Life of King Stephen
A Life of King Stephen I of Hungary compiled by a bishop named Hartvic at the command of King Coloman, about a century after Stephen’s coronation. It is the source of the story that the pope sent Stephen a crown first meant for the duke of the Poles.
Hartvic says in his prologue that he wrote at the order of King Coloman, whose reign the editor gives as 1095 to 1114. He took an older Life, Greater Legend of Saint Stephen, almost whole, wove in pieces of a second, and added matter of his own. The editor singles out as his chief addition the passage on the crown, of which the older Life says little.
In Hartvic’s telling Stephen I of Hungary sends Bishop Ascric to Rome; the pope, warned by a vision, gives him the crown he had prepared for the Polish duke, adds a cross to be carried before the king, and leaves the ordering of the Hungarian churches to Stephen. In the passage as printed Hartvic does not name the pope; the editor’s preface identifies him as Sylvester II. Hartvic wrote a century after the event, and the one writer of Stephen’s own time cited in this wiki, Thietmar, credits the emperor and does not mention Rome.
Cited in
- AD 1000 or 1001, estimated date