Saint Gerard Sagredo

Saint Gerard, known in Hungary as Gellért, was the first bishop of Csanád in the Kingdom of Hungary and the tutor of Prince Emeric, son of Saint Stephen. He was killed in 1046 during a pagan revolt; the Roman Martyrology says that he was stoned to death near the Danube. The Church commemorates him on September 24.

He came from Venice, and this is the most certain fact about his youth. He was born at the end of the tenth century, usually given as around 980; in 1980 the thousandth anniversary of his birth was celebrated. The surname Sagredo, under which the Martyrology lists him, was attributed to him only in the sixteenth century and is not historically certain. According to the legends, as a child he entered the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, where he became prior and then abbot. Historians, however, consider these details uncertain.

Legend tells that he set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land but on the way came to Hungary, where King Stephen kept him. More certain is that by the 1020s he was already living in the Kingdom of Hungary. The king entrusted him with his son’s education; John Paul II named Gerard among the distinguished teachers to whom Stephen entrusted Emeric. According to tradition, Gerard then lived for several years as a hermit at Bakonybél.

Around 1030, after the king’s victory over the local magnate Ajtony, a new diocese was established with its see at Csanád, and Gerard became its first bishop; some historians give a slightly later date. He organized the Church in lands where Christianity was only beginning to take root. He wrote an unfinished commentary on the canticle of the three young men from the Book of Daniel, known as the Deliberatio. It is one of the oldest theological works written in Hungary and bears witness to its author’s wide learning.

After Stephen’s death in 1038 the kingdom was torn by struggles for the throne, and in 1046 a revolt broke out in which political conflicts mingled with resistance from defenders of the old beliefs. Gerard was then on his way to meet Prince Andrew, the future king. At the crossing of the Danube, where Budapest stands today, the rebels attacked him and his companions. According to the legends, he was thrown down from the hill that now bears his name: Gellért Hill. The sources give different days for his death.

He was first buried near the place of his death, and later his body was moved to Csanád; in time part of his relics reached Venice. John Paul II recalled that in 1083 King Ladislaus, during the pontificate of Gregory VII, proclaimed Stephen, Emeric, and Gerard saints in Székesfehérvár. What is known of Gerard’s life comes mainly from two medieval Lives: a shorter, older one and a longer one written only in the fourteenth century, which contains many uncertain details.