Establishment In his monography about the early history of the Archbishopric of Kalocsa, the Hungarian historian László Koszta concludes that the "establishment of the Diocese of Kalocsa is one of the most debated issues of our ecclesiastic history in the
Age of the Árpáds". Indeed, several important details of the early history of the
episcopal see are uncertain. The date of its establishment is unknown; its early statusa bishopric, a
metropolitan archdiocese or an archbishopric without
suffragan bishopsis obscure; its first (arch)bishop is uncertain; and its connection with the see of Bács (now
Bač, Serbia) is debated. According to
Hartvik, an early-12th-century
biographer of the first
king of Hungary,
Stephen I, the king "divided his territories into ten bishoprics", making the archbishopric of Esztergom "the metropolitan and master of the others", and bestowed "the dignity of the bishop of Kalocsa" on Abbot
Astrik. Astrik, continued Hartvik, was appointed to the see of Esztergom to substitute
Archbishop Sebastian who had gone blind, but Asterik "returned to Kalocsa with the
pallium" (the archbishops' specific
vestment) when Sebastian received back his sight three years later. Stephen's earlier hagiography, the longer version of the
Life of Saint Stephen, King of Hungary, did not mention this episode and exclusively referred to Astrik as archbishop of Esztergom. The cathedral church at Kalocsa was dedicated to
Paul the Apostle who was renowned especially for his missionary activities. The patron saint implies that the see was established as a missionary bishopric, possibly aimed at the conversion of the so-called
Black Hungarians (as it is proposed by historian Gábor Thoroczkay). Most historians developed their views about the establishment of the see on Hartvic's report. They accept that the see of Kalocsa was set up as a bishopric shortly after Stephen I's coronation in the first decade of the 11th century. According to a scholarly hypothesis, not only the lands between the rivers
Danube and
Tisza, but also the southern region of Transdanubia (the future
Diocese of Pécs), and the Banat (which later developed into the Diocese of
Csanád) were included in the new bishopric. One George was the first archbishop mentioned in a contemporaneous source: in 1050 or 1051 he was one of the prelates who assisted
Pope Leo IX to celebrate a
mass in
Lotharingia. The Archdiocese of Kalocsa was probably originally set up as a
Bishopric by King
Stephen I of Hungary, but it became the second
Archbishopric in 1009. Its original
suffragans were the bishops of
Bihar () and
Transylvania. Around 1028 the bishop of the newly established
Diocese of Csanád also became a
suffragan to the Archdiocese of Kalocsa. ==Secular offices connected to the archbishopric==