Kingdom of Hungary (1000–1301)

Background

The Magyars, or Hungarians, conquered the Carpathian Basin at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries. Here they found a predominantly Slavic-speaking population. From their new homeland, they launched plundering raids against East Francia, Italy, and other regions of Europe. Their raids were halted by the future Holy Roman Emperor Otto I, who defeated them at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955.

Hungarians lived in patrilineal families, which were organized into clans that formed tribes. The tribal confederation was headed by the grand prince, always a member of the family descending from Árpád, the Hungarians' leader around the time of their "land-taking". Contemporary authors described the Hungarians as nomads, but Ibn Rusta and others added that they also cultivated arable land. The great number of borrowings from Slavic languages prove that the Hungarians adopted new techniques and a more settled lifestyle in Central Europe. The cohabitation of Hungarians and local ethnic groups is also reflected in the assemblages of the "Bijelo Brdo culture", which emerged in the mid-10th century. Archaeological finds—a few objects with short inscriptions—indicate the use of a special runiform script in medieval Hungary. The inscriptions have not been deciphered, and the script was probably never used for administrative or legislative purposes.

Although they were pagan, the Hungarians demonstrated a tolerant attitude towards Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Muslim, Jewish, and Hungarian merchants from Hungary regularly visited the fairs at Prague, exchanging gold and Byzantine gold coins for slaves, tin, and fur. To Pereyaslavets, an important emporium on the Lower Danube, the Hungarians brought horses and silver. The Byzantine Church was the first to successfully proselytize among their leaders: in 948 the horka, and around 952 the gyula, were baptized in Constantinople. In contrast, the grand prince Géza who ruled from the early 970s received baptism into the Latin Church. He erected fortresses and invited foreign warriors to develop a new army based on heavy cavalry. Géza also arranged the marriage of his son, Stephen, with Giselle of Bavaria, a princess from the family of the Holy Roman emperors.

When Géza died in 997, his son had to fight for his succession with Koppány, the eldest member of the House of Árpád. Assisted by German heavy cavalry, Stephen emerged the victor in the decisive battle of the conflict in 998. He applied for a royal crown to Pope Sylvester II (r. 999–1003), who granted his request with the consent of Emperor Otto III.

"Patrimonial" kingdom

King St Stephen (1000–1038)

Stephen was crowned the first king of Hungary on either 25 December 1000, or 1 January 1001. He consolidated his rule through a series of wars against semi-independent local rulers, including his maternal uncle, Gyula, and the powerful tribal chief, Ajtony. He proved his kingdom's military strength when he repelled an invasion by Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1030. Marshlands, other natural obstacles, and barricades made of stone, earth, or timber provided defense at the kingdom's borders. A wide zone known as gyepü was intentionally left uninhabited for defensive purposes along the frontiers.

Stephen developed a state similar to the monarchies of contemporary Western Europe. Counties, the basic units of administration, were districts organized around fortresses and headed by royal officials known as ispáns, or counts. Most of the early medieval fortresses were made of earth and timber. Stephen founded dioceses and at least one archbishopric, and established Benedictine monasteries. He prescribed that every tenth village was to build a parish church. The earliest churches were simple wood constructions, but the royal basilica at Székesfehérvár was built in Romanesque style. With the introduction of the Catholic church hierarchy, Latin emerged as the dominant language of ecclesiastic life and state administration, although some royal charters were likely written in Greek. The bishops were required to supply the local clergy with liturgical books, and the kings regularly donated codices to monasteries. The earliest extant literary works were composed in Latin during Stephen's reign. Bishop Gerard of Csanád, who had come from Venice, completed a Latin commentary on a chapter in the Book of Daniel in Hungary. Stephen's views on state administration were summarized around 1015 in a mirror for princes known as Admonitions. Stating that "the country that has only one language and one custom is weak and fragile", he emphasized the advantages of the arrival of foreigners, or "guests". His laws were aimed at the adoption, even by force, of a Christian way of life. He especially protected Christian marriage against polygamy and other traditional customs. Decorated belts and other items of pagan fashion also disappeared. Commoners started to wear long woolen coats, but wealthy men persisted in wearing their silk kaftans decorated with furs.

