The Hungarian Golden Bull and its Place among European Legal Sources

Abstract

The Golden Bull, issued by King Andrew II of Hungary in 1222, was a milestone among contemporary Hungarian constitutional documents and a significant European document. It was drafted and published 800 years ago, and its significance lives on to this day, and is still a lively topic of modern constitutional law thinking. The 13th and 14th centuries were the age of the golden bull in Europe, as legal documents with similar content and character were produced not only in Hungary but throughout the continent, such as the Magna Charta Libertatum (1215) in England, the Danish constitutional charter (1282) and, a century later, the German Golden Bull (1356). The name “golden bull” itself refers to a kind of ceremonial exceptionalism; the use of the metal seal (bulla) was adopted from Byzantium. In the Middle Ages, the use of seals was in itself a highly important authentication procedure, since it provided a visible and tangible proof of the identity of the issuer to the largely illiterate members of society, and indirectly indicated the importance of the contents of the document. The Hungarian Golden Bull and its European counterparts carried significant public law and constitutional content. Such royal charters were essentially letters of privilege. Often they were the result of real social movements and dissatisfaction with the central power. The golden bulls can also be seen as the borderline institutions of the two (legal) historical periods of feudalism and polity, namely as constitutional documents that were conceived on the intellectual ground of feudal law, but were manifestations of an approach and a demand that was already oriented towards the political and legal concepts of the polity. Of the provisions of the Golden Bull, I would like to highlight the element dealing with the administration of justice. Its main lesson is that, for the first time, it establishes the fact, place and time of personal, institutionalised royal justice in the promise of regular annual judgments. The Golden Bull is still with us today: an exact replica of the royal seal of the Golden Bull hangs around the necks of the members of the Hungarian Constitutional Court, which was established in 1990, and a facsimile of the Golden Bull adorns the walls of the meeting room of the regular deliberations of the judges of the Constitutional Court.