MIRACULOUS MIRACLES™

Saint — Gerard of Csanád

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St. Gerard of Csanád
c. 980 AD, Venice (Venetian Italian noble family) — September 24, 1046 AD, Buda, Hungary — martyred by pagan-Magyar rebels at the Vata pagan rebellion
Italian-Hungarian missionary bishop; first Bishop of Csanád; martyr of Hungarian Catholic Christianity
Gellért Hill (Gellérthegy), Budapest, Hungary — the hillside named for him and bearing his martyrdom-cliff; also the Cathedral of Csanád (modern Cenad, Romania) — his episcopal see, Hungary
Feast
September 24
Canonized
Canonized July 26, 1083 by Pope St. Gregory VII (simultaneously with St. Stephen of Hungary, St. Imre, Bishop St. Mór, and others — the mass canonization of the Hungarian Catholic royal-and-episcopal saints)
✠ MartyrHurled from the hill of Buda by pagan rebels → The Martyrs
Life

Gerard (Hungarian Gellért, Italian Gerardo) was born around 980 in Venice to a Venetian Italian noble family. Educated at the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore on the island in the Venetian lagoon (the Benedictine abbey founded by Doge Memmo around 982), he became a monk and around 1015 was elected abbot.

Around 1020, en route to the Holy Land on pilgrimage, Gerard's ship was driven by storm to the Dalmatian coast — and from there, guided by divine providence (per his hagiographical tradition), he proceeded north to the kingdom of Hungary, where the young King St. Stephen of Hungary recognized him as the divinely-sent missionary teacher for whom Stephen had been praying.

King Stephen appointed Gerard as tutor of his son Prince St. Imre (Emeric) — the young Hungarian royal whose Catholic formation under Gerard's direction produced the young saint-prince who would die in hunting accident in 1031 (before he could succeed Stephen on the Hungarian throne).

In 1030, after the decade of royal-tutor service, King Stephen appointed Gerard as the first Bishop of the new Diocese of Csanád (modern Cenad, Romania, in eastern Hungary near the confluence of the Maros and Tisza rivers) — the principal eastern-Hungarian diocese of the nascent Hungarian Catholic ecclesiastical organization.

For sixteen years (1030–1046) Gerard governed the Diocese of Csanád, establishing the cathedral school, the Benedictine monastic foundations, and the pastoral organization of the Hungarian Catholic eastern frontier.

After the death of King Stephen in 1038, the Hungarian throne underwent a decade of instability culminating in the pagan-Magyar Vata rebellion of 1046 — the anti-Catholic pagan revolt that attempted to restore the pre-Christian Hungarian pagan religion. On September 24, 1046, while crossing the Danube at Buda to meet the arriving King Andrew I (whose accession Gerard hoped would restore the Catholic order), Gerard was seized by the Vata pagan rebels: placed in a two-wheeled cart, he was pushed down the rocky hillside of Buda — the hillside that has borne his name as Gellért Hill (Gellérthegy) to the present day, the principal geographic landmark of Catholic Budapest.

His mass canonization in 1083 by Pope St. Gregory VII (simultaneously with St. Stephen of Hungary, St. Imre, and others) instituted the national-saint cult of the Hungarian Catholic royal-and-episcopal tradition.

Miracles & Phenomena

  • The naming of Gellért Hill (Gellérthegy) in Budapest

    The naming of the hillside of the Buda side of the Danube — over which Gerard was thrown in his 1046 martyrdom by the Vata pagan rebels — as 'Gellért Hill' (Gellérthegy in Hungarian) is the principal geographic landmark of modern Budapest commemorating the saint. The Gellért Hill rises 235 metres above the right bank of the Danube and dominates the Buda skyline; the famous Liberation Monument (1947, originally Soviet, now Hungarian-national) and the Citadella (Habsburg fortress, 1854) crown the summit, while the famous Gellért Thermal Baths (Gellért Fürdő, Art Nouveau 1918) on the hillside bear the saint's name.

  • The 1083 mass canonization of the Hungarian saint-kings

    Pope St. Gregory VII's July 26, 1083 mass canonization of Gerard simultaneously with St. Stephen of Hungary, St. Imre (Emeric), Bishop St. Mór, and Sts. Andrew Zorard and Benedict — the simultaneous canonization of the entire first generation of Hungarian Catholic royal-and-episcopal saints — institutionally established the national-saint cult of the Hungarian Catholic tradition. The Hungarian royal-saint tradition that the 1083 canonization inaugurated would extend through the medieval Hungarian dynastic-Catholic tradition (St. László, St. Margaret of Hungary, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Kinga of Poland) to the present-day Hungarian Catholic identity.

Relics
  • Body
    Relics of St. Gerard of Csanád
    Originally Cathedral of Csanád (modern Cenad, Romania, in the Romanian-Hungarian border region); principal relics translated to Venice (St. George's Abbey on the Giorgio Maggiore island) in the 14th century; fragmentary relics survive at the Cathedral of Csanád, at the Hungarian Catholic Cathedral of Budapest, and at the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice

    His principal relics were translated from Csanád to Venice in the 14th century to save them from the Ottoman advance; they remain at the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore on the Venetian island where Gerard had entered religious life. Fragmentary relics survive at the Cathedral of Cenad (Romania) and at the St. Stephen's Basilica in Budapest.

Iconography
  • Gerard thrown from the cart over Gellért Hill

    The early-11th-century Venetian-Hungarian missionary bishop in episcopal vestments, bound and placed in a two-wheeled cart by the Vata pagan-Magyar rebels at the summit of the Buda hillside on September 24, 1046, the cart hurtling down the rocky slope toward the Danube below — the standard Hungarian Catholic iconography of St. Gellért, reproduced in the famous Gellért Monument on the hillside that bears his name (statue of Gyula Jankovits, erected 1904 by Cardinal Vaszary).

Patronages
Diocese of Csanád (Cenad, Romania)Hungary (especially Budapest; principal patron saint of the Pest side and of Gellért Hill)Catholic Venetian-Hungarian Christian mission traditionCatholic educators and tutors of royal children (his tutorship of Prince St. Imre)
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