Hunyadi family
The House of Hunyadi was one of the most powerful noble families in the Kingdom of Hungary during the 15th century. A member of the family, Matthias Corvinus, was King of Hungary from 1458 until 1490, King of Bohemia from 1469 until 1490, and Duke of Austria from 1487 until 1490. His illegitimate son, John Corvinus, ruled the Duchy of Troppau from 1485 until 1501, and five further Silesian duchies, including Bytom, Głubczyce, Loslau, Racibórz, and Tost, from 1485 until 1490. The Hunyadi coat-of-arms depicted a raven with a golden ring in its beak.
The founder of the family, Voyk, received the eponymous Hunyad Castle from Sigismund, King of Hungary, in 1409. His ethnicity is the subject of scholarly debate. Some modern historians describe him as a Vlach, or Romanian, knez or boyar, from either Wallachia or Transylvania. Others describe him as a Cuman or Slav nobleman. According to the 15th-century historian, Johannes de Thurocz, Voyk moved from Wallachia to Transylvania. Voyk's oldest son, John Hunyadi, was often mentioned as a "Vlach" by his contemporaries.
John Hunyadi, a military commander, became the first member of the family to acquire the status of "true baron of the realm". He was appointed Ban of Severin in 1439, and Voivode of Transylvania in 1441. He was also granted the title Perpetual Count of Beszterce in 1452, thus receiving the first hereditary title created in the Kingdom of Hungary. At his death, John Hunyadi held many lands throughout the Kingdom. John Hunyadi's fame and fortune led to the election of his son, Matthias Corvinus, as King of Hungary in 1458. He attempted to secure a hereditary line of succession for his son, John Corvinus. This did not happen, however, and John was only able to retain the Duchy of Glogau, along with some other family domains in Hungary, after Matthias died in 1490. John's only son, Christopher Corvinus, was the last male member of the family. He died at the age of six in 1505. His sister Elisabeth died during childhood.
Origins
The family was given its land by Sigismund, King of Hungary, on 18 October 1409. On that day, Sigismund granted Hunyad Castle and its demesne to Voyk and four of his kinsmen. In addition to Voyk, the grant lists his two brothers, Magas and Radol, their cousin or uncle also named Radol, and Voyk's son, John, the future Regent of Hungary. Magas means "tall", and is evidently a Hungarian name. The grant mentioned that Voyk's father was named "Serbe", but did not say anything further about the origins of the family. Turkologist László Rásonyi, in his analysis of the family names and heraldry, says that Serbe's name is of Cuman origin and is related to the Kyrgyz and Kazakh word for unlucky. He adds that the Turkic origin of Serbe's name explains that Voyk's name also comes from the Turkic bay, meaning "prince" or "lord".File:Fff437kicsi.jpg|thumb|right|alt=King Sigismund's charter of grant of 1409 |King Sigismund of Hungary's grant of Hunyad Castle to Voyk and his relatives
Voyk's son, John Hunyadi, bore the nickname "Olah", meaning "Vlach", in his youth, which implied that he was of Romanian stock. The court historian of Voyk's grandson King Matthias Corvinus, Antonio Bonfini, explicitly stated that John had been "born to a Vlach father". Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III likewise knew that King Matthias had been "born to a Vlach father", and a Venetian man, Sebastiano Baduario, referred to the Romanians as King Matthias's people.
Historians of the 15th and 16th centuries, with perspectives that were either against or in favour of the family, wrote differing reports of the family's status before King Sigismund's grant. Jan Długosz described John Hunyadi as "a man of unknown origin", and he is likewise mentioned as "a Vlach by birth, not highly born" by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini. On the other hand, Johannes de Thurocz said that John Hunyadi "was descended from a noble and renowned race of Wallachia".
John Hunyadi's rapid advance, which astonished his contemporaries, and gave rise to legends about his origins. According to one of these stories, recorded in detail by the 16th-century historian Gáspár Heltai, John Hunyadi was the illegitimate son of King Sigismund with a woman named Elizabeth, who was the daughter of a "rich boyar" from Morzsina in Hunyad County. Antonio Bonfini, on the other hand, wrote that John Hunyadi's mother was an unnamed Greek woman who was related to the Byzantine Emperors.
File:Varkapu.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Hunyad Castle |The Gothic and Renaissance Hunyad Castle, built on the demesne that the family was named after
Further legends emerged about the purported Roman origin of the family. Antonio Bonfini wrote that John Hunyadi "traced his kin to the Roman family of the Corvini". This story is connected to the Hunyadis' coat-of-arms, which depicts a raven, corvus in Latin, with a golden ring in its beak. Coins minted for Prince Vladislav I of Wallachia in 1365 depict a raven-like bird. Based on this similarity, Zsuzsa Teke and some other historians did not exclude the possibility that the Hunyadis were related to the Basarabs, the ruling dynasty of Wallachia. Another historian, Péter E. Kovács, wrote that that theory needed further verification.