From a legal perspective, Hungarian society was divided into freemen and serfs, but intermediate groups also existed. All freemen had the legal capacity to own property, to sue, and to be sued. Most of them were bound to the monarch or to a wealthier landlord, and only "guests" could freely move. Among freemen living in lands attached to a fortress, the castle warriors served in the army, and the castle folk cultivated the lands, forged weapons, or rendered other services. All freemen were to pay a special tax, the freemen's pennies—eight denars per person per year—to the monarchs. Peasants known as udvornici were exempt from this tax, being somewhat transitory between the status of freemen and of serf. Serfs theoretically lacked the legal status available to freemen, but in practice they had their own property: they cultivated their masters' land with their own tools, and kept 50–66 percent of the harvest for themselves. Stephen's laws and charters suggest that most commoners lived in sedentary communities which formed villages. An average village was made up of no more than 40 semi-sunken timber huts with a corner hearth. The huts were surrounded by large courtyards. Ditches separated them, keeping the animals away and enabling the growing of grains and vegetables. Many of the villages were named after a profession, implying that the villagers were required to render a specific service to their lords.

Pagan revolts, wars, and consolidation (1038–1116)

Stephen I outlived his son, Emeric, which caused a four-decade long crisis. Stephen considered his cousin, Vazul, unsuitable for the throne and named his own sister's son, the Venetian Peter Orseolo, as his heir. After Vazul was blinded and his three sons were expelled, Peter succeeded his uncle without opposition in 1038. Peter's preference for his foreign courtiers led to a rebellion, which ended with his deposition in favor of a native lord, Samuel Aba, who was related to the royal family. Supported by Emperor Henry III, Peter returned and expelled Samuel in 1044. During his second rule, Peter accepted the emperor's suzerainty. His rule ended with a new rebellion, this time aimed at the restoration of paganism. There were many lords who opposed the destruction of the Christian monarchy. They proposed the crown to Andrew, one of Vazul's sons, who returned to Hungary, defeated Peter and suppressed the pagans in 1046. His cooperation with his brother, Béla, a talented military commander, ensured the Hungarians' victory over Emperor Henry III, who attempted to conquer the kingdom two times: in 1050 and 1053.

A new civil war broke out when Duke Béla claimed the crown for himself in 1059, but his three sons accepted the rule of Solomon, Andrew I's son, in 1063. Bishop Maurus of Pécs wrote his Life of the hermits Benedict and Andrew Zorard—the earliest Hungarian hagiography—around this time. The young king and his cousins cooperated for almost a decade; for instance, they jointly defeated the Pechenegs plundering Transylvania in 1068. The power conflict in the royal family caused a new civil war in 1071. It lasted up to Solomon's abdication in favor of one of his cousins, Ladislaus, in the early 1080s. Ladislaus promulgated laws that prescribed draconian punishments against criminals. His laws also regulated the payment of customs duties, of tolls payable at fairs and fords, and of the tithes. He forbade Jews from holding Christian serfs, and introduced laws aiming at the conversion of local Muslims, who were known as Böszörménys.

The death of Ladislaus's brother-in-law King Zvonimir of Croatia, in 1089 or 1090, created an opportunity for him to claim Croatia for himself. Ladislaus's sister, Helena, and several noblemen (mainly from northern Croatia) supported his claim. Ladislaus's troops occupied the lowlands, but a native claimant, Petar Snačić, resisted in the Petrova Mounts. Nevertheless, Croatia and Hungary remained closely connected for more than nine centuries. Ladislaus I appointed his nephew, Álmos, to administer Croatia. Although a younger son, Álmos was also favored by the king against his brother, Coloman, for the succession. Even so, Coloman succeeded his uncle in 1095, while Álmos received a separate duchy under his brother's suzerainty. Throughout Coloman's reign, the brothers' relationship remained tense, which finally led to the blinding of Álmos and his infant son Béla.

Expansion and colonization (1116–1196)

Unsuccessful wars with the Republic of Venice, the Byzantine Empire, and other neighboring states characterized the reign of Coloman's son, Stephen II, who succeeded his father in 1116. The earliest mention of the Székelys—a Hungarian-speaking community of free warriors—is in connection with the young king's first war against the Duchy of Bohemia. The Székelys lived in scattered groups along the borders, but they were moved to the easternmost regions of Transylvania in the 12th century. Stephen II died childless in 1131. His cousin, Duke Álmos' blind son Béla II, succeeded him. During his reign, the kingdom was administered by his wife, Helena of Serbia, who ordered the massacre of the lords whom she blamed for her husband's mutilation. Boris Kalamanos, an alleged son of King Coloman who attempted to seize the throne from Béla II, received no internal support.

