Why Should Be Rejected the Bakonybél Variant
Personality admired by Trithemius[1] and Pelbartus of Themesvár[2], eulogized by Pierre Nadal[3] and Nicolaus Olahus[4], St. Gerard of Csanád remains beyond the character of his legend one author wrapped in mystery and uncertainty, with a biography closer to miracle than to historical argument. Even the editors of Acta Sanctorum have seen beyond his hagiographic legend: Vita minor S. Gerardi[5], a biography “corrupted by many errors and false stories” (quae multis erroribus & fabulis sunt inquinata)[6] and they recommended to the exegetes to gain critical distance of this vita fabulosa. For this reason, a pertinent response to the question ’when was written Deliberatio supra hymnum trium puerorum[7]?’ can not be gave by a simple glimpse trough this veil of uncertainties and hagiographic mystifications which is largely contradicted by the Gerard’s autobiographical notes disseminated everywhere in his Deliberatio, the single work come down to us.
Too easily overlooked, those ‘diary entries’ tell us in first that the Deliberatio was not written, as some claim, during the seven years of eremitic life (1024-1030?) spent by St. Gerard accordingly his hagiographic legend as anchoret at Bakonybél. It is undoubtedly “the place not the monastery” (loco nimirum, non monasterio)[8] where he would be lived, as it is say in Acta Sanctorum, “alone with the monk Maurus” (in Beel solus habitavit cum Mauro monacho)[9]. In this “place named Bél, located in the Bakony forest from the Buda region, St. Gerard lived solitary for seven years” (Locus Beel, ubi septennio solitariam vitam duxit S. Gerardus, etat in silva Bocon agri Budensis)[10]. During this vita contemplativa spent in “fasting and prayer” (jejuniis, orationum exercitiis)[11], the solitary monk would be “built a cell in a place hidden in the woods” (cellulam sibi silvarum secretiori loco construxerat)[12]. A “cell in which he dictated – append the Legenda major[13] – books from which many was written with his own hand” (cellam, in qua dictabat libros, quot propria manu scribebat). But this loco solitario, which is also mentioned in the chapter 40 of Thuroczius’ Chronicle of the Hungarians (1488)[14], is in contradiction with the numerous references made throughout the Deliberatio to “the brethren” (fratres), who are awaiting the author “at bath” (ad termas)[15], “to quench hunger” (reficiendi esuries)[16], or “at the Liturgy of Hours” (ad horas)[17]. Such details indicate around the author an intense monastic life, a place where it is felt the regula monachorum, a set of prescriptions which recommend that any task to be done jointly [18] and in a climate of fraternal love.
Something about the Bishop’s Bath
Furthermore, the Benedictine abbey in which St. Gerard writes his treatise seems large enough to have not just an apart cell for the solitude of writer Bishop, separated by the common bedroom that is required by the Rule of St. Benedict 22:3, but also the luxury of a common “bathroom with heated water” (termas), where the author of Deliberatio – as he says at a time – “our brethren are still waiting us” (nos citius praestolentur fratres ad termas)[19]. Even a such monastic balneatorium et lavandi locus[20] was in the St. Gerard’s time only a room with large wooden barrels as individual tubs where the water was heated with hot river rocks, the detail reveals one more time not an eremitic, but an organized monastic life, an Abbey with a minimum of 10 monks and an Abbot as is demanded by the Rule of St. Benedict 21:2[21]. Such monastic community can only be, in Gerard case, that one from the “well-off town” (urbs) Moresena or Morissena, which town was “named Csanád in the honor of Csanád’s victory, the Duke of King St. Stephen” (Moresena seu Morissena urbs a Sancto Stephano King in honorem sui uictoris ducis Csanád nominata est)[22]. Here – it is says in Vita major S. Gerardi – the Bishop Gerard arrives in 1030 with a group of 10 monks assembled from all Hungarian Benedictine abbeys to found here, in Banat region, the first Roman Catholic diocese on the actual Romanian territory. The year 1030 is also certified by the Annals of Bratislava (1203)[23] as the year in which “Gerard was consecrated Bishop” (Gerardus episcopus ordinatur). In addition, the Deliberatio‘s author says about “us who call ourselves Bishops” (episcopi nominamur)[24], making very clear that the treatise was written when its author was in the rank of bishop (between 1030 and 1046).
A Strange Reference to Some Phylacteries
On the year 1030, after the defeat[25] of the “local ruler” (dux) Achtum by Csánad, the last one being mentioned as nephew (nepos) of King Stephen in Gesta Hungarorum and as pagan general of Duke Achtum in Vita major S. Gerardi, the Benedictine monks led by Bishop Gerardus occupy the Byzantine monastery from Morisena/Csanád dedicated to St. John the Baptist. This monastery was erected by the local ruler Achtum for the monks of Byzantine rite (graeci, not Slavonic!) immediately after his baptism in Byzantium. As a result, the Greek monks were moved nearby to the new Byzantine monastery of Oroszlános (near Novi Kneževac, in Serbian Banat). Thus, the old Byzantine Church relatively large (having 20 meters long and 12.5 meters wide) became the first cathedral of the Roman Catholic diocese of Csánad. A school would have been “opened here by the Episcopal monks” (schola cathedras arripuerunt episcopales), as it is mentioned in Legenda major[26], but other reference to such institution do not appear in Deliberatio or in any other sources. In addition, the curricula that would have been taught here by the schoolmasters Walter and Henri: reading, cantus, grammatica, musica and computus remembers rather the pedagogy from the end of 14th Century[27] than one from the beginning of 11th.
