ABSTRACT
King Andrew II of Hungary (1205-35) was one of the key figures of the Fifth Crusade. He led a crusading army composed of knights, magnates and prelates of the kingdom of Hungary, which incorporated the two kingdoms at that time inhabited by Croats: Croatia-Dalmatia and Slavonia.1 The tradition in which the chivalry and sanctity of King Andrew II of Hungary took a great part in the Fifth Crusade originates in Hungary shortly after the crusade itself. Nevertheless, it was not until the invention of printing press and the publication of the Chronica Hungariae, written by Johannes de Thurocz in 1488, that Andrew II became popular among the nobility in Hungary and Croatia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; this was because there were constant wars against the rising Ottoman Empire at this time.2 The Croatian nobility abandoned the tradition of finding their family roots in Roman patrician families, as was popular in the fifteenth century, and started connecting their ancestors with Andrew II and the Fifth Crusade.3