Béla II's son, Géza II, who ascended the throne in 1141, adopted an active foreign policy. He supported Uroš II of Serbia against Emperor Manuel I Komnenos, and launched at least six military campaigns to the Kievan Rus' against the enemies of his brother-in-law Iziaslav II of Kiev. He even recruited Muslim warriors in the Pontic steppes to serve in his army. Abu Hamid al-Gharnati, a Muslim traveler from Al-Andalus who lived in Hungary from 1150 to 1153 stated that Géza was "many times more powerful than that of the Byzantine ruler" as his troops were "innumerable". He overestimated Géza's military power but the Hungarian army was indeed on a par with the armies of the Byzantine and Holy Roman emperors. While crossing Hungary during the Second Crusade, Otto of Freising noticed Géza's nearly uncontrolled authority over his subjects.

Géza promoted the colonization of the border zones. Flemish, German, Italian, and Walloon "guests" arrived in great numbers and settled in the Szepesség region (Spiš, Slovakia) and in southern Transylvania. Abu Hamid refers to mountains that "contain lots of silver and gold", which points at the importance of mining and gold panning already around 1150. He also writes of slave trading, mentioning that he bought an attractive slave girl for ten denars, but beautiful slave women were sold for three denars after military campaigns. Archaeological evidence indicates that the large asymmetric heavy plows, capable to turn the soil over, first appeared when the new settlers arrived. As the heavy plows spread, long narrow fields, more suitable to their use, replaced the traditional small square fields in the villages.

Development of the Estates of the realm

Age of Golden Bulls (1196–1241)

Béla III's son and successor, Emeric, had to face revolts stirred up by his younger brother, Andrew. Furthermore, incited by Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice, the armies of the Fourth Crusade took Zadar in 1202. Emeric was succeeded in 1204 by his infant son, Ladislaus III. When the young king died in a year, his uncle, Andrew, mounted the throne. Stating that "the best measure of a royal grant is its being immeasurable", he distributed large parcels of royal lands among his partisans. Freemen living in former royal lands lost their direct contact to the sovereign, which threatened their legal status. Royal revenues decreased, which led to the introduction of new taxes and their farming out to Muslims and Jews. The new methods of raising funds for the royal treasury created widespread unrest.

Andrew II was strongly influenced by his wife, Gertrude of Merania. She openly expressed her preference for her German compatriots, which led to her assassination by a group of local lords in 1213. A new uprising broke out while the king was in the Holy Land on his crusade in 1217 and 1218. Finally, a movement of the royal servants, who were actually free landholders directly subordinated to the sovereign, obliged Andrew II to issue his Golden Bull in 1222. It summarized the royal servants' liberties, including their tax exemption. Its last provision authorized the secular and spiritual lords to "resist and speak against" the sovereign "without the charge of high treason". Around this time, the structure of charters of grant underwent a significant change with the introduction of a narrative section about the beneficiaries' heroic acts in the king's service. These lengthy accounts contain more information about Hungary's 13th-century history than the chronicles.

The Golden Bull also prohibited the employment of Muslims and Jews in royal administration. This ban was confirmed when Andrew II, urged by the prelates, issued the Golden Bull's new variant in 1231, which authorized the archbishop of Esztergom to excommunicate him in case of his departure from its provisions. For non-Christians who continued to be employed in the royal household, Archbishop Robert of Esztergom placed the kingdom under interdict in 1232. Andrew II was forced to take an oath, which included his promise to respect the privileged position of clergymen and to dismiss all his Jewish and Muslim officials. A growing intolerance against non-Catholics is also demonstrated by the transfer of the Orthodox monastery of Visegrád to the Benedictines in 1221.

Mongol invasion (1241–1242)

Batu Khan, who was the commander of the Mongol armies invading Eastern Europe, demanded Béla IV's surrender without a fight in 1240. The king refused, and ordered his barons to assemble with their retinue in his camp at Pest. Here, a riot broke out against the Cumans and the mob massacred the Cuman leader, Kuthen. The Cumans soon departed and pillaged the central parts of the kingdom. The main Mongol army arrived through the northeastern passes of the Carpathian Mountains in March 1241. Royal troops met the enemy forces at the river Sajó, where the Mongols won a decisive victory in the battle of Mohi on 11 April 1241. From the battlefield, Béla IV fled first to Austria, where Duke Frederick II held him for ransom. Thereafter, the king and his family found refuge in Klis Fortress in Dalmatia. The Mongols first occupied and thoroughly plundered the territories east of the river Danube. An eyewitness account of the devastation of eastern Hungary was compiled by Master Roger, archdeacon of the cathedral chapter at Várad. The Mongols crossed the Danube when it was frozen in early 1242. On learning of their acts, Hermann, abbot of the Austrian Niederaltaich Abbey recorded that "the Kingdom of Hungary, which had existed for 350 years, was destroyed".

