997-1038 - Stephen
Stephen I was one of the great constructive statesmen of history. His long and strenuous reign (997-1038) resulted in the firm establishment of the Hungarian church and the Hungarian state. The great work may be said to have begun in Rome, when Pope Silvester II. recognized Magyar nationality by endowing the young Magyar prince with a kingly crown. Less fortunate than Charlemagne, Stephen had to depend entirely upon foreigners - men like the Saxon Asztrik1 (c. 976-1010), the first Hungarian primate; the Lombard St Gellert (c. 977-1046); the Bosomanns, a German family, better known under the Magyarized form of their name Pazmany, and many others who came to Hungary in the suite of his enlightened consort Gisela of Bavaria.
By these men Hungary was divided into dioceses, with a metropolitan see at Esztcrgom (Gran), a city originally founded by Geza, but richly embellished by Stephen, whose Italian architects built for him there the first Hungarian cathedral dedicated to St Adalbert. Towns, most of them also the sees of bishops, now sprang up everywhere, including Szekesfehervar (Stuhlwcissenburg), Veszprem, Pecs (Fimfkirchen) and Gybr (Raab). Esztergom, Stephen's favourite residence, was the capital, and continued to be so for the next two centuries. But the Benedictines, whose settlement in Hungary dates from the establishment of their monastery at Pannonhalma (c. 1001) were the chief pioneers. Every monastery erected in the Magyar wildernesses was not only a center of religion, but a focus of civilization. The monks cleared the forests, cultivated the recovered land, and built villages for the colonists who flocked to them, teaching the people western methods of agriculture and western arts and handicrafts. But conversion, after all, was the chief aim of these devoted missionaries, and when some Venetian priests had invented a Latin alphabet for the Magyar language, a great step had been taken towards its accomplishment.
The monks were soon followed by foreign husbandmen, artificers and handicraftsmen, who were encouraged to come to Hungary by reports of the abundance of good land there and the promise of privileges. This immigration was also stimulated by the terrible condition of western Europe between 987 and 1060, when it was visited by an endless succession of bad harvests and epidemics. Hungary, now better known to Europe, came to be regarded as a Promised Land, and, by the end of Stephen's reign, Catholics of all nationalities, Greeks, Pagans, Jews and Mahommcdans were living securely together within her borders. For, inexorable as Stephen ever was towards fanatical pagans, renegades and rebels, he was too good a statesman to inquire too closely into the private religious opinions of useful and quiet citizens.
In endeavoring, with the aid of the church, to establish his kingship on the Western model, Stephen had the immense advantage of building on unencumbered ground, the greater part of the soil of the country being at his absolute disposal. His authority, too, was absolute, being tempered only by the shadowy right of the Magyar nation to meet in general assembly; and this authority he was careful not to compromise by any slavish imitation of that feudal polity by which in the West the royal power was becoming obscured. Although he broke off the Magyar tribal system, encouraged the private ownership of land, and even made grants of land on condition of military service - in order to secure an armed force independent of the national levy - he based his new principle of government, not on feudalism, but on the organization of the Frankish empire, which he adapted to suit the peculiar exigencies of his realm.
Of the institutions thus borrowed and adapted the most notable was the famous county system which later played so conspicuous a part in Hungarian national life. Central and western Hungary (the south and north-cast still being desolate) were divided into forty-six counties (vdrmegyek, Lat. comitates). At the head of each county was placed a count, or lord-lieutenant (Foispan, Lat. comes). The title of count (gref) was assumed later (15th century> by those nobles who had succeeded, in spite of the Golden Bull, in making xheir authority over whole counties independent and hereditary. They nominated his subordinate officials: the castellan (varnagy), chief captain (hadnagy) and "hundredor" (szdxados, Lat. centurio). The lord-lieutenant was nominated by the king, whom he was bound to follow to battle at the first summons. Two-thirds of the revenue of the county went into the royal treasury, the remaining third the lord-lieutenant retained for administrative purposes. In the county system were included all the inhabitants of the country save two classes: the still numerous pagan clans, and those nobles who were attached to the king's person, from whom he selected his chief officers of state and the members of his council, of which we now hear for the first time.
It is significant for the whole future of Hungary that no effort was or could be made by Stephen to weld the heterogeneous races under his crown into a united nation. The body politic consisted, after as before, of the king and the whole mass of Magyar freemen or nobles, descendants of Arpad's warriors, theoretically equal in spite of growing inequalities of wealth and power, who constituted the populus; privileges were granted by the king to foreign immigrants in the cities, and the rights of nobility were granted to non-Magyars for special services; but, in general, the non-Magyars were ruled by the royal governors as subject races, forming-in contradistinction to the "nobles" - the mass of the peasants, the misera contribuens plebs upon whom until 1848 nearly the whole burden of taxation fell. The right, not often exercised, of the Magyar nobles to meet in general assembly and the elective character of the crown Stephen also did not venture to touch. On the other hand, his example in manumitting most of his slaves, together with the precepts of the church, practically put an end to slavery in the course of the 13th century, the slaves becoming for the most part serfs, who differed from the free peasants only in the fact that they were attached to the soil (adscripti glebae).
At this time all the conditions of life in Hungary were simple and primitive. The court itself was perambulatory. In summer ic king dispensed justice in the open air, under a large tree, only in the short winter months did he dwell in the house built for him at Esztergom by his Italian architects. The most valuable part of his property still consisted of flocks and herds, the products of the labours of his serfs, a large proportion of horn were bee-keepers, hunters and fishers employed in and round the interminable virgin-forests of the rough-hewn young monarchy.
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