King Matjaž/Mátyás/Matijaš (, , ) is a
legendary king in
Slovenia
Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...
,
Hungary
Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...
,
Croatia
Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...
and in some other countries, based on pre-Christian traditions of
Carantania and in course of centuries gradually linked to a real-life king,
Matthias Corvinus of Hungary
Matthias Corvinus (; ; ; ; ; ) was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1458 to 1490, as Matthias I. He is often given the epithet "the Just". After conducting several military campaigns, he was elected King of Bohemia in 1469 and adopted the tit ...
, who lived in the second half of the 15th century. He has also been linked to the leader of the peasant's army that fought against the Turks in the
Battle of Kokovo in July 1478. A number of
folk
Folk or Folks may refer to:
Sociology
*Nation
*People
* Folklore
** Folk art
** Folk dance
** Folk hero
** Folk horror
** Folk music
*** Folk metal
*** Folk punk
*** Folk rock
** Folk religion
* Folk taxonomy
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Fo ...
poems and stories about King Matjaž are known, the earliest ones originating in the western Slovene area of
Tolmin
Tolmin (; ,trilingual name ''Tolmein, Tolmino, Tolmin'' inGemeindelexikon, der im Reichsrate Vertretenen Königreiche und Länder. Bearbeit auf Grund der Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. Dezember 1900. Herausgegeben von der K.K. Statistische ...
from the 16th century.
He is mainly represented as the king who is just and a defender of his people, and the bringer of the
golden age of prosperity.
It has been assumed that the legend was the basis for the name of the
1573 peasants' revolt leader
Matija Gubec, actually named Ambrož Gubec.
Content of the poems and stories
The folk poems tell about King Matjaž's fights with the
Turks, about the kidnapping of his wife Alenčica, or his rescue from the Turkish jail. The stories about King Matjaž are arrangements of the poems or may have a different content. In this case, they tell about the King's rebellion against
God
In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...
and about his army, buried under a mountain.
Traditions and memorials
The traditions related to the King Matjaž have a significant role in the
Slovenian Carinthia
Carinthia ( ; ), also Slovene Carinthia or Slovenian Carinthia (''Slovenska Koroška''), is a traditional region in northern Slovenia. The term refers to the small southeasternmost area of the former Duchy of Carinthia, which after World War I ...
, particularly the
Črna Valley, where a competition in building snow castles as well as visual art and literary writing related to King Matjaž takes place every January since 1993. This is related to a story, according to which King Matjaž sleeps in the
Peca Mountain above the valley.
In the vicinity of the Peca hut,
there is a bronze sculpture of King Matjaž in the beginning of an abandoned pit. It was designed by the sculptor and mountaineer
Marjan Keršič in 1958,
put to bronze by the sculptor
France Rotar, and placed in the cave in 1962.
In the mid-1990s, King Matjaž was depicted on the
King of Diamonds card of the
Slovene Tarock.
The depiction was based on a study led by the ethnologist
Janez Bogataj, and the card was drawn by the academy-trained painter and illustrator
Matjaž Schmidt
Matjaž Schmidt (7 February 1948 – 29 September 2010) was a Slovenes, Slovene artist and illustrator, best known for his Children's literature, children's books illustrations and comic strips.
Schmidt was born in Ljubljana. After high school, ...
.
In 2006, the Slovenian country musician Milan Pečovnik, a.k.a. "Pidži," spotted the image of King Matjaž carved into the rocks of Mount Peca.
Turkish poet M. Bahadirhan Dincaslan's narrative poem "Kuzgunların Kralı" (The King of Ravens) depicts Matthias Corvinus as a sleeping king whose sculpture is animated every night and wanders an unknown town.
References
External links
*
Gradovi Kralja Matjaža 2010. Pod Peco v Črni na Koroškem ing Matjaž's Castles, 2010. Under Peca in Črna na Koroškem(February 2010). A video. Jeromelj, Metka. Todorovič, Bojan. Horvat, Jana. Studio K-2. 10:29 min. Retrieved 12 March 2012.
{{DEFAULTSORT:King Matjaz
Slovene mythology
Hungarian mythology
Mythological kings
King asleep in mountain
Cultural depictions of Matthias Corvinus
hu:Mátyás király