Establishment

In his monography about the early history of the Archbishopric of Kalocsa, the Hungarian historian László Koszta concludes that the "establishment of the Diocese of Kalocsa is one of the most debated issues of our ecclesiastic history in the Age of the Árpáds".^[1] Indeed, several important details of the early history of the episcopal see are uncertain.^[2] The date of its establishment is unknown; its early status—a bishopric, a metropolitan archdiocese or an archbishopric without suffragan bishops—is obscure; its first (arch)bishop is uncertain; and its connection with the see of Bács (now Bač, Serbia) is debated.^[2]

According to Hartvik, an early-12th-century biographer of the first king of Hungary, Stephen I, the king "divided his territories into ten bishoprics", making the archbishopric of Esztergom "the metropolitan and master of the others", and bestowed "the dignity of the bishop of Kalocsa" on Abbot Astrik.^[3] Astrik, continued Hartvik, was appointed to the see of Esztergom to substitute Archbishop Sebastian who had gone blind, but Asterik "returned to Kalocsa with the pallium" (the archbishops' specific vestment) when Sebastian received back his sight three years later.^[4] Stephen's earlier hagiography, the longer version of the Life of Saint Stephen, King of Hungary, did not mention this episode and exclusively referred to Astrik as archbishop of Esztergom.^[4] The cathedral church at Kalocsa was dedicated to Paul the Apostle who was renowned especially for his missionary activities.^[5] The patron saint implies that the see was established as a missionary bishopric, possibly aimed at the conversion of the so-called Black Hungarians (as it is proposed by historian Gábor Thoroczkay).^[5]

Most historians developed their views about the establishment of the see on Hartvic's report.^[4] They accept that the see of Kalocsa was set up as a bishopric shortly after Stephen I's coronation in the first decade of the 11th century.^[4][5] According to a scholarly hypothesis, not only the lands between the rivers Danube and Tisza, but also the southern region of Transdanubia (the future Diocese of Pécs), and the Banat (which later developed into the Diocese of Csanád) were included in the new bishopric.^[5]

One George was the first archbishop mentioned in a contemporaneous source: in 1050 or 1051 he was one of the prelates who assisted Pope Leo IX to celebrate a mass in Lotharingia.^[4]

The Archdiocese of Kalocsa was probably originally set up as a Bishopric by King Stephen I of Hungary, but it became the second Archbishopric in 1009. Its original suffragans were the bishops of Bihar (Romanian: Biharea) and Transylvania. Around 1028 the bishop of the newly established Diocese of Csanád also became a suffragan to the Archdiocese of Kalocsa.