Today’s Budapest was created on 17 November 1873 by the merger of Pest on the left bank of the Danube and Buda and Óbuda on the right bank. The rich and tumultuous history of these settlements has been documented since the 11th century.
Surprisingly, the earliest royal secular knightly order in Europe was founded in 1326 in Hungary, a country just emerging from civil war, by King Charles I, in honour of St George, the patron saint of knights since the crusades.
The concept of the ‘Bulwark of Christendom’ appeared in all border areas where two civilisations and religions came into contact. However, the conscious and regular use of the term is linked to the Italian humanists of the 15th-century Renaissance, who greatly contributed to the formation of the modern image of Europe.
There is a myth, to be dispelled, that the Romans were always cruel conquerors. In truth, those who lived under the rule of the Caesars had plenty autonomy, be it in the public or private sector of society. It was that rationality and pragmatism of Roman law, which regulated regulated the lives of the conquered peoples, that structured Western culture as is evident from a host of historical, cultural, political, and societal elements.
From the perspective of Europe, the Hungarians’ conversion to Christianity was by no means an unbroken continuation of their raids—the Hungarian people was still considered suspicious, barbaric, and prone to paganism for a long time.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.