With a pecuniary aid granted directly by King Stephen I, Bishop Gerard erects in Csanád a new Abbey and a new Cathedral, probably between 1036 and 1042. Deliberatio does not contain specific references to such construction activity, labor from which in respect of the Holy Rule of St. Benedict should not miss the Benedictine brethren. But this lack of references turns in extremely important information for the period of authorship and might help us to uncover Gerard’s purpose in writing his treatise. And so taking into account 6 years construction period for a new abbey[28], we have to look from 1042 upwards for a possible terminus post quem of the treatise. But let’s not anticipate…
An evangelization mission is in fact a cross cultural communication and its success depends in a large measure on this interaction with habits and differences of perspective and perception of local population. In this context, it must be said that the episode with displace of Greek monks to Oroszlános was not an expulsion and had no confessional motivation, but only an administrative one. Do not forget that it is a quarter of century until the Great Schism and Vita majoris S. Gerardi tells us that the relocation was done in an absolutely new monastery. It is about the Byzantine monastery newly built by the rulers of Csánad after his victory in the battle of Oroszlános over the local ruler Achtum (about 1028). The fact that Duke Csánad has set here the burial place for himself and his family certifies one more time the importance of the Byzantine rite among the local rulers and demonstrates that the Byzantine clergy relocation was not an attempt of expelliation, but rather the recognition of its importance in the Bant region. The 10th Century episode of two co-regents of the Hungarian tribal Confederation narrated by Constantinus Emperor Porphyrogenitus in his chronicle, De adminstrando imperio, speaks very clear about the beginning of the Greek/Byzantine cult in the Banat province and about the Jewish-Khazar[29] religion in this area. The episode is referring to a gylas and a carchan, which are “not proper names, but titles of nobility” (non nomina propria, sed dignitates)[30]. The two lexemes suggests a gyula and a kar-khan, the last one being a Turkic ‘black prince’, yet retrievable between the Banatian toponyms, such as Carani (Merczyfalva) or Caran (Caransebeş, in present time). But more interesting is the lexeme gylas, as it is attested by Porphyrogenitus, which is considered by linguists of unknown etymology, and which is derived by us from the Hebrew gyla (הליג), ‘eternal joy’. This gyula / gyla, which is illustrated by the Transylvanian dynasty with the same name (King Gyula III, it is said in Chronicon pictum vindobonense, was the maternal uncle of St. Stephen I and the descendant of “Captain Gyula” the conqueror of Transylvania), must be seen as a linguistic relict that testifies the Jewish religion spreading in Hungary, especially in Transylvania, that included the today’s Banat. The two dignitaries gylas et carchan, added a contemporary of St. Gerard, the Byzantine chronicler Ioanes Skylítzes, in his Sýnopsis historiõn, would have received at Constantinople the baptism on the Greek rite, the godfather being the Emperor Constantinus VII Porphirogenitus. On the occasion of their conversion, both nobles would have received honors and great riches from Byzantium and after that they returned to their country “with a Greek monk with a reputation of piety named Hierotheos who had been ordained bishop by the Patriarch Theophylact”[31].
Living together with the Greek monks stimulated Gerard advanced knowledge of Greek language, being presumably that he learned Greek here, at Csanád, as it is revealed by some details of his Deliberatio. Gerard reached a sufficiently advanced level to allow him for such specialized references to Byzantine angelology and liturgy as in the paragraph about the “three great powers inspired by the divine: Michael of course, Gabriel and Raphael” (trium fortium divinitus inspiratis, Michael nimirum, Gabriel et Raphael)[32]. Besides these three archangels, Gerard says that “the Greeks have another one, Uriel, called the fire of God, who is invoked especially by the heretics” (Graeci autem haec, et unum utique Uriel, qui ignis Dei dicitur, quem specialius heretici invocare dicuntur)[33]. Indeed, the Council of Rome expelled the Archangel Uriel from the liturgical texts of Latin Church in the year 745, passing it permanently to the index of demons. But archangel Uriel survived with all his greatness in the Byzantine liturgy and especially in the Jewish tradition, where, accordingly to the Book of Enoch, he is the guard of all-embracing knowledge.
Such Byzantine angelology knowledge to a Catholic bishop emphasizes once more the idea that the two Christian rites, Greek and Catholic, have lived in harmony in Hungarybefore the Grand Schism. A proof of religious tolerance is given by King Stephen himself, who built churches in both rites and not just in his Kingdom, but also in Latin Rome, in Byzantine Ravenna, in Constantinopleor at Jerusalem. Furthermore, we see in Deliberatio that the great resistance to the Catholic missionarism in Banat was due not to the monks of Byzantine Rite (graeci), not even to those of Slavonic Rite, “the supporters of Methodius” (suffragantibus Methodianistis)[34] as Gerard say, but to some local heretics who not recognize the divine nature of Christ:
“Around here, in our time, despite our zeal, all talks badly about not only the divine ceremonies, about the Church and the priests, but also about Jesus Christ himself, the son of the Lord, our God [...] And the devilish abjection did what he had to do and snatched from the God’s law those who recently I have brought to the holly illumination. And they all with one consent deny now the resurrection of the flesh, a turpitude that nothing greater can be conceived in the world”[35].
