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 308 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE the Teutonic Knights and the Brethren of the Sword, who were to make conquests far beyond the Vistula. Not long after Otto had repulsed the invasions of the Hungarians their kings became Christians and tried to Expansion convert their people forcibly to the same faith of Christian by the aid of numerous clergy from western Europe and knights from Germany. In the next century came a relapse of part of the country into pagan- ism ; but in the twelfth century the Gregorian reforms and the Cistercian monks revived Christian influence. Hungary was now a powerful state and about noo absorbed Croatia and gained access to the Adriatic, and annexed the cities of the Dalmatian coast, which had hitherto owed allegiance to Constantinople. By the close of the twelfth century Hun- gary had the same religious and political institutions as the rest of western Christian Europe, and shared also in its culture to a large extent. The monks, who were numerous in Hungary in the twelfth century, came from France. But in the second half of that century the Magyars called in Flemish and German colonists to settle and defend Transyl- vania or Siebenbiirgen, a debatable territory away over on their eastern frontier. In the East, as the power of the Arabs and Bulgarians had declined in the course of the tenth century, the Byzan- Byzantine tme Empire had begun to expand again. The expansion islands of Crete and Cyprus, the city of Antioch, about iooo -,. _ . J, e and a large part of Syria, were recovered from the Saracens; and the frontier was extended to the upper Euphrates. Farther north an advance was made to the Caucasus Mountains. In Europe, especially during the reign of Basil II (976-1025), all Bulgaria was brought under Byzantine rule. Once Basil blinded fifteen thousand Bul- garian captives and sent them home as a warning, leaving one prisoner out of every hundred one eye in order that he might serve the others as a guide. Basil's sister mar- ried the Prince of Russia, who thereupon adopted Chris- tianity. While the Serbs were allowed local autonomy under their own rulers, they were forced to recognize the