The Eighth Tribe, 1976 (3. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1976-10-01 / 10. szám
Page 4 THE EIGHTH TRIBE October, 1976 also given various diplomatic assignments, including the leading of an embassy to France. By 1023 his services as Emeric’s tutor were no longer needed, and he willingly retired to the Bakony Hills in Trans- Danubia in order to lead the life of a hermit. He spent the next seven years in meditation. In 1030, however, King St. Stephen finally persuaded him to return to active life once again. Gerard was immediately appointed the Bishop of Csanád in eastern Hungary, and thereafter he devoted all of his efforts to the spreading of Christianity in the region of the Tisza and the Maros rivers. His work there was very rewarding. He soon established a monastery, along with a school for the education of Hungarian priests, built a cathedral, and founded dozens of parishes with as many churches. Simultaneously, he also converted tens of thousands of Magyars to the Christian faith. Apparently he had a very captivating personality, for he soon made himself a universally beloved apostle of the new religion, and a powerful exponent of West European culture in all of the lands under his influence. Following St. Stephen’s death in 1038, Gerard also withdrew from active public life. But under the reign of King Aba Samuel (1041-1044), when the partisans of the Old Order were openly calling for the restoration of the pre-Christian religion and way of life, and found some support with the king, Gerard turned against the monarch. To protect the new faith and culture in Hungary, he decided to support the recall of Prince Andrew (Endre), the exiled nephew of St. Stephen, to the throne of Hungary. It was while going to meet Prince Andrew and his younger brothers, Béla and Levente, at the river crossing between the future Buda and Pest, that a group of pagan rebels caught him, took him up to the steep rock that now bears his name (St. Gerard’s Hill), bound him to a two-wheeled cart, and then pushed him off the rock into the Danube River. The day of his martyrdom was September 24, 1046. St. Gerard thus joined the ranks of the numerous martyrs of Christianity. Simultaneously, however, he also entered the pantheon of Hungarian heroes, and rightly so. This high-born son of Italy, after all, could have spent his days living the pleasant life of a Venetian nobleman. Yet he opted to devote his life and energies to the spreading of Christianity and West European culture in the land of the strange, pagan Magyars of that day. For this he deserves our gratitude and our remembrance. Apparently this was also the way the Magyar leaders felt soon after Gerard’s martyrdom, for he was among the very first to be placed into the ranks Baptism of St. Stephen of the saints of Hungary. This came in 1083, when he was canonized simultaneously with his benefactor, King St. Stephen, and with his gifted student, St. Enteric. Emeric, who was St. Stephen’s son, may have given indirectly his name to the new lands discovered by Columbus some four and a half centuries later (Imre-Emeric-Amerigo-America). St. Gerard was eventually buried at the place of his greatest triumphs, the Monastery at Csanád that he founded. Although this monastery was destroyed during the great peasant rebellions of 1514, some of Gerard’s relics survived. They are scattered in a number of cities, including Venice, Bologna and Murano in Italy, Prague in Czechoslovakia, and Győr in Hungary. St. Gerard’s martyr’s death 930 years ago this month may have been a relatively insignificant event amidst the chaotic events of those years. His life’s work, however, had an incalculable influence upon the destiny of his adopted nation; an influence that can only be measured in terms of the survival of the Magyars and their language in the strange world of Christian Europe.
