K.E. Skedgell

Coat of arms of King Mátyás (center left) and Queen Beatrice (center right). T oday marks the 570 th anniversary of the birth of one the most revered kings of Hungary, King Mátyás (Hunyadi) Corvin. Born this day in Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca) on 23 February in 1443, second son to one of the greatest of Hungary's military heroes, János Hunyadi , and his wife Erzsébet Szilágyi , little did either of them know their pink, wrinkly infant boy would one day become the first native born Hungarian without royal ancestry to take the throne in centuries. The honor, if he hadn't died by the axeman of King Ladislas V Posthumous, would have went to his older brother and only sibling, László Hunyadi . On Easter of 1490, after biting into a rotten fig, spurring a fury of foul words from his lips, a sharp, searing pain struck Mátyás's brain and sensations worse than the taste of a spoiled fruit overwhelmed him, and two days later on the 6 th of April, the Hungarian Renaissance k...

János Hunyadi N o, I'm not about to blog about the novel by Ernest Hemingway , or the song from Metallica of the same name. I'm speaking of the church bells that chime at noon. I never had any thought as to why church bells chime at noon, it was always a thing that just was. One day, I couldn't tell you when, during one of my researchscapades for my novel, I came across some interesting bit of info. Yeah, it has to do with the church bells chiming at noon. Some of you reading this may already know why and the importance of why they chime at noon, some of you may not. They chime in commemoration of two men, but primarily for one: János (John) Hunyadi , and for the other, Giovanni (John) da Capistrano . Giovanni da Capistrano   I've written a scene where the son of János Hunyadi, the king of Hungary Mátyás (Matthias, or Matthew) Corvin, is telling the tale of his father's brave fight in Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade) to my main character, Vlad, over-looking t...