Béla IV of Hungary
Béla IV of Hungary died on Rabbits' Island on the 3rd of May 1270, and was buried in the church of the Franciscans in Esztergom. Yet even that burial became a dispute: the Archbishop had his corpse moved to the cathedral, and the Minorite friars fought a long lawsuit to recover the remains of a king they had claimed as their own. That struggle over a body captures something essential about Béla IV's entire reign. He was a man everyone wanted a piece of, pulled in every direction by barons, popes, Mongol warlords, his own son, and the daughters he had promised to princes across Central Europe.
He ruled Hungary and Croatia from 1235 to 1270, a span of thirty-five years that opened with him burning the barons' chairs so they could not sit in his presence, and closed with him begging his grandson-in-law to protect his wife and daughter after he was gone. Between those two moments lies one of the most turbulent reigns in medieval European history. The Mongols came and destroyed roughly half of his kingdom. He rebuilt it. His son raised an army against him. He negotiated a truce. Posterity gave him an epithet he earned: the "second founder of the state."
What made him capable of that rebuilding? What did it cost him? And what did he leave behind, besides a church full of saintly daughters and a lawsuit over his bones?
On the 28th of September 1213, Queen Gertrude of Merania was seized and murdered in the forests of the Pilis Hills by a group of Hungarian noblemen who resented her favoritism toward her German relatives. Béla was a child when this happened. He never stopped remembering it. His royal charters, written decades later, declared his deep respect for her in explicit terms.
His father, Andrew II, punished only one conspirator after returning from a campaign in distant Halych. The elder king moved on; his son did not. That gap between father and son was there from the beginning, and it would define the early decades of Béla's life.
Pope Innocent III had already urged Hungarian prelates and barons on the 7th of June to swear loyalty to the King's future son, before Béla was even born. By 1214, influential noblemen were actively trying to crown the eight-year-old over his father's objections. Andrew II asked the Pope to excommunicate those lords, but the coronation happened anyway. Andrew's response was to refuse his son any territory to govern, not for six more years.
During Andrew's Crusade to the Holy Land in August 1217, Béla was sent to stay with his maternal uncle Berthold of Merania in Steyr, in the Holy Roman Empire. He was, in effect, removed from Hungary while his father was away. Andrew arranged Béla's marriage to Maria, daughter of Theodore I Laskaris, Emperor of Nicaea, and Béla married her in 1220, only after Andrew returned from the Holy Land in late 1218.
Even that marriage became a battleground. In the first half of 1222, Andrew II demanded that Béla separate from his wife. Pope Honorius III refused to declare the marriage illegal. Béla accepted the Pope's ruling and took refuge in Austria from his father's anger. He came back only after the prelates persuaded his father to forgive him, and he came back with Maria.
Béla governed Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia from 1220, and Transylvania from 1226. In those provinces, his sense of what a king ought to be took concrete shape years before he reached the throne.
In Slavonia, a rebellious Dalmatian nobleman named Domald of Sidraga forced Béla to move militarily. Béla besieged and captured Domald's fortress at Klis. He then distributed the confiscated domains among the Šubići, the local clan that had supported him during the siege, rewarding loyalty in a way his father rarely did.
In Transylvania, he crossed the Carpathian Mountains in 1227 and met a Cuman chieftain named Boricius. Boricius agreed to convert to Christianity and acknowledge Béla's authority. Within a year, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cumania was established in those lands. By 1233, Béla had adopted the title "King of Cumania" in recognition of his reach east of the mountains.
He had long criticized what he called his father's "useless and superfluous perpetual grants." From 1228, he began acting on that criticism, using his ducal authority to reclaim estates that Andrew II had given away. The Pope backed him. Andrew often blocked him. When Béla tried to help his younger brother Andrew recover the Principality of Halych in 1229 or 1230, he boasted to the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle that Halych would not remain standing against him. He could not take the town. Many of his soldiers, the same chronicle recorded, "died of many afflictions" on the way home.
