Matthias: Legends of a Righteous Tyrant
Despite being depicted as Hungary’s
most honourable ruler, Matthias was deemed the biggest tyrant of our country by
the 15th century’s Hungarian population. Although the tales about
the king are educational and moral, the legends surrounding Matthias are
constructions of later centuries and therefore as unreliable as the chronicles
from Anonymous, who wrote about an era of Hungarian history he did not live in.
As
the son of the equally famous Hunyadi János, Matthias was considered to be a
ruthless and egoistic king in his own time. The main reason why the country,
including barons and peasants as well, hated him as their king was because of
his taxes that he raised to sustain his power. The collected money was used to
sustain his favourite hobby of fighting wars. Nonetheless, the king was
successful, but he also angered the taxpayers with his demands to collect more
money, because his army, the so called “Black Army”, consisting of mercenaries,
was extremely expensive to maintain. It is true that he was able to conquer the
glorious city of Vienna, which was something no other ruler was capable of
achieving in his time, but the costs of the war were tremendous and he could not
keep the city for long.
The taxes he
enforced on the common people also prevented the barons from increasing their
own incomes and after the amount of taxes reached a level that was unbearable,
the nobles tried to overthrow Matthias. His closest allies, including the poet
Janus Pannonius, became his worst enemies. Without any friends he could trust,
the king was not able to solidify the throne for his son, who was a bastard,
and his legacy died with him leaving Hungary in the hands of a ruler who was
not able to defend the country from the Turkish invaders.
The legends of
Matthias present a totally different version of the king than what we know from
history. The king appears as the Hungarian equivalent of Robin Hood. He is
depicted as a hero, the protector of the poor and helpless. In most of his
legendary tales he visits the common people of the country in disguise to
witness the cruelty of the “real oppressors”, the barons and the noblemen,
first hand. After he has gathered enough evidence to prove the misuse of power,
he teaches the tyrants a lesson while also aiding the ones who are in need of
his help.
In these tales
the real, historical version of the ruler is nowhere to be seen, there is only
the righteous and wise King Matthias who resembles King Solomon from the Bible.
The legends do not mention taxes, wars, bastards, conspiracies or the king’s
misuse of power. Luckily this false characterization of Matthias only exists in
children’s books and cartoons. The only truth that still applies today is a
famous line quoted by Hungarians; “Matthias is dead and so is justice”.
In conclusion, although the legends of the
righteous Matthias are beautiful moral lessons they are still lies that were
constructed in later centuries to help process the end of a glorious era of
Hungarian history.
Kling Ádám
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