Luscombe D., Riley-Smith J. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 4: c. 1024-c. 1198, Part 2
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Scandinavia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries 301
of the dispute over the imperial succession that broke out in 1197.Forawhile
the Danes were the dominant power in the western Baltic and in 1201 even
L
¨
ubeck, which had been founded by Henry the Lion in 1158, acknowledged
Knut as its protector and lord. A year later his brother, Valdemar II, recognized
Frederick II as emperor and was rewarded in 1214 by aGolden Bull granting
him all the territory that the Danes had won from the Elbe to the Oder; he
then adopted the title ‘king of the Danes and the Slavs’. Kings were not the
only beneficiaries of such territorial expansion. Much of the land and revenues
acquired had to be given to the church, to lay supporters or to local rulers who
submitted.
Military adventures could be rewarding, but their outcome was uncertain;
a more stable basis of royal power in the early middle ages was the yield of
royal estates. Royal landholding could be enlarged in several ways other than
conquest: by marriage settlements, as penalties to regain the king’s favour after
an offence or by confiscating the property of rebels. Kings could also claim
land for which there was no known heir.
Even in the early middle ages kings were not solely dependent on the land
they owned. There was a general obligation to contribute food and materials
needed by the royal household as it travelled from place to place. It was in
effect one of the earliest taxes and by the thirteenth century had become a reg-
ular demand regardless of the king’s itinerary, although extra demands might
be made when the king did visit. Another obligation was to contribute when
defence against invasion was needed. Until the twelfth century offensive oper-
ations against enemies abroad were undertaken by royal armies that included
the king’s own retainers, some of whom had their own retinues, together with
warriors supplied by allies and tributary rulers. When defence was needed all
able-bodied men could be called on to fight or help in some other way; food
and other materials had to be supplied and transported. In the twelfth century
cavalry began to play a decisive role in the struggles for power in Denmark
and Sweden where the landscape was suitable. Kings and magnates then re-
cruited professional warriors, mainly Germans, to fight on their behalf. By the
end of the century most people were no longer required to perform military
service but had to pay tax instead. Even in Norway, where the landscape made
cavalry warfare difficult if not impossible and royal armies were still based on
local levies of amateurs in the fourteenth century, tax was demanded when the
levies were not mustered.
During the eleventh and twelfth centuries tolls and rents from towns were in-
creasingly important sources of royal revenue. At the beginning of the eleventh
century there were only ten towns in Scandinavia, seven of them being very
recent foundations; 200 years later there were twenty-seven (fifteen Danish,
eight Norwegian, four Swedish). These included all the medieval towns of
Norway, and most of the Danish ones. In Sweden urbanization proceeded
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302 peter sawyer
more slowly. It was royal power that made these towns possible. Kings could
best provide the protection that traders and craftsmen needed and they could
grant the privileges that enabled the embryo urban communities to flourish.
In the eleventh century kings established episcopal sees in some of them, and
endowed churches in others. There were royal residences in some and most of
the mints in which coins were struck in the names of kings were located in
towns. The inhabitants of towns were, in effect, royal tenants and paid rent to
royal agents who also collected tolls and other dues.
This urban expansion reflected not only the growth of royal power, but also
economic changes. Scandinavia as a whole was largely self-sufficient; the needs
of one region could be met by the produce of another, distributed by itinerant
traders, in seasonal fairs or later in town markets. There was, however, some
demand for imports. Cloth from Flanders and England was of better quality
than that produced in Scandinavia, and in the twelfth century Norwegians
supplemented their inadequate supply of cereals by imports from England.
