Hungarians as vremde in Medieval Germany

When the first western European authors became aware of the Hungarians, just before their honfoglalás (i.e., conquest of the Carpathian basin, after 880), ¹ they literally did not know what to make of them. The earliest sources register the vanguard raiding parties as “hostes antea inexperti” (enemies unknown before), “gens retro ante seculis inaudita quia nee nominata” (a people unheard of in past ages, never having been named), “qui modo in novissimo temporum apparuerunt” (newly appeared on the scene). ² For an early medieval author or audience, the notion of an “unknown” and “unnamed” gens was more than a mere admission of ignorance. This was the age of the origo gentis, the narrative roots of national historiography, in which the status of a people was measured by the identifiability and prestige of its ancient patrimony. ³ Ultimately, the lists of the descendants of Noah in Genesis 10 were thought to cover all nations (or their ancestors) on earth. An important agendum of medieval ethnography—considered part of theology since Latin-Christian late antiquity ⁴ —was to trace the genealogies of contemporary gentes back to a scion of Noah. Thus to claim that the Hungarians were “unheard of” was to insinuate that they were outside of and foreign to the divine order of the world. ⁵