Church, State, and the Hungarian Holy Crown Between Past and Present

Abstract

In Hungary, a particular form of state church developed during the Middle Ages. The legal nature of royal power was ensured by the crowning with the state and church founder Saint Stephen’s crown. Following the example of the apostolic succession of rights ensured by the laying on of hands at the consecration of bishops, we can, in fact, speak of a similarly sacral ‘successio regia’ in Hungarian terms. This sacral succession was created by the cultic relationship with the first holy king. In parallel, along the same ideology, the Hungarian kings took full control of the country’s church organization by the 15th century. However, while this control was linked to the person of the king, the Holy Crown also became, from the 15th century onwards, a symbol of state power independent of the king’s personal authority (Sacra Corona Regni Hungariae). This crown, however, was not merely an abstract idea, as in England, but an ideology tied to a concrete, sacred object that had developed. After the end of the reign of the foreign Habsburg dynasty from 1526 to 1918, the dignity of ‘apostolic king’, recognized by the Holy See in 1758, was no longer a realistic option. State control over the Catholic Church organization had disappeared. In contrast, the idea of the Holy Crown proved to be virulent, thanks to its independence from the person of the monarch. This explains why, after the fall of state socialism and the disappearance of the Soviet-Russian sphere of interest in Central Europe, the ancient crowned coat of arms was chosen in 1990 by the first freely elected parliament as the coat of arms of the Republic of Hungary, which had been proclaimed the previous year. This originally sacral symbol and the historicity and ideality it represented became the cornerstone of Hungarian statehood and the constitution in the third millennium, which, not incidentally, separated the state from all denominations.

1. Preface

The state symbol of present-day Hungary, rich in crosses, seems monarchic and ecclesiastical. The public opinion surrounding it could be comprehended solely in the knowledge of extremely unique historical antecedents. These antecedents are unique per se in the European state-development, in the relationship between Church and State. Moreover, they have resulted in a rather extraordinary phenomenon today among European countries. They resulted in a republic in which the separation of church and state is enshrined in the constitution, but the official state coat of arms bears a huge double cross. They resulted in a republic whose official name has been stripped of the word Respublica since 2012, and whose official emblem is an old-fashioned closed crown, also with a cross on top. In 1989, the name of ‘Hungarian People’s Republic’, which adopted the Soviet model in 1949 and was the euphemism for the Soviet state socialist dictatorship, was changed to ‘Hungarian Republic’, which had been used between 1946 and 1949.¹ Prior to this period—apart from a short interval of the first republic and then the turbulent and tragic months of the commune—the form of the state of Hungary was kingdom.² The spectacular contemporary use of the symbolism of the cross seems to symbolize the survival of the Catholic state church, which collapsed in the 19th century and disappeared with the abolition of the kingdom in 1946. The use of the crowned coat of arms and the removal of the word ‘Republic’ from the official name of the State seem to be a gradual return to Monarchy and with it to the state church system, especially to its specific Hungarian ecclesiological form. However, this is not the case. Why? The question is answered in this study.

The paper is primarily based on the results of research conducted over the past two decades in the fields of Hungarian public history, church history, and specialized crown history. Most of these studies are not available in English. The overview of the interaction between Hungarian state theory and the unique development of church doctrine, with the aim of understanding and explaining the relevance of this thousand-year-old historical process today, is an original problem formulation. Its solution may be of interest to both Hungarian and international historical science and may encourage further relevant research.

2. The Sacred Crown and Its Ideology in the Middle Ages

The foundation of the Hungarian state could be accurately dated; it is linked to the coronation of (Saint) Stephen I in Esztergom, on Christmas of 1000. The establishment and organization of the church is closely connected to the foundation of the state. Esztergom, located by the Danube, is still an important ecclesiastical center. According to the tradition based on the legends created a couple of decades later, the coronation took place with a crown donated by Pope Sylvester II through angelic contribution.³ King Saint Stephen (1000–1038) and his crown: two such pillars that still determine the Hungarian perspective of public law. Although the angelic contribution is truly and merely a legendary element, the Sacra Corona Hungariae, which was ceremoniously moved from the Hungarian National Museum to the central hall of the Parliament in early 2000, might be linked to the saint monarch in certain elements. Its origin has been discussed in almost 40 theories. According to the most widely accepted theory, the lower crown was prepared during the reign of King Géza I (1074–1077) and it reached its current form under King Béla III (1172–1196), at the latest. The components of the upper part of the crown could have been owned by St. Stephen, and they might have originated from a gospel book from the tenth or eleventh century.⁴ It is certain that in the 1160s the crown of the Hungarian kings was a unique jewelry, which was guarded in the treasury of the coronation church of Székesfehérvár with special care. A century later, in 1256, it was mentioned as the Sacra Corona.⁵

