BETWEEN THE EMPEROR AND THE POPE
Coloman and the Church Reform
During King Coloman's reign, around 1104 and 1112, there were two (clearly ecclesiastical) synods held at Esztergom. With Archbishop Lőrinc as chairman, and his ten bishops participating, the synod focused on making church disciplined stricter. It regulated the most important duties of priests, it banned pagan rituals for believers, protected ecclesiastical property against the encroachments of the prelate. It also took measures about church government and the celibacy of priests, the way of life, economic and social situation of canons, monks and village priests and also the order of services. He put the crime of bewitching, magic and adultery under the authority of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The second synod of Esztergom made celibacy stricter, and it ordered - for the first time - that marriages be performed in churches.
The first canons of the second synod at Esztergom declared crimes against the king as crime against religion, which should be punished by excommunication. The king's rights concerning church government were also uncurtailed then. Around 1113, in case of the foundation of the bishopric of Nyitra - started by King Ladislaus - Coloman acted without the approval of the Pope, like his predecessor in case of Zagreb. The king answered Pope Orban II's letter, in which he demanded obedience to the Holy See, in St Stephen's third legend. In this Bishop Hartvik approved King Coloman's right for governing the church in historical aspects - inbedded in the theory of sending a crown by the Pope. His theory (supporting the Sicilian ruler) guaranteed a special situation for the Hungarian king throughout the 12th century. The Pope could not send a legate to the country without his permission, and the Hungarian clergy could keep in touch with the Holy See only with the approval of the ruler.
Though in 1201 Pope Ince III gave permission to use the Hartvik legend as a reading in St Stephen's office only with the restriction that he took a part out of it - namely the one according to which St Stephen could take measures in church matters using "both of his rights" -, the Hungarian ruler's demands for being an apostolic king were still existing in the 13th century as well. In 1238, during King Béla IV's Bulgarian military campaign, the king asked the Pope to let him use these rights in the conquered territories: an apostolic cross should preceed him, and he wanted to establish the church organisation freely.
The century of the Monks
The most outstanding feature of the history of the church in 12th-century Hungary was the appearance of various monastic orders. The 11th century was the time of Benedictine supremacy. The basic structure of Hungarian monasticism was just in the making then: monasteries were founded privately, or by the king. After King St Stephen almost each Hungarian ruler founded his own monastery, which became his burial place later in most of the cases. Andrew I was buried in Tihany in 1055, Béla I in Szekszárd in 1061, Géza I in Garamszentbenedek in 1075 and Ladislaus I in Somogyvár in 1091. in the first half of the century secular dignitaries expressed their religious beliefs by giving donations to monasteries, but later they also founded monasteries to guarantee their salvation and a burial place of their own. Bailiff Otto from the Győr clan founded a monastery at Zselicszentjakab in 1061, Peter from the Aba clan in Százd, on his estate near the Tisza river, in 1067.
The Premontre canons settled down in Váradhegyfok during the reign of Stephen II, whose aim was to perform pastoring duties. The Cistercians, who reformed the Benedictine way of life strictly, and who played an important role in the spread of modern agriculture and Gothic culture, were invited to Cikador, near Bátaszék, by King Géza II in 1142. However, they settled down in a greater number only during the reign of King Béla III. The monasteries of Egres, Zirc, Szentgotthárd, Pilis and Pásztó were founded then, and they became the parent monasteries of later abbacies. The special characteristic feature of the spread of the new orders in Hungary was that the majority of Cistercian houses were transferred to Hungary directly from the most significant French parent-houses, eliminating the German mediating monasteries (for example, Cikador was transferred from Heiligenkreuz). The other local characteristic feature was that the spread of orders was in inverse ratio compared to that of Western Europe: the Cistercians, who were very popular in the west, had only about 20 monasteries in Hungary, while the Premontrians established about 40 parent-houses. While the Cistercians were not very keen on taking up the advowson of secular estate owners, and they belonged under the patronage of the king almost without exception, the Premontrians accepted dependence on secular persons and their advowees were buried in their churches unimpededly, in contrast with the Cistercians.
The growth of the prestige of the country in the 12th century showed that Christianity became stronger in Hungary. It revealed itself in the fact that both the Pope and the German emperor claimed the support of the Hungarian ruler. After the double pope-election of 1159 King Géza II first took sides with Frederic Barbarossa, but after 1160 - under the influence of the Archbishop of Esztergom - he consistently supported Pope Alexander III, like his successors, till his triumph in 1177. The debate between Archbishop Lucas and King Béla III was the starting point of the competition between the two archbishoprics: Esztergom and Kalocsa. In the first decades of the 13th century Esztergom finally became the leading archbishopric of the country. Its position is first mentioned in sources in 1239. Lucas might have had a role in founding the St Thomas prepostery in Esztergom, as it was named after his one-time school-mate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket.
In Hungary the orders of knighthood were represented by the Johannites of Esztergom since 1147, and by the knights of the church of Vrána since 1169. They played an important role in sick-nursing and fighting. Religious ideas gained strength, which was shown by the fact that Hungary joined the fights for the liberation of the Holy Land through the crusades. In 1217 King Andrew II lead the fifth crusade, and both orders took part in it, as in the battle of Muhi in 1241 against the Tartars. By the end of the 13th century the number of Johannite houses was around 30. The members of the German order of knighthood spent the shortest time in Hungary. King Andrew II entrusted the Barcaság to them in 1211, but because of their strive for independence the Hungarian ruler was forced to chase them away from the country in 1225. The Johannites of Esztergom was an order founded in Hungary, but besides their main monastery they had houses in the Holy Land as well (in Jerusalem and Akkon).
