Veszprém [antikvár]

Veszprém down the Centuries Travellers from Gydr to Lake Balaton traverse the wooded Bakony Hills before descending onto the plateau and into Veszprém. Crossing the pass above Gyulafirátót, there suddenly appears a panorama of the city, ringed by villages, with Castle Hill, the historic centre, in the middle and modern housing estates around it. Varying the scene are the weekend cottages and orchards on the slopes of Csatár-hegy, the rocky, precipitous ravine of the Séd Brook, and beyond, forests of Turkey oak and pine, bald stretches of dolomite, and waving fields of corn. The natural features of Veszprém hardly suggest themselves as a site for human settlement. So why should a town have grown up there in the Middle Ages? Part of the explanation can be given In the context of human geography. The Veszprém plateau, between Balaton and the Bakony, gains importance because three districts converge on it: the Bakony Hills, rich in building materials and minerals, the Balaton Uplands, with its vineyards and orchards, and the Mezőföld, a fertile plain. This allowed Veszprém to develop into the economic, political and cultural centre of a region. By AD 900, the conquering Magyar tribes under Prince Árpád had occupied Pannónia, the western part of the Carpathian Basin. Each tribe tended to settle along a river. Jutas, son ofÁrpád, took the area between the Danube and the district of Veszprém, which had an earthwork castle of strategic importance, which remained in the princely tribe's hands throughout the 10th century. Prince Géza (c. 972-997), who began the work of turning Hungary into a Christian state, gave Veszprém Castle to his consort, Sarolt (Charlotte). Her court there was probably visited by the first Latin bishop, Bruno of St Gallen, who arrived at Géza's request as a missionary, some time after 972. It was near Veszprém that Géza's son Stephen fought the battle that confirmed his hold over the country in 997. Having defeated the pretender Koppány, he went on to have himself crowned king, at Christmas in the year 1000. Thanks to the events in the final years of the 10th century, Veszprém became a bishopric and a royal seat in the reign of Stephen I (1000-1038). The cathedral, dedicated to St Michael, is known to have been standing by the year 1002. The boundaries and properties of the diocese are recorded in a royal deed of gift of 1009, when it covered four castles and their dependent counties: Veszprém, Fehérvár, Kolon and Visegrád. Alongside the bishopric, the monasteries founded at Bakonybél in about 1018 and by the Benedictines at Tihany in 1055 helped to spread the faith in the district. According to the medieval Great Legend of St Stephen, St Michael's Cathedral was built and furnished by Stephen's consort, the Blessed Gisella, daughter of Henry the Quarrelsome,