Three months after Andrew II died on the 21st of September 1235, Béla was crowned by Robert, Archbishop of Esztergom in Székesfehérvár on the 14th of October. He immediately had Palatine Denis blinded and Julius Kán imprisoned. The former was accused of an adulterous relationship with Queen Beatrix, his father's young widow, who escaped to the Holy Roman Empire and gave birth to a posthumous son. Béla considered that son a bastard, and the question of the line of succession was now entirely his to control.
Roger of Torre Maggiore was a contemporaneous chronicler, and he left a detail about Béla's early reign that no document of policy could have preserved: the king had the barons' chairs burned so that they could not sit in his presence at meetings of the royal council. The gesture was deliberate, theatrical, and entirely in keeping with the program Béla announced at his coronation.
He declared his purpose was "the restitution of royal rights" and "the restoration of the situation which existed in the country" in the reign of his grandfather, Béla III. Special commissions were established to examine every royal charter of land grants made after 1196. The annulments that followed made enemies out of men who had benefited from Andrew II's generosity.
Pope Gregory IX protested when Béla moved to withdraw grants given to the Cistercians and military orders. The conflict between Béla's centralizing ambitions and the Church's institutional interests ground on. By 1239 a compromise had been reached: Béla agreed to stop reclaiming estates from religious institutions, and in return the Pope authorized him to employ local Jews and Muslims in financial administration, a practice the Holy See had long opposed.
All the while, a warning was approaching from the east. Friar Julian had sponsored a mission to find the descendants of the Hungarians who had centuries earlier stayed behind in Magna Hungaria, their legendary homeland. After returning in 1236, Julian reported to Béla something far more urgent than old genealogies. The Mongols had reached the Volga River and were planning to move west.
By 1239, the Mongols had broken the Cumans in the Eurasian Steppes, sending at least 40,000 Cuman refugees to the eastern borders of Hungary. Their leader, Köten, agreed to convert to Christianity and fight against the Mongols in exchange for shelter. Béla gave them lands along the Tisza River. The conflicts that erupted between the nomadic Cumans and the settled Hungarian villages were frequent and violent. Béla rarely punished the Cumans, because he needed their cavalry. Roger of Torre Maggiore recorded the result: "enmity emerged between the people and the king."
The Mongols under Batu Khan gathered in the lands bordering Hungary and Poland in December 1240. They demanded Béla's submission to Great Khan Ögödei. He refused, fortified the mountain passes, and the Mongols broke through the Verecke Pass on the 12th of March 1241.
Duke Frederick II of Austria arrived to help and won a small engagement near Pest. When his soldiers brought back Cuman captives who had been forced to serve in the Mongol army, the population of Pest panicked. They accused Köten and his Cumans of siding with the enemy. A mob massacred Köten's retinue. Köten himself was either killed in the riot or took his own life. His Cumans, upon learning what had happened, left Hungary and burned villages on their way south toward the Balkan Peninsula.
Béla's army, with fewer than 60,000 soldiers, met the Mongols at the Battle of Mohi on the Sajó River on the 11th of April 1241. Roger of Torre Maggiore wrote that the barons, alienated by Béla's earlier policy of land confiscations, "would have liked the king to be defeated so that they would then be dearer to him." The Hungarian army was virtually annihilated. A great number of lords, prelates and noblemen died there. Béla barely escaped.
He fled through Nyitra and Pressburg, sent letters to Pope Gregory IX, Emperor Frederick II, King Louis IX of France and other Western rulers asking for reinforcements, and even accepted Emperor Frederick II's suzerainty in June in hope of military aid. The Pope declared a Crusade against the Mongols. No reinforcements came.
Béla returned to Hungary in May 1242 and found a country of collapsed settlements. At least half the villages in the plains east of the Danube had been abandoned. The Mongols had destroyed the earthwork-and-timber fortifications that defended most traditional administrative centers. Only places with stone walls, such as Esztergom, Székesfehérvár and the Pannonhalma Abbey, had held. A severe famine followed in 1242 and 1243.