The Organisation of the Church
The turn of the 12-13 centuries brought the growth of the church. The ruler established two preposteries around 1186 and in 1198, in Szeben and Szepes, for the Saxons who settled down in Transylvania. The bishopric of Milko was organised by the Dominicans in 1228, who converted the Cumans, while the bishopric of Syrmia, approved in 1229, was founded privately by Ugrin Csák, the Archbishop of Kalocsa with the aim that it should stop heresy coming from the Balcans. When the Dalmatian region and the southern ends were permanently owned by Hungary, the Bosnian bishopric - with the residence of Diakóvár - and church district and bishoprics in the Dalmatian Spalato also joined the Hungarian church. By the 13th century the network of parishes was established in the country.
IN THE SHADOW OF THE PAPACY
New Monastic Orders
As an answer to poverty at the urban settlements of the 13th century an new monastic movement was born: the begging orders. In 1221 Paulus Hungarus, the dean of the university of Bologne, participated in the ceremony at the foundation of the Dominican order. He became the leader of the first group sent to Hungary. The number of their houses, after Győr and Székesfehérvár, reached ten by the time of the Tartar Invasion. The first house of the Franciscans was founded by a German province in Eger; by 1233 their houses in Hungary were organised in separate garrisons, by 1238 in separate order-provinces. The third order, which played an important role in Hungarian history, was founded in Hungary. It was the Paulian order. Bartholomew, Bishop of Pécs, collected the hermits of Jakab-hill into a monastery in 1225. In 1250 he founded a monastery near the village of Kesztőc, in the honour of the Holy Cross, for the hermits living in the Pilis mountains. In 1256 he named them the order of Hermit St Paul. To the urging of St Thomas Aquinas, Pope Alexander IV acknowledged the new order. Under the influence of begging orders and economic changes the monastic orders were pushed back, the great age of the Benedictine and the Cistercian orders came to an end around 1240.
Legates in Hungary
During the 13th century papacy, which gained strength in the investiture fights, had a great influence throughout Europe. At Pope Ince III's repeated invitation, in 1217 political interests forced King Andrew II to complete his fathers promise for a crusade. In the middle of the 1220's the Pope worked out the theory of inalienation of royal properties - in opposition to the wasteful estate policy of the Hungarian ruler. This served as a base for King Béla's policy to take back royal estates. During the century two papal legates visited the country. In 1233 Jacob of Pecorar, Bishop of Palestrina, made a deal with the ruler in the forest of Bereg, and made him promise to keep the basic privileges promised in 1222 (ecclesiastical persons belonging to ecclesiastical courts and immunity from taxes), and he guaranteed the salt-monopoly of the church. Pope Nicholas III sent Philip, Bishop of Fermo, to Hungary to restore the king's reputation and solve the problem of the pagan Cumans. After settling the Cuman question legate Philip called a synod together in 1279 in Buda, the aim of which was to guarantee the liberty of the Catholic belief and church and improve the way of life and morals of both ecclesiastic and secular people.
Church and Society in the Age of the Árpád Dynasty
The structure of Hungarian church orders became stabilised during the 13th century. It was headed by the board of prelates, who had the same rights as the secular barons, and they formed the majority of the royal council. Under them stood the chapters with their preposts and the abbots of monasteries. The middle layer consisted of the canons, who could afford to study at foreign schools and quite often they were members of the royal chapel. Parish priests and pastors, benefice-priests - who substituted canons in the choir - and choir priests, who all had very low income, belonged to the lower layer of the church. The prelates and prestigious monasteries had huge uninheritable estates. Church estates were scattered estates, the work organisation of which - with servants grouped according to their services - guaranteed a dynamic development in the early period. However, in the 13th century secular estates took over the leading role, and the scattered ecclesiastical estates were on the decline.
Meanwhile the role of priests became fixed in public life, too. The synodic courts of the Coloman age had already shown that secular society claimed the church taking up public roles. Bishopric residences, which played important roles at red-hot iron trials, gradually began to perform written duties in the countryside. The first institutes of it were the great residential chapters and royal preposteries (Veszprém, Székesfehérvár, Győr, Esztergom and Buda). They were followed by monastic convents, the Benedictine and the Premontrian, form the 40's of the century.
Theoretically at the end of the 12th century the question of appointing prelates was solved, but in fact the ruler had all the means to help his candidate to the bishopric chair. Besides centralising church disciplinary matters into the papal High Court of Justice, this was still a difficulty in the relation between the Holy See and Hungary. Since Béla IV did not get any serious help from the papacy in the course of the Tartar Invasion, he reproached the head of the Church. The vital force of Hungarian Christianity is shown by its missionary activities. The Dominicans undertook the search for the Eastern Hungarians and the conversion of the Havasalföld Cumans. The King took the responsibility for organising and supporting converting work in the Balcans, and creating the structure of the church. Till the age of Ladislaus IV the pagan Cumans provided the possibility for inner missions.
The reputation of the Archbishop of Esztergom seemed strong already in the 1230's, and in the second Golden Bull, in 1231 he received the right for resistance. From the middle of the century he tried to provide priests for the church at synods. The archbishop was the first person, who had an important role in secular government as a prelate - he became the perpetual bailiff of castle district Esztergom. At the end of the century the personality of archbishop Lodomer shows most clearly the place and role of the Hungarian church in society. The Archbishop of Esztergom took the lead of the ecclesiastical movement, which undertook the reorganisation of Hungarian society - weakened in the age of Ladislaus IV - following the most modern European models, that is transferring early feudalism to Hungary. The death of Lodomer in 1298 was symbolical: it closes the first period of the history of the Hungarian church.
