Saint Ladislas, Hungary's second canonized king (reigned 1077-1095), is depicted in a fresco painted in the fourteenth century by Janos Aquila in the Catholic church of Velemer.

ollowing their defeat of Svatopluk of Moravia in the late ninth century the Magyars, or Hungarians, soon extended their control over all of the Carpathian Basin from the Alpine foothills in Austria to the eastern corners of Transylvania. They still worshiped their pagan gods, and thus were viewed with distrust by their Christian neighbors.

This distrust and the Magyars’ desire to extend their power beyond the Carpathian Mountains led to a series of campaigns. Their forays lasted through much of the tenth century, and took the Magyars’ armies as far west as the Swiss Alps and Gallia (France), and as far south as the Po Valley in Italy and Constantinople.

These military incursions into the civilized lands of western and southern Europe brought some temporary gains, but they also made the Magyars hated and feared among the peoples of western Europe.