This text is about an often-repeated claim concerning the Battle of Bratislava. There was no plan and no decree whose goal it was to eliminate Magyars. They only wanted to oust them from Bavaria, and even this is but a speculative statement in a source written 600 years later. (For our other articles about the Battle of Bratislava click here.)
When it comes to the events leading up to the Battle of Bratislava, the claim is regularly made on certain websites that the ’German king’ (who is – also incorrectly – often referred to as the Holy Roman Emperor on these sites) decreed: ’ decretum … Ugros eliminandos esse’, which even made it into the Hungarian Wikipedia entry on Louis the Child, King of East Francia, translated into Hungarian as ’we order the Magyars to be wiped out’.
Others too, quoting this, translate ’eliminare’ as ’wipe out’, it has even made it into a film title. Here the pope is also mentioned along with the emperor plotting this alleged genocide. The pope at the time was Sergius III who had a lot more on his plate to be able to deal with the whole question.
Those translating ’eliminare’ like this have a strange kind of self-assuredness. Using this word to mean ’wiping out’ sounds like a very modern euphemism. Why can’t it be translated as ’hindering’ or at most ’removing’ with however brutal means? In Latin ’elimino’ was used relatively close to its primary, etymological meaning: ’ex + limen’, i.e. to turn out of doors, to banish in Lewis and Short’s Latin dictionary. The reflective form, ’se eliminare’ is translated there as ’to go out’ rather than ’to kill oneself’. In medieval Latin (see Niermeyer: Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus, WBG, Darmstadt): „écarter – to remove – wegräumen”. But not ’to eradicate’ or ’to wipe out’.
The quote itself comes from the 16th century, from Johannes Aventius, who wrote, ’Litavicus, rex Germaniae atque Boiorum, ex omni Boiaria peracto delectu Anassoburgium, novam Boiorum coloniam, se confert. adsunt episcopi, monachorum antistites, proceres Boiorum, quinto decimo calendas Iulii, anno christianae salutis noningentesimo super septimum. ibi decretum omnium sententia Ugros Boiariae regno eliminandos esse.’ (Sämmtliche Werke, Zweiter Band, Erste Hälfte, Annales ducum Boiariae, Buch I-III, p 657). The approximate translation of the last sentence is ’there they decided that the Magyars are to be driven out from Bavaria’ (or simply: ’decided to drive out’).
Also, even according to a much later account, let alone contemporary ones, there was no emperor’s decree involved, much less a papal one – the word ’decretum’ is the predicate of the sentence, meaning ’it was decided’.
It also becomes clear why there was a need to put three dots between ’Ugros’ and ’eliminandos’ in the translations that want to push the interpretation that the West was bent on ’wiping out/genocide’: the adverb of place answering the question ’where’ does not sit pretty with this preconception.
Another telling detail is that Count Arnulf of Bavaria, son of Luitpold who fell in battle, ended up fleeing to the Magyars to avoid Konrad I, not once but twice, which shows that there can’t have been that much animosity between Bavarians and Magyars after all.
András Pöstényi, Bromma, Sweden
