Lea Ráskay
Encyclopedia
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
Dominican
Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...
nun
Nun
A nun is a woman who has taken vows committing her to live a spiritual life. She may be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent...
living in the monastery
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...
of the Hare Island
Margaret Island
Margaret Island is a long island, 500 metres wide, in the middle of the Danube in central Budapest, Hungary. It belongs administratively to the 13th district. The island is mostly covered by landscape parks, and is a popular recreational area. Its medieval ruins are reminders of its importance...
(today Margaret Island
Margaret Island
Margaret Island is a long island, 500 metres wide, in the middle of the Danube in central Budapest, Hungary. It belongs administratively to the 13th district. The island is mostly covered by landscape parks, and is a popular recreational area. Its medieval ruins are reminders of its importance...
, Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
). She was highly learned and well read, and is famous for copying several Hungarian codices that without her work would not have survived, among them the one she is most known for: the Legend of Saint Margaret
Legend of Saint Margaret
The Legend of Saint Margaret is an important piece of Mediaeval Hungarian literature. The only specimen of the text was preserved in the Margaret Codex, copied by Lea Ráskay in 1510. The legend tells the life and deeds of Saint Margaret of Hungary....
, about Saint Margaret of Hungary
Saint Margaret of Hungary
Saint Margaret was a nun and the daughter of King Béla IV and Maria Laskarina. She was the niece of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and the younger sister of Saint Kinga and Blessed Yolanda.-Early life:...
who lived in the same monastery three hundred years before Ráskay.
Life
Ráskay was likely a descendant of that old Hungarian aristocraticAristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
family which got its name after the village of Ráska
Raška
-Places:* Serbian Principality or Raška, a medieval Serbian state 610-960* Catepanate of Rascia, a Byzantine province 969-976* Grand Principality of Serbia or Raška, a medieval Serbian state 1101-1217...
, and until the end of the 16th century, held important positions in the court
Court
A court is a form of tribunal, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance with the rule of law...
s of the Kings of Hungary. She designated her life to writing in the scriptorium
Scriptorium
Scriptorium, literally "a place for writing", is commonly used to refer to a room in medieval European monasteries devoted to the copying of manuscripts by monastic scribes...
of the monastery, and was the librarian of the facility, possibly between 1510 and 1527, according to her notes in specific codices. She also worked as a secretary, as a manuscript written in the name of Ilona Bocskay is known from her. With her collaborators, Ráskay was working on more books simultaneously. In 1529, when the monastery was evacuated because of the danger of the Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
forces, she fled, but took the most important codices to a safe place.
Works
All the below works were written in HungarianHungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
.
- Legend of Saint MargaretLegend of Saint MargaretThe Legend of Saint Margaret is an important piece of Mediaeval Hungarian literature. The only specimen of the text was preserved in the Margaret Codex, copied by Lea Ráskay in 1510. The legend tells the life and deeds of Saint Margaret of Hungary....
(1510; copied from a lost codex of the 14th century) - parts of the Codex Cornides (1514–1519
- Codex Domokos (1517)
- parts of the Codex Jordánszky (1519)
- parts of the Old TestamentOld TestamentThe Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
- The Gospels
- parts of the Old Testament
- Codex Horvát (1522)
See also
- Legend of Saint MargaretLegend of Saint MargaretThe Legend of Saint Margaret is an important piece of Mediaeval Hungarian literature. The only specimen of the text was preserved in the Margaret Codex, copied by Lea Ráskay in 1510. The legend tells the life and deeds of Saint Margaret of Hungary....
- Margaret IslandMargaret IslandMargaret Island is a long island, 500 metres wide, in the middle of the Danube in central Budapest, Hungary. It belongs administratively to the 13th district. The island is mostly covered by landscape parks, and is a popular recreational area. Its medieval ruins are reminders of its importance...
- Hungarian literatureHungarian literatureHungarian literature is literature written in the Hungarian language, predominantly by Hungarians.There is a limited amount of Old Hungarian literature dating to between the late 12th and the early 16th centuries...