Gál Éva: Margaret Island - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)

Virgin at the time, was therefore, by the standards of the period, a fairly well populated place and the scene of noteworthy historical events. According to contemporary documents Béla IV often stopped on the island. It was here that, in 1266, he made peace with his son, the future King Stephen V, who had started an armed rebellion against him (as anecdotal evidence has it, it was Margaret who reconciled one with the other), and it was here that he died in 1270 (according to his last will and testament, he was not buried here, however, but in the Esztergom church of the Franciscan order). In 1271, Margaret also died here, followed by her brother Stephen V in 1272; both of them were buried in the nuns’ church. It was also on Margaret Island that, in 1272, after the death of Stephen V, one of the heirs apparent, Béla, Prince of Macsó, grandson of Béla IV, was slaughtered. A descendant crowned as Ladislas IV, but notorious as László Kun (Ladislas the Kuman), had his unfortunate wife Elizabeth of Anjou confined in the cloister on Margaret Island.

The real fame of Margaret Island was not, however, based on these melancholy events, but the legend of St. Margaret. The pious, selfless princess-nun, whose life was full of self-mortification, became the focus of many a story already in her lifetime, which is why her canonisation was requested of the Pope shortly after her death. The requisite inquiry and the examination of witnesses was begun as early as 1276. Those questioned, mainly eye-witnesses, reported that she had wrought many a miracle. It was on the basis of the records taken during the procedure—surviving in later copies only—that the legend of Margaret was compiled already in the thirteenth century. This was recorded for posterity in Hungarian by Lea Ráskai, a nun who lived in the cloister on the island at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The canonisation itself did not, however, take place for centuries to come. Although Margaret was beatified as early as the fifteenth century, she was not canonised until 1943. Nevertheless, the name St. Margaret’s Island has occurred since the end of the seventeenth century, parallel with the nomenclature the Island of Hares, which remained in use for a long time.

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