In a letter of 1247 to Pope Innocent IV, Béla described his plan to fortify the Danube with new strongholds, calling it the "river of confrontations." He abandoned the ancient royal monopoly on castle construction and actively encouraged barons and prelates to build stone fortresses. By the end of his reign, close to 100 new fortresses had been erected. Among them was a castle he built at Nagysáros, and another he and his wife built at Visegrád.
To reconstitute his army, Béla granted land in forested regions on condition that the new owners equip heavily armoured cavalrymen for royal service. The so-called ten-lanced nobles of Szepes received their privileges from him in 1243. He also permitted barons and prelates to retain armed noblemen in private retinues, a system known as the banderium, that had previously been forbidden.
Population loss was the most stubborn problem. Béla estimated that at least 15 percent of the population had perished in the invasion and the subsequent famine. He offered colonists personal freedom and favorable tax treatment, drawing Germans, Moravians, Poles, Ruthenians and others to depopulated lands. He persuaded the Cumans who had fled in 1241 to return, and settled them again along the Tisza. He arranged the engagement of his son Stephen to Elisabeth, a Cuman chieftain's daughter, binding the alliance dynastically.
He moved the citizens of Pest to a fortified hill on the opposite bank of the Danube in 1248. Within two decades, that new settlement, Buda, became the most important commercial center in Hungary. The privileges he granted to more than 20 settlements modeled on those of Székesfehérvár laid the institutional foundation for Hungarian urban life for generations.
In the second half of 1242, Béla crossed back into Austria and recovered the three counties that Duke Frederick II had extorted from him during the Mongol crisis. Frederick later invaded Hungary and routed Béla at the Battle of the Leitha River on the 15th of June 1246. Frederick died in that same battle, childless, leaving Austria and Styria without a clear heir and opening a decade of dynastic maneuvering.
Béla built a network of dynastic alliances to hold the Mongols at bay. He married daughters to princes across the threatened regions: Anna to Rostislav Mikhailovich, the pretender to Halych, in 1243; Elisabeth to Henry XIII, Duke of Bavaria around 1245; Constance around 1251 to Lev Danylovich, a son of Prince Daniil Romanovich of Halych; and Yolanda to Boleslaw the Pious of Greater Poland. A seventh daughter, Kunigunda, married Boleslaw the Chaste of Cracow in 1246.
A peace treaty signed in Pressburg on the 1st of May 1254 gave Béla Styria, which Ottokar of Bohemia had occupied. That gain did not last. The Styrian nobles rebelled against Béla's governor, and Béla's son Stephen, appointed Duke of Styria, could not hold them. When Béla and his allies confronted Ottokar in the Battle of Kressenbrunn on the 12th of June 1260, Ottokar won decisively. The Peace of Vienna, signed on the 31st of March 1261, required Béla to hand Styria to Bohemia permanently.
In 1259, Berke, the successor to Batu Khan, offered an alliance through a proposed marriage between one of his daughters and a son of Béla. Béla refused. The threat of another Mongol invasion never disappeared from his calculations, but he was not prepared to seal that peace at dynastic cost.
On Rabbits' Island, where the Dominican Monastery of the Blessed Virgin stood, the agreement between Béla and his rebelling son Stephen was signed on the 23rd of March 1266. That same island was where Béla died on the 3rd of May 1270, and where his daughter Margaret had chosen to live as a nun rather than marry Ottokar of Bohemia.
Margaret had been dedicated to God by her parents at her birth in 1242, during the Mongol invasion. She spent her life in the monastery and died there on the 18th of January 1270, just months before her father. She was canonized in 1943. Her older sister Kunigunda, who had married Boleslaw the Chaste of Cracow in 1246, was beatified in 1690. Yolanda, who married Boleslaw the Pious of Greater Poland, was beatified in 1827. The Greater Legend of Saint Elisabeth of Hungary described the family as "adorned with resplendent pearls that irradiate all the earth."
