The Eighth Tribe, 1974 (1. évfolyam, 1-7. szám)
1974-11-01 / 6. szám
Page Six THE EIGHTH TRIBE November, 1974 St. Stephen’s Day in Hungary, or was until the Communists changed its name to Constitution Day. Understanding that Hungary stood between the East and West, Stephen looked to Rome for Christianity and to Germany for the feudal system on which he structured Hungarian economics and politics; but he also tried to keep free the Eastern roots of the country, represented by the Magyars, a people passionately devoted to freedom and liberty and the basic stock of the Hungarian nation. It is to Stephen’s great credit as a ruler that he successfully kept the Magyar spirit alive within a feudal, Catholic framework. When he died in 1038 (on August 20, incidentally), he left a country which could rightly be called an outpost of Christianity on the threshold of the East. But that left Hungary in a peculiarly vulnerable position, and throughout the centuries Eastern and Western powers would covet Hungary as a protective buffer state or merely for expansionist reasons. Thus in 1073, Michael Ducas, the Emperor of Byzantium and hereditary enemy of the Roman Church, seeking to gain influence with Hungary, sent King Géza II a crown richly decorated in the Byzantine style, roundish, formal, rich. Hungarian jewelsmiths joined and welded this crown with Stephen’s crown, fusing in one national symbol Hungary’s role as meeting place of the East and West. Gold plates were joined in a ring around the Crown. Set into the ring are precious stones and eight of the Apostles in effigy, carved in enamel. Ruby pendants in the shape of clover leafs hang from either side, and in the center front of the Crown is a picture of Christ; and opposite it, at the rear, a picture of Michael Ducas himself—who else. The Crown is generously studded with precious stones, and, of course, rising magnificently from the peak is the cross, which later came to be bent at an angle like an old leaning telephone pole. The Crown has a value that far transcends its worth in precious material or as a work of art—a value that even transcends its symbolic value as a “crown.” The Kingdom of Hungary is embodied absolutely—and by virtue of the Hungarian Constitution—in the Holy Crown. Endowed with mystical properties, the Crown functions like a person. It is a seat of power even if no King carries it on his head. It is Kingship itself. And in so far as Hungarians regard the State as an organization to protect the whole, public power and rightness live in the Holy Crown. The Crown, then, retains value even beyond the days of Kings and Emperors. Thus the Holy Crown of St. Stephen lives as a symbol of extraordinary importance to the people of Hungary, and it can be understood why the Communists and certain people of the West are presently engaged in cloak and dagger operations and public debate over the Crown. But before we comment more specifically on the present value of the Crown, we must understand that the Crown has existed since 1001 and survives as one of the oldest still meaningful objects in the history of any nation. It has survived changes in government, long periods of occupation and siege, thefts, burials; and it has rested on the heads of foreign sovereigns unsympathetic to Hungary. Yet it has always found its way back to Hungary. The drama goes on, and the post World War II period finds it again out of the country and still an object of controversy, badly wanted by opposing political factions. If it could speak it would tell of 1000 years of Eastern European history. It lived through the Tartar invasion of Hungary during the reign of Béla IV. In the 14th Century it and the heir to the throne, young Wencelas, were abducted by Bohemian Knights and taken to Prague. Duke Otto of Bavaria next took possession of the Crown; and in 1387 it was offered to Charles Durazzo of Venice as a political palliative. Again it found its way back to Hungary. In the 15th Century the wet nurse of the infant Vadislas stole the Holy Crown, and with the Crown under one arm and Vadislas under the other, she rode off to hide both from political enemies. She was