Johannes de Thurocz also wrote that King Sigismund, fascinated by Voyk's fame, "took him away from Wallachia to his own realm and settled him there", suggesting that Voyk moved from his Wallachian homeland to the Kingdom of Hungary. The late 15th-century historian Philippe de Commines referred to Voyk's son John as the "White Knight of Wallachia". In accordance with these sources, Pál Engel, András Kubinyi, and other contemporary historians have written that the Hunyadi family descended from Wallachian boyars.
Based on the genealogy of Nicolaus Olahus, which states that John Hunyadi's sister received the estate of Corbii de Piatră from her brother, and on the writings of Antonio Bonfini and Pietro Ranzano which stated that John Hunyadi was born in the "ancestral village , which is also called Corvinum in our time", it has been proposed that the Hunyadi family originates from Corbii de Piatră in Wallachia. A castle had existed there until at least the 16th century and the village was also referred to as an "old and hereditary estate" of Jupan Mogos, likely the same person as Voyk's brother Magas, in a charter from 1456 by Vladislav II of Wallachia. Voyk may have also been born in the same village. The origin of the family in Corbii de Piatră might also explain the raven on their coat-of-arms.
According to another view on the family's origins, which is championed by historians Camil Mureșanu and Ion-Aurel Pop, Voyk did not migrate from Wallachia, but was born in a family of Romanian noble knezes from the region of Hátszeg, or Hunyad. They say that Voyk's grandfather could have been a man named "Costea", mentioned in a royal charter from 1360, and who fathered a son named Serbe. According to the charter, Costea and Serbe together established two villages in the region of Hátszeg.
Historian Dezső Dümmerth offers a third view of the Hunyadis' ancestry. He said that Voyk was of Cuman stock, one of the Wallachian boyars. Turkologist concludes: "the names of János Hunyadi's father and grandfather and the use of raven in the coat-of-arms of the family clearly point to the Tatar-Cuman origin of the later Hunyadi family".
Miklós Molnár, accepts the Wallachian origin of the family, but also represents a fourth perspective on the origins of the family. He said that they may well have been of Slavic descent. Neither Paul Lendvai nor András Boros-Kazai excluded the possibility of the Hunyadis being of Slavic origin.
Genetics
Bone samples were collected in the Corvinus grave from the remains of John Corvinus and Christopher Corvinus in the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lepoglava by the Institute of Hungarian Research in 2021 to define their genetic composition. This information will be crucial for possible identification of the remains of King Matthias Corvinus from among the bones stored in the ossuary at Székesfehérvár. The team of Endre Neparáczki successfully identified the DNA profile of the last two male members of the Hunyadi family by next-generation sequencing technology, and the genetic study was published in Heliyon in 2022.John Corvinus and Christopher Corvinus carried the paternal Y-chromosome haplogroup E1b1b1a1b1a6a1c~, which is widespread in Eurasia. This haplogroup belongs to the E-V13 clade which is part of the E-M78 branch. The father-son relationship was also verified. The closest ancient genetic matches to the paternal haplogroup of the Hunyadi descendants are a sample from the Otrar-Karatau culture in the Iron Age Kazakh steppe and a sample from Medieval Sardinia. The closest genetic sample matches from the Carpathian Basin to the Hunyadi genome were detected in Avar individuals, elite Hungarian Conquerors and in a Medieval Hungarian nobleman from the Hungarian Royal Basilica.
John Corvinus belongs to the T2b mitochondrial haplogroup, his maternal lineage widespread haplogroup throughout Eurasia. His son Christopher Corvinus belongs to the rare T2c1+146 mitochondrial haplogroup, his maternal lineage was already present in the Neolithic era on the territory of present-day Hungary but most frequent around the Mediterranean. Both maternal lines are consistent with the known origin of their mothers.
Archaeogenomic analysis indicated that John and Christopher Corvinus had an ancient European genome composition. The majority genome components of John Corvinus were present in the Carpathian Basin thousands of years ago, the highest shared drift are with European Neolithic samples and Hungarian Neolithic samples: Transdanubian Lengyel culture, Bodrogkeresztúr culture, Körös culture, Alföld Linear Pottery culture. The genome of Christopher Corvinus also has a shared drift with a sample from the Croatian Copper Age Vučedol culture, which was received from his mother. The Corvinus genome contains these admixture components: 50% Neolithic Anatolian, 31% Ancient North Eurasian, 8% Iranian Neolithic, 5% Western Hunter gatherer, 3% Early Bronze Age and 2% Han. At the individual level, the 10 most similar samples were from Russia, Croatia, Romania and Hungary, while at the population level, it clustered with populations from northern Italy, Spain, Basque Country, France, Croatia and Hungary. The greatest similarity to this medieval Corvinus genome is found with today's southern European and Carpathian Basin populations, and also with individuals from the Eastern European steppe.
In 2024, the Institute of Hungarian Research published the results of the archeogenetic study of the Hungarian noble Aba family. The genetic results uncovered dynastic connections that were not documented in written sources. It was revealed that members of the Aba family were related to significant medieval Hungarian noble families such as the Árpáds, the Báthorys, and the Hunyadis. The genetic analysis revealed kinship ties among these prominent Hungarian families, suggesting that marital connections were common within the noble class of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary.