The Christianity of the Hungarians before the Conquest In my paper I would like to answer three questions:
1. What was the dominant religion among the Hungarians before they joined the Christian faith?
2. From when did the Hungarians have had contacts with Christianity?
3. What was the role of the Turks in the early cultural and religious life of the Hungarians?
According to the newest researches,1 the Hungarians moved from the South Ural to the Kuban-Don region in about 600 AD. They joined there Turks and Iranian groups who lived among the Volga, Caucasia and the Black sea. The Hungarians lived there together with the Onogurs, the Bul-ghars, the Khazars and the Alans. The Hungarians played an important role in the formation of the Khazar Empire that defeated the Bulghar Kingdom of Kuvrat along the Dnyeper around 670.2 After the crash of the Bulghar King
dom great parts of the Bulghar confederation moved to the West. A group founded the Danube Bulgarian Empire, another joined the Avars in the Car
pathian Basin, but one part of the Bulghars remained in their old homelands and accepted the rule of the Khazars. At the end of the 7th century the Hun
garians moved to the former place of the Bulghars and occupied the territory beween the Dnyeper and the Lower Danube. They called this region Etelküzü or Etelköz, Mesopotamia. Levedia was not a separate station, it was the ter
ritory of the tribe lead by Levédi in the ninth century within the confines of Etelköz.3 The Hungarians lived in Etelköz until 895, when they moved into the Carpathian Basin. We had to give this very sketchy historical background of the almost three hundred years of early Hungarian history before the Con
quest, because this helps us to reconstruct the early religion and the contacts of the Hungarians.
The religion of the Hungarians was mainly influenced by the Turks. On
1 For a summary of the latest research see Róna-Tas (1996).
2 The Bulghar Kingdom of Kuvrat was earlier placed to the Kuban region. After the lo
cation of the tomb of Kuvrat in Malája Pereshchepina, near to Poltava, the decipherment of the inscription of the seal-ring of Kuvrat and a new research into the relevant Byzantine sources, we can place now the Kingdom of Kuvrat to the region around the Dnyeper, see Werner (1984), Róna-Tas (1996).
3 Several studies have recently dealt with the question of the earlier homelands of the Hungarians. The papers of Benkő (1985), Györffy (1986), Harmatta (1985), Ligeti (1985), had one opinion in common, the famous Levedia was not a separate homeland, but part of Etelkuzu or Etelköz.
the religion of the Turks we have excellent sources. Some of these sources are in Old Turkic language. They were written by the Turks themselves. The earliest texts pertain to the beginnings of the 8th century. We can follow the changes in the religious beliefs of the Turks until the 11th century at least, when most of the Turkish groups adopted one of the great religions as Bud-dhism, Manicheism, the Muslim faith or even Christian Nestorianism. A sec-ond group of sources is written by the neighbour of the Turks. Important ac-counts on the religion of the Western Turks we find in Greek, Armenian, Georgian, Persian and Arabic sources.
According to these sources the main god of the Turks was the God of the Heaven, Tengri. The Turk ruler Köl tegin who died in 732 called himself the Heaven-like and the Heavenborn. The ruling clan styled itself as the Blue Turks, kök türk. Blue was the colour of the sky, even the sky itself. This blue colour was originally the colour of the Iranian Saka ruling clan, and its branch the Asseina "the blue ones" became known as Ashina, the name of the Turk ruling dynasty.4 According to the Armenian author Movses Dashur-anci the Khazars had a holy tree that was sacrificed to the God of Heaven.
