Having studied royal inauguration rites and related subjects, I often asked myself how much of all that display reached the subjects. If these symbolic signs and actions were to serve the legitimization of rule, then it was important that those who were ruled take cognizance of them and in some way or another ‘hear’ (and decode!) the message. Few students of these subjects raised this question – and even fewer found answers to it. A major exception was Marc Bloch, who had the good luck of finding records about the number of people who came to Reims to be healed by the king's touch: here we have an indication of how many Frenchmen ‘knew about’ the king’s divinely granted healing power. There are similar records for England as well. Perhaps the popularity of ‘pilgrimages’ to Nürnberg at the occasions of the showing of the imperial insignia as relics (Heiltumsweisungen) – of which the Holy Lance contained one, indeed – in the later Middle Ages could be counted as another proof of the widespread perception of the holiness of rulership and the importance of its signs and symbols. But, alas, no such obvious evidence seems to exist from other parts of Europe. Thus, we know very little about the ‘mute majority’s’ knowledge and understanding of all this, although that was the main purpose of the exercise.

As a kind of replacement, I intend to study the memoria of rulers in what may be termed folklore. As a first round in exploring possible sources for the folkloric ‘reception’ of royal status and character, I started looking at the veneration of kings of Hungary: the legends around a holy ruler, the tales and anecdotes about one late medieval king and a little jingle referring to another. All, or at least most, of the elements of these ‘memories’ are wellknown from folk tales and similar matters (songs, images) from several other cultures; the question, therefore, is, how and why these topics were attached to the three kings for which I found evidence: King St. Ladislas from the eleventh century, a little bit about Wladislas I from the mid-fifteenth, and quite a lot on Matthias I ‘Corvinus’ from the late fifteenth century.