Glad (duke) - Controversy Around His Story

Controversy Around His Story

One view is that the elaborate studies of the last decades on the text Gesta Ungarorum have revealed that most of the reports are not inventions, but they have a real support, even if here and there some anachronisms occurred. According to some modern Hungarian historians (for example Pál Kristó, Ferenc Makk, etc), Glad was not a real person.

Other view is that very few of the episodes of the Gesta can be substantiated from other sources. Some argue the anonymous author of the Gesta projected the ethnic situation of his own age (the turn of the 12th–13th centuries) back to the past (to the turn of the 9th–10th centuries) (e.g., one interpretation of the appearance in conjunction of Bulgarians, Romanians and Cumans, three nations only mentioned together during the first years of the Second Bulgarian Empire). The term "Cuman" however is very ambiguous in the chronicle and could easily designate the Pechenegs, reflecting the ethnic realities of the 10th century. When narrating Glad’s story, the author of the Gesta borrowed heavily from the Ahtum episode recorded in the Long Life of St Gerard. Those phrases which refer to Glad seem to belong genuinely to the Ahtum episode; thus all that is wrong with Glad is that he is usurping his descendant’s story.