Saint Ladislaus of Hungary

Saint Ladislaus of Hungary was king of Hungary at the end of the eleventh century, a lawgiver and defender of his country. The Roman Martyrology says of him that he restored in his realm the Christian laws promulgated by Saint Stephen, corrected morals, and himself gave an example of virtue. The Church commemorates him on June 30.

He was born in Poland, where his father Béla, later King Béla I of Hungary, was living in exile. Ladislaus’s mother was a Polish princess of the Piast dynasty. The exact year of his birth is not known, and the sources give different dates. Together with his elder brother Géza he defended Hungary against the Pechenegs and Cumans, who were breaking into the country from the east. The brothers were also engaged in a long dispute over the throne with their cousin, King Solomon, the son of Andrew I.

When Géza, who reigned as Géza I, died in 1077, the nobles passed over Solomon and chose Ladislaus as king. As a ruler he combined firm government with care for the Church. At the assembly of Szabolcs in 1092, which had the character of a synod, laws were passed to order church and civil life. The king also strove to root out the remnants of pagan customs that had survived in the country.

In 1083, during the pontificate of Saint Gregory VII, Ladislaus brought about the proclamation as saints of King Stephen, his son Emeric, and the martyr bishop Gerard, who had been the teacher of the young Emeric. Saint John Paul II recalled this event in 1983, when the Hungarians were celebrating the nine hundredth anniversary of the canonization of their first saints. He said then that their homeland owed to these figures the preaching of the Gospel and the strengthening of national unity in concord and peace.

In 1091, at the request of his sister Helen, the widowed queen of Croatia, he entered that country and united it with the Hungarian crown. According to the Martyrology, he zealously spread the Christian faith there and established the episcopal see of Zagreb. He also established an episcopal see at Várad, today Oradea in Romania.

Accounts link him with the preparations for the First Crusade, but he did not live to see it set out. He died on July 29, 1095, at Nitra, during a war against the Bohemians. His body was later laid to rest at Várad. The king’s tomb became a place of pilgrimage, and accounts speak of miracles that took place there.

In 1192, during the pontificate of Pope Celestine III, Ladislaus was enrolled among the saints. The Hungarians kept his memory as a knightly king, the hero of legends and songs. Saint John Paul II, visiting the cathedral of Győr in 1996, commended the faithful to the intercession of the holy King Ladislaus, together with Our Lady and all the Hungarian saints.