Levente

Levente (between 1010 and 1015 – 1047) was a member of the House of Árpád, a great-grandson of Taksony, Grand Prince of the Hungarians. He was expelled from Hungary in 1031 or 1032, and spent many years in Bohemia, Poland and the Kievan Rus'. He returned to Hungary, where a pagan uprising was developing around that time, in 1046. Levente remained a devout pagan, but did not hinder the election of his Christian brother, Andrew I as king.

Childhood Hungarian chronicles have preserved contradictory information of his parentage. According to one variant, Levente and his two brothersAndrew and Bélawere "the sons of Ladislas the Bald" and his "wife from Ruthania", according to the Illuminated Chronicle, and moved to the court of King Mieszko II of Poland in 1034 at the latest. The youngest among them, Béla settled here, but Levente and Andrew moved to Kiev. Andrew was baptized in Kiev, but Levente remained a devout pagan.

Dissatisfied with King Peter Orseolo, who succeeded Stephen I of Hungary, Hungarian lords persuaded Levente and Andrew to return to Hungary in 1046. Meanwhile, a great pagan uprising had broken out in Hungary. The rebels captured King Peter. The Hungarian lords and prelates preferred a Christian monarch and offered the crown to Andrew, while, as historian Sándor Tóth argues, leaders of the pagan revolt supported the claim of Levente, for he was not baptized, unlike his brothers. The Illuminated Chronicle states that Levente "would beyond doubt have corrupted all Hungary with paganism and idolatry". However, the same chronicle also writes that Levente gave the crown, in the "simplicity of spirit", to Andrew, suggesting that Levente voluntarily renounced the crown in favor of his brother. Levente died in 1047 and was buried in a village on the Danube which was named after his great-grandfather, Taksony, who was "said to lie in a pagan grave" there, according to the Illuminated Chronicle.