Pannonhalma [antikvár]

Halfway between Budapest and Vienna as the crow flies, some twelve milesor so south of Győr, just off the Győr-Veszprém road, lies the Abbey of Pannon-halma. The traveller approaching from the east sees it from afar across the plain,a great complex of gleaming buildings on the highest of the three hilltops thatmake up the mons sacer Pannoniae-the sacred mount of Pannonia-encircled by alow line of the mountains to the west.HistoryIt was barely a century after the year 1000 A.D., when the Christian peoples ofEurope had trembled with superstitious fear in the belief that the first millen-nium after Christ would herald the end of the world. A new fever had seizedthe Christian states in the West. Nobles and vagabonds, landless knights seekingadventure and urban citizens escaping the daily round, men and women, oneand all stitched the cross on their garments and set out to recover Jerusalemfrom Moslem hands.Putting their faith in the heavenly powers, well-equipped and miserably ill-provided armies alike sallied forth on their martial pilgrimage to the Holy Land.The conversion of the Hungarians to Christianity, around 1000 A.D., was knownto the countries on the western fringe of Europe, and the route of the first Cru-saders was planned to take them to Constantinople, en route for Jerusalem,through Hungarian soil. In 1096, after disarrayed crusading forces had marchedthrough the country, Godfrey of Bouillon with his vast, disciplined host appear-ed at the frontiers requesting King Coloman (Kálmán) (1095-1116) to givethem peaceful passage through Hungary. And it was at Pannonhalma that firstthe envoys of Godfrey, and then Godfrey himself, were received by Colo-man.It was no mere chance that brought the French Crusaders to the sacred mountof Pannónia. In medieval times Pannonhalma (mount of Pannónia) was also knownas mons sancti Mart/n/-monte di S. Martino-Martinsberg-St. Martin's Mount.The Crusaders bore the image of their patron saint, St. Martin of Tours, on theirbanners, and came to Pannonhalma in search of his birthplace. For though someexperts claim that the Sabaria which was St. Martin's birthplace was what is nowSzombathely on the western borders of Hungary, others, including the monksof Pannonhalma, believe that it was at Sabaria Sicca in the vicinity of the Abbeythat the saint who began life as a Roman legionary was born around 310 A.D.According to the verse chronicle of Péan Gattineau, a thirteenth-centurytroubadour, a large monastery stood at the spot where the Sabarian legionary