5 From the Anonymous Gesta to the Flight of Zalán by Vörösmarty

The discovery of Anonymus, however, changed the emphasis within a generation or two to the conquest of the Carpathian Basin and made Arpad, the leader of that campaign, the central figure of the ancestry. The works of the Jesuit historians Gyorgy (Georgius) Pray (1723-1801) and Istvan (Stephanus) Katona (1732-1811) gave the Gesta of Anonymus the scholarly seal of authenticity and moved the center of the received narrative to the ninth-century foundation of the kingdom. Of the many imaginary speeches, some, such as the exchanges between Arpad's emissaries and Zalan are verbatim quotes from the Gesta , elegantly rephrased into meter. Even though the epiteton ornans of Arpad as panther-skinned was not Vorosmarty invention, it was the Flight of Zalan that made it universal down to the mounted figure in bronze on Heroes Square in Budapest (1896). Keywords: Arpad; Anonymus; Carpathian Basin; Flight of Zalan ; Gesta ; Gyorgy; Istvan; Katona; Pray; Vorosmarty