The Holy Crown of Hungary, Visible and Invisible

Abstract

SEER, tol. 8i,Vo. 3,J7ulY2003 The Holy Crown of Hungary, Visible and Invisible LASZLO PETER The reader at this point will certainlyask:how it is possible that a national relic of such great significance has never been properly examined in order to attain satisfactory conclusions [about its origin]. The answer is as contradictory as unexpected: precisely because such importance was attached to the crown; because it has been treatedas the greatestnationaltreasure. Kamamn Benda and ErikFugedi on the Holy Crown' THE history of political ideas reveals continuities and unexpected revivals. Too frequently it proves premature to pronounce a political idea dead. A well-known example which demonstrates that major political ideas hardly ever disappear without trace has been the reemergence of the natural law theory which had spent years in the doldrums while utilitarianism dominated political philosophy in Britain and America.2 Ideas whose impact is more limited and confined to a single national society could, likewise, unexpectedly revive after their apparent demise. When over forty years ago the present writer, working towards his DPhil in Oxford, took up the doctrine of the Holy Crown of Hungary, he thought that the subject was of purely historical interest, or at least one without any direct relevance to Hungarian politics, present and future. The reason why this assumption looked obvious at the time was not even primarily because Hungary, as a part of the Soviet bloc, was ruled by Communists who rejected and sneered at any political Laszl6 Peter is Emeritus Professor of Hungarian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. I am grateful to Professor Janos Bak (CEU, Budapest) for raising critical questions about the text, to Professor James Burns (UCL) for his point on Hegel's influence, to Dr L6rant Czigany (London) for his comments on my use of terms, to Professor R. J. W. Evans (Oxford) for his incisive observations, to Virginia Hewitt (British Museum) for a piece of information, to Dr Martyn Rady (SSEES, UCL) for detailed criticism and archival references, to Judit Villam (Parliamentary Library, Budapest) for providing a copy of a colligatum she compiled, in I999, of recent publications on the Holy Crown question. Finally, I should like to thank my wife, Margaret, for her suggestions for improving the grammar and style of the text. In the use of capital letters for 'Holy Crown', I follow established convention (the use of lower case would amount to the making of a political point). 'Kalman Benda and Erik Ftugedi, TausendjahreStephanskrone, Szeged, I988, translation of A magyar korona regbnye, Budapest, 1979 (hereafter, Stephanskrone), p. 20. 2 The revival followed the appearance of John Rawl's A TheoryofJustice, Cambridge, MIA,197 1. 422 THE HOLY CROWN OF HUNGARY tradition of the old order which they replaced.3 The reason went deeper: it was generally taken for granted, even by opponents of the Communist regime, that political traditions,like the ideas of the Holy Crown, however important they had been in past centuries, were closely tied to the institution of the monarchy that had irretrievably perished by the end of the Second World War. By 1945 the whole traditional social order that used to maintain the institutions of the kingdom was gone. It is true that even after I945 some emigre groups of the displacedpoliticalelite, having escaped to the WestfromNazi or Communist rule, cherished old political traditions including ideas about the Holy Crown.4 In the I96os a Hungarian scholar, Charles d'Eszlary,publishedin Francea three-volumehistoryof the Hungarian politicalinstitutionsfromthe Middle Ages,5consideredlargelyin terms of the Holy Crowndoctrine(thedoctrinewas a late-nineteenth-century innovation, of which more later).He must have been a 'lastMohican'. For the world at large, so far as it took cognizance of Hungarian constitutionalmatters,the doctrinewas as dead as the dodo. Yet, the reportsof the death of the Holy Crown traditionturnedout to be greatlyexaggerated.Come I989, EasternEurope'sannus mirabilis, Soviet power in the region collapsedand, togetherwith that, Communist rule. Hungary, like a few other former satellites, became a parliamentarydemocracy. There was no question of restoring either the monarchy or the old social order. And yet the Holy Crown, like that fabled Egyptian bird, the phoenix, miraculouslycame forth with new life. The...