The Hungarian public opinion attributed the Sacra Corona to St. Stephen in its entirety up until the end of the eighteenth century. The diadem is indeed one of Europe’s oldest royal headpieces, and it was used for the longest time.⁶ The enamels portraying icons on the lower crown (Corona Graeca) of Greek origin and the enamels portraying the apostles on the upper crown (Corona Latina) together as a joint composition date with certainty the origin of the Holy Crown from the second half of the eleventh century. At that time, Hungary was a country where the two rites met and coexisted; therefore, the presence of Eastern Catholicism was significant in the Carpathian Basin. The schism of 1054 became practice only after decades, and papal excommunication became the orientational point of separation only later. The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204), which resulted in the Sack of Constantinople, was a certain terminus post quem non in the creation of the Hungarian Holy Crown. In the knowledge of the relations that had become definitely poisoned by this time, the employment of the Greek saints images on a crown that was used for a monarch crowned according to a Latin rite is completely beyond possibility.

The cultic relevance of the sacred object can be dated from the beginning of the fourteenth century. After the Árpád dynasty had died out, the Anjou monarch, Charles I (†1342), ascended to the Hungarian throne. In 1310, he had to be crowned for the third time since the Holy Crown was not used either in the ceremony of 1301 or the one in 1308; therefore, neither of them was regarded as valid (Engel 2001, pp. 25–49). Consequently, already in the early 1300s, a cultic object—which could be associated with a saint monarch—was the root of the Hungarian monarch’s legitimacy. This relation had such importance that when Władysław I (†1444) was elected by the Hungarian orders in 1440—at which time the Holy Crown was temporarily possessed by the Habsburgs—he was crowned with a crown that was removed from St. Stephen’s reliquary kept in the coronation church of Székesfehérvár. That time, the rights of the Holy Crown were ‘transferred’ to this occasional diadem, which, however, related to St. Stephen (Engel 2001, pp. 278–97; Bódi 2013; Bartoniek 1934). Similarly to the successio apostolica granted by hand during the consecration of the bishops, namely an apostolic legal continuity, it is a special and unique sacred ‘successio regia’, in the Hungarian relations, which was created by a mystical connection with the first saint king.⁷

Besides the corona regia, the concept-pair of the corona regni and the regnum Ungariae occurs already during the first third of Sigismund of Luxembourg’s reign (1387–1437). The year 1440 and then the period after the death of Władysław I in 1444 are exceptionally important. After the king’s death during the battle of Varna, the country was governed by the prelati et barones’ council for years. In the deeds of gift issued at that time, only the crown of the country and the services offered to it are listed. The crown was independent from the king’s authority and was the indicator of the continuous state authority, which consisted of—besides the mentioned prelati et barones—the whole nobility. The crown, however, is not only an abstract theory, like that of England. It is linked to a particular object, the Sacra Corona Regni Hungariae. In the Tripartitum, which was written by István Werbőczy and published in 1517, the ‘one and same nobility’ (una eademque nobilitas) is described as the unified members of the Holy Crown.⁸ The two noblemen who were appointed the guards of honor, along with their banderiums, and the guards of the castle that was chosen to keep the crown were to defend it. From 1608 to 1613, there were statutes to order the establishment of a guard of honor. In the fifteenth century, the castle of Visegrád, in the seventeenth century, the castle of Pozsony (Bratislava), and from 1790/1791, the castle of Buda were the chosen places of guarding.⁹

3. The Idea of the Sacred Crown in the Early Modern and Modern Times

The cult of the Holy Crown that expresses the organic state theory was broadened by a new factor in the early modern age and became the embodiment of the territorial integrity broken by the Ottoman conquest and the Principality of Transylvania emerging in the eastern part of the country. The foreign Habsburg dynasty’s ascension to the throne, namely the lack of a national king and a court functioning within the country—as the last national king, John I, died in 1540—brought the cult of St. Stephen’s crown and the crown itself into focus, even more so. The personal union of the imperial and Hungarian royal dignities in 1558 under Ferdinand I (†1564) made the person of the all-time Hungarian king almost impalpable, greatly contributing to the above-mentioned shift in focus. The unquestionable significance of the Holy Crown and its cult is best proved by the books of Crown Guard Péter Révay from the seventeenth century.¹⁰ The emergence of the “total St Stephen’s paradigm”, which can be clearly identified as early as 1638, gave the crown and its developing cult a special ecclesiological significance. In it, not only the crown and the power, but also the Church as a whole ‘belongs to St Stephen’ in the Kingdom of Hungary, the ‘Ecclesia Hungarica’ or ‘Ecclesia Hungaricana’ deriving its origin, legitimacy, and identity from the apostolic and holy king. The true head of the Hungarian Church is therefore the legitimate successor bearing the crown of the Holy King (Tusor 2025, pp. 111–31, 121, note 22).

