^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Hungary - Coat of Arms - Part 2

by Zeljko Heimer, 3 November 2001

The Crown
- The Bent Cross

See also:

The Crown

I was asked: ""Szent Corona" means "saint's crown" in Hungarian. Is that term used frequently to identify St Stephen's crown?
The answer is no. The Holy Crown (Szent Korona) is the crown you can see as part of the nowadays Coat of Arms.
No data about the form of St. Stephen's Crown. Only legends. The Holy Crown was the crown of King St. Stephen by the legends.
The Holy Crown is symbolised the country and its people (of course before 1848 only lords, nobles) by the Idea of the Holy Crown. The Holy Crown ruled the country not the king. See information in English at <www.historicaltextarchive.com> .
István Molnár, 30 October 2001

From the pages of the Embassy of the Republic of Hungary in Zagreb:
The institution of kingship in Hungary was established by King Stephen I, who was later canonized. His work of organizing the state and the church was embodied in the royal crown, which he received from Pope Sylvester II in the year 1000. He had himself crowned with it on the first day of the new millennium, while the rest of Europe quaked at the prospect of the end of the world and the coming of Antichrist.
This crown received from the Pope had a double significance. On the one hand it meant that the Hungarian king was spiritually a direct dependant of the Pope, and not, therefore, a vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor. So it symbolized, within bounds, the sovereignty of the kingdom. On the other hand, it was an emblem of secular rule given by the Pope to the king so that he might support the aspirations of the Roman Catholic Church in the country.
In depictions of the time, this crown bears no resemblance to the crown of today. The crown of King Stephen was the kind of jeweled open crown worn by almost all European monarchs at the turn of the millennium.
Although the first crown disappeared, the belief persisted for centuries in Hungary that the Holy Crown was identical with the one donated by the Pope to crown the king who founded the state. So what happened to the original Crown of St Stephen?
The most likely of the many views expressed by historians is that the original Hungarian crown was plundered by Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor. Since Hungarian sovereignty was temporarily suspended at the time, Henry returned the crown to Rome, where it vanished, or at least its fate is unknown.
The present crown, however, is also a relic of St Stephen. It is probably an amalgam of a reliquary for a skull and a Greek crown presented in about 1074 to King Géza I by the Byzantine Emperor Michael Ducas. It is presumed that the Holy Crown known today, symbolizing Hungarian kingship, existed by 1166. So the finest, most radiant relic of Hungarian history is more than 800 years old.
However, the crown went through every conceivable adventure down the ages. There can hardly be another historical art object that has been hidden in as many countries, places, castles, mansions and fortresses.
Battles and wars were fought and thrones toppled for possession of it. On occasions it has been lost while being brought back to Hungary from abroad. There were characters in history who simply purloined it, and others who kept it in secret. It has even been pawned, and buried during flight. It has been taken out of the country many times, and on each occasion, its return was a cause for solemn, national celebration. A special institution was set up to protect it, with guards chosen from the highest men in the land and a special military detachment.
Supporters of the extreme right-wing Hungarian government at the end of the Second World War took the crown to the West, where it came into the hands of the US military. The crown and other crown jewels were then kept in the United States, and some repairs even done to them, until 1978, when Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, at the behest of President Carter, ceremoniously returned them to Hungary. Since then, the crown and regalia have been on public display at the Hungarian National Museum.
The crown has two parts. Most researchers agree that these were merged in the last quarter of the 12th century.
On the lower part of the crown, which is of Greek origin, one of the enamel plates shows the bust of a king with the legend in Greek, "Geza, Loyal King of Turkia" (i.e. Hungary). On the king's head is a diadem that resembles the lower part of the crown without its upper parts and pendants. This, as mentioned, was presented by the Byzantine emperor to Géza, whose consort was the daughter of a Byzantine patrician. The upper part of the present crown closely resembles a medieval reliquary for a skull. In its original form, the bands forming a cross may have been adorned with pictures of the twelve apostles, surmounted by a plate holding the four bands together and bearing a picture of Christ Enthroned. When the reliquary was incorporated into the crown, one panel was cut from each band, leaving a total of eight pictures of apostles.
István Molnár, 30 October 2001

Istvan is, of course, right, but this small semantic difference that is so obvious to Hungarians is not quite understood by others, not even to Austrians and Croatians whith whom their history was so much intermigeled. So, what Hungarians call Holy Crown is called (in ignorancy) by "everybody else" (when they have need for calling it anyhow) St. Stephen's Crown. It is centainly so in Croatian documents regarding the crown (once it was a big issue in Croatia as if that crown "could" be set above the Croatian shield).
Zeljko Heimer, 30 October 2001

The same happens in English, German etc. heraldry sources. They all talk about St Stephen's crown as a way of designating what Hungarians call the "Szent Korona", rather than as authenticating a historical claim to the "real" crown of the saint.
Santiago Dotor, 31 October 2001

The decision to include the crown in the Coat of Arma of post-communist Hungary was controversial. A sizable minority in parliament (mostly centrist to leftist politicians) preferred a version of the Coat of Arms without the crown when post-communist symbols were being adopted, but at the time, the mood of the country was predominantly conservative. Even though there have been several center-left governments in the meantime, I don't think there has been any (serious) attempt from the Coat of Arms. I guess people have gotten used to it.
At the time, the critics pointed out that it is strange that a republic will have a royal crown upon the shield. , but there were a couple of factors in play, here. Other than in much of Western Europe, the current Hungarian republic did not replace a monarchy, but a communist regime. Therefore, the sentiment of the day was anti-communist, rather than anti-monarchist. In fact there was some discussion of installing some ancient Habsburg figure as Hungarian king, but I guess the whole thing seemed outdated and therefore the republic became sort of the default form of state.
So, there really wasn't a strong political reason to oppose a crown. Also, the Coat of Arms with crown had been in use before WWII and many people probably just felt nostalgic about "the good old days" before communism. In addition, Hungarians always have had a very sentimental attachment to the royal crown with the peculiarly bent