The failure of the Roman Catholicization mission in the 11th Century Banat is explicitly highlighted here, and it is due to a virulent paganism that rejected especially the Christian idea of Jesus as Messiah. It can not be accused the Greek priests, concerned at that time to learn the penance tips of St. Simeon the New Theologian, nor the Bogomilic heresy, the Gnostic reaction that already spread his fancy docetism. The real Catholicization failure is entirely ascribed by the Bishop Gerard to the opposition of some “heresiarch, kings of the devil” (reges diaboli heresiarchas)[36], who form in Gerard’s vision an army that “works daily to persecute the Church and try to deviate from its position” (que exercitus cottidie aecclesiae persequitur opera et statum eius conatur inflectere)[37]. Beyond the invectives of an indignant theologian, we see cited here, on the author references to an “army of heretics” (exercitu hereticorum) that is composed of “sons of the devil who cannot speak” (diaboli filios, quibus non patior loqui)[38], not others than “the kings” (regum), “the commanders” (tribunorum) and “the influential people” (fortium)[39] from the Gerard’s immediate vicinity. Against this “army of enemies” (inimicorum exercitus), composed of noblemen “who oppressed the poor peoples [and] were strong through the cruelties” (qui pauperes oprimerunt, qui potentes in maliciis fuerunt)[40], the Bishop Gerard take an irreconcilable doctrinal position, particularly with regard to the divine nature of Christ, as a response to his opponents “who argued that Christ would not have received the divine spirit” (qui dicit Christum actualem animam non suscepisse)[41]…
The diatribe with apocalyptical contextualization which is addressed to “the heresies of the Church that came to include the entire world” (nunc multi pullulant in Aecclesia, immo iam totum occupant orbem)[42] and which reserves to the heretics a place in “the lake of fire and sulfur” (in stagnum ignis ardentis et sulphuris)[43] finally ends, seemingly paradoxically, by finding guilty “all of them who rule unjustly and without mercy in this time” (omnes qui in hoc saeculo iniquae et crudeliter potentantur)[44]. The equivalence made here between the secular power and the religious heresies is not accidentally, it reveals the reality of the Hungarian Kingdom in the time of St. Gerardus. It was a brief period, between 1044 and 1046, when the “faction of King Samuel” (rex Samael partes)[45] has made the Jewish fait (religione ebristiana)[46] almost as a national religion. In this context must be put and understood the author’s warning that his references to the heresiarchs of Europe conceal “really symbolic meanings” (quia vero symbolica sunt)[47], and “you have to hide them in the innermost recesses of your heart than to be put in phylacteries” (quae superadmittenda sunt, in archano pectoris mavis recondere quam philacteriis committere)[48]. A particular attention through its Hebrew connotations requires the Latin philacteriis, a metaphor beyond the text and contextually linked to the Jewish religion by its polysemy that sends both to Hebrew tefillin and to Medieval Latin phylacteries[49]. In other words, Gerard’s imprecations to the post-Carolingian heresies from the whole Europe hide here a more personal indignation to “the heretics kings of devil” (reges diaboli heresiarchas)[50] from his vicinity. It is another sign that the Hungarian Kingdom, even decreed Regnum Marianum under St. Stephen I, was far from being truly Christianized…
On his list of complaints, Bishop Gerard has one as regards the diocesan bishop status. Gerard speaks here on behalf of all those who, like himself, honored the God and the magisterium of Rome and who not received instead of their obedience than humiliation and taxes from the Holy See, Rome not doing than “forbid us to speak, and we, who are called bishops and with whom the divine kingdom of the world begins, are forced now to pay taxes” (prohibemur iam loqui et episcopi nominamur constituti etiam sub tributo, quibus totus committitur diuino imperio mundus)[51]. The author’s discontent reveals here briefly the entire historical background and let to be heard the antipapal riots and the moral scandals in which was involved Pope Benedict IX (1032-1048). The cupidity and the immorality of this pope diminished the people confidence in a vicious and corrupt clergy and made some contemporaries of St. Gerard to take attitude against the moral decline of the Church. For example, St. Peter Damian, himself a Benedictine monk, draws attention to the next Pope Leo IX in the preface to his 1049 Book of Gomorrah, that “a new light is needed to dispel the darkness of doubt and to illuminate the whole body of the Church with the bright light of truth”. Otherwise, more and more people will prefer to be sent rather “under the yoke of worldly army” (in mundane militiae jugo) than “to enter of their own accord in the shadow of religion under the iron rule of an evil tyranny” (tam libere ferreo juri diabolicae tyrannidis mancipari)[52].
A terminus ante quem for the treatise
After the death of King Stephen I (1038) who granted many privileges to the Order of Saint Benedict in 997, renewed in 1001 by the Charter of Pannonhalma, those privileges was retracted by the next kings: Peter Orseolo (1038-1041), who mingled in the affairs of Synod Council and “revokes the bishops at his will”[53], respectively Samuel Aba (1041-1044), who imposed the monastic wealth taxes. This despoliation of the Abbeys is, in fact, the real reason for the Gerard’s imprecations, mainly addressed to “the perfidious King Aba” (perfidious Ovonem)[54]. The Bishop’s anger really reaches the climax in the last chapter of Deliberatio, where Gerard utters imprecations on the king who is now a “lousy man” (hominem cimicis), a “devious man” (hypocritam hominem), and who “allows a lot of abominations and deeds against the divine Majesty” (permisit multos nefandissimos, et divinae Majestati contrarios). The King Aba not differ – the author saying – from those “who took the name of King and eat the people and demand tribute and as they rise as they waste all around, after the worldly lust in the vain glory; they can not be called kings, but traitors” (qui tantum ut nomen habeant regnant, et populum devorent et tributa exepetant, seque magnificent, et cetera circa mundi appetitum in vanum rumorem expendant, non reges, sed subversores sunt)[55].