There were numerous acts at the time that prohibited the Holy Crown’s transfer across the border; in 1608, the Hungarian orders reobtained the crown from Prague in a glorious pomp.¹¹ Nearly two centuries later, the crown was brought back to Hungary, accompanied by a ceremony that moved huge masses of people after the death of Joseph II (1780–1790), who did not want to be crowned but had the national relic moved to Vienna. The return of St. Stephen’s crown symbolized the triumph of the feudal/national historical constitution against the absolutist ruler aspirations (Soós 2018).

The celebration in 1790 started to go beyond the feudal bounds, and it was not born according to the idealism of the late Middle Ages and early modern period. By the nineteenth century, the Sacra Corona Hungariae was about to become one of the strongholds of the Hungarian national identity along with the Hungarian language. By replacing Latin, Hungarian became the official language of the country in 1844 after rapid progress and several waves of neologism since the last third of the eighteenth century. Its general teaching became mandatory for state elementary schools rather late, only in 1906. Although it was not the language of education, it was only a subject, and the nationalities living in Hungary welcomed it rather bristling: namely, the Croatians, Romanians, Serbs, Slovaks, and Rusyns. The last two nationalities mentioned previously were less repulsive. The same can be said about their approach towards the Holy Crown. As opposed to the feudal view of the early modern period, the Croatians, who had their own statehood and lived in a polity since the eleventh century, did not share its idealism by that time. The Serbs, who lived in the southern part of Hungary and migrated into the country fleeing from the Ottoman expansion, and the Romanians had been completely out of the feudal bounds. They evolved into a nation along with the nationalist movements of the nineteenth century, and this process, by the early twentieth century—though not generally, but palpably—was realized according to irredentism, namely, in the framework of joining Serbia and Romania across the border.¹²

What is more, there was a temporary lurch on the Hungarian part. During the Hungarian Civic Revolution and War of Independence of 1848–1949, the dethronement of the Habsburg dynasty was declared on 14 April 1849. The crown was removed from the coat of arms on several images, like that of the war flags. The form of state remained a kingdom, though this motion hinted at a republic. The liberalist, nationalist zeal profaned the Holy Crown and its cult, and they identified it with the rule of the Habsburgs. It assumed such proportions as the thought of the holy object’s destruction had also occurred. Fortunately, it did not happen, since the sovereign government fleeing to Turkey dug the crown along the southern Danube border, at Orşova. The Habsburg neoabsolutism that was being restored regarded the relic’s finding as its most important task. They sent spies after the Hungarian emigrants all the way to London. Finally, in the autumn of 1853, they found the national relic and placed it in the castle of Buda amid celebration and gun salutes (Hermann et al. 2018). The crown was used during a coronation ceremony twice afterwards. To seal the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Franz Joseph I (1848/1867–1916) and, during the First World War, Charles IV (1916–1918) were crowned by it in a series of ceremonies that had not changed since 1608. The latter one was already filmed.¹³

4. The Revolutionary 20th Century

The Holy Crown and its cult were emphasized even more after the cataclysm of Hungarian history in 1918–1920. After the revolution of 1918, the Bolshevik coup in the spring of 1919, and then after the Treaty of Trianon on 4 June 1920, never-before-seen attention was paid to them. Olivier Poncet, a French historian, claimed that the main problems of the treaty’s disproportion were that it was mainly prepared by geographers.¹⁴ More than two-thirds of the historical Hungary’s territory was cut off by the peace treaty, while more than a third of the population whose mother tongue was Hungarian were detached abroad along with the Hungarian history and national consciousness’s such legendary towns and cities of Hungarian majority, like that of Pozsony (Bratislava, the former coronation city), Kassa (Košice, the burial place of Prince Francis II Rákóczi), Nagyvárad (Oradea, the town of St. Ladislaus), and the capital of Transylvania, the ‘treasury’ Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca).¹⁵ This cataclysm of the Hungarian state and nation brought about a series of (to a lesser extent political, partly social, mainly economic, and administrative) reforms apart from the demand for revision. It created a national unity irrespective of political views, and it led to certain examinations of a critical nature, partly to self-reflection.¹⁶

