Ladislaus I of Hungary

: For other monarchs with similar names, please see Ladislaus I (disambiguation).

Modern bust of the Saint-King

Ladislaus I, (Hungarian: I. Szent László, Slovak: Saint Ladislav I, Polish: Święty Władysław I) (June 27, 1040 – July 29, 1095) was a king of the Kingdom of Hungary (1077–1095).

He was the son of Bela I, king of Hungary, and the a Polish princess (Richeza - Rixa or Adelaida). His maternal grandparents were Polish king Mieszko II Lambert and Richensa of Lotharingia.

He was born in Poland, where his father had sought refuge, and named according to his mother's kin's Slavic traditions (thus he brought the name Laszlo to yet increasing Hungarian use) - but was recalled by his elder brother Andrew I to Hungary (1047) and brought up there.

He succeeded to the throne on the death of his brother Geza in 1077, as the eldest member of the royal family, and speedily won for himself a reputation scarcely inferior to that of Stephen I, by nationalizing Christianity and laying the foundations of Hungary's political greatness. Recognizing that the Holy Roman Empire was a natural enemy of the Kingdom of Hungary, Ladislaus formed a close alliance with the pope and other enemies of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, including the anti-emperor Rudolph of Swabia and his chief supporter Welf, duke of Bavaria. He married Rudolph's daughter Adelaide, and she bore him one son and three daughters. His daughter Piroska of Hungary, married the Byzantine emperor John II Comnenus.

The collapse of the German emperor in his struggle with the pope left Ladislaus free to extend his dominions towards the south, and colonize and Christianize the wildernesses of Transylvania and the lower Danube. Hungary was still semi-savage, and her native barbarians were being perpetually recruited from the hordes of Pechenegs, Cumans and other races which swept over her during the 10th century. Ladislaus himself had fought valiantly in his youth against the Pechenegs, and to defend the land against the Cumans, who now occupied Moldavia and Wallachia as far as the Olt, he built the fortresses of Turnu-Severin (Szörényvár) and Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár, Weißenburg).

He also planted in Transylvania the Szeklers, the supposed remnant of the ancient Magyars from beyond the Dnieper, and in 1094 founded the bishoprics of Oradea (Nagyvárad, Großwardein) and of Zagreb (Zágráb, Agram) as fresh foci of Catholicism to the south of Hungary and the districts between the Drave and the Sava (Slavonia). He subsequently tried to conquer other parts of Croatia after the death of his sister's husband, Croatian king Dmitar Zvonimir, though his authority was questioned by the Croatian nobility, the pope, the Republic of Venice and the Byzantine emperor. Ladislaus made a notable incursion into the Croatian lands in 1091 and named his nephew Álmos as the viceroy.

Ladislaus died suddenly in 1095 when about to take part in the First Crusade. No other Hungarian king was so generally beloved. The whole nation mourned for him for three years, and regarded him as a saint long before his canonization. A whole cycle of legends is associated with his name. He was canonized on June 27, 1192.

C.A. Macartney, in his Hungary: A Short History, eulogizes Ladislaus thus: "Ladislas I, who, like Stephen and his son, Imre, was canonised after his death, was the outstanding personality among them: a true paladin and gentle knight, a protector of his faith and his people, and of the poor and defenceless."