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Béla IV (1206 - 3 May 1270) was King of Hungary and Croatia between 1235 and 1270, and Duke of Styria from 1254 to 1258. Being the oldest son of King Andrew II, he was crowned upon the initiative of a group of influential noblemen in his father's lifetime in 1214. His father, who strongly opposed Béla's coronation, refused to give him a province to rule up until 1220. In this year, Béla was appointed Duke of Slavonia, also with jurisdiction in Croatia and Dalmatia. Around the same time, Béla married Maria, a daughter of Theodore I Laskaris, Emperor of Nicaea. From 1226, he governed Transylvania with the title Duke. He supported Christian missions among the pagan Cumans who dwelled in the plains to the east of his province. Some Cuman chieftains acknowledged his suzerainty and he adopted the title of King of Cumania in 1233. King Andrew died on 21 September 1235 and Béla succeeded him. He attempted to restore royal authority, which had diminished under his father. For this purpose, he revised his predecessors' land grants and reclaimed former royal estates, causing discontent among the noblemen and the prelates. The Mongols invaded Hungary and annihilated Béla's army in the Battle of Mohi on 11 April 1241. He escaped from the battlefield, but a Mongol detachment chased him from town to town as far as Trogir on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. Although he survived the invasion, the Mongols devastated the country before their unexpected withdrawal in March 1242. Béla introduced radical reforms in order to prepare his kingdom for a second Mongol invasion. He allowed the barons and the prelates to erect stone fortresses and to set up their private armed forces. He promoted the development of fortified towns. During his reign, thousands of colonists arrived from the Holy Roman Empire, Poland and other neighboring regions to settle in the depopulated lands. Béla's efforts to rebuild his devastated country won him the epithet of "second founder of the state" (Hungarian: második honalapító). He set up a defensive alliance against the Mongols, which included Daniil Romanovich, Prince of Halych, Boleslaw the Chaste, Duke of Cracow and other Ruthenian and Polish princes. His allies supported him in occupying the Duchy of Styria in 1254, but it was lost to King Ottokar II of Bohemia six years later. During Béla's reign, a wide buffer zone-which included Bosnia, Barancs (Braničevo, Serbia) and other newly conquered regions-was established along the southern frontier of Hungary in the 1250s. Béla's relationship with his oldest son and heir, Stephen became tense in the early 1260s, because the elderly king favored his daughter, Anna and his youngest child, Béla, Duke of Slavonia. He was forced to cede the territories of the Kingdom of Hungary east of the river Danube to Stephen, which caused a civil war lasting until 1266. Nevertheless, Béla's family was famed for his piety: he died as a Franciscan tertiary, and the veneration of his three saintly daughters-Kunigunda, Yolanda, and Margaret-was confirmed by the Holy See. Family Béla's wife, Maria Laskarina was born in 1207 or 1208, according to historian Gyula Kristó.[146] She died in July or August 1270. Their first child, Kunigunda, was born in 1224, four years after her parents' marriage. She married to Boleslaw the Chaste, Duke of Cracow in 1246. A second daughter, Margaret followed Kunigunda in about 1225; she died unmarried before 1242. The third daughter of Béla, Anna was born around 1226. She and her husband, Rostislav Mikhailovich were especially favored by Béla. Her great-grandson, Wenceslaus-a grandson of her daughter, Kunigunda by King Ottokar II of Bohemia-was King of Hungary from 1301 to 1305. Béla's fourth child, Catherina died unmarried before 1242. Next, Elisabeth was born; she was given in marriage to Henry XIII, Duke of Bavaria in about 1245. Her son, Otto was crowned King of Hungary in 1305, but was forced to leave the country by the end of 1307. Elisabeth's sister, Constance married, around 1251, Lev Danylovich, second son of Prince Daniil Romanovich of Halych. Béla's seventh daughter, Yolanda became the wife of Boleslaw the Pious, Duke of Greater Poland. Béla's first son, Stephen was born in 1239. He succeeded his father. Béla's youngest daughter, Margaret was born during the Mongol invasion in 1242. Dedicated to God by her parents at birth, she spent her life in humility in the Monastery of the Blessed Virgin on Rabbits' Island and died as a Dominican nun. The King's youngest (namesake) son, Béla was born between around 1243 and 1250. The Greater Legend of Saint Elisabeth of Hungary (Béla's sister) described Béla's family as a company of saints. It wrote that the "blessed royal family of the Hungarians is adorned with resplendent pearls that irradiate all the earth". In fact, the Holy See sanctioned the veneration of three daughters of Béla and his wife: Kunigunda was beatified in 1690, Yolanda in 1827; and Margaret was canonized in 1943. A fourth daughter, Constance also became subject to a local cult in Lemberg (Lviv, Ukraine), according to the Legend of her sister, Kunigunda. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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