Obviously, it is a change of ton here, between the fearful and elliptical Chapter IV and the outrageous Chapter VIII. The use of such violent language shows us that the short reign of the bloody King Samuel was ended in the meantime. Only the disappearance of the King who beheaded[56] at Csanád “fifty noblemen” (quinquaginta uiros nobiles)[57] in the presence of Bishop Gerard in the Easter week of 1044 [eloquent sign of his disbelief in Jesus Christ!] may explain how, suddenly, the author gets rid of his always present fear of “not upsetting the royal ears” (ne quidem aures offendant regales)[58] and he can say now anything about the former King.
Other details turn our attention to the year 1044. In that year, two partial eclipses, one of Moon[59] and another one of Sun[60], were visible in whole Hungary, including Csanád. Such rare accumulation of astronomical phenomena could explain the interest shown by Gerard in eclipses. The Chapter V of Deliberatio offers a scientific explanation of solar and lunar eclipses with excerpts from St. Isidorus[61], but Gerard treats also here this phenomenon as a divine sign destined to enlighten the lost people in the deep darkness of unbelief and lechery, which is a consequence of Christ himself eclipse:
“Finally, the lunar eclipse is whenever the Moon enters in the Earth’s shadow. You know from long time ago that the Moon do not heave its own light, the Moon being illuminated by the Sun, what causes its disappearance if the Earth’s shadow is between her and Sun. Usually we say, as every time we run for enlightenment, that in the same way Christ is hiding from us because we indulge in fornications”[62].
But Gerard does not believe in prophecies, miraculous stones or astrological determinism, and we have to assume that he is here, in this symbolic interpretation of the eclipse, only the rumormonger of some superstitions spread among the others friars. Reminding us that the solar eclipse took place in autumn 1044, we can suppose the winter season of 1044 or the spring of 1045 as the time of Chapter V writing. It was exactly the period when Peter Orseolo the Venetian, the second king of Hungary(1038-1041, 1044-1046) was reinstalled on throne at Székesfehérvár (Alba Iulia). He defeated King Samuel Aba at Ménfö, near Győr, in the summer of 1044, when King Aba loses the battle and his throne despite the fact that he has had in Ménfö a much larger army (in Menfeu cum multitudine armatorum)[63]. This multitudine armatorum can be construed as a sign for the king’s popular support among the “ordinary people” (vulgaris), the local inhabitant who fear Gerard, as we will see below. After this battle the pagan king was killed and buried, as the chronicler says, not inside “but near a church” (et iuxtam quamdam ecclesiam sepelitur)[64], detail which can speak eloquently about its relationship with the Christian Church.
Battleof Ménfö: in the foreground left, the killing of the pagan King Samuel Aba; in the foreground right, the Christian King Peter Orseolo the Venetian; in the background left, as part of King Samuel army, the “ordinary people army” (vulgaris exercitus), as Gerard says, with their peasant caps.
Bishop Gerard does not even like the new king and he made in his Deliberatio an acidic comparison between the two Kings: Aba the Pagan and Peter the Venetian. This comparison, not at all flattering for a Catholic King in exercitium even done in an elliptical phrase lets to be heard the author’s fear for the consequences of his statements:
“But that one [God] who made to reign for the sins of the people a false man [Samuel Aba], abides now someone to have the power like that one […] And getting to they [the kings] do those things, only if we would talk about them and suddenly would rush upon us the entire ordinary people army”[65].
This paragraph from the middle of the last chapter speaks almost explicitly that Gerard was very disappointed by the King Peter, who, as King Samuel has done before, not has had trust in clergy and noblemen and he formed too an army based on ordinary and unfaithful people. Together with other connotative references, this text passage justifies us to date the Chapter VIII between the fall of the year 1045 and the summer of 1046. It was the period when the Bishop Gerard conspired with the Catholic faction which “would like to help Andrew [from the House of Árpád] to be king in Hungary” (qui Andream vocaverant in Hungariam)[66]. This political involvement will bring the legendary martyrdom to Bishop Gerard who was killed by the pagans “near Pest” (prope Pesthum)[67] in autumn 1046[68]. And so, Gerard will not see that his dream will come true few months later, in 1047, when was the coronation of King Andrew I, known as ‘the Catholic’ (András Katolikus, 1047-1060). This king was the defender of Catholicism and the founder of Tihany Benedictine Abbey (1056), where it is his burial place.
To conclude, we consider, as all exegetes agreed, that Deliberatio is left unfinished by the author on the Chapter VIII, this irrefutable fact makes 1046, when the author died as a martyr, a terminus ante quem for the manuscript. But one question still remains unanswered: when begun Gerard to write the opening chapter of his Deliberatio?
… and a terminus post quem
To answer the above question we should return to his ‘diary entries’. Two such personal references, one from the liminary chapter, another one from the chapter II, both speaking about the same rare meteorological phenomenon, can tell us with accuracy when Gerard started to write his treatise:
“…our time has passed and the heat (cauma) started to annoy us very much”[69]; and:
“…but the heat’s abnormality (caumatis improbitas) and the short time we remained not allows us to speak about them”[70].
