The Crown of Saint Stephen
Minkus, Friedrich von
November 6, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 8 THE CROWN OF SAINT STEPHEN By FRIEDRICH VON MINKUS I N which wide THE fertile towers castle valley above of Buda and the southern...
...And when the darkness pounced from overhead To quench her, she refused to be a ghost Wavering before it, vague and little and lost: She hated the cold arrogance of the dead, Their soundless faces, and a legend herself, almost, A little outside life from her first breath, She clutched at living...
...to these were added later the administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina...
...completed the conversion of the with her eldest son in her arms, seeking help against subordinate countries, and improved the condition of the enemies all about her who sought to seize her towns, schools, justice and commerce...
...GRACE HAZARD CO~KLINC...
...Then at last in I683, after three hundred years of uniting the different nations...
...Louis Kossuth, the leading spirit of the insursex of the House of Austria in the Pragmatic Sanction...
...He died five months later on a distant island, a martyr A law passed the same year--I92I---declared that the Pragmatic Sanction of the year x723 and all other standards of right which determine and regulate the right of succession of the House of Austria have become null and void and the right of electing a king consequently reverts to the nation...
...the kingdom of Saint Stephen was cut down to the Magyar core...
...Charles I, emperor of Austria and fourth apostolic king of that name, pronounced the coronation oath, "by God Almighty, by the holy Virgin Mary and by all the saints of God," gave the protecting sword-stroke over the lands toward the four points of the compass, and the crown was placed on his youthful, anxious, anointed brow, Two years later came the collapse of the Central Powers...
...The Sacred Grown of Saint Stephen, described here, is an index to feeling which ~lmericans do not share but which they will assuredly respect.--The Editors...
...the broad silver ribbon of the Danube, in an inaccessible chamber, hidden in an iron-clad chest with many locks, guarded day and night of Saint Stephen...
...On March 2, I92o, the monarchy was reestablished, the kingdom of Saint Stephen...
...what they wanted was the constituintroduced by Calvinism...
...The sums necessary to cover common expenses were fixed by agreement every ten years...
...he extended the realm to Moldavia, Wal- daughter came before the parliament in mourning, lachia and Servia...
...As a bulwark For three hundred years the crown was handed down against these invasions, which had penetrated to the in the direct line of Saint Stephen...
...The statutory title it bore was "the kingfilled out with wonderful transparent enamel...
...The legitimist party denies the legality of this law, which, with a curious curve in the policy of independence, is based on the actual expiration of just that "indivisibility and inseparability" which Charles VI had wrested ;rom the Diet of the kingdom of Saint Stephen in the Pragmatic Sanction...
...At the very back, opposite the picture of the always and is still called "the countries of the HunSaviour, also on a rounded plate, there is the picture garian crown," or more solemnly "the countries of of Michael Ducas, emperor of Byzantium, who pre- the Sacred Crown of Saint Stephen...
...rubies...
...Certain Hungarian troops belonging to the Austro-Hungarian army, having for four years brilliantly sustained their centuries-old reputation for bravery, were the first to desert at the front...
...Austria, which had stones and holy figures engraved in enamel surrounded grown up out of that Ostmark created as a protection by Greek lettering...
...sented this crown to his brother monarch, G&a II, With the formulating of this title the Hungarian constitution, ever very precise, made three points clear...
...They bear alternately sparkling precious called "Austria" or "Hungary...
...Hungary's own long-desired army, composed of troops gathered together by a powerful hand, put a sudden and dictatorial end to the horribly cruel Soviet rule...
...Thirdly: that for the HunSylvester II sent as a blessing to the country of the garians this central kingdom of one nation was emHungarians...
...She brought it blue wax berries from the cedar, And peat-like humus from the mountain-side...
...claimed the right of leadership over all other nationaliThese two bands were part of the gift which Pope ties under their dominion...
...Hungary became order of primogeniture for the other kingdoms and a province of Austria...
...rection, flying for his life to Turkey, hid the holy This was passed in I723, according to the established crown in the marshes near Orsova...
...He died without inheritance, they cried impetuously, "We will die for heirs...
...The topmost plate, state were to have no separate political and cultural which connects them, shows the Saviour in the act of life...
...Under the scourge of the Turks, who robbed Hun- But the Hungarian people were soon involved in gary of country after country, put in corulers of their quarrels with her successors of the House of Hapsown and carried their blood-stained crescent to the burg-Lorraine...
...And what she ate would be a commentary On her far wandering, as like as not: Pungent-fleshed roots and wild fruit she would carry To stew with mushrooms in her iron pot...
...The Sacred Crown November 6, I929 - - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . of Saint Stephen had been victorious over its wearer...
...of what was later the German empire...
...November 6, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 8 THE CROWN OF SAINT STEPHEN By FRIEDRICH VON MINKUS I N which wide THE fertile towers castle valley above of Buda and the southern such Reading accounts Europe news recently) accounts (and there we of seldom has embattled been realize an nationalisms the abundance importance of in king the Holy...
