Born Vajk, Hungary's first king built a Christian kingdom
The boy named Vajk, from a Turkic word for hero or prince, grew up to be Stephen, crowned Hungary's first king around the year 1000 with a crown sent by the pope. He crushed pagan rivals, unified the Carpathian Basin, and is still honoured every 20 August on Hungary's State Foundation Day.
Nobody wrote down when Stephen was born. Chronicles composed centuries later offer 967, 969 or 975, but his early biographies all describe him as still an adolescent in 997, which favours the latest date, and one legend places his birth at Esztergom, the royal seat his father chose around 972. That father, Grand Prince Géza, spread Christianity by force while continuing to worship pagan gods, and contemporaries remembered him as cruel. Stephen's mother, Sarolt, came from a family of chieftains. The date of his own baptism is unknown; one legend credits Bishop Adalbert of Prague, but Adalbert's own biography says nothing about it.
When Géza died in 997, Stephen's relative Koppány, backed by many pagan warriors, challenged his succession. Stephen won with help from foreign knights such as Vecelin, Hont and Pázmány alongside native lords. He was crowned on Christmas Day 1000 or New Year's Day 1001. Campaigns against semi-independent chieftains, among them his uncle Gyula the Younger and the Black Hungarians, brought the whole Carpathian Basin under his rule, and in 1030 he forced the invading army of Emperor Conrad II to retreat.
He married Gisela of Bavaria, from the imperial Ottonian dynasty, and was the first in his family to be a devout Christian. He set up six bishoprics, three Benedictine monasteries and no fewer than one archbishopric, letting the Hungarian Church grow independently of the empire's archbishops, and he punished those who ignored Christian customs harshly. Counties centred on fortresses and run by royal officials formed the backbone of his administration. Long peace made Hungary a favoured route for pilgrims and merchants travelling between Western Europe, Constantinople and the Holy Land.
Stephen outlived all his children and died on 15 August 1038, aged 62 or 63, and was buried in his new basilica at Székesfehérvár. Decades of civil war followed. In 1083 Pope Gregory VII made him a saint, along with Bishop Gerard of Csanád and Stephen's son Emeric.
Source: Stephen I of Hungary
