The New Hungarian Quarterly, 1986 (27. évfolyam, 104. szám)

HISTORY - Petrovics István - György Endre: Capystranus, a Late Medieval English Romance on the 1456 Siege of Belgrade

“CAPYSTRANUS” A Late Medieval English Romance on the 1456 Siege of Belgrade It was a Hungarian scholar, Éva Róna, who in 1937 first reported on the English metrical romance Capystranus, printed in London by Caxton’s successor, Wynkyn de Worde, about 1515. No complete copy of the little octavo book, which even contained some comely woodcuts, has survived. Beside the fragmentary copy in the British Library (STC 14649, lines 1-579) two more frag­ments of later editions are known (STC 14649.5, from about 1527, lines 1-102; and the edition of cc. 1530, STC 14650, lines 161-397); none have preserved the con­clusion of the epic. From the extant texts we can reconstruct the story; after an invocation to God, the author gives a kind of classification of the taste of contemporary readers and declares that he writes for those who love “to hear tell [...] of venturous knights old / That for our Lord did fight” (37-42), in opposition to those who prefer stories “Of doughty knights that were fell, / And some of ladies bright. . . ” (38-9). The passages that follow recall King Charles’ heroic deeds, how he won from the pagans the relics of Christ’s Passion, the spear, the nails, and the crown of horns. All this is presented as an example of the model subject-matter that the author finds desirable to follow. The next section gives an account of the Turks capturing the city of Constantinople in 1453, with detailed descriptions of the cruelty of the Muslims—all this leads us to the main body of the narrative: the story of Giovanni da Capistrano (1386-1456), the Franciscan friar who helped János Hunyadi, Hungary’s Captain-General, to relieve Bel­grade which was besieged by the Turks. We use the name Belgrade, although it should be noted that at that time the town was called Nándorfehérvár in Hungarian, ’Nándor’ meaning ’Bulgarian’; occasion­ally—as the epic shows—the name was asso­ciated with the Greeks: Grecuswissinburgh, cf. German Kriechisch Weissenburg.) This section can be divided into the fol­lowing episodes: — Capystranus meets the Pope and asks the Holy Father’s permission and blessing for a Crusade on behalf of Hungary; — The friar then “to an university he took the way / The greatest in Hungary I dare well say / Gottauntas it hight” (328-30), from which he directs a Crusader army of 26 thousand strong to Belgrade; — Soon he meets Hunyadi (Obedianus) and with two noble lords (“Richard Mor­­path, a knight of England, / And Sir John Elack, I understand / That was a Turk be­fore,” (349-50) they set out in the direction of the besieged town; — The last section contains the account of the military actions: a victory of the Christians; the disastrous counterattack of the Turks; and, finally, Capistrano’s mirac­ulous animation of the army when even the dead raise to fight in the name of Christ. At this point even the most complete ex­tant copy breaks off and as the work seems to be extremely rare, there is little hope of learning of the end of the ‘metrical romance,’ unless another copy is found in the future. It should be noted furthermore that up to now no modern edition has been prepared of the existing text, although a considerable fragment appeared in The Oxford Booh of Late Medieval Verse and Prose, edited by Douglas Gray. For the present publication Profes­sor William A. Ringler, jr., Senior Research Associate of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, examined all three extant fragments, collated and completed them

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