During the next half century, the Magyars were chiefly known in Europe for the forays they made across the continent, either as mercenaries in the service of warring princes or in search of booty for themselves—treasure or slaves for domestic use or sale. Terrifying to others, their mode of life was not always profitable. Indeed, their raiding forces suffered a number of severe reverses, culminating in a disastrous defeat at the hands of the German king Otto I in 955 at the Battle of Lechfeld, outside Augsburg (in present-day Germany). By that time the wild blood of the first invaders was thinning out, and new influences, in particular Christianity, had begun to circulate. Both the Eastern and Western churches strove to draw the peoples of east-central Europe into their orbits. The Magyars had established pacific, almost friendly relations with Bavaria. The decisive step was taken by Árpád’s great-grandson Géza, who succeeded to the hereditary office of fejedelem (duke) sometime before 972 and reestablished its authority over the tribal chiefs. In 973 he sent an embassy to the Holy Roman emperor Otto II at Quedlinburg (Germany), and in 974 he and his family were received into the Western church. In 995 his son, Stephen (István), married Gisella, a Bavarian princess.

Stephen I (reigned 997–1038) carried on his father’s work. With the help of heavily armed Bavarian knights, he crushed his rivals for the ducal office. Applying to Pope Sylvester II, Stephen received the insignia of royalty (including the still existent “Holy Crown of Hungary”) from the papacy and, according to tradition, was crowned king on Christmas Day, 1000. The event was of immeasurable importance, for not only did Hungary enter the spiritual community of the Western world but it did so without having to recognize the political suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire. This was possible because Sylvester, who extended papal protection to Hungary, held great sway with the emperor, Otto III, who had once been his pupil. Stephen then effected the conversion of his people to Christianity, establishing a network of 10 archiepiscopal and episcopal sees, which he reinforced with lavishly endowed monastic foundations.

Stephen crushed the surviving disputants of his authority—notably the Kavars—and, furthering his father’s work, organized his state on a system that was to remain for many centuries the basis of Hungary’s political and social structure. The tribes, as units, disappeared, but the fundamental social stratification was not altered. The descendants in the male line of the old conquerors and elements later equated with them remained a privileged class, answerable in judgment only to the king or his representative and entitled to appear in general assemblage. Their lands—which at this time, since the economy was mainly pastoral, were held by clans or subclans in semicommunal ownership—were inalienable, except for proved delinquency, and free of any obligation. The only duty required by the state of members of this class was that of military service on call. They were allowed to retain their slaves, although Stephen freed his own. All land not held by this class—then more than half the whole—belonged to the crown, which could indeed donate it at will. The nonservile inhabitants of these lands—e.g., descendants of the pre-Magyar population (among them the Late Avars/Early Magyars), manumitted slaves, and invited colonists—were subjects of the crown or of the local landholder.

The whole of this land was divided into counties (megyék), each under a royal official called an ispán (comes)—later főispán (supremus comes). This official represented the king’s authority, administered its unfree population, and collected the taxes that formed the national revenue. Each ispán maintained at his fortified headquarters (castrum or vár) an armed force of freemen. In Stephen’s day there were between 40 and 50 such counties.

The early kings

Once Stephen (canonized as St. Stephen in 1083) established his rule, his authority was rarely questioned. He fought few foreign wars and made his long reign a period of peaceful consolidation. But his death in 1038 was followed by many years of discord. His only son, Emeric (Imre), had predeceased him, and the nation rebelled against his designated successor, Peter (the son of Stephen’s sister and the doge of Venice), who was expelled in 1041. Peter returned in 1044 with the help of Emperor Henry III. Samuel Aba, the “national” king, who had taken Peter’s place, was murdered; however, Peter himself was killed in a pagan rebellion in 1046. He was followed on the throne by Andrew (Endre) I, of a collateral branch of the house of Árpád, who was killed in 1060 while fleeing from a battle lost to his brother, Béla I. After Béla’s death there was a further conflict between his sons, Géza and Ladislas (László), and Andrew’s son, Salamon.

Peace returned only when, after the short rule of Géza I (1074–77), the throne passed to Ladislas I, who occupied it until 1095. Even then the curse of dynastic jealousy proved to have been exorcised only temporarily. Ladislas’s successor, Coloman (Kálmán; 1095–1116), who was the elder son of Géza I, had his own brother, Álmos, and Álmos’s infant son, Béla, blinded to secure the throne for his own son Stephen II (1116–31). Béla II (1131–41), the blinded boy, whom his father’s friends had brought up in secrecy, and Béla’s eldest son, Géza II (1141–62), ruled thereafter unchallenged, but the succession of Géza’s son, Stephen III (1162–72), was disputed by two of his uncles, Ladislas II (1162–63) and Stephen IV (1163–65). Happily, the death of Stephen IV exhausted the supply of uncles, and Stephen III’s brother, Béla III (1173–96), had no domestic rivals to the throne. However, the short reign of Béla’s elder son, Emeric (1196–1204), was spent largely in disputes with his younger brother, Andrew II, who on Emeric’s death expelled his infant son, Ladislas III (who died the next year), before beginning his own long reign (1205–35).