The Turk at the Gates: The Hunyad Saga

The Emperor Sigismund, King of Hungary and Bohemia, died in 1437 after half a century of a prosperous though not altogether glorious reign. With his death, the male line of the Luxemburg dynasty became extinct. Any glory they left behind them was soon to be overshadowed, at least in Hungary, by John of Hunyad, a great Captain and statesman, who subsequently became Regent of Hungary and whose son, Mathias Corvinus, wore St. Stephen’s Crown from 1458 to 1490. Theories as to the origin of the Hunyadi family conflict.¹ According to some claims, John Hunyadi was a bastard son of the Emperor Sigismund; it is well known that the illegitimate lines of Royal and Imperial dynasties have often produced outstanding men, for example King Manfred of Sicily, son of the Emperor Frederick II, and that an almost magical quality was attributed to “love children” by the popular imagination throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. A legend claims that John came to the Court of the Emperor-King at the age of twelve—thus about 1420—after being a pageboy in the service of the Voivod Lazarevitch, Prince of the Serbs.