Many church furnishings, such as crosses, statues and altar panels, were also
obtained abroad. These imports were paid for by Scandinavian produce. Scan-
dinavia had, for centuries, exported furs. Some came from Scandinavia itself
but already by the eighth century the Svear were gathering large quantities as
tribute in Finland and in north Russia to sell to western European or Muslim
merchants. By the eleventh century most of the furs reaching western markets
came from Russia, but Scandinavians could no longer roam as freely there
as they had done earlier; the Russians themselves had by then gained more
effective control of their territory. Novgorod in particular made great efforts
to monopolize supplies from Karelia, the richest fur-producing region. Mer-
chants who wanted to obtain large quantities of high-quality furs had to buy
them in Novgorod. They took their purchases directly to England, Flanders
or France or to Slav, later German, trading places in the west Baltic, such as
L
¨
ubeck, with good land routes into Germany. As a result the importance of
trading places around Lake M
¨
alaren declined at the expense of Gotland. There
had earlier been several small trading places on the coast of that island, but
in the eleventh century one of them, Visby, began to grow rapidly to become
one of the major towns of northern Europe. It was visited by merchants from
many parts of Scandinavia and from western Europe as well as from the Baltic
towns. During the twelfth century Baltic trade was mainly in the hands of
Scandinavians but the Germans took an increasing share and by 1225 the Ger-
mans in Visby were sufficiently important to be granted special privileges by
the bishop of Link
¨
oping, whose diocese included Gotland.
Scandinavia’s share of the fur trade declined but there were other things,
notably falcons and walrus ivory, much of it from Greenland, that they could
supply better than anyone else. There were also less exotic exports: horses, tim-
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Scandinavia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries 303
ber, tar, goat skins and cowhides, sulphur from Iceland and lamp oil obtained
from fish, seals and whales. These and many other goods were shipped from
Scandinavian ports, but by the end of the thirteenth century, and probably
much earlier, they accounted for only a small part of Scandinavian exports
whether measured by volume or value; preserved fish were far more important.
In medieval Europe there was a general need for preserved food that could
be eaten in winter and spring. The need was most acute in the towns that were
rapidly growing in number and size in many parts of western Europe in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries. There were four main methods of preserving
food: smoking, fermentation, salting or drying. The simplest and cheapest was
drying, which is best done in a cold climate; in warm weather food tends to
rot before it is dry. North Norway was ideal; it had an arctic climate, strong
winds and fish, especially cod, were abundant in the coastal waters around
Lofoten and further north. The main production centre was in Lofoten and
dried cod, known as stockfish, from the whole of north Norway was collected
there to be shipped south in the spring, initially to Trondheim, which probably
owed its rapid development in the eleventh century largely to this traffic. Many
towns in England, Flanders, the Rhineland and elsewhere were already large in
the eleventh century and stockfish would have been as welcome then as they
were in 1191 when Bergen, which had by then become the main export market
for this produce, was, according to a contemporary account, ‘visited by ships
and men from every land; there are Icelanders, Greenlanders, Englishmen,
Germans, Danes, Swedes, Gotlanders and of other nations too numerous to
mention’.
By the thirteenth century Scandinavia was also supplying western Europe
with salt herring from
¨
Oresund, where huge shoals arrived in the late summer.
Until the end of the twelfth century production was on a small scale, limited
by the shortage of salt, but shortly before 1200 L
¨
ubeck merchants began to
obtain large quantities from the salt deposits at L
¨
uneburg, about forty-five
miles away, and that made it possible to process more fish. Merchants came
from many parts of Europe, by ship or overland, to collect supplies and sell
their wares, making the Skane Fair, that opened annually on 15 August, one
of the major fairs of medieval Europe. L
¨
ubeck’s control of the salt supply on
which the Sk
˚
ane Fair depended was an important factor in its later domination
of Scandinavian trade. The Sk
˚
ane Fair also led to significant political changes
for it was the ambition of several later Norwegian and Swedish kings and of
some north German princes, to gain control of
¨
Oresund and its approaches,
or at least to profit from the wealth that the Fair generated.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
chapter 12
HUNGARY IN THE ELEVENTH AND
TWELFTH CENTURIES
Nora Berend
the kingdom of Hungary was formed and consolidated as a part of Latin
Christendom during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Hungary was at the
intersection of three cultures: the Roman Christian, Byzantine and nomad; and
its development was influenced by each. The Hungarian tribal confederation,
which included Finno-Ugric and Turkic groups, moved into the Carpathian
basin in the late ninth century, mixing with the local Slavic population. Their
culture was that of a nomad steppe people. In 1000,Hungary was not yet
unified and its people were mostly pagans, whose chiefs had given up raiding
neighbouring countries for plunder barely fifty years before. By 1200, social
and economic structures had radically changed, and Hungary was a united
and powerful kingdom, with ambitions of and modest successes in expan-
sion. A latecomer to Christendom, Hungary was integrated by the end of the
twelfth century. The two main elements of this process of transformation were
Christianization and the building of royal power and government. Hungary’s
development fits into the pattern of emerging Christian states in the Scandi-
navian and east-central European region.
