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Laonikos on the Ethnonyms of the Hungarians*

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Laonikos on the Ethnonyms of the Hungarians* Tamás Mészáros Laonikos on the Ethnonyms of the Hungarians* In the memory of József Vekerdy Laonikos Chalkokondyles often added colourful geographical and ethno- graphic details to the main narrative of his work on the rise of the Turkish Empire. Almost as much as one third of the whole work consists of excursuses: we can read about the Slavs, the Germans, the French, the British, the Italians, the Mongolians, the Egyptians, etc. The ‘new Herodotus’, as Anthony Kaldellis refers to Laonikos in his re- cently published book,1 mentions the Hungarians for the first time in Book II, when discussing the doomed crusade led by Sigismund of Luxemburg (1396). In the course of the narrative he mentions several events and data related to the history of the Hungarians. Here I will discuss a problematic detail of the first longer locus, the ethnonym Παίονες used in reference to the Hungarians, and the questions related to it. After briefly presenting the geographical location of Hungary (Παιονία) and mentioning the system of government (kings of foreign origin, office of the governor, etc.) and the characteristic features of the Hungarian people (religion, way of life, customs, etc.), Laonikos continues his narration with the problems of the origin and language of the Hungarians. Let us see the passage in ques- tion. The text is the following (II,17): φωνῇ δὲ χρῶνται οὐδαμῇ παραπλησίᾳ ἑτέρῳ τινὶ τῶν γενῶν, ἀλλὰ ἄλλῃ τὸ παράπαν διενεγκούσῃ τε τῆς Γερμανῶν τε καὶ Βοέμων καὶ Πολάνων. οἴονται δέ τινες τούτους οἱ μὲν Γέτας γενέσθαι τὸ παλαιόν, καὶ ὑπὸ τὸν Αἷμον οἰκοῦντας, ὑπὸ Σκυθῶν κακουμένους, ἀναχωρῆσαι ἐς τήνδε τὴν χώραν, ἣν καὶ νῦν οἰκοῦσιν· οἱ δέ φασι Δᾶκας γενέσθαι. ἐγὼ δέ, * This study has been prepared with the support of the research project OTKA K 116371 and NN 104456. 1 Kaldellis, A., A New Herodotus. Laonikos Chalkokondyles on the Ottoman Empire, the Fall of Byzantium, and the Emergence of the West. Dumbarton Oaks 2014. 196 Tamás Mészáros ὁποῖον ἄν τι εἴη τὸ γένος τοῦτο τὴν ἀρχήν, οὐκ ἂν οὕτω ῥᾳδίως εἰπεῖν ἔχοιμι· τοὔνομα μέντοι τοῦτο ὑπό τε σφῶν αὐτῶν καὶ ὑπὸ Ἰταλῶν καλουμένους, οὐ πάνυ τοι καλῶς ἔχοιμι ἑτέρῳ τινὶ ὀνόματι καλεῖν τούτους.2 In this passage, Laonikos does not mention the ethnonym of the Hungarians expressis verbis. It is replaced with pronouns (τούτους, σφῶν αὐτῶν) and participles (οἰκοῦντας, κακουμένους). All in all, he tells us everything about the Hungarians but the ethnonym. Fortunately, there is no need to guess ‘this name’ (τοὔνομα τοῦτο), because it can be inferred from the geographical name. He calls the Hungarian Kingdom Παιονία, therefore the Hungarians certainly bear the name of Παίονες (nominative plural form) in his work. If we survey the complete work, our suspicion will turn into certainty especially as Laonikos proves to be consequent in his terminology. In his work the Hungarians are always referred to as Παίονες (235 times), Hungary is always called Παιονία (11 times), and even Transylvania is occasionally referred to as Παιονοδακία (8 times). Anthony Kaldellis finds this usage of names and Laonikos’ above quoted explanatory remark rather strange. He mentions this at the relevant place of the translation and also in his book published later. Even the idea of the corruption of the text might have occurred to him. Kaldellis first writes: It is odd that Laonikos pretends not to know the ethnonym Oungroi, because it was well established in Byzantine and international usage. It is also not clear which name he means by »this name« (presumably what he calls them, Paionians, but they did not call themselves that),3 and later as good as repeats his earlier opinion: It is not clear which name he means (presumably »Paionians«), but this is not what they called themselves or what they were called by the Italians (for example, in his Commentaries, Aeneas calls them Hungari). The term Oungroi, moreover, was established in Byzantine usage along with »Paionian« and other ethnonyms (»Turks«). We may be dealing with an unrevised or ob- scurely written passage here.4 2 I quote the English text translated by Kaldellis (Kaldellis, A., [transl.] Laonikos Chalkokondyles. The Histories I–II. Dumbarton Oaks 2014): They speak a language that is like that spoken by no other people and is entirely different from that of the Germans, Bohemians, and Poles. Some believe that they formerly used to be the Getai and lived beneath the Haimos range, but when they were oppressed by the Skythians, they moved to the land where they live now. But others say that they were Wallachians. For my part, I cannot easily decide, what these people were originally. This name is what they use for themselves and what they are called by the Italians, and so it would not really be correct for me to call them by any other name. 3 Kaldellis (n. 2) 496. 