...Others put up other candidates, one of them an archduke who, on account of large estates in Hungary, has been brought up as a Hungarian, and whose ambitious mother claims to have some drops of Arp~td blood in her veins . . . . Wrapped in silence, the regent and the government wait patiently for what the future may bring...
...When the male line of the to Christianity, and gave him in baptism the name of Arp~.ds died out in the year I3oI, there were many the first Christian martyr...
...by an armed troop of Curiously enough, the two knightly custodians, there states bound together from lies a treasure costly, beauti- the year 1867 in an actual ful and venerable, the Sacred Crown of Saint Stephen...
...In exultant gratitude the Diet passed the following law which was incorporated in the constitution: Hungarian mentality, however, distinguished between, or even set in contradistinction to one another, the ruling house and the crown...
...and personal union under one sovereign, and known by Sixteen square gold plates are joined together to the name of Austro-Hungary, were not individually form a ring...
...It was the business of fire to burn...
...They had been ordered home by demagogic agitators, more separatist than Bolshevist" they hoped for more advantageous peace terms for a Hungary severed from Austria...
...And so in the end dualism was the grave of the great and ancient monarchy...
...On either side said: "Others may wage war, but you, happy Austria, and somewhat lower are rounded and pointed plates marry...
...Every word she said Was chosen to offend eavesdropping death...
...With their destruction, Europe was freed from an incalculable danger, and Hungary redeemed from a foreign yoke and decay...
...The Crown of Saint case of the total extinction of the line, including the Stephen faced the "kingdoms and countries represented female branch, was the free choice of a king to revert in the parliament of the empire" as a partner with to the Diet, "according to ancient, hereditary, estab- equal rights, and after the king had taken the solemn lished and recognized right...
...Hungary refused to allow the Slavs on both sides of the frontier to enter the union of nations on equal terms...
...The Austrian peoples of this time...
...Germain showed the fallacy of this hope...
...For life had always been an Indian giver, She told the trees...
...in the most extreme-at that time scarcely imaginable--case, the only other misery whose equal is unknown to history, the Hapsburg emperor, Leopold I, supported by John Sobieski, form of government in contrast to Hapsburg-Lorraine king of Poland, defeated the Turks outside the gates might have been expressed in the word "republic...
...Only in the the Hapsburg-Lorralne kingdom...
...Juniper twigs she found to make it heed her, And feathery hemlock-rubbish bleached and dried...
...The pressure of these circumstances created that dualism which lamed the proven capacity for evolution of the Hapsburg realm, and prevented the otherwise certain federation of the nations...
...Secondly: that through it for a later addition, a cross with ball ex- this central klngdom--in contradistinction to the legal tremities, loosely fastened, which has stood awry for equality of the various nationalities of Austriamwas centuries...
...become a person, bearer of all the sanctified rights of free royalty, itself spiritual kingship: the immaculate, With Leopold's son, the Emperor Charles VI, the male line of the Hapsburgs died out...
...And last but not exhaustible Turkish armies, the internal chaos which least, the peoples of Austria identified dynasty and form tore Hungary asunder and the religious dissension of government...
...in renewed gratitude and also "to prevent all the inner When the European revolution of i848 spread to disturbances and evils of an interregnum which are Hungary, the insurrectionists declared the reigning apt to occur easily, as is well known to the Diet of this house dethroned and a Russian army marched in to kingdom," had extended the right of succession, in help the Austrians to reconquer the country of the case of the extinction of the male line, to the female rebels...
...For the legitimists the rightful king is the heir to the house of HapsburgLorraine, the youthful son of the last crowned king, who awaits his lawful coronation...
...A kingdom without a king...
...Charles Robert of the with wonderful wisdom, formed his rough and warlike Sicilian branch of the house of Anjou, supported by troops into a Christian kingdom...
...countries "which are to be hereditarily possessed, ruled After the catastrophe of K6niggHitz the Emperor and governed together with the kingdom of Hungary Francis Joseph was obliged to take steps to reorganize indivisible and inseparable therefrom...
...This wild, heathen and nomadic tribe bodied absolutely in that sacred crown which they from the north, under the sons of Arp~d, their first guard in the castle of Buda as the consecrated relic of ruler, had invaded the land of the Danube to the east their first king...
...When Charles IV's coronation oath to keep inviolate the lawful indepen- IO COMMONWEAL THE dence and territorial integrity of Hungary, the archbishop placed the crown on King Francis Joseph...
...Ninety years later, Saint Adalbert of Prague Croatia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, Bulgaria and Galicia were converted Arp~d's great-grandson, the youth Vaik, added to the young state...
...The reign of Matthias same nationalities uncompromisingly to that of her Corvinus, son of the national hero J~inos Hunyady, is own...
...High above any dynasty, and high above the idea of the people in a democratic sense, stood the Sacred Crown of Saint Stephen...
...Twice the crowned king tried in romantic fashion to return from banishment to his sworn duties as a ruler...
...Two broad bands crossing each other at right angles First: that the provinces conquered and added to the span the crown in half-circles...