The kingdom continued to exist. Batu Khan withdrew his entire army when he was informed of the death of the Great Khan Ögödei in March 1242. Nevertheless, the invasion and the famine that followed it had catastrophic demographic consequences. At least 15 percent of the population died or disappeared. Transcontinental trading routes disintegrated, causing the decline of Bács (Bač, Serbia), Ungvár (Uzhhorod, Ukraine) and other traditional centers of commerce. Local Muslim communities vanished, indicating they had suffered especially heavy losses during the invasion. Small villages also disappeared, but archaeological data indicate that the total destruction of settlements was less often than it used to be assumed. The abandonment of most villages, well-documented from the second half of the 13th century, was the consequence of a decades-long integration process with peasants moving from the small villages to larger settlements.

Last Árpáds (1242–1301)

After the Mongol withdrawal, Béla IV abandoned his policy of recovering former crown lands. Instead, he granted large estates to his supporters, and urged them to construct stone-and-mortar castles. He initiated a new wave of colonization that resulted in the arrival of a number of Germans, Moravians, Poles, and Romanians. The king re-invited the Cumans and settled them in the plains along the Danube and the Tisza. A group of Alans, the ancestors of the Jassic people, seems to have settled in the kingdom around the same time.

New villages appeared, consisting of timber houses built side by side in equal parcels of land. For instance, the scarcely-inhabited forests of the Western Carpathians (in present-day Slovakia) developed a network of settlements under Béla IV. Huts disappeared, and new rural houses consisting of a living room, a kitchen and a pantry were built. The most advanced agricultural techniques, including asymmetric heavy ploughs, also spread throughout the kingdom. Internal migration was likewise instrumental in the development of the new domains emerging in former royal lands. The new landholders granted personal freedom and more favorable financial conditions to those who arrived in their estates, which also enabled the peasants who decided not to move to improve their position. Béla IV granted privileges to more than a dozen towns, including Nagyszombat (Trnava, Slovakia) and Pest. A 1264 list of luxury goods—oriental velvet, silk, jewels, gems, and Flemish broadcloth—sold to Béla IV's heir Stephen indicates that imported goods were primarily paid for using silver and salt. Likewise, a list of merchandise brought to Ghent shows that Hungary exported wax and unminted gold and silver.

Although threatening letters sent to Béla IV by the khans of the Golden Horde proved that the danger of a new Mongol invasion still existed, he adopted an expansionist foreign policy. Frederick II of Austria died fighting against Hungarian troops in 1246, and Béla IV's son-in-law, Rostislav Mikhailovich, annexed large territories along the kingdom's southern frontiers. Conflicts between the elderly monarch and his heir caused a civil war in the 1260s.

Béla IV and his son jointly confirmed the liberties of the royal servants and started referring to them as noblemen in 1267. By that time, "true noblemen" were legally differentiated from other landholders. They held their estates free from any obligation, but everybody else (even the ecclesiastic nobles, Romanian knezes, and other "conditional nobles") owed services to their lords in exchange for the lands they held. In a growing number of counties, local nobility acquired the right to elect four "judges of the nobles" to represent them in official procedures (or two, in Transylvania and Slavonia). The idea of equating the Hungarian "nation" with the community of noblemen also emerged in this period. It was first expressed in Simon of Kéza's Gesta Hungarorum, a chronicle written in the 1280s.

Aftermath

With Andrew III's death, the male line of the House of Árpád became extinct, and a period of anarchy began. Charles Robert was crowned king with a provisional crown, but most lords and bishops refused to yield to him because they regarded him as a symbol of the Holy See's attempts to control Hungary. They elected as king the twelve-year-old Wenceslaus of Bohemia, who was descended from Béla IV of Hungary in the female line. The young king could not consolidate his position because many lords, especially those who held domains in the southern region of the kingdom, continued to support Charles Robert. Wenceslaus left Hungary for Bohemia in mid-1304. After he inherited Bohemia in 1305, he abandoned his claim to Hungary in favor of Otto III, Duke of Bavaria.

Otto, who was a grandson of Béla IV of Hungary, was crowned king, but only the Kőszegis and the Transylvanian Saxons regarded him as the lawful monarch. He was captured in Transylvania by Ladislaus Kán, who forced him to leave Hungary. The majority of the lords and prelates elected Charles Robert king at a Diet on 10 October 1307. He was crowned king with the Holy Crown of Hungary in Székesfehérvár by the Archbishop of Esztergom, as required by customary law, on 27 August 1310. During the next decade, he launched a series of military campaigns against the oligarchs to restore royal authority. Charles Robert reunited the kingdom after the death of the most powerful lord, Matthew Csák, which enabled him to conquer Csák's large province in the northeast of Hungary in 1321.