According to modern scholars' consensus, the monastery was established by Ladislaus I of Hungary before 1095.

The Kolozsvár Abbey was the first Benedictine monastery in Transylvania,[1] but medieval documents contain contradictory information about its foundation.

[2] However, a late 14th-century forged version of a 1263 charter stated that Béla I of Hungary had set up the abbey, while an excerpt made around 1430 from the same charter named Stephen I of Hungary as its founder.

[2] The two latters document also recorded that Ladislaus I of Hungary had made a large grant to the monastery.

[2] Historian György Györffy says, both Stephen I and Béla I were most probably copied from the list of the benefactors of the bishopric of Eger in a 1261 charter, although the reference to Béla I may have preserved a genuine tradition.