Béla's wife, Maria Laskarina, born in 1207 or 1208 according to historian Gyula Kristó, died in July or August 1270, a few months after her husband. Their union had produced at least ten children across more than four decades.
Béla himself died a Franciscan tertiary, according to the Greater Legend of his sister Elisabeth. His funeral arrangements descended into a dispute between the Franciscans, the Archbishop of Esztergom, and the Minorites. Archbishop Philip had the body moved from the Franciscan church to Esztergom Cathedral. The Minorites pursued a lawsuit and eventually recovered the remains.
The envoy Abbot Bernhard Ayglerius of Monte Cassino, who visited Hungary in December 1269 as a representative of King Charles I of Anjou, described what he saw at Béla's court in terms that the abbot considered remarkable from an impartial observer: the Hungarian royal house had "incredible power" and military forces so large that "nobody in the East and the North dares even budge" when the king mobilizes. Within five months of that report, the king was dead, and the realm he had rebuilt from ruin passed to the son who had once raised an army against him.
Common questions
Who was Béla IV of Hungary and when did he reign?
Béla IV was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1235 to 1270 and Duke of Styria from 1254 to 1258. He was the oldest son of King Andrew II and is remembered as the "second founder of the state" for rebuilding Hungary after the Mongol invasion of 1241-1242.
What happened to Hungary during the Mongol invasion under Béla IV?
The Mongols under Batu Khan annihilated Béla's army at the Battle of Mohi on the Sajó River on the 11th of April 1241. At least half the villages in the plains east of the Danube were depopulated, and a severe famine followed in 1242 and 1243. Béla himself was chased across Dalmatia as far as the fortified coastal town of Trogir before the Mongols withdrew in March 1242.
Why is Béla IV called the second founder of the Hungarian state?
Béla IV earned that epithet for rebuilding Hungary after the Mongol devastation of 1241-1242. He promoted the construction of close to 100 new stone fortresses, resettled depopulated lands with colonists from neighboring regions, founded the fortified town of Buda in 1248, and granted privileges to more than 20 settlements modeled on Székesfehérvár.
What was the civil war between Béla IV and his son Stephen?
Béla's favoritism toward his younger son Béla, Duke of Slavonia, and his daughter Anna led his heir Stephen to suspect he was being disinherited. Armed conflict erupted in 1264, and Stephen decisively defeated his father's army at the Battle of Isaszeg in March 1265. A peace agreement signed on the 23rd of March 1266 on Rabbits' Island divided Hungary along the Danube, with Béla ruling the west and Stephen governing the east.
How many of Béla IV's daughters became saints or blessed?
Three daughters of Béla IV were officially venerated by the Holy See. Kunigunda was beatified in 1690, Yolanda in 1827, and Margaret was canonized in 1943. A fourth daughter, Constance, became the subject of a local cult in Lemberg, present-day Lviv in Ukraine.
Where did Béla IV of Hungary die and where was he buried?
Béla IV died on Rabbits' Island on the 3rd of May 1270. He was initially buried in the church of the Franciscans in Esztergom, but Archbishop Philip of Esztergom had the body transferred to Esztergom Cathedral. The Minorites later recovered his remains after a prolonged lawsuit.
All sources
6 references cited across the entry
- 2bookCsukovits Enikő - Az Anjouk Magyarországon I.rész - I. Károly és uralkodása (1301–1342)Enikő Csukovits — MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet — 2012
- 3bookÁrpádkori Új Okmánytár (Charters from the Árpád Age, New Series), Codex diplomaticus Arpadianus continuatus, 12 volumens.Wenzel Gusztáv — 1860–1874
- 4webÁrpádházi Boldog Kinga Blessed Kunigunda of the ÁrpádsIstván Diós — Szent István társulat
- 5webÁrpádházi Boldog Jolán Blessed Yolanda of the ÁrpádsIstván Diós — Szent István társulat
- 6webÁrpádházi Szent Margit Saint Margaret of the ÁrpádsIstván Diós — Szent István társulat