Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1988. július-december (42. évfolyam, 27-48. szám)
1988-09-29 / 36. szám
Thursday, Sep. 29. 1988 AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO 11 flmEBiifln HuncflRmns The Founder of the State \ King Stephen /, the founder of the Hungarian state, died 950 years ago, on August 15, 1038 The trilx s which made up the body of Hungarians in the V,h ccnturv were nomadic people who were also familiar with land cultivation, living on the steppes of today’s southern Russia. As was general for the nomadic people, various ethnic groups formed the confederacy of tribes which held them together organizationally. The leading tribe was the megver'"! The nc nadic people living in tents on the steppes in clans, were held together by a unified political organization, which if it lasted for a longer period, gradually created the awareness of the common language- religion and origin. Certain parts of the tribes frequently broke away, and lived on in other loose communal federations of peoples. This is how the life style and customs of the peoples of the steppe mingled in an ethnically relatively free manner to form a very similar group. And they also included the Hungarians. The Finno-Ugric word—originally “megyer" — means: " man", as it did in the language of many other peoples. Under the pressure of the steppe migrations, around 895, the Hungarians crossed the Carpathian passes. At that time the area of the Carpathian Basin was, for the most part, uninhabited, a smaller part was under the ru.e of small vassals of the Frank empire. The population consisted of fragments of the Avar and other smaller ethnic groups, including Germans and other nomadic peoples with similar cultures who reached the Carpathian Basin ahead of the Hungarians, and of Slavs. The seven tribes of the Hungarians, together with the groups that broke away from the Khazar empire, gradually took over the Carpathian Basin. Today's historians estimate their number stood at 400,01 K)-5'X),000, and the various other groups of peoples living here is estimated to have been 100,000. The military escort of the tribes that settled here continued the way of life brought with them from the nomadic world, and launched marauding incursions into western Europe. After the fall of the Carolingian empire, it took almost a century foi the state organization to again strengthen on the nearby German land. After this, however, the much feared Hungarian mounted warriors suffered defeat after defeat. The Germans, who marched with heavy cavalry and had begun to develop the organizational structure of knightly w"rfare, scored their greatest victory over the Hungarians in 955 at A .u'burg. Thus the Hungarians were forced to give up their wanderings also by the western neighbours. The best manpower of the tribes, the young men, were increasingly compelled to cultivate land in the new country. In the first decades of the original settlement, the Hungarians continued their previous grazing activity on the one hand, but the Carpathian Basin made the nomadic way of life possible only in a limited way. and there was less scope for the alternation of pastures than on the steppes, among other reasons, because the farmers, who mainly grew cereals, created and owned permanent land areas, mainly in communal form. The new production order brought with it a new way of life. The tents were gradually replaced by semi-sunken houses with their timber structures above the surface and a permanent hearth, with changed eating and nutritional customs. The new, settled way of life created new organizational forms of coexistence. The small family became the basic work organizational framework amidst the conditions of land cultivation and animal husbandry carried out in one place, and greater emphasis w.*s placed in the division of labour on the daily producing activity of men wh'le. in the past, this was mainly the role of women. A firm village organization that determined the order of local production began slowly to take shape, and this ensured the “just” distribution of land and the permanency of individually acquired, or family possessed lands. In addition to ownership of the working tools, oxen, horses and women, attachment to the land and home as personal property also became constant. In the new homeland, the Hungarians did not settle in clans and tribes. The place of settlement also became the territorial unity of animal raising and land cultivation. Parallel to the decline of the tribal, then the clan organization—already in the 10th century—the new organizational form, individual land ownership and the proprietary community of villages strengthened on the everyday level of production. As compared to western Europe, these were very poor forms of settlements, with a very low population density. The population density of the puszta was 1-2 persons per square kilometre, as compared to triple this at the time of the original settlement and many times this within a century. The neighbours became permanent, new customs emerged in the organization of relations, spoken contacts became more frequent, and the language itself became more refined. At the end of the 10th century. Prince Géza recognized the unavoidable effect of the new way of life for the princely power. Beginning the creation of the Christian royal power that ensured permanency and order is linked to his name. There is hardly another ruler in Hungarian history as contradictory as he. When Géza, the great-grandson of the conquering chieftain Árpád, was born around 945, the raids were still in progress, and when he