Samuel Aba of Hungary

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Samuel Aba (Hungarian: Aba Sámuel; in contemporary foreign sources: King Aba, on his coins: King Samuel) was the third king of Hungary.

King Samuel Aba

Samuel was from Northern Hungary and was the leader of the Kabar tribe in the early 11th century. It is presumed that he was Jewish but (formally) converted to Christianity with his entire tribe when he married the youngest daughter of Géza around 1010. Even though he acted as a Christian and even founded a monastery in Abasár, converting to Christianity was mainly a political move for him, and he was not really religious. He was appointed count palatine during the reign of King Stephen, who was the first Christian ruler of Hungary. After the death of King Stephen the new ruler, Peter (Stephen's nephew) continued to strengthen the feudal Christian state and removed Samuel from the royal court for not supporting him enough. Many of the people were opposed to Christianity and feared that Peter would make the Hungarian kingdom subservient to the Holy Roman Empire; so they supported Samuel who might have had an active role in deposing Peter.

Peter fled Hungary, and Samuel became king in 1041. He had many of Peter's supporters killed or tortured, and he abolished several laws made by Peter. This sheds some light on who his supporters might have been: since he abolished the laws that mainly affected the poor people and commoners, and in chronicles he was criticised for socializing with the peasants instead of the nobles, it is likely that he was supported by the lower classes who still held their Pagan beliefs.

Samuel knew that he could remain on the throne only if he could make peace with Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, who was Peter's main ally. He succeeded in this in 1043, but had to pay a heavy price: Hungary lost some of its territories to Henry and had to pay tribute.

Because of the tribute paid to Henry and the abolishing of taxes, Samuel had to look for sources of money. He claimed back the donations the preceding kings gave to the Church, and made the bishops pay taxes. This was in keeping with his intentions of diminishing the role and power of the Church. (According to some sources he and his followers were excommunicated by the pope).

In several ways Samuel's rule meant a relapse from Feudalism to a tribal society. He was less and less popular, and was opposed by the Church, by the nobles, who resented him favouring the commoners, and by Henry III, who was furious that Samuel did not keep all the points of their peace treaty. Peter, with the help of Henry, attacked Samuel, and defeated him in the battle of Ménfő, near Győr. Samuel fled to the East. Contemporary sources offer different opinions about his fate; some say he was captured and killed by Peter and Henry, others say he reached the Tisza river and was killed there by Hungarians who opposed him. He was buried in the monastery he founded at Abasár.

There are no further data about what happened to his wife and sons, but his family, the Aba clan continued to be one of the most influential clans of Northern Hungary, where their name is preserved in the name of Abaúj county (today its Hungarian half is a part of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén and its Slovakian half forms the region Abov) and that of several villages.