Hungarian Literature - Earliest Writings in Hungarian

Earliest Writings in Hungarian

The beginning of the history of Hungarian language as such (and so the proto-Hungarian period) is set to 1000 B.C., when – according to current scientific understanding – it separated from its closest relatives, the Ob-Ugric languages.

No written evidence remains of the earliest Hungarian literature, but through Hungarian folktales and folk songs elements have survived that can be traced back to pagan times. Also extant, although only in Latin and dating from between the 11th and 14th centuries, are shortened versions of some Hungarian legends relating the origins of the Hungarian people and episodes from the conquest of Hungary and from the Hungarian campaigns of the 10th century.

In the earliest times Hungarian language was written in a runic-like script (although it was not used for literature purposes in the modern interpretation). The country switched to the Latin alphabet after being Christianized under the reign of Stephen I (1000–1038). There are no existing documents from the pre-11th century era.

The Old Hungarian counted from 896 A.D., when the Hungarians conquered the Carpathian Basin, settled down and started to build their own state. Not long after followed the creation of the first written extant records.

The oldest written record in Hungarian is a fragment in the founding document of the Abbey of Tihany (1055) which contains several Hungarian terms, among them the words "feheruuaru rea meneh hodu utu rea", "up the military road to Fehérvár" (referring to the place where the abbey was built). (This text is probably to be read as "Fehérü váru reá meneü hodu utu reá" with today's spelling and it would sound as "a Fehérvárra menő had útra" in today's Hungarian.) The rest of the document was written in Latin.

The oldest complete, continuous text of the Hungarian language is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer (Halotti beszéd és könyörgés), a short funeral oration written in about 1192–1195, moving in its simplicity.

The oldest poem is the Old Hungarian Laments of Mary (Ómagyar Mária-siralom), which was a free translation from Latin of a poem by Godefroy de Breteuil. It is also the oldest surviving Uralic poem.

Both the Funeral Sermon and the Lamentations are hard to read and not quite comprehensible for modern-day Hungarians, mostly because the 26-letter Latin alphabet was not fit to represent all the sounds in Hungarian language, as diacritic marks and double letters had not been developed yet.

During the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissace the language of writing was mostly Latin. Important Latin-language documents include the Admonitions of St. Stephen, which includes the king's admonitions to his son, Prince Imre.

Among the first chronicles about Hungarian history were Gesta Hungarorum ("Deeds of the Hungarians") by the unknown author usually called Anonymus, and Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum ("Deeds of the Huns and the Hungarians") by Simon Kézai. Both are in Latin. These chronicles mix history with legends, so historically they are not always authentic. Another chronicle is the Képes Krónika (Illustrated Chronicle), which was written for Louis the Great.

Further, Rogerius's 13th century work was published with Thuroczy Janos' chronicle in the late 15th century. In Split Thomas of Spalato wrote on local history with many information on Hungary in the 13th century (that time Dalmatia and the city was part of Hungary).

The 15th century saw the first translations from the Bible. The preachers Thomas and Valentine, followers of the Bohemian religious reformer Jan Hus, were responsible for this work, of which the prophetic books, the Psalms, and the Gospels have survived. A great part of the vocabulary, created for the purpose, is still in use.