious, barbaric, and prone to paganism for a long time.

Charlemagne’s figure, as well as the myths and legends associated with him, had a great influence on medieval Western European chronicles and fiction, but medieval Hungarian historiography—similarly to Central European—was surprisingly little affected by it.

Life in the East was not at all easy for the newcomers, as they had to preserve their traditions while developing their identity in a completely new social and religious environment.