Hungarian Mosaic [antikvár]

In the heart of Europe By European standards, the Magyars can be classed among the "newcomers": it was the wave of great migrations that, eleven hundred years ago, swept them what became to their permanent homeland in the Carpathian Basin. Part of the Ugrian ethnological group, they emerged as an independent ethnic group between 500 and 1000 B.C. Prompted by the migrations on the steppes that had commenced in the second half of the 9th century, the leaders of the Magyar tribes decided to settle their people behind the protective wall of the Carpathians. The main body of the invading Magyars started the occupation of the Carpathian Basin in the spring of 895, and by 900 they had completed it, occupying the entire Danubian Basin. For a long time it appeared as though the Magyars-similarly to other peoples of nomadic horsemen arriving from the east-would not be able to adapt to the conditions of the region and would sooner or later vanish. The Hungarian rulers of the Árpád Dynasty, however, recognized that their people, to survive, had to adapt to European norms. That process was started by Prince Géza with the adoption of Christianity, and completed by his son, Stephen I, who, at Christmas in the year 1000, was crowned king with the crown he had received from the Pope. With that act, the Hungarian Kingdom finally and irrevocably aligned itself with the model of social organization and system of values that had developed in Western Europe. In the ensuing centuries, periods of feudal anarchy alternated with periods marked by