Hungarian Conservative

‘Their book collections were also incorporated into King Matthias’ library, now known as the Bibliotheca Corviniana. This can be considered the first royal library to be consciously established and developed. It began to flourish especially after Matthias’ marriage to Beatrix, daughter of the King of Naples (1476). The queens always had prayer books for personal use, the possession of which was part of being a pious queen. However, the educated Beatrix completely transformed the court of Buda, and in her wake came the great representatives of the Italian Renaissance.’

‘The first units of the First Crusade, and then the main army led by Godfrey of Bouillon, did cross the Hungarian Kingdom, but by then King Coloman was on the throne, the successor of Ladislaus. It was also well known that the only Hungarian-led crusade to the Holy Land was launched in 1217 under King Andrew II. Yet Hungarian medieval narrative sources record one more. They tell an interesting and controversial story about King Saint Ladislaus…Given the fact that the Hungarian king died on 29 July 1095, almost half a year before the first Crusade was announced at the Council of Clermont in November 1095, modern scholarship quickly lost confidence in the historicity of the account.’

‘Although the Pechenegs have no visible identity, they are part of the Hungarian nation to this day: their medieval history may have ended, but they have played an important role in Hungarian ethnogenesis. Great clans of Pecheneg origins, like the Tomaj, rose to high nobility, exemplifying self-sacrifice when it came to defending the country from foreign invaders.’

Galambóc (Golubac in today’s Serbia), still an imposing fortress on the banks of the lower Danube section, first appears in the annals of history when Turkish invasions approached and even reached the former borders of Hungary. King Sigismund, however, is not usually praised in military historical literature for the siege of Galambóc, although he acted with great foresight and care.

During the reign of King Stephen, the political aspect of the King’s devotion to Mary was only secondary and could be seen much more as the individual devotion of a fervent Christian believer to Mary. However, posterity took a different path and gave it national importance, being the basis for the Regnum Marianum idea of the 18th century.

The contrast between the brilliant achievements of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and the inertia of the kingdom of the Jagiellonians is almost a cliché in Hungarian history. To this day, many seek the causes of the 1526 Mohács tragedy in the damaging reign of the weak Jagiellonians. However, more recent Hungarian and international historical research has taken a much more positive view of the Dynasty’s performance.

‘The ideological models that had emerged at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries…had transformed social thinking and humanity’s view of the world to such an extent that it was impossible to maintain and preserve the earlier, semi-feudal Europe. This in turn meant that ethnicity and nationality, previously considered less significant elements…became a determining factor, leading not only to an exploration of the historical past of a given community, in the search for national heroes, but also to a demand for political unification with ethnic or linguistic compatriots within a single country.’

The modern reader might scoff at the medieval chronicler’s words about divine assistance, even dismiss it as gibberish, as he rather tries to find rational reasons for military victory. This attitude, however, fit in perfectly with medieval thinking, and the protagonists were fully convinced that their success or failure was due to the gaining or lack of heavenly support.

‘On 10 March this year, the author of these lines has only one wish: that a miracle may happen in the modern, so-called democratic Romania, and it may become like it was in the 1950s, or even like in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, in the 13th and 16th centuries. Because, if that happened, it would give freedom and autonomy to Szeklerland as in a true 21st-century European—and a European Union—country…’

Charles I, Emperor of Austria, was crowned king of Hungary as Charles IV on 30 December 1916, after his father, Emperor and King Francis Joseph passed away on 21 November. His inauguration ceremony was the last public showcasing of the historical splendour of the Hungarian monarchy.

‘King Matthias of Hungary (r. 1458–1490) spent many years of his reign in the saddle. This was the case in 1463, 1467, and 1475, when he “celebrated” Christmas in Jajce in Bosnia, in Brașov after the Battle of Baia, and then in Belgrade after the siege of the Szabács Castle against the Ottomans.’

In the Hungarian memory, the Rákos assemblies have become a symbol of the freedom of the Hungarian nobility. The diets in Rákos, as well as the assemblies held in Pressburg (today’s Bratislava, Slovakia) after 1540, played no small role in ensuring that the unity of the country did not disappear after the Turkish rule and that the occupied parts of the country did not entirely break away from the Kingdom either.

The Hungarian-language version of the Brussels-based news site has since changed the title of their article. However, the cached version of their horrible faux pas is still available through a simple Google search.