After the rainy summer of the year 1043, followed by a hard winter, the year 1044 brought famine and hot weather over the whole Europe[71]. That year in Hungary, the famine gave very likely more reasons “to return the pagan ritual” (et resumatur ritus paganismus), as chronicler Simon of Keza says in his Gesta Hungarorum[72].
In our opinion[73], only one conclusion can be made regarding the Deliberatio’s relative dating: Gerard has written his treatise in the period between summer 1044 and summer 1046 at Csanád (now Cenad/Romania), in the newly built Benedictine Abbey. There, the Bishop Gerard lived together with cathedral and diocesan monks, all clerics leading a monastic life after the Rules of St. Benedict. Specifically, they recited daily the Liturgy of the Hours, which included also the apocryphal psalm Hymnum trium puerorum, which is the subject of Gerard’s treatise, all monks being dressed in cuculla, the mantle of choir and ceremony that was worn in festive occasions without the ordinary scapullo over the white race of wool with long collar and linked to the middle with a cord or a leather belt.
Blond Jews with Blue Eyes Enter the Scene
In 1048, King Andrew has given Hungary the famous edict that can be found in Migne’s Patrologia Latina under the title Constitutiones eclesiasticae, which have a distinct rule concerning the paganism: “profane and Scythian rites and also the false deities will be repealed, and the statues will be demolished”[74]. The so-called “Scythian rites”, far to be eradicated, will spread the fame of a pagan Hungary throughout Europe, being recorded for 12th Century even in The Song of the Nibelungs[75]. In addition, this resistant and gregarious paganism will be a fruitful field for the heresies proliferation in the area until the Late Middle Ages. Thus, in 1436, Pope Eugenius IV sent the inquisitor Jacob of Marchia to a mission in Hungary (especially in Banat and Transylvania) to exterminate “the plague of heresies” (morbus haeresium). This was the papacy’s response to the alarmed letters about the spreading of “devilish sects and harmful heresies” (maledicte secte et heresies pestifere), one of those letters was written by the Archdeacon Albert, Vicar-General of Csanád Bishopric[76]. In the same year, the archiepiscopal chapter of Kalocsa (same ecclesiastical province with Csanád diocese) reported in a missive dated December, 4th, 1436, to the Supreme Pontiff that the conversion mission of papal legate in this part of Hungary was successfully and “many heretics, both from clergy and laity” (plurimos hereticos, tam clericos, quam laicos) who were brought by abominable heresy into the way of perdition founded the correct way of believing in God. In a paraphrase to Daniel 11:31 (: “armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple”), the author of the letter insists on those who by use of force “vandalized the sacred insignia and the Eucharist sacrament” (divina profanasse ac sacram Eucharistiam)[77]. Such exaggeration functions here as a reference to those “who set up in the temple an abomination that causes desolation” (Matthew 24: 15). It is about the vandalism of idolatry and blasphemy correlated by theologians with the prophecy of Mark 13: 14: „When you will see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong – let the rider understand – then those who are in Judea flee to the mountains”. For theologians, this “abomination that causes desolation” that is happened in a “holy place” – as synonym for the heretic vandalism – it is obvious a prophetic sign about the future instauration there of true Christian faith represented by Roman Catholic Church. Concluding, the exaggerations about the acts of vandalism committed by local heretics in the Catholic churches can be in this letter only a subtle reference to a heresy closely related to the Old Testament and to “abomination that causes desolation” that speaking the prophet Daniel.
The legendary paganism of local population gave in Banatsome suggestive toponyms, such as MinişRiver(probably from the Heb. min, ‘heretic’), and Pogăniş River (from the Latin paganus, ‘pagan’), a tributary of Timis River. The Jidovini locality (Berzovia, in present time) is as well attested in the area under this strange name (etymon: Old Rom. jidov, ‘Jews’) since 1366 in a diploma of King Ladislaus I of Hungary. Written at Şemlac, in Banat region, this diploma granted the village Jidovini to the Catholic nobleman Benedek Neém. The meaning of Rom. jidovini remembers that the local folklore, particularly from the mountainous Banat, abounds in legends about a population of blond giants with blue eyes named jidovi (meaning Jews in old Romanian), who would have lived a long time ago in the area… But can be established a causal relationship between the legendary ‘Jews’ (jidovi) from the Romanian folklore and the mysterious “Scythian rites” (Scythicas caeremonias) from the Royal Edict?
