Ladislaus I of Hungary

Ladislaus I of Hungary, venerated as Saint Ladislaus, was a king of the Árpád dynasty who reigned from 1077 to 1095 and who also established Hungarian authority in much of Croatia in the early 1090s. He was the second son of Béla I of Hungary and of a daughter of King Mieszko II of Poland, a princess commonly named Richeza or Adelaide in the sources. He was born in Poland, where his father had taken refuge after being expelled from Hungary. After Béla’s restoration and accession, Ladislaus grew up at the Hungarian court. Following Béla’s death, Solomon, son of Andrew I, obtained the crown with German military support. Ladislaus and his brothers Géza and Lampert went into exile and later received a duchy comprising the eastern portions of the kingdom. In 1074 they defeated Solomon at the Battle of Mogyoród. Géza became king; when he died in 1077, Ladislaus succeeded him and in the following years secured the realm against Solomon’s remaining partisans.

Ladislaus issued legal codes that survive in three books under his name. They prescribe severe corporal and capital penalties for theft, the kidnapping of women, and offenses against the Church, and they seek to protect private property and public order in a kingdom still undergoing Christianization. He founded the Benedictine abbey of Somogyvár, supported other monasteries, and created the bishopric of Zagreb. He married Adelaide of Rheinfelden, daughter of Rudolf of Rheinfelden, Duke of Swabia and claimant to the German throne. Their daughter Piroska, known in Byzantium as Irene, became the wife of Emperor John II Komnenos. In the conflict between papacy and empire Ladislaus initially favored Gregory VII, then adopted a more independent stance. After the death of the Croatian king Dmitar Zvonimir, husband of Ladislaus’s sister Helen, Hungarian forces occupied Slavonia and large parts of Croatia, an intervention that began the long political connection between Croatia and the Hungarian crown. He also led campaigns against Pecheneg and Cuman groups along the eastern borders.

Medieval Hungarian chronicles and later hagiography present Ladislaus as a model of Christian knighthood: pious, just, and a protector of the defenseless. The best-known legend describes him chasing a Cuman warrior who had abducted a Hungarian girl, overcoming the pagan in combat, and freeing the captive. The scene was frequently painted in Hungarian churches from the late Middle Ages onward. Whatever the historical basis of such tales, they shaped his posthumous image as the chivalric saint-king of the Hungarians.

Ladislaus died on 29 July 1095. The fourteenth-century Illuminated Chronicle states that he died in the fifty-fifth year of his age after falling ill, but it does not name a precise locality; later tradition sometimes places the death at Nyitra (Nitra). He left no son. The crown passed to his nephew Coloman, son of Géza I, despite Ladislaus’s earlier preference for Coloman’s brother Álmos. He was buried at Somogyvár. A cult developed during the twelfth century. In 1192 Pope Celestine III canonized him, and his relics were translated to the cathedral of Nagyvárad (Oradea in present-day Romania), which became the chief shrine of his cult. His feast is celebrated on 27 June. He is honored as a patron saint of Hungary and of Transylvania, and later Hungarian rulers invoked him as an exemplar of royal justice and martial piety.