page_title: Coloman, King of Hungary
section_title: Last years (1113–1116)
hierarchical_section_title: Coloman, King of Hungary / Reign / Last years (1113–1116)
context_page_description: Coloman the Learned, also the Book-Lover or the Bookish was King of Hungary from 1095 and King of Croatia from 1097 until his death. Because Coloman and his younger brother Álmos were underage when their father Géza I died, their uncle Ladislaus I ascended the throne in 1077. Ladislaus prepared Coloman—who was "half-blind and humpbacked", according to late medieval Hungarian chronicles—for a church career, and Coloman was eventually appointed bishop of Eger or Várad in the early 1090s. The dying King Ladislaus preferred Álmos to Coloman when nominating his heir in early 1095. Coloman fled from Hungary but returned around 19 July 1095 when his uncle died. He was crowned in early 1096; the circumstances of his accession to the throne are unknown. He granted the Hungarian Duchy—one-third of the Kingdom of Hungary—to Álmos.
  In the year of Coloman's coronation, at least five large groups of crusaders arrived in Hungary on their way to the Holy Land. He annihilated the bands who were entering his kingdom unauthorized or pillaging the countryside, but the main crusader army crossed Hungary without incident. He invaded Croatia in 1097, defeating its last native king Petar Svačić.
context_section_description: In 1113 Duke Boleslaw III of Poland, who had blinded his rebellious brother Zbigniew, causing his death, "undertook a journey of pilgrimage to St. Gilles and St. Stephen the King", to the Somogyvár Abbey, and to the king's shrine at Székesfehérvár in Hungary. Coloman received the Polish monarch cordially in Somogyvár. Shortly afterwards—between 1113 and 1115—Coloman discovered that Álmos was again conspiring to seize the throne. Having lost his patience, the king had Álmos and Álmos's young son Béla blinded to secure a peaceful succession for his own son. On the same occasion, many of his brother's partisans were likewise mutilated. According to one of the two versions of these events recorded in the Illuminated Chronicle, the king even ordered that Béla should be castrated but the soldier who was charged with this task refused to execute the order. The chronicle also states that the child was believed to have died after his blinding, but he was actually kept in a monastery for more than a decade.
  [The] King took the Duke and his infant son Bela and blinded them. He also gave orders that the infant Bela should be castrated. But the man who was instructed to blind them feared God and the sterility of the royal line, and therefore he castrated a dog and brought its testicles to the King.
  — The Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle
  The fleet of Venice, commanded by Doge Ordelafo Faliero, invaded Dalmatia in August 1115. The Venetians occupied the Dalmatian islands and some of the coastal cities but could not take Zadar and Biograd na Moru. By that time, Coloman was gravely ill. The symptoms recorded in the Illuminated Chronicle indicate a serious otitis, which caused encephalitis. Before his death, he "instructed his son and his great men that after his death they should take vengeance on Russia for the injury done to him" during his campaign of 1099. Upon his councillor's advice, he also had Álmos, who had taken refuge in the monastery of Dömös, imprisoned.
  The King now began to be gravely ill, and he had a Latin doctor, named Draco, in whom he placed too much trust. This doctor applied a poultice to the ears of the King, who was oppressed by headaches, and the strength of the poultice drew out through the cavities of his ears no small part of his brain. When the poultice had been removed because he could endure it no longer, he showed it to Count Othmar. When he inspected it and saw upon it the matter drawn forth from the brain, he said to the King: "Lord, it behoves you to prepare yourself for extreme unction". When the King heard this, he groaned and was afraid.
  — The Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle
  Coloman died on 3 February 1116. According to the Illuminated Chronicle, "divine vengeance made him drink the bitterness of early death" because of his "shedding of innocent blood" when ordering the punishment of Álmos, Béla, and their partisans. He was the first monarch to be buried near the shrine of Stephen I in the Székesfehérvár Cathedral.
caption: Álmos and his son, Béla are blinded on Coloman's order (from the Illuminated Chronicle).
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