Anonymus and Master Roger

Introduction

iNTRODUCTiON The report of Master Roger on the Mongol invasion of Hungary is a rare text, being an eyewitness account of a major historical event in the thirteenth century. As such, it may be compared on the one hand with Galbert of Bruges’s twelfth-century narrative of the murder of Charles the Good, and, on the other, with Archdeacon Thomas of Split’s less immediate, but still contemporary account of the Mongol attack.1 Although written within a few years after the events of 1241–42, the text is extant only in a fifteenth-century printed edition . it is clear from the biography of the author (see below) that it was completed before 1244, but its fate over the following two and a half centuries remains unknown. The first edition was printed in 1488 in Brno as an appendix to the Hungarian Chronicle of John Thuróczi, royal notary and historian.2 Since the sponsor of that edition was in all likelihood John filipec, bishop of Várad/Oradea and diplomat and counselor of King Matthias i Corvinus, it is possible that filipec gave a manuscript to the printer (or to Thuróczi).3 At the time of the Mongol attack, Master Roger was archdeacon of Oradea; consequently, a copy of his narrative may have been pre1 for other eyewitness accounts and contemporary reports of the Mongols, see Gian Andri Bezzola, Die Mongolen in abendländischer Sicht (1220–1270). Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Völkerbegegnungen (Bern and Munich: francke, 1974), pp. 66–109; for a general analysis of the Mongol’s perception in and relations to the west, see now peter Jackson, The Mongols and the Latin West, 1221-1405 (Harlow: pearson longman, 2005). 2 See now Johannes Thuróczy, Chronica Hungarorum, ed. Elemér Mályusz, Gyula Kristó and Erzsében Galántai, 3 vols. (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1985–88). 3 On filipec’s sponsorship of the Brno officina, see Vladislav Dokoupil, Počátky brněnského knihtisku: Prvotisky [The beginnings of book-printing in Brno: incunabula] (Brno: Univerzitní knihovna v Brně and Archiv města Brna, 1974). we are grateful to Antonín Kalous for drawing our attention to this title. [Xli] Anonymus.indb 41 2010.06.14. 9:39 iNTRODUCTiON Xlii served in the Oradea cathedral, with which filipec kept in touch during his diplomatic missions. whatever the case, no manuscript has survived. But within just a few months of its publication, the editio princeps was re-edited in Augsburg, and then in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries several more printings appeared.4 in each instance, the editors added some “emendations” to the text, usually according to their taste in latin. its title, also emended several times, was probably the creation of a later copyist or the first editor. in the 1488 edition it runs (in translation): “Epistle of Master Roger to (or for) a pitiable (or Sorrowful) lament on the Destruction of Hungary by the Tatars written to Bishop John of pest.” Some editors or translators assumed the existence of a lost Carmen miserabile that would have been originally attached to the letter, but there are no evidence for such an assumption: although it was not formally composed in verse, the epistle itself is a “mournful song.” Moreover, in the title the identification of the bishop is erroneous. There was no bishopric in pest, and no John is known to have been a prelate in Hungary at the time of the text’s composition . Rather, the manuscript exemplar may have had (as was often the case) only the initials i and p. it is in fact clear from the biography of Roger that the reference was to Iacobus, bishop of Preneste, i.e., Giacomo di pecorari, bishop of palestrina. while the epistle is addressed to one person, it is most likely that Master Roger expected a wider circulation for his lament. in his detailed study of the Carmen miserabile (as Roger’s text traditionally came to be called), Tihamér Turchányi suggested a number of emendations to the text and pointed to passages that may be interpolations. Somewhat hypercritically, he also called into question the originality of the title, the chapter headings, and even the text’s division into chapters.5 ladislaus (lászló) Juhász, in his critical edition in the now standard collection of early medieval 4 See Bibliography, below, p. 231. 5 Tihamér Turchányi, “Rogerius mester Siralmas éneke a tatárjárásról” [The Carmen miserabile...