The Holy Crown of Hungary [antikvár]

T I ' JL h owards the end of the year 1000, as Christendom prepared to celebrate the millenary of Christ's birth, the nobles of the Carpathian Basin were looking to the future. They were awaiting leave from the Pope, the highest spirimal and temporal leader in the Christian world, to crown as their king Vajk, son of Géza. He had already received the baptismal name Stephanus, the 'crowned'. Although no record remains of when the coronation took place, tlie length of his reign—38 years, 7 months and 15 days—and the date of his death, August 15, 1038, are both documented. If these are correct, the coronation was on January 1, 1001, or bearing in mind the variation in the date on which the year began in the 11th century, Christmas Day, 1000. The ceremony may well have been held in the Church of St Stephen the Martyr at Esztergom, the forerunner of the present cathedral. The coronation, which established Hungary as a Christian kingdom, marked the climax of a process that had lasted for three decades. The initiator was Prince Géza. In 973, shortly after coming to power, Géza sent an embassy of twelve Hungarian chiefs to the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I. They arrived at Quedlinburg on March 23, where they celebrated Easter with the emperor. What they discussed at their council we do not know, but the upshot was that missionary priests soon arrived in Hungary, and the Prince was baptised. Moreover, his son was granted the hand of the emperor's niece, Princess Gisela of Bavaria. The presence of the German princess in a still semi-pagan country was an unprecedented mark of favour. It was far from the custom to wed imperial princesses to 'barbarian' chieftains, for Hungary still did not have a king in the Western sense. The female members of the Saxon and Salian ruling houses were seldom even married outside the Empire. If no political marriage was arranged, they would end their lives as abbesses of Essen, Quedlinburg or Gandersheim. Gisela herself had prepared for a monastic life. Indeed the husbands of the only two princesses in the 10th and 11th centuries to many outside the Empire were both from the House of Árpád. Gisela, as second cousin of Emperor Otto III, married the future King Stephen in 995, while the heir apparent, Solomon, received the daughter of Emperor Henry III in marriage in 1058. The decades after the Council of Quedlinburg were a decisive period in Hungarian history. Father and son, Prince Géza and King Stephen, were more successful than their neighbours at making a European kingdom out of their people. Hungary was the only country to the east of the Holy Roman Empire that succeeded in becoming an independent kingdom during that period. This kingdom was an enduring one, where the office of king went unquestioned and its existence was not threatened by outside factors. (The hereditary nature of kingship was not established in either Poland or Bohemia in the 11th and 12th centuries. In Croatia, only the Hungarian kings managed to establish continuity on the throne.) The Hungarian church likewise managed to gain its independence. It was directly subordinate to Rome, whereas the Scandinavian sees were under Bremen until the 12th century. The Bohemian church remained in the province of Mainz until the archbishopric of Prague was established in 1344. This organization of the church under its own archbishop, with subordinate bishoprics, was essential for an independent Christian kingdom. Esztergom became an archbishopric in 1001, which suggests that conversion to Christianity had begun several decades earii-er. A church organization could only be established once a sizeable proportion of the population had been converted. The German chronicler Thietmar of Merseburg recounts the organization of the Hungarian church, the foundation of bishoprics and the coronation establishing kingship as a single act. Vajk, who founded the sees, had received a blessing and his crown by tlie grace and encouragement of the emperor, according to Thietmar. The crown was the symbol of royal power, while the benediction may refer to the spirimal part of the ceremony, the unction. The Pope at the time was Sylvester II, Gerbert of Aurillac, formerly Archbishop of Reims and Patriarch of Ravenna. He had been the tutor and friend of Otto III, and his 5