Századok – 2014
TANULMÁNYOK - Csákó Judit: A magyar-lengyel krónika és a hazai elbeszélő hagyomány II/287
334 CSÁKÓ JUDIT complemented. I also regarded a detailed treatment of the problems which emerge with regard to the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle all the more justified since the text in question is likely, in my opinion, to offer valuable information about the devbelopment of the Hungarian narrative tradition in the 13th century. In the first part of my study I examine the problem of what exactly is to be meant by the very text of the Mixed Chronicle, which has come down to us in two versions, a shorter and a longer redaction. How burdened with interpolations is the text preserved in the so-called Zamoyski-codex? How shall we conceive the archetype of the Chronicle? In presenting the mutual relationship of the two versions to each other, I perforce had to touch upon the question of what kind of text of the Hartvic legend may have been at the disposal of the thirteenth-century chronicler who borrowed long sections therefrom. Upon a close similarity between the Life of St Stephen contained by the Legendary of Seitz and certain passages in the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle, László N. Szelestei even proposed the hypothesis that the manuscript of Seitz and the Mixed Chronicle may reveal the existence of a shorter version of the third Life of Stephen that predated the text now known as the Legenda Hartiviciana. I, however, rejected this hypothesis, along with the view of Ryszard Grzesik, who likewise suspected in the background of Mixed Chronicle a text of the Hartvic legend that stood closer to the presumed archetype that any of the other surviving manuscripts. Before shifting to an analysis of potential parallels between the Hungarian chronicle literature and the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle, I judged a survey of the most important ideas about the presumed place and time of the Chronicle’s compilation indispensable. While the arguments which Grzesik advanced in support of a dating of the Mixed Chronicle to the mid-thirteenth century (most probably put together in the 1220s and 1230s) will probably prove to be sound, his suspicion of the existence behind the Chronicle of a source of southern origins (namely a chronicle written in the Slavonian court of prince Coloman) is far less immune to criticism. Nor based on any more solid foundations is the thesis put forward by Martin Homza, according to which the fabulous history was put to writing by Adolf, provost of Szepes. Although I do not exclude either the possibility that the Mixed Chronicle originated in Hungary, equally serious arguments can be forwarded in support of the Polish origins of a narrative which, moreover, has not survived in any Hungarian manuscript. In the last part of the study I have examined the ways in which the narrative source in question may have been related to the Hungarian gesta-compilations. The main question is whether the hypothesis of Grzesik that certain details of the Mixed Chronicle, which is admittedly full of strange elements, betray familiarity with the Hungarian narrative tradition in the 11th and 12th centuriers. Following Bálint Hóman, the Polish scholar opined that the text reveals at several points philological concordances with the Hungarian chronicle tradition, more exactly with the narratives of the Anonymous and Simon Kézai, as well as the fourteenth-century chronicle compilation. Upon examining the relevant parts of the text, I have come to the conclusion that, contrary to the opinion of Grzesik, apart from the sections borrowed from the Hartvic legend, no passage of the Hungarian- Polish Chronicle reveals immediate recourse by the compiler of the text to any Hungarian written record. Nevertheless, some elements of the history do appear to reflect the Hungarian tradition; this may have been transmitted to the chronicler indirectly, possibly by way of oral communication. Yet the parts examined - such as the episode which casts a rather unfavourable light on the consort of Saint Stephen - reflect the knowledge not of early texts but of some version of the thirteenthcentury Hungarian narrative tradition. The history of Attila as presented by the Mixed Chronicle also raises the possibility that this tradition during the reign of Andrew II may have included a narrative devoted to this presumed ancestor of the Arpáds that was more detailed than the one offerred by the Anonymous.