The Scythians appear in the first Hungarian chronicles as a polyethnically heterogeneous community of Middle Eastern origin, which was ethno-genetically related to the Hungarians. The Árpád dynasty chronicles say explicitly that the Huns migration to South has begun “from Scythia” (de terra scithica descendens)[78]. This Scythian land is a fabulous place for the anonymous notary of King Béla: “very large” (maxima terra est) and “where is an abundance of gold, silver and precious stones” (Nam ibi habundat aurum et argentum, et inueniuntur in fluminibus terre illius preciosi lapides et gemme)[79]. The migration of the Huns to the Danubian plain in the ninetieth century begins from here and involved Turanian tribes, which later became integral part of the Hungarian nation. More precisely, it is about the Kabars tribes, a group of three Khazar clans revolted against the Khazar government. The Khazars were a pagan nomad population with Turanic origin that acquired in a short period in history until its fall and dissolution in circa 969 AD the largest and most wealthy empire in that time, which stretched at its climax from Aral Sea to Carpathians. During the eighth century, all the Khazar royalty and much of the aristocracy abandoned paganism and converted to Judaism. The first “Jewish king” (melek) of Khazaria was Bulan, who decided to end the shamanic practices and to adopt as state religion the “Talmudist-Rabbis taught”[80]. In short time, the ideology of the Talmud became the axis of political, economic and social attitudes and the Old Testament will be the Saint Book of this population that lived a land known in Classical Antiquity as Scythia. This strange conversion of Khazarian Muslims shouldn’t be successfully without a linguistic reform so necessary for the comprehension of the Judaic religion, and accordingly the Persian author Ibn Ishaq al-Nadim (The Book of the Index, 988 AD)[81] the Khazarians adopted the characters and many of them the Hebrew language. A contemporary theory[82] claims even that the Ashkenazic Jews descends from the Khazars and the Yiddish (‘Jewish’) is the heir of old Khazarian language.
In the eleventh century, the most illustrious representative of those Scythians / Kabars was King Samuel Aba of Hungary, who appeared in Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum as a relative on paternal line of Attila the Great, and on maternal line as a “descendant of Kawish clan” (Muslim) from the Khabar tribes (de Corosminis orta erat)[83]. The 12th Century Byzantine Empire historian John Kinnamos mentioned the khalisioi (possible meaning ‘Muslims’) from the Hungarian army “who kept the law of Moses although not in a pure form” (isti Mosaïcis legibus iisque non omnino genuinis etiamnum vivunt)[84]. Otherwise said, they were jidovi, as can be translated in old Romanian language. As head of the Scythian clans of Hungary, King Aba was – like Achtum, the ruler of Banat – of “Jewish religion” (religione ebristiana)[85] in a Khazar (Muslim) form. The historians presume that he passed formally from Judaism to Christian belief in the moment of his marriage with Princess Sarolta, the daughter of Prince Géza of Hungary. Formally, because all the chronicles speak about “his reign as a time when the sins were multiplied and the Hungarian people opposed to Christianity as in the prophecy of St. Gerard” (quo regnante, pecata accreverunt, et juxta prophetiam S. Gerardi gens Ungarica ad Christianitate est adversa)[86].
Deepening the roots of this strange Muslim-Hungarian Judaism, we arrive at the myth of the ten Israelite tribes from the “House of Omri” [1 Kings 16:16] which disappear from The Book of Chronicles of the Kings of Israel in the 6th Century BC. On the basis of some Assyrian references, it can be presumed that Bit-Humria or Beth Khumri (Heb. the House of Omri, as the whole North Kingdom of Israel) survived until the fall of Assyrian Empire (609 BC), when these Israelite tribes migrated to Caucasus. Traces of their migration can be found in the neighboring peoples’ chronicles, which call them Khumree, Ghomri, Gomer, or Kimmeroi (Cimmerians). They are probably responsible for the conversion to Mosaic faith of Khazar tribal confederation in the 7th Century Empire of rite the on Scythian land in AD. Only thus could explain why the conversion to Judaism was a resounding success between the Moslems of Khazaria and why the Israelite tribes become here the aristocracy (illis tribus Cabarorum populis princeps est)[87], as it is said in De administrando imperio of Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos. The tenth-century Muslim geographer Al-Istakhri noted in his book Roads of Kingdoms (Kitâb al-Masâlik ’al-mamâlik)[88] an important typological diference between the Mozaic people called “white Khazars” (ak-Khazars) that were white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes, and the lower classes of Turkic population, known as the “black Khazars” (kara-Khazars) because their darkened skin which made them to look like they were, as chronicler says, “some kind of Africans”. The khagan and one “prince” (Išâd) of Empire were elected from among these white Khazars, added Gardēzī in his Kitāb Zayn al-Akhbâr[89] written in Persian around 1050 AD. In the ninth century, the “Israelite Scythians” of Khazaria, generically known as cabároi at Porphirogenitus[90], joined the Huns in their migration to Central Europe. Fallowing the Khazar model, Huns and Kabars together will form there a tribal confederation led by three co-regents. “The first in importance was the prince Árpád House” (Primusque inter ipsos est princeps ad prosapia Arpade)[91], in other words a Hun, fallowed by a “Gylas, which is more important than Carchan” (Gylas que tamen maior est quam Carchas)[92], these two coregents being the representatives, respectively, of white and black Khazars.
We assume that all Banattoponymic legends about giants are referring to the Kabar Jews (Rom. jidovi) of this Gylas. The assimilation process of Khazar with a population of blond giants with blue eyes probably puts here on mythological forms the popular respect for the “ancestral lord of the place”: ‘úri-ős’ in Hungarian, which contaminated homophonic the Hungarian term óriás, ‘giant’, and gived the Romanian uriaş, ‘giant’. The Jidovini locality (Berzovia in the present-day) of which we have spoken above, or other toponyms with similar etymon, as Jidovului Forest, Jidovinilor Hill, Jidoştiţa, Jadani village (in the present-day Corneşti, Timiş County), or even Reşiţa (from the Heb. reshit, ‘beginning’, the opening word of the Old Testament), locality attested from the 14th Century, can argue a Khazar habitation in Banat region. In addition, a lot of families from this area have the origin of their patronymics in the biblical names from the Old Testament, such us Moisă (from Moses), Avram (Abraham), Samoilă (Samuel), Dăvidoni (David), Aron (Aaron), Solomie (Salmon), Zăroni (Sarah) etc. More than a confession of their ancestral Jewish faith, these biblical names give evidence about the resistance to baptism of the Banatian rural population (known here as paori – term which can be related to the Yiddish פּויער (poyer), ‘farmer’ ) in the Medieval Period. They are those “ordinary people” (vulgaris) who terrified St. Gerard because “will rush upon us” (adversus nos concitabitur) if he would contradict their king (Aba)[94].
