The Eighth Tribe, 1978 (5. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1978-06-01 / 6. szám
June, 1978 THE EIGHTH TRIBE Page 9 his marriage to Theodora, Manuel’s only living sister — Béla III may even have achieved his goal, had Andronicos not been overthrown by the Byzantines themselves (Sept. 1185), just at the moment, when his armies were ready to leave Sardike for Constantinople. The overthrow and execution of the tyrant Andronicos, and the rise of Isaac II Angelos (1185-95) to the Byzantine throne, however, put an end to this plan. Thus, Béla Ill’s plans for a Hungaro-Byzantine union — similarly to the earlier plans of Emperor Manuel — also failed. But in light of the marriage of his daughter, Margaret (renamed Maria in Constantinople), to the new emperor, Byzantine-Hungarian relations again turned friendly. Because of this new friendship, Béla III returned to the empire those Byzantine territories that he had conquered in the course of his struggle against Andronicos. In return for this generosity, the Byzantines assured Hungary of her possession of Dalmatia. Although assured of Hungarian military and diplomatic support, under the new dynasty of the Angeli, the power of the Byzantine Empire began a rapid decline, which soon lead to the conquest and destruction of the imperial city by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The decline of Byzantium — which was the result of many intertwining economic, social, political and intellectual causes — was bound to affect her role in the Balkans, as well as her relationship with Hungary. One of the direct results of this decline was the Bulgarian Revolution of 1186, which ultimately lead to the secession of Bulgaria and to the foundation of the Second Bulgarian Empire (1196) under the Asen Dynasty. The rise of independent Bulgaria then created a vedge between Hungary and Byzantium, and henceforth Hungary’s southern expansions came into conflict not with Byzantium, but rather with the rising Bugarian and later Serbian power. (Moravcsik: Byzantium, 91-95; Dvornik: Slavs, 89-119.) The decline of Byzantium and the substitution of Bulgarian and Serbian power with that of the formerly powerful Byzantine Empire took the Balkans out of the main stream of European history. This was bound to influence also Hungary’s attitude toward that area. Hereafter, the land of the Magyars began to look once more toward Western Europe as a source of inspiration. This reorientation was given a major push in 1186, when Béla III married Margaret Capte, the daughter of King Louis VII of France. This marriage brought French cultural and social influences to Hungary, which influences were instrumental in reshaping her court life and literary culture, as well as in pushing 111 her toward a feudal type of social and political system. These influences also contributed to the transformation of Hungary from a patrimonial into a feudal kingdom; a transformation that found full legal expression in the Hungarian Golden Bull (Magna Charta) of 1222. 112 Book Review: Dr. Endre Ágoston A NEW BIOGRAPHY OF SÁNDOR PETŐFI In 1973, Hungary celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of its greatest and internationally best known poet: Sándor Petőfi, (1823- 1849). He was the poet of passionate love and passionate lover of the Great Hungarian Plain, the “puszta”. But above all, he was the poet of the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848 - 49, which started with his glowing patriotic poem: “Talpra magyar!” (Rise Hungarians!), and ended with the defeat of Hungarian freedom by the joint Austrian and Russian armies in Transylvania, at that time Eastern Hungary. The patriotic waves of the Petőfi celebration in 1973, induced Dr. Edward (Ede) Ágoston, an emigrant Hungarian poet living in Oakland, California, to immortalize Petőfi’s memory in a biography written in verse. In the past 150 years several good biographies of Petőfi were published in narrative style but none was written in verse. The idea of a biography in verse was carried in the state of fermentation in Dr. Agoston’s mind for almost 50 years. In 1973, he started to put down his thoughts on paper