The trauma of Trianon, the period of the kingdom without a king, introduced the heyday of the Holy Crown cult; moreover, it placed it into new dimensions. Its relation to the state idea of St. Stephen is close and inseparable, which it practically symbolizes and projects. Namely, the view that the Magyars, who settled down in their new homeland at the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries—in the spirit of the state founder saint king’s ‘Intelmei’ (‘Libellus Sancti Stephani regis de institutione morum ad Emericum ducem’)—successfully provided the political unity of the Carpathian Basin for 1000 years despite the huge challenges. Throughout long, long centuries, they welcomed and supported within unified state bounds ‘Latins’ (Italians and French), Germans, Slovaks, Rusyns, Romanians, and Serbs. The methodological, legal, and historical research and legal dogmatic systematization of the Holy Crown cult started. The crown became the national past’s outstanding symbol not only for the nobility but also for the whole society, irrespective of political belief. In addition, the crown of St. Stephen became the revisional idea’s bearer. Those who strived to regain the whole territorial integrity (‘historical tenet’) lost during 1918–1920, not only those territories that were inhabited by mainly Hungarians (‘ethnic tenet’), did not found their ideology simply on the relative majority of the Hungarians, on the so-called ‘cultural supremacy’. (Hungary is still the oldest nation that can render continual, Christian statehood in the Carpathian Basin.) The leading idealism was not a certain ‘imperial nostalgia’ nor the undoubtedly existing desire for revanche. The historical and legal approach aimed to restore the rights of the Holy Crown to reincorporate the territories into the body of the Holy Crown.¹⁷ The Vienna Arbitrations of 1938 and 1940—which drew the Hungarian-Slovak and Hungarian-Romanian border according to the national tenet, namely, the territories of the Hungarian majority were awarded to Hungary—were interpreted by many as the fractional restitution of the Holy Crown’s ‘body’.¹⁸

The crown with a cross at the top had to escape again in 1944–1945, actually from the Soviets approaching from the East. The crown guards, who lived in the barracks connected to the royal palace with a private tunnel, had the chance once again to prove that their duty as guardians is not solely of a representative nature. The crown, along with many crown jewels (scepter, orb), was dug out of a gasoline drum in Mattsee near Salzburg in late April 1945. The coronation mantle, which was proven to be from the age of St. Stephen and was converted from a vestment, was left in the charge of the local parish priest. The Holy Crown was hidden underground for three months; afterwards, it was taken by the Americans. It was kept in Germany until 1953, and then it was transported to Fort Knox in Texas (Glant 2018).

Even the state socialist dictatorship established by the Russian occupation following the Soviet model found the retrieval of the relic of the ‘symbol of Hungarian statehood’ important. The attempts of the Kádár regime, which was formed after the suppression of the anti-communist revolution of 1956 and the anti-Russian war of independence, were ardently opposed by the Hungarian emigration in the USA. The large Hungarian community feared that the restitution of the national and Christian relics would contribute to the Kádár regime’s legitimacy. But it did not happen. The significance of the Holy Crown’s return in 1978 (Glant 2018) could be compared to the election of Pope John Paul II of the same year. The Polish pope practiced the policy of modus vivendi (‘Ostpolitik’) formed during the reign of Paul VI, with the communist regimes.¹⁹ The bald fact, however, that the new Roman pope was from the eastern part of the Iron Curtain fundamentally rocked the communist ideology from within, which envisioned the generic disappearance of religion and the church according to the Marxist development theory. The election of the Polish pope was the pure refutation of this theory. It shook millions of Catholics in Central and Eastern Europe, giving them faith and hope. The same was true for the Hungarian Holy Crown’s return home. The communist regime regained and then put the crown in the museum in vain; this did not stabilize the situation of the regime, which was heavily crackling under the surface. Moreover, it became the focus of the historical past’s experience and the revival of the national identity, which had been propagandistically re-, or more precisely, devalued along the Marxist ideology. The ceremony of the return pulled the whole population of the country in front of the television. The older generations spoke about the event with tears in their eyes; hundreds of thousands of people made a pilgrimage to watch the Holy Crown and the regalia exhibited in the National Museum in Budapest, among whom one could find the 11-year-old author of these lines with his parents. The younger generations, which were born in the ‘Soviet era’ and were increasingly unsatisfied with the prevailing political, ideological, and social system, were not indifferent, either.²⁰ The ‘István a király’ (‘Stephen, the King’) rock opera, which gained permission to be staged five years later and is a musically as well as textually cleverly written piece, met with almost euphoric success. The state-founder saint king’s coronation is its final scene. The evocation of the ceremony was historically and particularly symbolically conducted by the Holy Crown.²¹ At the same time, a strong Christian religious renaissance began in the communist country, especially among the younger generations, while the number of Catholics increased compared to Protestants (Tomka 1996).

Based on the above said, two theses are unraveled, or become self-evident in respect of the modern relations.

