The circle of those oral epics comprised also the Magyar heroes proper. There were stories about Álmos, father of Árpád, the conqueror of Hungary; others about the “Seven Magyars” (_Hét Magyar_); the conquest of Transylvania by doughty Tuhutum, one of Árpád’s generals; the flight of King Zalán, defeated by Árpád; the exploits of valiant Botond, Lehel (the Hungarian Roland), Bölscü, and other paladins of Árpád’s times, etc. In the fragments from Priscus, the Byzantine rhetorician and historian; in the chronicles of Ekkehard, the monk of St. Gallen; and in the “Anonymus,” or one of the chief, but hitherto, fatherless chronicles of Hungary, the above and some more heroic stories and epical records may be found. In addition to the heroic epic, the Hungarians, like all the rest of the Christian nations of the west, had a considerable tradition of legends and lives of saints. Fortunately for Hungary, it had become, by the end of the tenth century of our era, both the hierarchical and political interest of one of the most learned and most statesmanlike of the popes, Sylvester II., to detach Hungary completely from the Eastern, or Greek Church; and to adopt it, by sending a royal crown to Stephen, duke of the Hungarians, into the world of Roman Catholicism. Had Hungary joined the Eastern Church, it could never have withstood the ambition and supremacy of the German Emperors, aided by the Popes of Rome. Having, however, adopted the Roman, or progressive form of Christianity, Hungary was endowed with occidental or richer seedlings of civilization. St. Mary was made the patroness of Hungary; and all through the Middle Ages, she was adored and glorified in legends and songs. Some of these Hungarian legends about the Virgin Mary we still possess; likewise, the life of St. Margit, the daughter of King Béla IV.; the famous story of Josaphat and Barlaam, one of the most popular of mediæval Christian legends, taken originally from Indian (Buddhistic) sources; the life of St. Catherine of Alexandria, etc. The most characteristically Hungarian of these legends is, as to its subject, the life of St. Margit. As to its literary merits, it is, alas! a dry chronicle without any charm of form or diction at all. Nor did the Hungarians, as far as we know, succeed in throwing one or another of their crusading heroes into strong epic relief. The crusaders, in spite of their marvellous deeds, lent themselves far more to good chronicling than to epics. Their inherent poetic vice of being, or trying to be, saints rather than heroes rendered them unfit for real epics. CHAPTER VI. 1520-1711.