After they converted to Christianity they cut this holy tree and formed from it the Holy Cross.5 In 922 the Arab envoy Ibn Fadlan described the faith of the Bashkirs, most probably the Hungarians of Magna Hungária in the Volga region.6 Above the twelve gods of the Bashkirs the greatest is the god of the Heaven. The twelve gods were the following: the god of the winter, the summer, the rain, the wind, the tree, the man, the horse, the water, the sun, the night, the death and the earth. According to Ibn Fadlan the name of the highest god at the Oghuz tribe was Tengri. Mahmud al-KäshgarT7 a Turk who already converted to Islam reports in 1074 about the Turks: "The infidels -may God destroy them! - call the sky Tengri, also anything that is imposing in their eyes they call Tengri, such as a great mountain or tree, and they bow down to such things. Hence they call a 'wise man' tengriken. We take refuge from error in God" - says the member of the Karakhanid dynasty. At the same time however Käshgar! himself calls God, the glorious and exalted as Tengri and not as Allah as later Turks do. The God of heaven is very old and we know that the Indo-European god of heaven was Zeus of the Greeks and Jupiter of the Latin. Their names come from the Indo-European name of the sky dyeus pater "sky father."
4 The Saka word is asseina "blue" <*axsaina-, see Old Persian axsainaka, New Persian xas èn, Sogdian agsaynak, Ossetian aexsin (cf. Bailey 1979, 26, Abaev 1958,1, 220). The con-nection was first mentioned by S. E. Klashtornyj with reference to an idea of V. A. Livshic.
5 On the religion of the "Caucasian Huns" and the Khazars see among others Ludwig (1983).
6 On Ibn Fadlän see Togan (1939), Kovalevskij (1956).
7 The work of Käshgari is now edited by Dankoff and Kelly (1982-1985).
God Heaven was the Creator. The act of creating, however, was not from nothing. The Old Turkic texts distinguish two types of creation. The first is connected with separation, the other is connected with creating or building from elements a new subject. These are the two actions also in the Bible. God is first separating light from darkness. At the end he creates man from earth.
The Hungarians had not only Shamans but they also obeyed the God of Heaven. This is reflected by the early Hungarian terminology. The creation from already existing parts was expressed in Old Turkic by the verb yarat-which is a factitive derivation from the simple verb yara- "to fit". An Old Turkic text wrote "God created everything, good and bad" (edgilg ani'gag hop Tengri yaratm'is). The Hungarians borrowed this Turkic word and used it for expressing the activity of producing, manufacturing. This is in present Hungarian gyárt, earlier gyárat*
Without mentioning more details about the religious beliefs of the Hun-garians before the Conquest, I have to speak about the first contacts of the Hungarians with Christianity. There were two people in the close neighbour-hood of the Hungarians who were not Turks: the Alans and the Crimean Goths. The Alans a people of Iranian origin are known since early times.
They are the only offshoots remained from the Scythians. One part of their descendants live in Caucasia under the name Ossetians, another branch joined the Hungarians in the 13th century. They are known in Hungary under
the name jász. They preserved their Iranian language in Hungary until the 15th century at least, from when we have an interesting Jassian word-list.9
The Alans were Christians already in the 6th century. They suffered much from the wars between the Arabs and the Khazars. In the times of Con-stantinos Porphyrogenitos they were almost as powerful as the Khazars. The Emperor wrote: "If the ruler of Alania is not at peace with the Khazars, but thinks preferable the friendship of the emperor of the Romans, and if the Khazars are not minded to preserve friendship and peace with the emperor, the Alan may do them great hurt by ambushing their routes and setting upon them, when they are off, their guard...(Ch. II.)"10 The Alans preserved their independence until the Mongolian invasion that destroyed their Kingdom in 1239. Byzantine sources noted that the High Priest of the Alans was conse-crated by the Patriarch of Constantinople. According to Masudi they fol-lowed the Christian faith, but in 932 they expelled their bishops and priests.
According to a Persian source, the Hudüd al-Álam written in 982 a part of the Alans was yet Christian an other part was heathen.
The Hungarians lived in close contact with the Alans. Cotacts between
On the reflection of the Turkic Tengri-cult at the Hungarians see Róna-Tas (1987).
9 On the language of the Jassian group in Hungary see Németh (1959).
10 See Moravcsik-Jenkins (1967, 65).
the Alan and the Hungarian ruling dynasties is reflected both in the Hungar-ian language and the HungarHungar-ian chronicles. The old name of the queen was in Hungarian not the Turkic title qatun but asszony a word of Alanian ori-gin.11 The name of Sunday vasárnap consists of the Alanian name of the
"market": vacar12 a word cognate to but not identical with Persian bazar.
The other people with which the Hungarians lived together were the Goths of Crimea. They were the remnants of the Eastern Gothic Kingdom which was subjugated by Attila, but after the death of Attila and the disap-pearance of the European Huns, the Goths remained in Chrimea and were Christians. Our knowledge about their bishops and the history of the Gothic Church of Crimea during the 8-1 Oth centuries is very scanty. A list of bish-oprics set down between 733 and 746 mentions the metropolitan of the Cri-mean Goths and enumerates the bishops who pertain to his jurisdiction.
Among them the Bishop of the Onogurs is mentioned.13 Cyrill the apostle of the Slaves, who visited Crimea around 860 reported that the Crimean Goths read books and praised God in their own language. This may have been the Holy Script translated by Wulfila (died in 383). The last visitor who col-lected linguistic materials from Crimean Gothic language was the Flemish traveller Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq in 1560-62.14
We know that the Hungarians who lived in Etelköz had close contacts with Crimea. They visited frequently the harbours of Crimea where they sold slaves. On one of these ways happened that Cyrill met them. The Vita of Cy-rill relates that the Hungarians who first wanted to kill the Apostle soon changed their mind. They listened to his prayers and teaching, became calm and let him go in peace. The name of the Hungarians in the Vita is Ugri which is a late form of the name of the Hungarians used by the Slaves. Slavic Ugri goes back to Ongri and finally to the name Onogur or Onugur.15 We do not know for certain that the bishop of the Onogurs in the list of 733-746 was a missionary bishop of the Hungarians or the Onogur-Bulghars. Moravc-sik inclined to think that the Onogur bishop was the bishop of the Hungari-ans.16 I have serious doubts about this suggestion. In any case the Onogur bishop pertained to the Gothic metropolitan of Crimea in the 8th century with whom the Hungarians had contacts.
In 630 the Bulghars revolted against the rule of the Avars and founded an independent Kingdom. The ruler was Kuvrat, who got his education in
11 See Ossetian aexsin (Abaev 1989 IV, 236).
12 See Osetian wacar on which see Abaev 1989IV, 30.
13 On the lists of bishoprics see Moravcsik 1983 I, 463.
14 On the Crimean Goths see Stearns 1978.
15 The names of the Hungarians in the Legends of Cyrill and Method was dealt with by Király (1974).
16 Moravcsik (1938).
Constantinople. This Turkish leader converted to the Christian faith and ob-tained the title patrikios. Recently Joachim Werner has identified his tomb and the inscriptions of his seal-rings were deciphered. He was buried near to the river Dnyeper. Though the Kingdom of Kuvrat lasted only a few decades there can be no doubts that Christianity begun to spread among the Turks in the 7th century and the Onogur bishop was the bishop of the Turkish Ono-gurs.
In the 8th and 9th century we know of Christian missionaries in Khazaria and converted Khazars. The Khazars took advantage from the war between the iconoclasts and iconodules. In 695 the Byzantine Emperor Justinianos II was sent into exile to Crimea the great part of which was then under Khazar rule. He married the sister of the Khazar khagan who was baptised with the name Theodora. When the Khazars refused to help him back to the throne, Justinianos asked the Bulghars, who sent their army and he got back to the Byzantine throne. Soon te Khazars supported Philippikos Bardanes who re-volted against Justinianos and ended the second reign of Justinianos in 711.
In 732 Konstantinos, the son of Leo III married the daughter of the Khazar khagan, by name Chichek "flower", who got the name Irene in the baptism.