Another testimony which should take into consideration comes from the twelve-century anonymous author of the Song of the Nibelungs. He tells us that between the 24 vassals of King Etzel of Hungary[95] at the place of honor in his wedding procession was the Duke Ramunc of Wallachia (der herzoge Rämunc üzer Walachen lant)[96] with his train of 700 horsemen “flying like birds” (sam vliegende vogele)[97] on their horses. Beyond the first Romanian ethnonim attestation in history, this Ramunc can refer here to Duke Csanád, the ruler of Banat and the vassal of King Stefan I, the last one dissimulated in this saga as the personage King Etzel. About this Csanád, the Legenda major S. Gerardi says that he was a pagan, and St. Gerard asserts in his treatise that he was more interested “to groom his horses” (lotium equorum) than to believe in Christ[98]…
To who is actually Deliberatio addressed?
Bishop Gerard is complaining throughout his treatise about this pagan population and her resistance to evangelization, accusing mainly those “who say now that Christ would not have received divine grace” (qui dicit Christum actualem animam non suscepisse)[99]. Indeed, the divine/human nature of Jesus Christ was a controversial motive among Christians and Jews. For 31 AD, St. John relates a dramatic confrontation on such theme at the Temple of Jerusalem between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders. The dispute culminated with the assertion of Jesus: “I and my Father are one”, moment at which “Jews took up stones again to stone him” claiming that such affirmation is “a blasphemy because you, who are man, you do it yourself God” (John10:30-33).
Furthermore, the lives of SS Cyril and Methodius show how the Khazar Judaism and its non-acceptance of Jesus had become a problem in the space of Byzantine Christianity for the 9th Century, when Cyril and (probably) his brother Methodius were sent by Photius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, in the land of Khazars for an evangelization mission. Accordingly Vita Cyrilli, Cyril learned Hebrew or Khazarian (in the Italian version of his Legenda) in Crimea (“Little Khazaria”), but despite this advantage, his mission of evangelization was a fiasco like those of Gerard in Banat, only “a small part of khazars being baptized”[100]. The gain, if it was one, seems to be – as it is said in the letter to Byzantine Emperor Michael III – that the Jew khagan of Khazaria allowed further the Jews, Mohammedans, and Christians to live peaceably side by side in his Empire.
The paganism of indigenous people is the source for another complaint that arises out of Gerard’s treatise: someone (unnamed) succeeded “to move away from the law of God of those recently brought by us in the happy light” (quid ex lege Dei nouiter uenientes ad beatissimam illuminationem docuimus, abstulit). Gerard is referring here not only to the “ordinary people” (vulgaris), but also to “the priests” (sacerdotes) who “were forced to utter intolerable falsehoods about God” (quod ui compellabantur intolerabilia mendatia in Dei). Of course, the subject of bishop complaint could not be merely a person, unnamed here [nomina odiosa], with sufficient authority and resources of coercion to persuade a Christian clergy, which, at least theoretically, was dependent only on the Pope. Our suspicion falls on King Aba, who – Vita S. Gerardi remembering us – was often not in the pilgrimage of humility to Bishopric of Csanád. Only from this level of power the Catholic priests could be forced (compellabantur), as Gerard says, to utter lies about God:
“With faith and truth I confess unto thee, that even the priests were forced by him to utter intolerable falsehoods about God. And the devilish abjection did what it could and has succeeded to persuade those recently brought by us to the law of God and has moved them away from the happy light. All denies now in one voice the flesh resurrection, an ignominy than cannot be a greater one in the entire world”[101].
Let us remember that we have established that Gerard has begun to write his Deliberatio in the summer of 1044 after the visit of King Samuel Aba at Cenad and the bloody decapitation of 50 noblemen in the Easter week. Probably this event was the start mechanism in the author mind, who conceived a plan to convince with theological arguments the ‘Jewish’ King Aba about the inter-testamentary thought that make from Old Testament the announcer – hermeneutic speaking – of the New one. The passage above shows quite clearly that the King was involved in such theological disputes, field in which the king has succeeded to persuade the Catholic priests “to utter intolerable falsehoods about God”. Probably, Csanád became the epicenter of such debates between the Catholics and the prominent members of Turanic-Jewish faction. As one leader of Catholic thought, Gerard prepared few dialectical arguments for a future deliberation with the “true disciples of Moses” (veri Moysi discipuli)[102]. And so Deliberatio was born as an apologetic treatise that makes from the biblical verse: “Jesus Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3)[103], the central idea of a whole demonstration about the superiority of Christianity, which are collected all the treasures of pagan wisdom. It is about the same thesaurus which can be found but incomplete in the Old Testament, the true meanings being possessed only by the Apostles.
