### Gerald's Deliberatio, Gerald legends
Gerald's Deliberatio Bishop St Gerald (afetr 977-1046) brought the Latin knowledge of North Italy to St Stephen's court with his works, which either survived or were lost. According to some people he wrote his work Deliberatio supra hymnum trium puerorum (in its full title: Gerlad's, bishop of the Marosvár church, essay on the "Song of the Three Youths" to the learned Isingrimus) in the Bakonybél hermitage in the 1020s, or more likely, during the reign of kings Aba and Peter. In his work, which survived unbroken, presumably in its final version, he meditated on 8 verses from the book of the prophet Daniel. In the first Hungarian Bible-study he made comments on the details of the morning psalm (= laudes) from the Old Testament. His main goal was to reveal a deeper (allegorical) meaning with the help of other parts of the Scripture, the Bible-studies of clergyman and other scientific works, as he felt the text was quite worn in its every-day usage. Since he connected the quotations from other works as a chain and completed it with his own comments, he compiled a catenic (the Latin catena = chain) Bible-study. Dionysus the Areopagite's mystic philosophy had a great influence on this piece of work, and it also suggests that the author knew the North Italian liturgy very well. Though sometimes it is hard to understand, it has a significant role in medieval western Latin literature. Its language and style is as difficult to cope with as the chain of thoughts in it. The author preferred applying special expressions (for example, when referring to the various books of the Scriptures, he calls The Song of Solomon "Honourable Nuptial"). Gerald himself mentions his other two works in his book which survived, but the commentary on the letters of apostles Paul and John and his sudy about the Holy Trinity were lost. The legend, whose author was canonised in 1083, preserved all the sermons written by Gerald for all the days of the year (homily), but these were not thematic sermons. Some of their fragments were found in 1982. SzK The Gerald legends The legend of St Gerald survived in two versions, similarly to the St Stephen legends. The smaller legend is much shorter than the other, and at first sight it seems older than the other, as the oldest manuscript preserving its text originates from the turn of the 12-13th centuries. The larger legend, however, was preserved only in a 15th century codex, and its text mentions Queen Elisabeth's death in 1381, consequently it must have been compiled later, and the text is full of anachronisms. While the shorter text did not contain data concerning the age its hero lived in, the longer legend refers to early dates, which were forgotten later in the 14th century (for example, it mentioned the bishop of Csanád and the office of the palatine-bailiff in its archaic form). The use of sources in the larger legend also proves that it is the older one, because it used a 12th century text - which was later lost - and not the 14th century Illustrated Chronicle or the texts of the 13th century chronicles. The texts of the two legends show several similarities, but none of these can be derived from the other. According to this fact the two texts must originate from a common ancient legend, the text of which was written around the middle of the 12th century. The larger legend preserved this orginal text in greater content, but the traces of rewriting it in the 14th century can also be noticed. The shorter text is actually a sermon made from an ancient legend in the 13th century, which was preached on the day of the celebration of the saint. The author knew and quoted Fulbert of Chartres' - the master of symbolic theology, who lived in the beginning of the 11th century - antique text, and in the spirit of this he represented the perspective of salvation behind Gerald's life: "Since he put on the clothes of monastic life in his childhood, and avoiding the ancient parent's sinful path, he lived the life of a new man, created after the pattern of God: he tried to obtain the pleasures of Paradise, that is the earth, which had to be left because of disobedience, already in his adolescence". The spirit of this quotation shows a close connection with mental behaviour of the 12th century forerunners to the renaissance. The events of Gerald's life were changed by the author deliberately: if he had introduced his hero as King Samuel Aba's follower, he would have shadowed Gerald's saintly life, since the Pope had excommunicated the Hungarian king and his prelates. SzK