Until the early fourteenth century, the dynasty that ruled Hungary was the
house of
´
Arp
´
ad, whose first Christian king was Stephen I (Istv
´
an, 997–1038).
Christianization and royal power were linked from the beginning. Stephen’s
father G
´
eza had invited missionaries to convert the population of the coun-
try and had strengthened his power at the expense of clan leaders. Stephen
continued these policies, extending royal power eastward, and created both an
ecclesiastical and a royal territorial organization. The strong ties between clerics
and royal power were evident during the reigns of Stephen and his successors:
ecclesiastics filled important roles in the royal council and diplomacy. Stephen
was anointed and crowned king in 1001. Contrary to later assertions, he did
not receive his crown from the pope; that claim was part of a twelfth-century
304
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Map 9
Hungary
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306 nora berend
political construct (see below).
1
His marriage to the Bavarian Gisela, sister of
the future Emperor Henry II, was the first among many dynastic marriages
that the
´
Arp
´
ads made in order to promote their security and create politi-
cal alliances. Stephen unified the kingdom, defeating the remaining territorial
lords (Kopp
´
any in 997, the gyula in Transylvania in 1003, Ajtony in 1027–8).
Occasionally the king took part in wars against his neighbours, in order to
prevent them from backing opponents to his rule in Hungary; he was on the
German side in the war against Poland in 1015–18 and on the Byzantine side
against the Bulgars (probably in 1018). He enforced the conversion of the peo-
ple to Christianity, promulgating strict laws to ensure compliance: ‘If someone
neglects a Christian observance and takes pleasure in the stupidity of his neg-
ligence, he shall be judged by the bishops ...If he rebelliously objects...he
shall be subject to the same judgement seven times over. If...hecontinues to
resist...heshall be handed over for royal judgement.
2
For example, common-
ers who were inattentive during mass were to be ‘punished by whipping and by
the shearing off of their hair’.
3
Churches were built and the ecclesiastical tithe
was introduced. Royal policy imposing adherence to Christianity is also dis-
cernible in the art of the period. Objects imitating Carolingian and Ottonian
art rapidly replaced the earlier pagan Hungarian styles that had characterized
grave-goods of the Conquest period.
Christianization proceeded following tenth-century precedents (both
Roman and Byzantine). While monastic communities conforming to the Greek
rite flourished in Hungary until the thirteenth century, the missionaries and
priests who gathered at Stephen’s court were westerners (especially from the
German empire) and Roman Christianity became the majority religion. The
eastern regions of the kingdom were first influenced by Byzantine Christian-
ity; territorial lords relied on these ties as well on as paganism to oppose the
establishment of royal power. Pagan revolts broke out in 1046 and 1061, and
pagan practices persisted in Hungary. The synod of Szabolcs (1092) mentioned
the punishment of those who made ‘a sacrifice next to wells’ or gave ‘offerings
to trees, fountains, and stones according to heathen rites’ and included decrees
against those not observing Sunday.
4
Pagan rituals had still to be condemned
at the synod of Esztergom between 1105 and 1116.
1
Gerics and Lad
´
anyi (1996), pp. 12–17;V
´
aczy (1994), pp. 77–93.