5. The “Perpetual Vacancy” of the Hungarian Throne

One of the theses is that due to the centuries-long lack of a ‘national’ king of Hungarian origin, there was no real option to fill the Hungarian throne after the Catholic House of Habsburg’s last dethronement in 1921, nor in the 1920–1940s, nor in the ‘modern’ times starting in 1990. Not even if we take the fact into account that the form of state was a kingdom until 1946. Although in the 1920s and partly in the 1930s, there were numerous heated debates of the publicists; moreover, there were frays of party politics between those who demanded the restoration of the House of Habsburg and those who demanded the ‘free king election’ (they were the so-called ‘free king electors’), yet neither of them carried political reality. The odds of the Habsburgs were made slim by the two ‘king coups’ of 1921, namely, Charles IV’s unsuccessful attempts to return. The bordering successor states (Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Serbia; the ‘Little Entente’ as they were called at the time), as a reply, threatened direct military interventions. Consequently, due to the military power relations, the restoration had no reality concerning foreign affairs.²² The majority of the liberal society that was loyal to the spirit of the civil revolution of 1848, of mainly Protestant origin, was not committed to the idea of restoration. The Catholic clergy, especially the prelates and the aristocracy, believed in ‘legitimism’, the Habsburgs’ lawful succession.²³ However, their weight in politics was enough only to neutralize the endeavors of the free king electors, who considered electing a national king, either a member of a collateral branch of the Habsburgs or of a foreign dynasty or aristocratic family. The situation was complicated by the fact that, due to the conditions that had become established at the beginning of the 17th century, the Hungarian king could only be Catholic (Tusor 2025, p. 117).

The stalemate mainly favored Miklós Horthy, who was the head of state from 1920 to 1944 and who temporarily toyed with the idea of establishing a dynasty. During the Second World War, his son, István Horthy, was appointed deputy regent and his possible successor. However, the tragic flying accident of the deputy regent on the Russian front in August 1942 precluded further steps. The plan to crown István Horthy Jr.—who was born Protestant in 1941 and who later converted to Islam, later in the 1960s—as King Stephen VI was only good to induce the protest of the Hungarian church’s prevailing head, Cardinal Jusztinián Serédi, archbishop of Esztergom (1927–1944). As the Prince Primate of Hungary, Serédi, and then his successor József Mindszenty (1945–1974), were a certain king’s substitute in the eyes of the Catholics. Mindszenty was the only one to publicly oppose the abolition of the ’thousand-year-old’ Hungarian kingdom and the proclamation of the republic in February 1946.²⁴

The movement in favor of the enthronement of Charles IV’s son, Crown Prince Otto, as Otto II, was continuously present in Hungarian public life, especially in the press between the two world wars. (Charles IV died of the Spanish flu in Madeira in 1922.) Otto von Habsburg, who participated in the last coronation of a Hungarian king as a successor in December 1916, could visit Hungary only from 1987, in the last years of the communist dictatorship.²⁵ His visits that were of a personal nature at the beginning attracted growing interest and public awareness, like that of the ceremonial requiem of his mother, Zita of Bourbon-Parma, which was held in the coronation church in the castle of Buda in the spring of 1989.²⁶ In August of the same year, Otto played a historic part in the organization of the ‘Pan-European Picnic’ at the Hungarian-Austrian border. The event resulted in the break (breaking) of the ‘Iron Curtain’. Jumping at this chance, thousands of East German refugees escaped to Austria, which paved the way for the fall of the Berlin Wall.²⁷

In the following two decades, Otto von Habsburg—who became fluent in Hungarian, which could not be achieved by any of his predecessors in his family—became a guest at various events in Hungary on a regular basis as the embodiment of the ‘history living with us’. Sometimes as a member of the European Parliament, sometimes as a private individual. He did not expect to be called ‘your royal highness’ or ‘mister crown prince’ at these events; however, he did not reject it.²⁸ After his death in 2011, Cardinal Péter Erdő, archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, celebrated a requiem in St. Stephen’s Basilica of Budapest in the presence of many members of the parliament in memory of the last crown prince of Hungary. This requiem was the last public occurrence of the late Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the former Hungarian Kingdom on the stage of history.²⁹

The idea of the monarchy’s restoration cannot be found in the public life of present-day Hungary. This idea is nurtured only by some zealous, young historians’ nice movement of a subcultural nature. They are all sundry legitimists and endeavor to restore the kingdom with the descendants of ‘Prince Otto’. The ‘free king electors’ have already died out.³⁰ The founding of Hungary and the times prior to the birth of the Kingdom of Hungary raise more people’s interest. The conquest of the Carpathian Basin, the times of the ‘invasions’ of Western Europe, and the questions of the incidental Hun-Hungarian, Avar-Hungarian kinship, and the problem of the Hungarian language’s origin are the subject of the scientific and, unfortunately, nonscientific common talk. It is almost self-evident based on the above-mentioned: neither the king nor the kingdom attracts wide interest among the society in present-day Hungary, but the Holy Crown, especially its origin, medieval history, and its cult, does. The history of the object between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries has been dealt with by a separate research group since 2012 (Lendület Szent Korona 2012).

However, as it occurs in the thesis detailed below, there is more to say apart from the social attention.

