hundred miles further west, we would now live in Switzerland'" (Volgyes 93). According to Hungarian legend, "Tradition holds that the Magyar clan chiefs . . . swore by sipping from a cup of their commingled blood to accept Arpad's male descendants as the Magyars' hereditary chieftains" (Burant 4).
Late in the 10th century, the duke of the Magyars was Arpad's great-grandson, a chief named Geza, who understood the political necessity of the expanding religion and decided that conversion was the expedient choice. He, his family, and a group of his nobles were baptized as Christians. Geza chose the Western rite of conversion, thereby aligning his fortunes with the Roman church. Emil Lengyel comments, "It is . . . likely that the decision of the Chief reflected the wishes of the Hungarian 'creative minority,' the people who in turn mirrored the views of effective public opinion" (24).
Prince Geza's conversion was a nominal political gesture. Ivan Volgyes notes, "[Geza], as a good Magyar, covered his bets by both being baptized and continuing his homage to the pagan symbols" (3). His first-born son took his new religion more seriously, however. Vajk was given the Christian name of Stephen, Stephanos in Greek, Istvan in Hungarian; the change in names, a common gesture in conversions, nevertheless "created misgivings among the traditionalists. It smacked of foreign influence" (Sisa 15). Stephen received a scholarly Christian education, being tutored in Greek, Latin, and German, as well as politics, theology, and the laws of Charlemagne, by Saint Adalbert of Prague; he "received a Christian knightly education and took it very seriously" (Sugar 17).
Historians disagree on the year of Stephen's birth. The most commonly accepted date is 975 AD, though some accounts place Geza's conversion two years earlier and insist that Stephen was baptized at the same time as his father. Some give his date of birth as early as 969. Step...