2
The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, i,p.4.‘Si quis observatione christianitatis neglecta et
negligentie stoliditate elatus, ...abepiscopo . . . iudicetur, si vero rebellitate instructus rennuerit sibi
inpositum eque sufferre, iterum eodem iudicio restringatur et etiam usque septies. Tandem super
omnia si resistens . . . invenitur, regali iudicio . . . tradatur.’
3
The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, i,p.5....‘corripiantur flagellis et cesura capillorum’.
4
The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, i,p.58.‘Quicumque ritu gentilium iuxta puteos
sacrificaverint, vel ad arbores et fontes et lapides oblationes obtulerint.’
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Hungary in the eleventh and twelfth centuries 307
Stephen I laid the groundwork for Hungary’s ecclesiastical organization, es-
tablishing bishoprics. According to tradition, their number was ten (Veszpr
´
em,
Gy ´´or, Esztergom, P
´
ecs, Eger, Transylvania, Kalocsa – which became an arch-
bishopric during the eleventh century – Csan
´
ad, Bihar, V
´
ac); the last two of
these, however, were created by his immediate successors.
During the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, the seat of the bishopric
of Bihar was moved to V
´
arad, and new bishoprics were created in Zagreb
and Nitra. Stephen established an independent Hungarian archbishopric at
Esztergom, with the result that the kingdom did not become an ecclesiasti-
cal province of the German empire. By the end of the eleventh century, an
ecclesiastical network of archdeaconries, churches, monasteries and chapters
attached to cathedrals or collegiate churches was developing. The Latin foun-
dation charter of the monastery of Tihany (1055) included the first vernacular
Hungarian sentence to be preserved in documentary record.
Stephen also initiated a territorial organization of the kingdom. To protect
Hungary, tracts of land were left uninhabited at the borders, followed by an
inner ring of obstacles and settlements of guards (gyep´
´
u). Stephen followed
the German model in adopting the system of counties along with its name
(comitatus); the first counties appeared in western Hungary. Unlike German
counts, however, the administrators (isp
´
an) appointed by Stephen and his
successors could not turn the counties into their hereditary possessions. They
remained representatives of the king; throughout the eleventh and twelfth
centuries the isp
´
anok were members of the royal court appointed as officials of
a county. The attachment of one isp
´
an exclusively to one county only developed
gradually from the late twelfth century. The isp
´
an led the army levied from the
county, had juridical rights and collected taxes.
The county included royal, ecclesiastical and noble estates. The basis of royal
power was land. The king was the largest landlord in Hungary throughout
the first two centuries; even B
´
ela III (1172–96)retained about two-thirds of
the entire territory (including uninhabited land). Thus initially most of the
land in the counties belonged to the king, and these lands were organized
into castellanies (v
´
arisp
´
ans
´
ag ). The centre of both the county and castellany
was the castle (constructions made of wood and earth, built from the turn
of the tenth and eleventh centuries onwards). The castellan – the same isp
´
an
who administered the county – represented the king as landlord on the royal
estates. Officials who were appointed to the castellanies also participated in
the administration of the counties. The exact number of either the counties or
castellanies established by Stephen himself is not known. Stephen’s successors
extended both systems, and by the late twelfth century, there were seventy-two
castellanies; the number of counties was smaller, perhaps around forty-five.
The two types of organization became increasingly distinct from each other;
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308 nora berend
in the thirteenth century, castellanies disintegrated, while the counties were
transformed from being the basis of royal power to juridical organizations of
the nobility. Throughout the period, royal and ecclesiastical territorial structure
was linked. By the end of the eleventh century, priests of the castle-chapels
acquired administrative functions and the archdeaconries developed. Their
territories corresponded to those of counties or castellanies.
Kings travelled around the kingdom together with the court, setting up
certain royal centres without creating a stable ‘capital’. Esztergom, by the late
twelfth century housing Hungary’s largest lay and ecclesiastical building com-
plex (royal and archiepiscopal palaces and cathedral), became the centre for the
collection of taxes and minting. Feh
´
erv
´
ar was the sacral centre of the dynasty,
the site of royal coronations and many royal burials. Councils and assemblies
for royal judgements took place both in Feh
´
erv
´
ar and
´
Obuda.
