Stephen I and the Christian Kingdom of Hungary

The older Life of King Stephen, written in the later eleventh century, tells that Adalbert, bishop of the Bohemians, came to the prince Géza, that the people were preached to and baptized and churches were set up in many places, and that Adalbert baptized the prince’s son, who was given the name Stephen (Greater Legend of Saint Stephen 4–5, p. 231). The Life puts Géza’s death in 997. The pagan people and their chiefs, it goes on, refused the yoke of the Christian faith and rose against the young ruler. He defeated them under the banners of Saint Martin and Saint George, killed their leaders, and compelled the rest, once baptized, to worship one God (Greater Legend of Saint Stephen 5–6, p. 232).

Stephen sent word abroad for clergy, and priests, abbots and monks came. He divided the land into ten bishoprics and made the church of Esztergom their metropolis, with the consent and subscription of the Roman see, the Life says; he founded a monastery of Saint Martin on the Holy Mount (Greater Legend of Saint Stephen 7–8, pp. 232–233).

On the crown the sources differ. Thietmar of Merseburg, a contemporary in Saxony, has one sentence: by the favour and urging of the emperor, Otto III, the Hungarian ruler, whom he calls Waic, set up bishoprics in his realm and received crown and blessing (Thietmar, Chronicle 4.59, p. 198). The older Life says that in the fifth year after his father’s death letters of apostolic blessing were brought, and Stephen was acclaimed king, anointed and crowned (Greater Legend of Saint Stephen 9, pp. 233–234). Hartvic, a bishop who rewrote that Life for King Coloman about a century after the event (Hartvic, Life of King Stephen heading, prologue and editor’s preface, p. 223), tells much more. Stephen sent Bishop Ascric to Rome to ask for a blessing, for the confirmation of Esztergom as metropolis and for a crown. The pope had a crown ready for the duke of the Poles; warned in a vision by a messenger of the Lord, he gave it to the Hungarian envoy, with a cross to be carried before the king, and left the ordering of the churches to him. Hartvic does not name the pope (Hartvic, Life of King Stephen addition to chapter 9, pp. 233–234). Thietmar says that Gerbert, who took the name Sylvester, became pope by the emperor’s favour and sat until the time of King Henry; his editor dates this from 999 to 1003 (Thietmar, Chronicle 6.100, p. 392).

The laws issued in Stephen’s name show the new order at village level. Ten villages are to build a church and endow it; the king provides vestments and altar cloths, the bishop a priest and books (Laws of King Stephen 2.1, p. 321). Whoever works on Sunday loses his ox or his tools, everyone but those who mind the fires must go to church, and eating meat on Fridays or in the Ember fasts is punished by a week’s fasting in confinement (Laws of King Stephen 1.8–11, pp. 313–314). A book of advice to his son, written in his name, sets the keeping of the Catholic faith first among a king’s duties (Stephen I, Admonitions table of chapters and chapter 1, p. 301) and tells him to welcome foreigners, since a kingdom of one language and one custom is weak (Stephen I, Admonitions 6, pp. 305–306).

Stephen died in 1038 (Annals of Pressburg, years 998, 1000 and 1038, p. 571). One manuscript heads Hartvic’s work the Life of Saint Stephen, king of the Hungarians “and their apostle” (Hartvic, Life of King Stephen heading, prologue and editor’s preface, p. 223).