Attila - Later Folklore and Iconography

Later Folklore and Iconography

Later writers developed the meeting of Leo I and Attila into a pious "fable which has been represented by the pencil of Raphael and the chisel of Algardi", reporting that the Pope, aided by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, convinced Attila to turn away from the city.

According to a version of this legend related in the Chronicon Pictum, a mediaeval Hungarian chronicle, the Pope promised Attila that if he left Rome in peace, one of his successors would receive a holy crown (which has been understood as referring to the Holy Crown of Hungary).

A sword in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is known as the Sword of Attila, because of the Miholjanec legend and because Jordanes embellished the report of Priscus with a fairytale by describing that Attila had possessed the "Holy War Sword of the Scythians", which was given to him by Mars and made him a "prince of the entire world."

Attila himself is said to have claimed the titles "Descendant of the Great Nimrod", and "King of the Huns, the Goths, the Danes, and the Medes" - the last two peoples being mentioned to show the extent of his control over subject nations even on the peripheries of his domain.

Some histories and chronicles describe him as a great and noble king, and he plays major roles in three Norse sagas: Atlakviða, Völsungasaga, and Atlamál. The Polish Chronicle represents Attila's name as Aquila.

Frutolf of Michelsberg and Otto of Freising pointed out that some songs as "vulgar fables" made Theodoric the Great, Attila and Ermanaric contemporaries, when any reader of Jordanes knew that this was not the case.

In 1812, Ludwig van Beethoven conceived the idea of writing an opera about Attila and approached August von Kotzebue to write the libretto. It was, however, never written.

In World War I, Allied propaganda referred to Germans as the "Huns", based on a 1900 speech by Emperor Wilhelm II praising Attila the Hun's military prowess, according to the Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru. Der Spiegel commented on 6. November 1948 that the Sword of Attila was hanging menacingly over Austria.

American writer Cecelia Holland wrote The Death of Attila (1973), a historical novel in which Attila appears as a powerful background figure whose life and death deeply impact the protagonists, a young Hunnish warrior and a Germanic one.

In modern Hungary and in Turkey "Attila" and its Turkish variation "Atilla" are commonly used as a male first name. In Hungary, several public places are named after Attila; for instance, in Budapest there are 10 Attila Streets, one of which is an important street behind the Buda Castle. When the Turkish Armed Forces invaded Cyprus in 1974, the operations were named after Attila (Atilla I and Atilla II).