came to the princely throne around 971, the sounds of battle caused by the marauding Hungarians in south-east Europe were just beginning to quieten down. When he died, in 997, his tribe—and with respect to the consequences—all the Hungarians faced a turning point: to progress further on the road of state organization and the Christian religion, or to return to the order and pagan faith of the ancestral tribes. Géza’s father raised him to be a pagan prince, and turned his attention towards the east, and even brought a wife for him from the most eastern Hungarian tribe, from the family of the Transylvanian Gyula. When Géza took over power from his father at the age of 20, which meant final and leading rule of the Hungarian tribes and direct rule over his own tribe, he firmly changed the political line, and turned towards the West, asking for and receiving missionaries from there. While previously the Hungarians waged war in the foreign countries and returned to peace in the Carpathian Basin, the situation changed now. Géza followed a peace policy towards all his neighbours, but at home he began to crush the tribes and tribal leaders who opposed him. He used the moral support of the Christian church for his fight, although he himself never became a onvinced follower of the Christian faith. He felt rich enough to make sacrifices both to the Christian and the pagan gods. Western priests came to the country when he brought a wife for his son Stephen from the Bavarian princely family. Bavarian knights accompanied Gizella to the country. On the ruins of the ancient freedom, he consciously began to build a political formation, the state, which was based on hierarchical relations. As he was obliged for the most part to rely on foreign support and to a lesser extend on a domestic base, lie was friendly towards the aliens and Christians, but strict towards his compatriots. An episcopacy of the Latin rites was already operating, a Benedictine Monastery was erected in Trans- danubia, but the outcome of the fight was still not decided even in the Transdanubian areas of his own tribe, and far less in the eastern region where his new policy was barely felt. The bulk of the work remained to be carried out by his son, Stephen. King Stephen I, who was later made a Saint, was born a pagan, and was called Vajk. He received the name of Stephen, the first martyr, when he was baptized in his childhood. Fate did not bring the wreath of martyrdom to Vajk-Stephen, although he came close to this quite often in his life full of struggles. Young Stephen had to test his strength first on the death of his father. He was already married at the time, and enjoyed the support of the knights who accompanied his wife to Hungary. His older relation, Koppány, who opposed the “innovations” of Géza and was attached to paganism, rebelled against him and demanded the tribal leadership and princely power for himself. Stephen, who mainly received assistance from the Germans, scored a bloody victory which decided once and for all that this own tribe would progress on the toad begun by Géza and flung wide open by himself. At the turn of the millennium, the son of the tribal leader of semi-“barbarian”, semi-pagan Pannónia became a Christian king who, on the encouragement of the emperor, received a crown from the Pope of Rome. Stephen carried out immense activity in the first few decades of the new millennium, and steadily extended his rule with long and persistent work to other areas, together with the form of power and faith that he represented. He linked some persons to himself and to his family by marriage or the strength of the C'oss. The great work was completed by 1030: the former Hungarian tribal federation—after decades of tribal rivalry and isolation—was reborn on a higher level, in the form of the Hungarian State that covered the entire Carpathian Basin. A council (Senate) was set up alongside the King, counties and governorships created on the former tribal territories, and those who had only recently been free were forced into subjection. Alongside the episcopacy and the Benedictine monastery of Géza’s age, new ones were built and churches erected in the villages. The lay and ecclesiastic nobility demanded and collected services and taxes from their subjects. Hungary made rapid progress to come abreast of western Europe, which had a century-long advantage. More knights and priests came to the country, and it is hardly accidental that Stephen stressed the fragile and fallible nature of the country with a single language and a single morality. Granting of charters was launched in Hungary on the example of the West, legislation followed western examples, mintage copied western standards of coinage. The state of Stephen became an organic part of Christian Europe with Latin rites. The political far-sightedness and personal dedication of Stephen is indicated by the fact that the difficulties and hardships did not divert him from his chosen path. He defeated the brother of his own mother in the person of Gyula, in Transylvania, and fate robbed him of all his sons, even of Imre who had reached adulthood, and his own cousin raised a murderous weapon against him. The last years of his life were made difficult by the lack of a direct heir and by lasting illness. But he did not give up the fight. When he died on August 15, 1038, he left behind a strong state that had survived a German attack, a state which not even the struggles for the throne or the foreign political complications following his death could shake in its foundations. Ferenc Glatz-Gyula Kristo Give this page to a friend !