Stephen followed German models in initiating minting (which remained
aroyal prerogative throughout the period), as well as in introducing Latin
written culture to Hungary. Scribes from the German imperial chancery settled
at Stephen’s court, allowing Stephen to issue the first charters and the first
lawbooks. The Institutiones morum,awork on good government and conduct,
addressed to Stephen’s son Emeric (Imre), attributed to Stephen I, but written
by a cleric of the royal court, provides evidence of ideas about government.
The Venetian Gerard, bishop of Csan
´
ad, wrote an exegetical work on The Song
of the Three Children, the only theological work to survive from Hungary’s first
Christian centuries.
Stephen I had no surviving son, and prior to his death appointed his nephew,
Peter Orseolo as his successor. Peter’s rule was the beginning of wars of succes-
sion. There was no single order of succession in Hungary. Several principles
of inheritance coexisted: seniority (the heir would be the eldest male member
of the dynasty), primogeniture (inheritance of the first-born son), idoneitas
(the most capable person who to rule) and election could all justify throne-
worthiness as long as the king was a member of the
´
Arp
´
ad dynasty. In fact,
the strongest pretender could claim ‘his inheritance’ on the basis of the most
suitable principle. Those nobles who had important positions at the court
supported one or another pretender according to their interests, even insti-
gating the succession wars. Despite these struggles, the institution of kingship
remained stable, and the kingdom never fell apart into independent prin-
cipalities. King Peter ruled only a few years (1038–41) when the dissatisfied
Hungarian lay and ecclesiastical elite revolted against him and put Samuel Aba –
arelative, probably another nephew of StephenI–onthethrone(1041–4).
Peter turned to Emperor Henry III for help. German emperors repeatedly
attempted to extend their rule to Hungary. King Stephen successfully defeated
the first attack (in 1030). Beginning in the 1040s, German emperors took
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Hungary in the eleventh and twelfth centuries 309
advantage of succession wars, backing one or another pretender, occasionally
even obtaining oaths of fidelity from their candidate. Henry III sent his armies
against Hungary in 1042, 1043 and 1044 to back Peter Orseolo against Samuel
Aba. Peter was reinstalled in 1044, but in 1046 two sons of Vazul – a cousin
of King Stephen, whom Stephen had had blinded to exclude him from the
succession, while his sons escaped abroad – returned from Kiev, and, aided
byapagan rebellion, defeated and blinded Peter. One of them, the Christian
Andrew I (Endre or Andr
´
as, 1046–60) became king of Hungary, suppressing
the pagan revolt. His pagan brother Levente died soon afterwards.
Andrew I recalled his younger brother B
´
ela from Poland and set up a territory
approximately one third of the kingdom as a duchy (ducatus) under B
´
ela’s rule.
The ducatus functioned between 1047–8 and 1107 and was briefly resurrected in
1162–3.Itwas always under the rule of a prince of the dynasty, often the reigning
monarch’s younger brother. At the time of its establishment, this territory was
in the area most recently subjugated to royal power, thus on the peripheries
of the kingdom. It was organized into a duchy partly in order to establish
control over it. The duchy provided a power-base for pretenders to the throne,
but no prince tried to turn it into an independent kingdom. From the end
of the eleventh century a new system increasingly replaced it; princes gained
authority over newly conquered territories or those parts of the kingdom that
had a separate administration.
As Peter Orseolo had taken an oath of fidelity to Henry III in 1045,Henry
tried to enforce this dependence, attacking Hungary in 1051–2 without success.
Fights for the succession continued as B
´
elaI(1060–3), Andrew’s brother, seized
the throne, although Andrew had appointed his son Solomon as his heir. B
´
ela
attacked his brother with the help of the Polish ruler Boleslaw II, and Andrew
died of his wounds. Then Solomon (1063–74) asserted his claim to the throne,
assisted by the armies of Henry IV. It may have been during Solomon’s reign
(in any case between the mid-eleventh and the early twelfth century) that the
oldest Hungarian gesta, the history of the Hungarians, was composed. It has
survived in a revised form: subsequent authors made additions and alterations
according to the needs of the branch of the dynasty that was then in power.
