An Unremembered Hungarian Friar’s Martyrdom in the Golden Horde

Absztrakt

In the last decades of the 13th and in the first half of the 14th century, Hungarian Franciscans played an important role in Christian conversion of the Golden Horde. Some of them achieved a great career in the court of the Golden Horde’s Khans. Elias of Hungary was not only a trusted friend of Özbeg (r. 1313–1341) and also his son, but he was entrusted with a mission to the Pope; others died as martyrs in the 14th century. The Hungarian Franciscan friar, Stephan (Stephanus de Hungaria) was executed in Sarai, the centre of the Golden Horde in April of 1334. His martyrdom is mentioned frequently in the sources of the Franciscan Order and some of them contain details of the events leading to his execution and about his death. Although Stephan’s passio is characterised by general particularities of its genre, it contains a lot of useful information on the history of Golden Horde and the history of the missions on its territory. The data of the passio can contribute to refining and clarifying other disputed data regarding the history of the region.