Sources of early Hungarian history

Three Hungarian chronicles contain the early legends and history of the Huns, Magyars and Hungarians, the Anonymi Gesta Hungarorum (Anonymous "Deeds of the Hungarians"), Simon of Kéza's Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum and the Vienna Illuminated Chronicle.

The Gesta Hungarorum of Magister P. (also called "Anonymus") is preserved in a mid-13th Century manuscript. Most parts of the text are simply inventions (by the author or by his predecessors) and contradict Frankish, Czech and other chronicles. Hypotheses about the identity of the anonymous author include:

Péter Pósa, bishop of Bosnia
The chancellor of King Béla II of Hungary (1131–1141). If this is true, the author could be a certain Petrus who was in 1124 the chancellor of the previous king Stephen II.
The chancellor of King Béla III of Hungary (1172–1196).

The other early history of the Hungarians is Simon of Kéza's Gesta Hungarorum ("Deeds of the Hungarians"), an imaginative and vividly written historical fiction written in the 1280s, which combines Hunnish legend with history. Simon of Kéza was a court cleric of King Ladislaus IV of Hungary (reigned 1272–1290). He travelled widely in Italy, France and Germany and culled his epic and poetic materials from a broad range of readings. The division of the work in two periods, Hunnish legend and Hungarian history, offered a framework that persists in popular national history today. Simon of Kéza's Gesta was edited and translated in 1999 by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer, of the Central European University.