6. The Holy Crown State Emblem

The 500-year-old separation of the cult of the Holy Crown from the person of the ruler, and the concrete object’s becoming cultic and its ‘direct’ link to the state founder saint king, properly compensated for the lack of the national king and sometimes of the king himself. Furthermore, it fulfills this function even in a republic, as it seems. It symbolizes the Hungarian state, statehood, tradition, history, and national identity. Namely, by the twentieth century, not only the nobility but every Hungarian citizen could also feel and regard themselves as a member of the Holy Crown. The other thesis, which seeks to support the understanding of current affairs, is closely related to the previously mentioned ascertainment. Namely, the fact is almost self-evident: after the fall of state socialism and the Soviet sphere of interest in Central Europe in 1990, why the ancient coat of arms illustrating the crown was chosen as the new Hungarian Republic’s (proclaimed in the previous year) coat of arms by the first freely elected parliament. Based on the historical antecedents, it also becomes comprehensible and clarified why the relic, and the history and ideology embodied within itself, turned into the principle of Hungarian statehood and constitutional policy in the third millennium.

Although in 1990 there were heated debates in the Hungarian parliament about whether the crowned or only the striped scutum with a double cross but without a crown should be the country’s old–new coat of arms. The followers of the version without the crown argued with the republican and revolutionary traditions of 1849, 1946–1949, and 1956. During these parliamentary debates, it became clear to everybody that the Holy Crown is primarily the ancient symbol of the nation, and millennial statehood remained in its physical reality. In the course of history, the relic separated from the person of the actual monarch; moreover, the monarch’s authority derived from the Holy Crown itself through the coronation that followed the given rules. It could be related only to one person, namely, to the state founder King St. Stephen. Everything that had been only tradition and ideology was put down in 1990 and was codified in Act XLIV: the Holy Crown de iure separated from the monarchy as a form of government and became the coat of arms symbol of a parliamentary republic, a modern parliamentary democracy. This given state has been a member of the European Union since 2004 (Oxford University Press 1990).

The third millennium’s symbolic and legislative events already relied upon this mutual historical and legal basis. In the millennium of the foundation of Hungary, the parliament passed Law I of 2000, which is about the legacy of St. Stephen and the Holy Crown. As a result, on 1 January 2000, the coronation regalia were transferred to the House of Parliament in a ceremonious procession and were placed in its central hall.³¹ On 15 August, on the day of St. Stephen’s death, as a momentum of the millennium celebrations, the Holy Crown was transferred to Esztergom, to the place of the millennial coronation, by boat on the River Danube. The Body of the Holy Crown was set up under the above-mentioned law. The President of the Republic became its president; its members are the Minister President, the President of Parliament, the President of the Constitutional Court, and the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and since 2004, the President of the Supreme Court (Act LXII of 2004) (Hungarian Act 2025).

The next important legislative move was in 2010 (modification of Act CV of 2004) (Hungarian Act 2025). The Crown Guards of the Hungarian Defense Forces were formed in that year. The crown guards went into service in May 2011 and took the oath to protect the Holy Crown even at the expense of their lives. The romantic ceremonial dress uniform and the special halberd (‘vibárd’) of the crown guards, which operated until 1945, were changed to a new full dress uniform and modern armament.³² It indicated that it was not a nostalgia reflecting upon the past, but a living tradition of Hungarian statehood. The national state symbol, protected day and night in the Parliament building, can be visited by anybody.

The process of codification reached its peak in the next year. The new constitution of Hungary was ratified on 25 April 2011 and entered into force in 2012. The Fundamental Law is Hungary’s first written (‘charterial’) constitution that was framed in sovereign circumstances and adopted by two-thirds of the parliament. Previously, a historical constitution—formed based on the English model—was used; the constitution of 1949 is a copy of the Soviet constitution of 1936.³³ The constitution lays down in the so-called ‘National Avowal’ praeambulum: ‘We honour the achievements of our historic constitution and we honour the Holy Crown, which embodies the constitutional continuity of Hungary’s statehood and the unity of the nation.’ Article A changed the name of the former ‘Hungarian Republic’ to Hungary. Only the 2nd point of Article B specifies the form of government, that of a republic. Article I declares that the coat of arms of Hungary shall be a vertically divided shield with a pointed base. The left field shall contain eight horizontal bars of red and silver. The right field shall have a red background and shall depict a base of three green hills with a golden crown on top of the higher central hill, from which rises a silver patriarchal cross. The Holy Crown shall rest on top of the shield, as we can read.³⁴

7. Conclusions

The constitution that inserts the Holy Crown in the state coat of arms does not use the term Hungarian Republic, but only Hungary when it speaks about the state itself. This detail indicates the approach more vividly than anything, where the republic’s modern form of government becomes only secondary. The ‘country’ (the ‘motherland’) and the ‘crown’ that symbolizes it are primary. In this unique Hungarian approach, the crown is not the symbol of the monarchy, but the whole country. That is why it does not contradict the republic as the form of government. That is why the ‘crowned republic’ can be discussed without any inner antagonism. The historical comprehension and exposition of this consistency was the achievable goal of this paper. As well as the demonstration that the double cross in the Hungarian coat of arms and the traditional sacrality of the crown covering the coat of arms with another cross on the top have no constitutional or political relevance in the present. In the last three decades, both right-wing and left-wing governments have been able to operate under its auspices. (Another issue is that the present course, as a reminiscence of the 19th alliance of throne and altar, is regularly trying to use not only the Catholic but all historical denominations for its political ends…).