In his hermeneutical exaltation, Gerard tries to unify forcefully symbols from both Testaments to demonstrate how the Christian faith is announced by the Jewish tradition. For this reason he say, for example, that menorah, which is “the bright divine candlestick of Jewish speeches” (diuino eloquiorum in semitis lucente candelabro)[104], symbolizes Jesus and it is “warning us on the governance of Christ in his Church” (aduertimus presidentem Christum in aecclesia sua)[105].
Realizing that an evangelization mission in Banatcan be compromised without the noblemen’s (potentes) support, Gerard uses as the main argument in his hermeneutical approach, as we will see, an Old Testament apocrypha accepted not only by Catholics, but also by Jews and Greeks. It is about an old psalm which was probably performed by Bishop alongside the King Aba in the Episcopal Cathedral of Csanád during the Eastern Services of April 1044. Gerard began to write his hermeneutic treatise as a persuasive and argumentative essay destined to remain strongly intertwined with the future religious debates on the superiority of Judaic/Christian faith. That is why, along his apologetic treatise, the lector have an acute impression of an unnamed and omniscient addressee, a presence who is felt everywhere in this “deliberation” upon a minor apocrypha entitled The Song of the Tree Young Men.
For example, the authors of Deliberatio use in Chapter IV a hermeneutical approach to the St. Paul’s concept of “vessels of clay” (vasis fictilibus) from 2 Corinthians 4:7, which symbolizes the human beings who keep inside as in a treasury the entire Christian thesaurus of knowledge, the treasure gave by Christ. In this passage, Gerard indicates us almost explicitly the true addressee of his treatise. He is neither the common reader, nor the philosopher Isingrim, who is only a jovial auctorial instance brought in text only for the narrative architecture considerations, but this anonymous addressee is just the monarch of Gerard’s time and place. We can hear the author speaking to him under the veil of connotative falsity and reminding him constantly, with examples, that he is in the situation of the illustrious kings of antiquity who searched through “the treasuries” (vestiariis) of the world, even if they did not find it, “the treasure of heavenly Kingdom” (regnum caelorum thesauro) which is the true God and the only one who “lives by faith in the minds of true believers”:
“This treasure [of apostles – note of Batthyany] we carry with us – as it says[106] – in some vessels of clay. It is the great treasure which all great talents put it over the centuries and in no other Treasury (vestariis)[107] it is only in this clay vessels of witch nothing should not be broken without reason. This treasure couldn’t have it the King Darius, nor Xerxes, nor Arthaxerxes, nor Xerxes Ochus, nor Xerxes son of Ochus, nor Alexander the Great, nor Ptolemy the son of Largus, nor Ptolemy Philadelphus, nor Ptolemy son of Cleopatra, nor any others who have acquired and divided the world, nor the stoics, nor the platonicians, nor the academics, who consider all as non-determinate, nor the peripateticians, who say that a part of the soul is perishable, nor the epicureans, the followers of that who was called pig by the stupid wise men[108], asserting that the world is made only of atoms and after death is nothing; nor the gymnosophists who say that the world is invisible and the God is made of four elements, and nor any other of their colleagues. These vessels of clay are more worthy, surely, for their humble, silent and fearful words [of philosophers], than for the jaw of prophets, who crushes the stones as a hammer. We have access now to these vessels which keep the greatest treasures. Many kings and prophets, it is saying[109], that were strong-willed to see what you see, and they have not seen. But happy is that one who does not see and believe. Here are the vessels that preserve the treasure of the Kingdom of heaven which is undoubtedly the true knowledge and the fame of the son of God. It is similar, it is saying[110], with a treasure hidden in a hidden land, which is the clouds of Holy writings, the treasure which is Christ our God, the one who live by faith in the minds of true believers, the most upright and useful charity work applied to a clean heart, to a good conscience and to a sincere faith”[111].
This enumeration of kings before the philosophers hides some interesting connotative references. Compiled by St. Isidore’s Chronicle[112], the list includes here only the kings who ruled over Egypt and Judea. Also said, they were the best examples for a King of Jewish religion, as it was Samuel Aba, to indicate that the thesaurus of eternal knowledge “hidden amongst the clouds of Holy writings” (occultato in nubibus scripturarum) could not be found outside the Christian thought. More than that, Gerard must have known about Ptolemy Philadelphus from The Chronicle of St. Isidorus that he “was that who freed the Jews from Egypt and returned the sacred vessels to the priest Eleazar, and who summed the translators of Septuagint, caring about the translated of the Holy Scriptures in Greek”[113]. And maybe the similarity between these Israelite “sacred vessels” (vasa sacra) and the “clay bottles” (vasis fictilibus) of St. Paul gave him the idea to introduce into discussion, as argument of an ancient sapient tradition, the Jewish concept of “precious vessels” (Heb. hakeilim yekarim) from Proverbs 20:15. It is about the vessels in which God would be put at the beginning of the Creation his entire wisdom and which was brought out by Jews from Egypt (vade infra)…
When the Hungarian king Aba who practiced the Judaism became history, the Gerardus’ project transgressed the simple theological dialectics and was naturally continued in politics with the plot to bring a true Catholic on throne. History stands witness to the fact that his missionary strategy of converting in first the local rulers, strategy which was practiced before, in the 10th Century, by the Byzantines who baptized those gylas et carchan, was a winning choice and that Gerard’s strategy for the Scythian paganism and Khazar Judaism eradication was on long term, an inevitable success…
