The paper discusses the story cycle set in a frame narrative known by Hungarian literary history as The History of Emperor Pontianus and by international research as Historia septem sapientum. One of the two Hungarian variants was done by Gáspár Heltai, the author of the other is unknown. After a survey of the medieval and early modern Latin, German, and Hungarian textual variants and possible uses of this work – the moralized versions could be used as auxiliary preaching materials and read as mirror for princes – the study presents the interpretational horizons of the frame story.
The second part of the paper focuses on the similarity of the embedded stories to parables and exempla, in fact on the seven sages’ and the empress’ argumentative strategies. The text and the story as well as the prefaces of the two Hungarian translations published in mid 16th century reveal that reception in the Renaissance Age also focused on the entertaining aspect of this work; its main issue, however, was the necessity and possibility of making decisions, the search for truth and the limits of this search.
