Abstract:
Pelbartus de Themeswar wrote four Latin sermons on the feast of Saint Katherine of Alexandria, the fi rst sermon also containing the legend of the saint. To a greater or lesser extent, these texts served as a source for the three Hungarian legends of Katherine in the Hungarian codex literature. According to the stories of virgin martyrs, a beautiful and clever virgin of noble descent defends her faith against a man in a position of power who wants to possess her ideologically and sexually – this confl ict is at the core of the legend. Starting from this main confl ict, I examine Katherine’s role in these three very similar legends, that is, how much she prevails as a woman, as a scholar, as a ruler, and as a Christian, how much these roles become predominant in the three texts as a result of minor changes to the source.
