Peter (; died 1218) was a Hungarian prelate at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, who served as Bishop of Győr from 1205 to 1218. Prior to that, he was chancellor in the royal court of Emeric, King of Hungary between 1202 and 1204. He participated in the Fifth Crusade, where he was killed in fights against the Ayyubid Sultanate. Some historians identify him with the chronicler Anonymus, author of the Gesta Hungarorum.
Early life
Peter (also Pescha and Pechse) was born in the mid-1170s, as he was about the same age as King Andrew II, according to his royal charter from 1217. They were brought up together in the royal court of Andrew's father, Béla III. The aforementioned name variants confirm his Hungarian origin. The reconstruction of Peter's early life is uncertain and contested, mainly depending on the existing parallel scholarly standpoints that he can be identified with the chronicler Anonymus or not. In 1966, literary journal Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények published the papers of János Horváth, Jr. and Károly Sólyom, who first claimed Anonymus was identical with Peter, Bishop of Győr, independently from each other. Subsequently, other historians, including György Györffy and Gyula Kristó refused their theory and there is no unanimously recognized scientific position. For instance, the interpretation of the "P dictus magister" text in the opening sentence of the Gesta Hungarorum is unclear. The text may refer to a man whose monogram was P – as most of the historians share this view and tried to find contemporary church people with "P" initial – or it may be an abbreviation of the Latin word for "aforementioned" (praedictus) in reference to a name on the title page which is now missing.
Philologist János Horváth, who claimed Peter was identical with Anonymus, considered his baptismal name was Peter and identified him with a certain bishop Torda (Turda) – his pagan name, son of dux Velek, who was referred by Andrew II in 1225. In this theory, Peter's mother was a Greek woman, possibly a maid of honor of Béla's first wife Agnes of Antioch and he also had a sister Anne, who married Bors, son of Dominic Miskolc and Margaret, spouse of an unidentified Ban Stephen. Accordingly, Peter came from the lineage of chieftain Velek, who had participated in the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin and is a recurring character in the Gesta Hungariorum. As Anonymus had a detailed knowledge of the lands along the upper courses of the river Tisza, especially the bishopric lands of the Diocese of Eger, historian Károly Sólyom, who also identified Anonymus with Bishop Peter, claimed that Duke Andrew and Peter spent their youth in the episcopal manor of Peter, Bishop of Eger in the 1180s. During that time, the younger prince Andrew was raised as a potential pretender to the neighboring Principality of Halych. Regardless his identification with Anonymus, Sólyom considered Bishop Peter himself also originated from the borderlands of Zaránd County, based on his other name variants in the contemporary documents. He also claimed the town of Pecica (Pécska), present-day in Romania, is named after him.
Peter attended a French universitas (presumably at the Abbey of Saint Genevieve or the University of Paris) from 1190 to 1194, where obtained a doctorate of canon law. He bore the title of magister, demonstrating his literacy and scientific proficiency. According to Károly Sólyom, Peter studied together with his friend the "literate" Nicholas Csák (brother or nephew of Bishop Ugrin Csák). Accordingly, later Anonymus dedicated his work to "the most venerable man N", i.e. Nicholas. Peter read Dares Phrygius's Trojan History, if the Anonymus identification is correct. Returning to Hungary, Peter functioned as a notary in the chancellery of Béla III between 1194 and 1196, as both János Horváth and Károly Sólyom argued (Anonymus wrote in the opening sentence of his work that he was "Bele regis notarius" – "Notary of King Béla"). According to Sólyom's interpretation, the young Peter wrote the Gesta Hungarorum thereafter, from 1196 to 1198, after the death of Béla III (while the majority of historians consider Anonymus was in advanced age, when the text was completed in the early 13th century), but before his election as provost of Székesfehérvár (as Anonymus styled himself only magister in his work). As Anonymus knew and used the Aragonese chronicles as a source, Sólyom assumed that the young courtly cleric Peter was a member of that Hungarian diplomatic mission, which escorted Constance of Aragon to Hungary in order to become the wife of Emeric, King of Hungary around 1197 or 1198.