Skeleton with brutal injuries identified as duke assassinated in 1272

More than 700 years ago, a Hungarian duke was murdered in a brutal and very bloody head-on attack in a convent. Now, researchers studying an ancient skeleton excavated in Budapest have confirmed it belonged to the duke and revealed shocking details of his assassination.

“There were so many more serious injuries than would be necessary to kill somebody,” says Martin Trautmann at the University of Helsinki in Finland.

Archaeologists uncovered the man’s remains — which had been buried in dismembered pieces in the convent floor — during a 1915 excavation of a Dominican convent on Margaret Island, in the middle of the river Danube in Budapest. At the time, the researchers suspected it might be the body of 29-year-old Béla of Macsó, the grandson of King Béla IV, who had built the convent.

Historical records from 13th-century Austria indicate the young duke was assassinated on the island over a feud for the Hungarian throne in November 1272. The bones showed multiple signs of trauma, but the scientists lacked the tools and technology to confirm their suspicions.

The skeleton was apparently lost during the second world war, says Tamás Hajdu at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, but it resurfaced in 2018 in a wooden box at the Hungarian Museum of Natural History. Its re-discovery prompted investigations with modern techniques, including a facial reconstruction last year.

The skeleton had nine injuries to the head and face and another 17 to the rest of the body, all occurring at the time of death, says Hajdu. To determine how the attack unfolded, Trautmann and his colleagues marked an educational model skeleton with the same cuts and played out various scenarios. “It was step by step, injury by injury, like a stop-motion movie,” he says.

The injuries suggested two or three people accosted the man from the front and the sides, and he used his arms to block the blows, Trautmann says. “They were flanking the victim, so there was no easy way to escape.”

Eventually he fell and cracked open his skull, but continued to fight with his left leg, lying on his side, until someone stabbed though his spinal column. His attackers then inflicted multiple injuries to the head and face.

Those might have been fatal, but it is also possible the man bled to death. “There was a lot of bleeding,” Trautmann says.

Radiocarbon dating placed the death in the mid-13^th century. Dental plaque analyses revealed a luxurious diet that included cooked wheat semolina and baked wheat bread.

DNA analyses identified the man as a fourth-generation descendant of King Béla III of Hungary and an eighth-generation relative of a 13th-century regional Russian prince, Dmitry Alexandrovich – aligning with historical records about the duke’s family history.

Additional genetic analyses showed Eastern Mediterranean origins on the individual’s mother’s side and Scandinavian origins on the father’s side — consistent with historical knowledge about the duke’s ancestry — and that he probably had dark skin, dark curly hair and light brown eyes.

The study sheds “convincing” light on a poorly understood historical event that has few recorded details, says Tamás Kádár, an independent medieval historian in Budapest. With no firsthand witnesses, the Austrian text mainly states the duke “was struck down in miserable slaughter on an island near Buda” with his limbs “cut into pieces” that were gathered by his sister and aunt.

The new scientific work attests to the passion of the murder, says Kádár, who wrote a biography of Béla of Macsó. “The fact that his body was hacked apart, and perhaps even further mutilated after death, undoubtedly indicates great hostility and hatred,” he says. “The primary aim was to kill Béla, to eliminate him. The main goal was his prompt and certain death.”

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