CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Tayler, Nicholas Paul |
|---|---|
| Title | The Entangled Histories of Lotharingia, Medieval Hungary and the vallis Agriensis: The Textual Evidence |
| Summary | This MA thesis focuses on eleventh-century Hungarian-Lotharingian relations, prelate and settler migration to the Kingdom of Hungary, and the Eger Valley, or vallis Agriensis, as it was known in the Middle Ages. It describes the factors that led to the entanglement of highly disparate geographical areas on an axis linking northwestern Europe (and Lotharingia) through Hungary to the Holy Land. It argues that while migration along this route was set in motion by several factors, including the Lotharingian region’s population excess and economic might, the Lotharingian church and its network played a leading role. Lotharingian prelates had become active throughout the European continent; their excellent education, received at Liège cathedral school, fostered group cohesion and making them resilient spearheads of this movement of outward expansion. Comital violence in Lotharingia and ‘pagan’ revolts in Hungary brought prelates, including Leodwin, the future bishop of Eger, to Hungary in around 1046. Dating the settlers’ arrival, however, remains contentious, with details of their possible eleventh-century migration to be found in the fifteenth-century Chronicle of Jean of Stavelot. Onomastic evidence demonstrates clearly that migration to the vallis Agriensis occurred before the Mongol invasions of 1241. The Eger bishopric’s foundation by King Stephen I is reevaluated, suggesting building work began later after the arrival of Leodwin and his settlers in the 1040s. The thesis also explores the vallis Agriensis’s villages, administration, and ecclesiastical status, the role the district played over the following centuries, demonstrating that it maintained its separate status throughout the Middle Ages. |
| Supervisor | Szende Katalin, Nagy Balázs |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/tayler_nicholas.pdf |
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