1038-1301 - Stephen's Successors
Stephen died in 1038, and was canonized in 1083. A troubled forty years (1038-1077) divides the age of St Stephen from the age of St Ladislaus. Of the six kings who reigned in Hungary during that period three died violent deaths, and the other three were fighting incessantly against foreign and omestic foes. In 1046, and again in 1061, two dangerous pagan risings shook the very foundations of the infant church and state; the western provinces were in constant danger from the attacks of the acquisitive emperors, and from the south and southast two separate hordes of fierce barbarians (the Fetehenegs in 1067-1068, and the Rumanians in 1071-107:) burst over the land. It was the general opinion abroad that the Magyars would rather relapse into heathendom, or become the vassals of the Holy Roman Empire, and this opinion was reflected in the increasingly hostile attitude of the Popes towards the Arpad kings. The political independence of Hungary was ultimately secured by he outbreak of the quarrel about investiture (1076), when Geza I. (1074-1077) shrewdly applied to Pope Gregory VII for assistance, and submitted to accept his kingdom from him as a fief of the Holy See.
Despite pagan revolts and a series of succession struggles after his death, Hungary grew stronger and expanded. Transylvania was conquered and colonized with Magyars, Szekels (a tribe related to the Magyars), and German Saxons in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In 1090 Laszlo I (1077-95) occupied Slavonia, and in 1103 Kalman I (1095-1116) assumed the title of king of Croatia. Croatia was never assimilated into Hungary; rather, it became an associate kingdom administered by a ban, or civil governor.
The eleventh and twelfth centuries were relatively peaceful, and Hungary slowly developed a feudal economy. Crop production gradually supplemented stock breeding, but until the twelfth century planting methods remained crude because tillers farmed each plot until it was exhausted, then moved on to fresh land. Gold, silver, and salt mining boosted the king's revenues. Despite the minting of coins, cattle remained the principal medium of exchange. Towns began developing when an improvement in agricultural methods and the clearing of additional land produced enough surplus to support a class of full-time craftsmen. By the reign of Bela III (1173-96), Hungary was one of the leading powers in southeastern Europe, and in the thirteenth century Hungary's nobles were trading gold, silver, copper, and iron with western Europe for luxury goods.
The immediate esult of the papal alliance was to enable Hungary, under both Ladislaus and his capable successor Coloman [Kalinin] (1095-1116), to hold her own against all her enemies, and extend her dominion abroad by conquering Croatia and a portion of the Dalmatian coast. As an incipient great power, she was beginning to feel the need of a seaboard. In the internal administration both Ladislaus I. and Coloman proved themselves worthy followers of St Stephen. Ladislaus planted large Petcheneg colonies in Transylvania and the trans-Dravian provinces, and established military cordons along the constantly threatened south-eastern boundary, the germs of the future banates [bansdgok - equivalent to the margrave, or count of the marches) vhich were to play such an important part in the national defence in the following century.
Law and order were enforced with the utmost rigor. In that rough age crimes of violence tredominated, and the king's justiciars regularly perambulated he land in search of offenders, and decimated every village which efused to surrender fugitive criminals. On the other hand, K>th the Jews and the "Ishmaelitcs" (Mahommedans) enjoyed complete civil and religious liberty in Hungary, where, indeed, they were too valuable to be persecuted. The Ishmaelites, the financial experts of the day, were the official mint-masters, treasurers and bankers. The clergy, the only other educated class, supplied the king with his lawyers, secretaries and ambassadors. The Magyar clergy was still a married clergy, and their connubial privileges were solemnly confirmed by the synod of Szaboles, presided over by the king, in 1092. So firmly rooted in the land vas this practice, that Coloman, much as he needed the assistance of the Holy See in his foreign policy, was only with the utmost difficulty induced, in 1106, to bring the Hungarian church into line with the rest of the Catholic world by enforcing clerical celibacy. Coloman was especially remarkable as an administrative reformer, and Hungary, during his reign, was said to have been he best-governed state in Europe. He regulated and simplified the whole system of taxation, encouraged agriculture by diferential duties in favor of the farmers, and promoted trade by systematic improvement of the ways of communication. The Magna via Colomanni Regis was in use for centuries after lis death.
Another important reform was the law permitting the free disposal of landed estate, which gave the holders an increased interest in their property, and an inducement to improve it. During the reign of Coloman, moreover, the number )f freemen was increased by the frequent manumission of serfs. The lot of the slaves was also somewhat ameliorated by the law forbidding their exportation.
Throughout the greater part of the I2th century the chief impediment in the way of the external development of the Hungarian monarchy was the Eastern Empire, which, under the first three princes of the Comnenian dynasty, dominated south-eastern Europe. During the earlier part of that period the Magyars competed on fairly equal terms with their imperial rivals for the possession of Dalmatia, Rascia (the original home of the Servians, situated between Bosnia, Dalmatia and Albania) and Rama or northern Bosnia (acquired by Hungary in 1135). But on the accession of Manuel Comnenus in 1143 the struggle became acute. As the grandson of St Ladislaus, Manuel had Hungarian blood in his veins; his court was the ready and constant refuge of the numerous Magyar malcontents, and he aimed not so much at the conquest as at the suzerainty of Hungary, by placing one of his Magyar kinsmen on the throne of St Stephen. He successfully supported the claims of no fewer than three pretenders to the Magyar throne, and finally made Bela III (1173-1196) king of Hungary, on condition that he left him, Manuel, a free hand in Dalmatia. The intervention of the Greek emperors had important consequences for Hungary. Politically it increased the power of the nobility at the expense of the crown, every competing pretender naturally endevoring to win adherents by distributing largesse in the shape of crown-lands.
Ecclesiastically it weakened the influence of the Catholic Church in Hungary, the Greek Orthodox Church, which permitted a married clergy and did not impose the detested tithe (the principal cause of nearly every pagan revolt) attracting thousands of adherents even among the higher clergy. At one time, indeed, a Magyar archbishop and four or five bishops openly joined the Orthodox communion and willingly crowned Manuel's nominees despite the anathemas of their Catholic brethren.
The Eastern Empire ceased to be formidable on the death of Manuel (1080), and Hungary was free once more to pursue a policy of aggrandizement. In Dalmatia the Venetians were too strong for her; but she helped materially to break up the Byzantine rule in the Balkan peninsula by assisting Stephen Nemanya to establish an independent Servian kingdom, originally under nominal Hungarian suzerainty. Bela endeavored to strengthen his own monarchy by introducing the hereditary principle, crowning his infant son Emerich, as his successor during his own lifetime, a practice followed by most of the later Arpads; he also held a brilliant court on the Byzantine model, and replenished the treasury by his wise economies.
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