Rogerius of Apulia

Rogerius of Apulia (also Rogerios; Ruggero di Puglia in Italian) (c. 1205 – 1266) was a medieval Roman Catholic monk and chronicler, born in Torremaggiore, Apulia. He became bishop of Oradea in 1249, and is best known for his account of the Tatar invasions.

Life
After 1241, he wrote a description of the conquest of Transylvania and the Pannonian Plain by the Tatars (see: Battle of Mohi) in his work Carmen Miserabile ("Sad Song"). Mongol-Tatar Golden Horde forces led by Batu Khan began attacking Europe in 1223, starting with Kievan Rus'. They continued to defeat Imperial, Polish, and Hungarian armies before turning back to go home, upon learning of the death of their Great Khan in 1241.

Rogerius survived the devastation by hiding in the marshes, and writes that the Tatars annihilated the population to the last infant, besides committing many other atrocities.



Rogerius subsequently assumed other posts, including dean of Sopron (1243), dean at Zagreb (1249), secretary to Johannes Toletanus in Lyon, and archbishop of Split, where he died.

Comments and renditions of his work

 * Carmen Miserabile super Destructione Regni Hungariae per Tartaros, ed., L. Juhasz, in I Szentpetery, ed., Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum, 2 vols. (Budapest 1937-1938) 11, 543-88;
 * German translation by H. Gockenjan in Ungarns Geschichtsschreiber, 111: Der Mongolensturm
 * C. de Bridia, Historia Tartarorum, ed., A. Onnerfors (Berlin 1967); an English translation in R.A. Skelton, T.E. Marston, and G.D. Painter, The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (New Haven 1965) 54-101.
 * William of Rubruck, Itineraarium, ed., A. Van den Wyngart, Sinica Franciscana 1, 147-332; an English translation in Dawson, op. cit. (At n. 6)87-220.