Category Archives: Metahistory

When Heribert Illig developed his theory known as the Phantom Time theory he drew his arguments mainly from the history of the Western part of Europe. He drew attention to the immense amounts of forged documents that remains from the Carolingian empire, the Palatine Chapel of Aachen with its architectural features preceding its own time by several centuries, the extraordinary calendar correction of pope Gregory XIII and the conspicuous and inexplicable lack of any archaeological findings, being typical for the era.
Of course he also addressed the oddities of the Byzantine empire: he mentioned the end of construction, the decline of the knowledge of writing, the transformation of events of the era in question into (quasi) fairy-tale and the inexplicable and unmotivated rewriting of chronicles. His arguments are in themselves heavy enough and worthy of consideration. However, Illig never addressed one issue, never referred to it with a single word – in fact, it seems he was not even particularly aware of the problem: the issue of the legacy of the Hungarian chronicle tradition. Specifically, this Hungarian chronicle tradition, which supports its hypotheses with such elementary strength, should have enjoyed an elevated position in his book or even a separately devoted chapter. It is not coincidence that lately our medieval chronicles have become surrounded by a conspicuous great silence. While in single issues of our renowned historical journals efforts are being made to “refute” the facts of falsification of our chronology, they do not even dare mention the issue of our [Hungarian] chronicles.