Though around 800 the Khazar ruling class adopted Judaism, the spread of Christian faith among the Khazars did not cease. Those Khazar leaders who did not join the ruling group adopting Judaism, left the Khazar Khaganate and joined the Hungarians. They were the Three Kavar tribes.
As we have seen the Hungarians lied in Etelköz at least two hundred years, longer than it was supposed by earlier research. Their western neigh-bours were the Danube Bulghars from whom only the Lower Danube sepa-rated them. Christianity slowly penetsepa-rated into Danubian Bulgaria as early as the 8th century. The decisive changes happened when Boris succeeded to the throne in 852. The most dangerous enemy of Bulgaria was then Moravia un-der the ruler Rastislav. For obvious political reasons the Moravians asked for Byzantine help and preferred the Eastern Church to balance the Franks who were supported by Rome. At the beginnings Boris turned to Rome because he wanted to avoid the Byzantine influence from the near. I have no time here to go into the details of the historic events of the second half of the 9th century. They lead finally to the fact that Boris received the official Christi-anity for his kingdom from Constantinople and Rastislav was overthrown by the pro-Frank party. The Frank priests expelled Method whose disciples took refuge in Bulgaria. What is important for the Hungarian history is that they had close contacts both with the Moravians and the Danube Bulghars. This can be followed in written sources at least from the middle of the 9th century, but no doubt the contacts began earlier at least with the Danube Bulghars.
We have to discuss against this historical background the fact that the earliest terminology pertaining to the Christian faith is of Turkic origin.
Words as Hungarian gyász "mourning", törvény "law, canon", örök "ever,
eternity", bűn "sin", érdem "merit", bocsájt "to forgive", búcsú "indul
gence", gyarló "frail, peccable", gyón "to confess", egy "saint" in egyház
"church", ünnep "holiday".
According to Németh17 the beginning of Christianity among the Hun
garians has to be connected with the Bulghar Turks who lived in Transylva
nia. Németh suggested that this terminology reflects the influence of the spouse of Géza, Sarolt, mother of Saint Steven. Sarolt was the daughter of Gyula who ruled in the Maros valley and his father Gyula the older was bap
tised in Byzantium in 948. Melich and Németh claimed that the Gyula dy
nasty was of Turkic, more properly of Bulghar Turkic origin - or at least they were under Bulghar Turkic cultural influence. This would be the source of the earliest Turkic components of the terminology of the Hungarian Chris
tianity. The hypothesis of Németh has, however, serious linguistic and his
torical difficulties and therefore was generally not accepted by the Hungarian scholars.
The newest researches show that Moravcsik was on the right way. The Hungarians became acquainted with Christianity on the northern shores of the Black Sea during the 300 years of their history before the Conquest in 895. The Onogurs, Bulghars and even the Khazars transmitted the Christian faith to the Hungarians. Alans, Crimean Goths and of course the Byzantine Church all were much interested in converting the Hungarians. The bishop of the Onogurs, his priests and successors did a fine job. The Greek priests did not directly work among the Hungarians but used missionaries who were Turks or spoke the Turkic language. This is the way how the early terms of Turkic origin came to the Hungarians. And with this missionary activity the soil for the conversion of the Hungarians to Christianity was prepared before they entered the Carpathian Basin. 8
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Adam Somorjai OSB (Pannonhalma-Roma)
Sant'Adalberto e il Cristianesimo ungherese nel contesto centroeuropeo
Nella storiografia ungherese, esaminando la figura di Sant'Adalberto, si possono osservare due fenomeni. Prima di tutto l'attenzione si ferma di solito sulla questione: secondo la Legenda maior S. Stephani lui avrebbe battezzato il principe Vajk divenendo così Stefano («Adalbertus episcopus crismali
Nella storiografia ungherese, esaminando la figura di Sant'Adalberto, si possono osservare due fenomeni. Prima di tutto l'attenzione si ferma di solito sulla questione: secondo la Legenda maior S. Stephani lui avrebbe battezzato il principe Vajk divenendo così Stefano («Adalbertus episcopus crismali