Although the unification made the dream of the Romanians come true, the aspirations of Transylvanian Hungarians for self-determination were ignored. The annexation of Transylvania to Romania was finally enshrined by the Treaty of Paris.

French historian René Grousset was the first in the international literature to show an understanding of the Crusade of Andrew II and many more continue to do so today. We do not see the campaign as successful because it was Hungarian, but because it was, in its time, a uniquely well-led, and, in our modern terms, ‘peace-making’ campaign with limited objectives.

For generations, the heroic deeds of the defenders of the Eger Castle have given the Hungarian people strength and fortitude. Although the area under Ottoman occupation expanded and, in the following years, the Sultan managed to reassuringly stabilize his presence in the Carpathian Basin, our predecessors could draw strength from the example of Dobó and his army in later years.

The year 1000 is not only memorable for Hungarians: at the turn of the first millennium, unexpected events took place in the whole of Europe, including on the fringes of the continent barely touched by Latin Christianity, in Poland and Hungary, where Christian conversion had been going on for years.

The coronation ceremony of the Kings of Hungary was a highly formalised and strict ritual, which conferred sovereignty onto them via the Holy Crown. It represented the bond between king and nation, and the monarch’s duty to uphold the laws, customs, and liberties of Hungary.

The Habsburg Court regarded Protestantism simply as the ideological expression of the nobility, that is, the ‘spirit of rebellion’. In addition, it was part of the absolutist thinking of the era that only a mono-religious country could be politically united.

Czech toponyms that include the adjective ‘Hungarian’ allude to the historical, centuries-old relationship between Hungary and Czechia that has not always been perfect, but nonetheless close. This is a region where the fates of the two countries were intertwined for a long time—the Bohemian–Hungarian frontier.

Hungarian cinemagoers have been craving enjoyable historical films for a long time. Finally, Hadik arrived, which, although not faultless, is a great example of the genre well done.

‘The significance pilgrimages had in terms of building clerical and diplomatic relations cannot be overlooked either. A whole slew of abbots, bishops, future archbishops, historians, poets, theological thinkers, and monks later canonised as saints visited Hungary. They brought highly cherished relics, luxury items of the East, and—not least—news with them.’

Notwithstanding his many political failures, such as the Crusade to Nicopolis in 1396, the involvement of Sigismund of Luxembourg in the short-lived, but nevertheless historical reunification of the Christian Churches cannot be discounted.

It has been 174 years since Major Pál Vasvári and his Rákóczi Free Army were massacred near Havasnagyfalu (today Mărișel in Romania), on 6 July 1849. Despite all resistance forces, the memory of the young revolutionary and his fellow martyrs is a powerful cohesive force for the dwindling Hungarian community of the Kalotaszeg (Țara Călatei) region to this day.

The purpose of Cum hiis superioribus annis, a papal bull issued by Pope Callixtus III in 1456, was to exhort Christians to pray, as the success of the Hungarian crusader army against the Turks was key for the future of Christian Europe at the time. To this day, the noon bell tolls every day to remind us that, as so many times in history, the Kingdom of Hungary stood up valiantly and proved itself one of the bulwarks of Christian Europe.

27 June is the Day of Hungarian Border Guards. The geographic location of our country and the very fact that it is the eastern bulwark of Western Christianity obliged it in the past and is still predestining it today to be one of the guardians of European civilisation and the peace of the continent.

The Treaty of Vienna, ending the Bocskai uprising, known in Hungary as Bocskai’s War of Independence, was signed 417 years ago today, on 23 June 1606. The agreement ensured (at least in principle) the sovereignty of Transylvania against the Habsburgs in the long term and guaranteed the free religious practice of Protestants.

On 18 June 1868, 155 years ago today, Hungarian admiral Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was born in Kenderes, Austria-Hungary. One of the greatest Hungarian statesmen of the 20th century served as the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary between 1 March 1920 and 16 October 1944.

What does the lower reach of the River Garam mean to Hungarians? For some, it is just a region of the Uplands, for others, a beautiful, wide, flat, and fertile valley surrounded by hills, while many people do not even know where to look on the map when they hear its name. For ethnic Hungarian local historian Gábor Juhász, it represents his homeland, a place where his ancestors had lived for hundreds of years.

The earliest Hungarian princes and kings can also be found among the many ancestors of today’s British Royal family: between British King Charles III and the Pagan Hungarian Prince Árpád, leader of the conquering Hungarians, there were forty generations marching through Europe’s more than a thousand-year-old history.