The sons of B
´
ela I first forced Solomon to cede the duchy to the elder of
them, G
´
eza, then defeated him. By the time Solomon took an oath of fidelity
to Henry IV in 1074,hewas king in name only. Some skirmishes in border
areas followed in 1079, but German emperors gave up the attempt to attach
Hungary to the empire. (The last intervention, in 1108, when Henry V attacked
Hungary to help
´
Almos wrest the kingdom from his brother Coloman, was a
brief, unsuccessful episode.) After Solomon’s defeat, first G
´
ezaI(1074–7), then
after his death Ladislas I (L
´
aszl
´
o, 1077–1095) became king of Hungary. G
´
eza I
and Ladislas I ascended the throne while the kingdom already had a crowned
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310 nora berend
and anointed king, Solomon, who, marginalized, forced to renounce the throne
(1081) and imprisoned, was none the less a constant reminder that B
´
ela I’s sons
were not legitimate rulers of Hungary. The brothers resorted to practical as
well as ideological means to offset their disadvantage. As Solomon possessed
the crown, G
´
eza I used a Byzantine crown (perhaps that of his Byzantine wife)
which later became the lower part of the ‘Holy Crown’ of Hungary, which
still exists. Because Emperor Henry IV backed Solomon, Ladislas became
an ally of Rudolf of Swabia. In addition to creating a system of alliances,
Ladislas sought new forms of sacral legitimization. This led to the creation of
an ideology centred on the ‘holy lineage’ of Hungarian kings. Ladislas, probably
inspired by Czech and Kievan examples, initiated the canonization of Stephen
I. During 1083 (when Solomon was allowed to leave his prison and Hungary), a
Hungarian synod declared the bishop-martyr Gerard (killed in the pagan revolt
of 1046), Stephen I and his son Emeric, and two hermits (Andrew-Zoerard and
Benedict) saints. Ladislas, in turn, was canonized in 1192 at the initiative of
B
´
ela III, an act linked to a rising culture of chivalry, and the holy predecessors
became a standard reference for Hungarian kings.
Ladislas I innovated in his expansionist policies as well. Although Hungarian
kings had participated in wars against neighbouring areas before, their aim from
1091 became the extension of the kingdom’s territory through conquest. The
results of this policy were modest; the only areas that were more or less durably
attached to the kingdom were Croatia, which provided access to the Adriatic
Sea (from 1091, although not continuously throughout the middle ages), and
Bosnia (from 1136–7). Because the pope refused to acknowledge Ladislas’s right
to Croatia, claiming it as a papal fief, Ladislas sided with Emperor Henry IV
and the antipope Clement III. Two other main areas of – mostly unsuccessful –
expansion in the twelfth century were Dalmatia and Galicia. At the same time,
the kingdom had to be defended from recurring nomad (Petchenek, Oguz,
then Cuman) raids from the east. The main components of the royal army
were the soldiers from the castellanies and counties, with special light cavalry
units of nomads who settled in the kingdom.
Ladislas died without a male heir, and G
´
eza’s two sons reached a compromise.
Coloman (K
´
alm
´
an, 1095–1116) became king, and his younger brother
´
Almos
received the duchy, reviving the territorial division that had ceased to exist
during Ladislas’s reign.
´
Almos repeatedly made attempts to oust Coloman and
gain the throne; therefore in 1107 Coloman abolished the duchy, and in 1115
ordered the blinding of
´
Almos and his son.
Coloman continued the expansionist policy of Ladislas I. From his reign
onward, Hungarian kings competed with Byzantium and Venice for the
Dalmatian coastal cities. In 1097 the Byzantine emperor appointed the Venetian
doge to defend the Dalmatian coast. In 1105 King Coloman attached the middle
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