...In the following paper a brilliant Fiennese journalist, whose previous contributions to The Commonweal will be remembered, describes the tradition which fortifies the And since that time the precious crown, which a whole nation guards as its greatest treasure, has been known as the Sacred Crown Hungarian idea of government...
...From doms and countries represented in the Diet," which delicate chains on both sides of the crown hang pen- was meant to emphasize its particular structure and dants in the shape of clover leaves made of glowing constitutional character...
...Nicholas yon Horthy, formerly adjutant to the emperor-king and imperial and royal Austro-Hungarian admiral, who had set the Hungarian troops in order and led them home, who had overthrown the Bolshevist republic, had reestablished the kingdom and was now regent, also refused him entrance to the kingdom, and finally the army which was under his command did the same...
...In the castle of Buda, guarded day and night by an armed troop of knightly custodians, high above the fertile plain and the broad silver ribbon of the Danube, lies enthroned the Sacred Crown of Saint Stephen--Hungary's immortal king...
...This plate has had a pole roughly bored become one with the central kingdom...
...His Sacred Majesty having defeated with his all- It had become far more to them than a relic or conquering weapons the terrible enemy of Christendom, symbol...
...Above these in the centre there against the Hungarians, had gained various neighboris a rounded structure containing the picture of the ing lands through inheritance and marriage ; for it was Son of God as Judge of the world...
...Hungary, however, was king of Hungary, in the year lO75...
...From to their nobility, left the leadership to them in the generation to generation they struggled with the in- struggle for liberal innovations also...
...Finding them taciturn, She told the fire instead...
...The two halves of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of the coronation oath...
...itch Girl Solitary she would laugh like nobody's daughter Lost in dim eternities of fern, Sharing the laughter of the brown brook water, Nobody's love with nothing at all to learn...
...The Hapsburgs, who had long been were striving after liberal institutions in a democratic rulers of Austria and at the same time, in a long line, sense, as a reaction from the hyper-conservatism which emperors of Germany, were called to the crumbling had followed the Napoleonic wars...
...Daylong she searched for fuels whose strange meaning The fire would translate in undertones, And when the coals were ripe and no flame leaning, She cooked her supper on three blackened stones...
...Once more, in the middle of the great war, the Sacred Crown of Saint Stephen was reverently drawn forth from its guarded shrine and in solemn procession carried over to the coronation church...
...The crux of the matter was really very gates of Vienna, the Diet of Hungary appointed the conflict--even though it was still latent between --not without many dissensions--sometimes foreigners Austria's idea of uniting many nationalities under one and sometimes natives of their own country as wearers crown, and Hungary's principle of subjugating these of Saint Stephen's crown...
...In those times of distress and danger caused and having freed the venerable seat of kings from bond- by the Turks, the quarrels for the throne and the diimperial and royal Majesty as their rightful king and ruler, and will only crown him according to ancient age, the Diet of this kingdom declare, in everlasting vided elections, it had been surreptitiously removed, memory thereof, that in future they will recognize no hidden, stolen--a long-hoped-for talisman to him in other than the first-born among the male heirs of his whose hands it happened to bemand to the national imagination it had become completely severed from the person of its wearer...
...His son, Ludwig the Great, Father crowned the anointed head of the first apostolic became one of the most brilliant successors of Saint 9 THE COMMONWEAL November 6, 1929 our kinghMaria Theresa I" tional monarchy, and later in part a federal monarchy Stephen...
...the Hungarians, throne of Saint Stephen in the year I526 by a deed of from remote ages accustomed to vassalage in regard inheritance confirmed by the Hungarian Diet...
...of Hungary, Stephen of the historical sources from which they have derived...
...They made her shiver...
...The cross-bands bear small square plates essentially a one-nation kingdom, the kingdom of the connected by hinges on which are the effigies of eight Hungarians, who, being relatively though not absoApostles framed in precious stones and inscribed with lutely in the majority, as the founders of the kingdom, Latin names...
...had very little in common: foreign and military affairs and certain/inancial matters...
...Hungary, like infallible, undeposable, immortal and free sovereign all the other countries which the Hapsburgs united, of the holy realm of Saint Stephen...
...The crowned apostolic king of Hungary gave up his :.sword as a prisoner to the royal Hungarian army, to the royal Hungarian governor...
...The entente, particularly the Little Entente~ Servia, Roumania, etc.--which had a territorial interest in the matter, prevented him...
...Added to this, there v~ere decided differences the only one which rises to eminence above the miseries in the psychology of the races...
...on the contrary, they were to be merged and blessing...
...On Ascension Day the Pope and the emperor, was chosen by the magof the year lOOO, the consecrated gift of the Holy nates as king of Hungary...
...This young prince, blessed quarrels as to the succession...
...At these meetings Hungary ever strove to attain more independence, and especially the division of the army...
...There were conheart of Germany in many a sanguinary battle, the stant wars with the rough and mostly heathen neighempire formed the Ostmark, the nucleus of the future boring tribes in the course of which Transylvania, Austria...
...of Vienna...
...It had, so to speak, itself custom after he has taken the coronation oath...
Vol. 11 • November 1929 • No. 1
