Born into the native nobility, he was of Hungarian origin. As he did not adopt a Christian name, he was not a member of the
Benedictine Order, in contrast to most contemporary prelates. It is possible that, as his successors, he was one of the court clergymen during the reign of
Ladislaus I of Hungary. A document from 1134, which contains a verdict of Archbishop
Felician, narrates the circumstances of the foundation of the
Diocese of Zagreb, where Acha was mentioned as Archbishop of Esztergom, thus he held the dignity around then, when Ladislaus set up the episcopate. According to historian László Koszta, it is presumable that Acha already served as archbishop during the canonization of
Stephen I in 1083. 17th-century Jesuit scholar
Melchior Inchofer argued Ladislaus sent his envoy, Archbishop Acha to
Pope Urban II in 1088 in order to prepare his
invasion of Croatia and ask the pope's consent. Based on historian
Bálint Hóman's research, the Diocese of Zagreb (in
Slavonia, which was "no-man's land" between Hungary and Croatia) was founded in the late 1080s, just before Ladislaus' invasion. If the establishment took place after the war, Acha functioned as Archbishop of Esztergom after 1091 (at the latest in 1093 and 1094). According to a scholarly theory, the sees of the dioceses of
Kalocsa and
Bihar were moved to
Bács (now Bač,
Serbia) and
Nagyvárad (present-day Oradea,
Romania), respectively, during Acha's primacy. It is possible that the erection of the second
Gyulafehérvár Cathedral also occurred then, in addition to the foundations of the
Kolozsmonostor and
Báta abbeys. As he was not present at the establishment of the
Somogyvár Abbey in 1091, presumably he was dead by then. ==References==