MAGYARS / HUNGARIANS
905-6 Great Moravia
Otto I (912-973)
St. Stephen / István (c.970-1038)
“Hung” / “Ungvar” / Uzhghorod
Gog and Magog
In the interior there is a very broad plain seamed by rivers and streams. It has many forests filled with all sorts of wild animals and is known to be delightful because of the natural charm of the landscape and rich in its arable fields. It seems like the paradise of God, or the fair land of Egypt. For it has, [] as I have said, a most beautiful natural setting, but in consequence of the barbarous people it has only rarely the adornment of walls or houses; its bounds are set not so much by mountains and forests as by the course of its mighty rivers.
Now the aforesaid Hungarians are of disgusting aspect, with deep-set eyes and short stature. They are barbarous and ferocious in their habit and language. One seems justified in blaming fortune, or rather in marveling at divine patience, that has exposed so delightful a land to such—I will not say men, but caricatures of men. In one respect, however, they imitate the shrewdness of the Greeks, in that they undertake no important matter without frequent and prolonged deliberations. Finally, since in their villages and towns the houses are very wretched, made merely of reeds, rarely of wood, most rarely of stone, during the entire period of summer and autumn they live in tents.
(Otto of Freising [1111-1158], The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. C. C. Mierow [Toronto, 1994], 65-66)
Periphyseon (De divisione naturae)
In short, there is no corporeal creature enlivened by the Vital Motion which does not return again from the beginning from which it set forth. For the end of every moment is in its beginning: it is concluded in no other term but that origin out of which its movement began, and to which it ever seeks to return in order that therein it may have peace and rest. And this can be said not only of the parts but of the whole of the sensible world. For the end of it also is its beginning, which it seeks and in which it will rest when it has found it; a rest which will not consist in the abolition of its substance, but the return into those “reasons” whence it sprang. “For,” says the Apostle, “the figure of this world shall pass away.” . . .
(Periphyseon trans. I.P. Sheldon-Williams, 530)
& Marc Bloch Feudal Society
& Georges Duby The Three Orders, The Age of Cathedrals
Agreement / Bond: dominus/vassus-vassalus
oratores those who pray churchmen
bellatores those who fight aristocrats
laboratores those who work everyone else
Chevalier = KNIGHT
& Susan Reynolds Fiefs and Vassals
& Matthew Innes State and Society in the Early Middle Ages