An indeterminate sojourn: Hungarian aristocrats in the Byzantine Empire

This chapter surveys the Hungarian aristocrats, both members of the Árpád dynasty and other nobles, who visited, settled in or were brought to the Byzantine Empire between the 10th and the 13th centuries, and the reasons for their presence there. Drawing mainly on Byzantine narrative sources (De Administrando Imperio, Skylitzes, Kinnamos, Choniates, Akropolites, Pachymeres, Kantakouzenos) together with Hungarian chronicles, it distinguishes four groups: early chieftains who came to Constantinople for baptism (Termatzous, Bulcsú, Gylas); princes and pretenders seeking refuge or support in struggles for the Hungarian throne (Álmos and Béla, Bors, István and László, Géza); princesses married into the imperial dynasties (Piroska-Eirene, Margit-Maria, Anna); and nobles captured in war or who defected. Particular attention is given to Béla-Alexios, the future Béla III, who was betrothed to Manuel I’s daughter and designated heir, and to the Kalamanoi family, descended from Boris Kalamanos, which served in the Byzantine administration for generations. Comparing Béla-Alexios with the Seljuk princes in Byzantium, the chapter applies Rustam Shukurov’s concept of “dual identity” to his years in Constantinople. It also discusses the Byzantine portrayal of the Hungarians as a semi-barbarian people. The chapter concludes that the Hungarian aristocrats in Byzantium were mostly linked to the Árpád dynasty and to the Komnenos, Angelos and Palaiologos houses, that their political networks depended on Byzantine dynasties rather than on independent Hungarian networks, and that lesser nobles left almost no trace; it suggests that sigillographic research may identify further individuals of Hungarian origin.