In conclusion, the international terminology can be extended with further elements. One can add the term ‘Republic with a Holy Crown’—under which term only and solely Hungary in the twenty-first century is indicated—to the historically concrete ‘Crowned Republic’ (like that of Geneva and Venice) and the constitutional monarchies that are often called the previous name—monarchies that have only ceremonial functions, like those of Norway, Sweden, etc.³⁵

Contrary to the past, and despite strong appearances, this symbolism no longer has any ecclesiological implications. State and church are legally separated in Hungary, and the Hungarian ius supremi patronatus regii and the Catholic State Church system and Catholic privileges based on the ideological foundations of St. Stephen’s tradition are a thing of the past. The Holy Crown itself, unlike the relic of the “Holy Right” (the authentic St. Stephen’s hand kept in a separate chapel in the Budapest Cathedral), has not been surrounded by direct religious cult for a very long time. While the Czech Crown of Wenceslas is kept in the chapel of St. Wenceslas in Prague Cathedral, the Hungarian crown has not had a sacral depository since the 14th century. However, unlike the imperial Reichskrone and Rudolfskrone in the Schatzkammer in Vienna (Cf. Österreichische Kaiserkrone 2024; Krone (Herrscherattribut) 2024; Reichskrone 2023), the Hungarian Holy Crown is not a museum object. Nor is it a mere heraldic insignia, like the papal tiara, which has been relegated to the shelves of treasuries. It is a living national and state symbol of Christian origin and Christian ideals in the 21st century.

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Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Footnotes

Notes

1. For the sake of historical accuracy, it should be mentioned that the revolution on 31 October 1918 already changed the name of the Kingdom of Hungary (Regnum Hungariae) to Hungarian People’s Republic, and the Bolshevik-like dictatorship rampaging for 133 days from 21 March 1919 used the term of soviet republic. Between 1 August 1919 and 15 March 1920, the temporary governments headed the ‘Hungarian Republic’, which means that the kingdom was restored only after it.

2. The two most useful outlines are: (Molnár 2001; Romsics 2016). An informative and reliable entry: (Hungary 2025).

3. On the age of the foundation of Hungary and the crown-bestow, and on the history of medieval Hungary, the best monograph: (Engel 2001, pp. 25–49).

4. The abundant and important theses of the Hungarian secondary literature on the crown and its origin were published mainly in German, hence the most well-known Hungarian summary, too: (Benda and Fügedi 1988). A recent outline in English: (Bak and Pálffy 2020). Its review by (Oberly 2021). The latest volume of studies illustrating the crown’s itinerary abroad: (Pálffy 2018). An art historical description of the insignia: (Tóth 2001).—The statements of the Wikipedia entries in English are often incorrect; therefore, they are useless for academic discourse. It is mainly worth a look due to its graphic content: (Holy Crown of Hungary 2025).

5. (Zsoldos 2018). There is only one object that can be identified from 1241 to 1242, 1305, and 1440–1464, at the time of the absence of the Hungarian monarch’s regalia in Dalmatia, Bohemia, and Austria. See the (Zsoldos et al. 2018).

6. See note 4 above.

7. The statement of the similarity is based on the fact that the coronation ceremony, which can be traced back to Egbert, archbishop of York (Pontificale Egberti) in its roots, and which was amplified with local elements during the course of time, was similar to the consecration of a bishop in its various elements, which is highlighted in the given secondary literature. (Cf. Bartoniek 1917; Fügedi 1984; Gerics 1984; Bak and Pálffy 2020, pp. 68–81).

8. Tripartitum Corpus Iuris consuetudinarii inclyti Regni Hungariae, Viennae 1517. In the compilation, which was not, however, enacted, though it was decisive until 1848 and in its certain details until the twentieth century, the Holy Crown was cited 33 times.—On Werbőczy and on the cult of the Holy Crown with fundamental literature, see: (Bódi 2013).

9. Act 2 of 1464, Act 3 of 1492, Act 25 of 1498, Act 23 of 1500, Act 4 of 1608 (before coronation) and Act 16 of 1608 (after coronation), Act 62 of 1609, Act 18 of 1613, Act 4 of 1622, Act 25 and 26 of 1625, Act 87 of 1635, Act 1 of 1638, Act 3 and 4 of 1647, Act 38 of 1715, Act 6 of 1790/1791, Act 25 of 1928. They are available online in Hungarian: (Hungarian Act 2025).

10. (de Reva 1652; de Rewa 1659). The latter was published in a critical edition and translated into Hungarian in the autumn of 2021, thanks to (Tóth 2021); more recently, see (Pálffy and Tóth 2024).

