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Hungary Christianization of the Magyars
The bonds linking the seven Magyar tribes grew frail
soon
after the migration into the Carpathian Basin. At that
time,
Europe was weak and disunited, and for more than half a
century
Magyar bands raided Bavaria, Moravia, Italy,
Constantinople, and
lands as far away as the Pyrenees. Sometimes fighting as
mercenaries and sometimes lured by spoils alone, the
Magyar bands
looted towns and took captives for labor, ransom, or sale
on the
slave market. The Byzantine emperor and European princes
paid the
Magyars annual tribute. In 955, however, German and Czech
armies
under the Holy Roman Empire's King Otto I destroyed a
Magyar
force near Augsburg. The defeat effectively ended Magyar
raids on
the West, and in 970 the Byzantines halted Magyar
incursions
toward the East.
Fearing a war of extermination, Chieftain Geza
(972-97),
Árpad's great-grandson, assured Otto II that the Magyars
had
ceased their raids and asked him to send missionaries.
Otto
complied, and in 975 Geza and a few of his kinsmen were
baptized
into the Roman Catholic Church. Geza consented to baptism
more
out of political necessity than conviction. He continued
to offer
sacrifices to the pagan gods and reportedly bragged that
he "was
rich enough for two gods." From this time, however,
missionaries
began the gradual process of converting and simultaneously
westernizing the Magyar tribes. Geza used German knights
and his
position as chief of the Magyars' largest clan to restore
strong
central authority over the other clans. Hungary's ties
with the
West were strengthened in 996 when Geza's son, Stephen,
who was
baptized as a child and educated by Saint Adalbert of
Prague,
married Gisela, a Bavarian princess and sister of Emperor
Henry
II.
Data as of September 1989
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