4 Kaldellis (n. 1) 64–65. Laonikos on the Ethnonyms of the Hungarians 197 Similarly to Kaldellis, I also believe that the expression τοὔνομα τοῦτο refers to the Paeoneans and any other ethnonym is impossible. However, the passage he discusses does not seem so obscure for the Hungarian reader, due to the fact that the question was one of the most popular – if not the most popular – areas of research in the first half of the 20th century, the heroic age of Byzantine studies in Hungary. The names referring to the Hungarians in Byzantine sources were discussed by Jenő Darkó,5 Gyula Czebe,6 Gyula Moravcsik – in several of his works7 – and later by Moravcsik’s pupil, Mátyás Gyóni as well, who also published his results in a paper.8 As well as focusing on the collection and the analysis of the loci of the Greek written sources, they also dealt with the phenomena related to the usage of names in general. The corpus they examined included the works written in the 15th century, among them those of Laonikos Chalkokondyles. So a significant amount of the work has already been completed by our eminent predecessors. No wonder I feel like a chef in one of the popular cookery programmes on television, who, after having listed the ingredients, immediately produces the beautifully garnished dish, prepared by some- one else, from the oven. However, applying the general observations of the Hungarian Byzantinologists to the Laonikos-locus may yield some further particular results. The earlier findings relevant for us can be summed up as follows: (1) The Byzantine sources use nearly twenty different ethnonyms for the Hungarians: Γέται, Γήπαιδες, Δᾶκες, Κάβαροι, *Μάζαροι/Μάτζαροι, Μυσοί, Οὐγγροβλάχοι, Οὖγγροι, Οὖννοι, Παίονες, Πάννονες, Σάβαρτοι ἄσφαλοι, Σαυρομάται, Σερβουγρική, Σκύθαι, Στρασαλβάνιοι, Τοῦρκοι, Χαλίσιοι.9 These were grouped into three types by Moravcsik: ethnonyms referring to the Hungarians exclusively; names used as ethnic generic terms; and the ones 5 Darkó, J., A magyarokra vonatkozó népnevek a bizánczi íróknál. [The Ethnonyms of the Hungarians Used by Byzantine Authors] Budapest 1910; Darkó, J., Die auf die Ungarn bezüglichen Volksnamen bei den Byzantiner. BZ 21 (1912) 472–487. 6 Czebe, J., Ephraim, Missionär von Τουρκία. Ein Beispiel für den Bedeutungswandel eines byzantinischen Landnamens. BZ 25 (1925) 106–113. 7 Moravcsik, Gy., Die archaisierenden Namen der Ungarn in Byzanz. BZ 30 (1929–1930) 247–253; Moravcsik, Gy., A magyar történet bizánci forrásai. [The Byzantine Sources of the Hungarian History] Budapest 1934; Moravcsik, Gy.,: Byzantinoturcica I–II. Berlin 1958. 8 Gyóni, M., Magyarország és a magyarság a bizánci források tükrében. [Hungary and Hungarians in the Byzantine Sources] Budapest 1938. 9 Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica (n. 7) 360. According to Moravcsik, the form Μάζαροι is a scribal error instead of the correct Χάζαροι. 198 Tamás Mészáros we are now focusing on, the so-called archaizing ethnonyms (Γέται, Γήπαιδες, Δᾶκες, Μυσοί, Παίονες, Πάννονες, Σαυρομάται, Σκύθαι).10 From the point of view of the Byzantine authors, archaization is a tool for the conservation of ancient heritage and tradition. Their purpose is to maintain the so-called historia continua, the living connection with the past.11 (2) In the cases of the incorrect identification of evidently different peoples with the Hungarians there is always at least one link between the people in question and the Hungarians, which serves as the basis for the identification. As Moravcsik puts it, It is a common phenomenon that besides or instead of the actual names of the peoples they encounter the Byzantines will use the names of other antique peoples and identify them with ones known from antiquity. The identification is usually based on the geographical position, but there can be other reasons as well, for example identical ethnographic characteristics, or less frequently the similarity of the names.12 (3) The usage of names shows certain tendencies from time to time. The pres- tige of a remarkable author, the general practice of the era, the expectations related to the contemporary aesthetic taste can all decisively influence the usage of names. There is no doubt, for example, that the almost exclusive use of the form Τοῦρκοι in the 10th century can be attributed to the influence of Leo the Wise and Constantine Porphyrogenitus. As they tended to use this form, the very same ethnic collective noun appears in the works related to the imperial court, in the sequel to Theophanes’ Chronicle (Theophanes Continuatus) and in the works of Genesios and Symeon the Logothete (and Pseudo-Symeon as well), in spite of the incorrect identification. The colloquial form Οὖγγροι is used in the standard language as well from the end of the 11th century. However, as a parallel phenomenon the archaizing usage of names also exists. As for the form Παίονες referring to the Hungarians, it occurs from the end of the 12th century (Kinnamos, Niketas Choniates), and becomes widespread in the 14th and 15th centuries (Gregorios Pachymeres, Ioannes Kantakuzenos, Nikephoros Gregoras, Kritobulos, and of course Laonikos Chalkokondyles).
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