11. See the cited Acts in note 8, and (Pálffy and Teszelszky 2018), and more recently (Pálffy 2023).

12. On the period: (Péter 2012), on the nationality question 183–198 and 438–465; on the survival of the Tripartitum 134–152; on the Holy Crown: pp. 15–112. The original and online version of the latter: (Péter 2003) (see https://www.jstor.org/stable/4213744 accessed 27 February 2025). On the relations in the nineteenth century: pp. 455–60.

13. See (Maczó 2018). The coronation of Charles IV on 31 December 1916, from his ceremonial arrival to Budapest with the identification of the important characters, can be watched online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRsB7QKlmVg (accessed on 27 February 2025). The classical analysis of the coronation ceremonies’ history: (Bartoniek 1939), on the modern period 112 et seq. On the modern history of the Holy Crown and the coronation regalia: 174 et seq.

14. Poncet shared his personal view in November 2019 in Budapest. This episode is important, since it proves that French historians of the twenty-first century are aware of the gravity of the problem.

15. On Trianon, see this essay: (Romsics 2021); furthermore, the following current volume of studies: (Barta et al. 2021). A detailed bibliography on the homepage of the (Trianon 2020).

16. On the consolidation hallmarked by Prime Minister István Bethlen (and on the whole history of Hungary in the twentieth century): (Romsics 2010); and this volume of studies: (Zeidler and Ujváry 2014) (especially the study of pp. 21–48 and 121–136).

17. Important literature on this topic: (Timon 1903; Hóman 1938; Szekfű 1942), and mainly the following monograph: (Eckhart 1941). See also (Kardos 1992).

18. The same is true for the military intervention’s interpretation after Yugoslavia’s first dissolution (concerning the Međimurje Region).

19. On the Ostpolitik, see: (Melloni 2006).

20. Glant (2018).

21. Its premiere was in Budapest on 18 August 1983, on the so-called ‘Royal hill’ of the City Park, which was named after this premiere. Up until 2020, there were altogether 10 important shows recorded (the venues were Sevilla, Esztergom, Csíksomlyó, and Szeged apart from Budapest).

22. With further literature, see: (Gulyás 2010).

23. On the legitimism among others: (Kardos 2012).

24. (Krizsán 2002). On the behavior of Prince Primate Serédi: (Csíky 2018). Mindszenty and the king-question: (Balogh 2018).

25. Archival documents related to the first visits: (Habsburg Ottó magyarországi látogatásai 2012).

26. The photo collection of the requiem on 3 April 1989 with Otto Habsburg, his family, and Cardinal László Paskai, archbishop of Esztergom: (Évforduló 1989).

27. See the memorial issue of the Soproni Szemle on the border opening: (Oplatka 2009).

28. The author had the chance to meet the (late) prince twice, first during his visit to the Eötvös József Collegium in the early 1990s and on the campus of the Péter Pázmány Catholic University in 2008.

29. In the ceremony of 17 July 2011, Otto was portrayed by his photo taken during the coronation of 1916. An amateur image from the occasion: (Hungary’s Last Respect 2011). On this same day (one day after his funeral in Vienna), his heart was placed, according to his last wish, in the crypt of the Pannonhalma Archabbey.—On the centenary of his birth, in November 2012 the National Archives of Hungary commemorated him in a grandiose exhibition, whose catalog was published: (Habsburg Ottó és öröksége 2012); his bequest and legacy, his documents are kept and his memory kept green by a state funded foundation in the castle of Buda: (Otto von Habsburg Foundation 2025).

30. Their homepage: (Regnum! Portál 2025). There are news, recollections, and studies on the discourse between the legitimists and the free king electors between the two world wars published. The latter were published in a book with further current essays: (Pánczél Hegedűs and Uhel 2017).

31. Act I of 2000. The coronation mantle stayed in the National Museum. Cf. (Péter 2003, pp. 421–23).

32. The former uniform and traditions of the guard are kept and nurtured by an association. Its homepage: (Magyar Királyi Koronaőrök Egyesülete 2025).

33. The new constitution from 2012 cites the old historical constitution in many points. On its raison d’être: (Varga Zs. 2016). An opposing opinion that highlights the antagonism of the charterial and historical constitution: (Vörös 2016). This volume of studies serves a useful orientation on the previous constitutional circumstances: (Kukorelli 1995).

34. The text of the Fundamental Law: (Magyarország Alaptörvénye 2011). In English: (The Fundamental Law of Hungary 2020).

35. On the term ‘crowned republic’ (sometimes ‘monarchical republic’), see further literature: (Crowned Republic 2025). Those interested in further details and more information about the history of the Holy Crown, its tradition and rite of St. Stephen between 1000 and 2000, with further literature in English, the easily check the (small monograph-like) study, whose two parts were only cited (Péter 2003).

Footnotes

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