Holy Crown of Hungary: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:21, 11 January 2007

Revision as of 02:40, 21 January 2007

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===Legal personality concept of the crown===

[[Image:Emperorcharlesofaustria.jpg|thumb|left|King Charles IV<br><small>The last King of Hungary. He was crowned in 1916.</small>]]

The crown's raw gold and jewelry value was assessed at a mere 20.,000 gold [[hungarian forint|forints]] in the early 19th century, but its artistic value and spiritual power are immense. Charles Robert ([[Charles I of Hungary]]) had to be crowned three times because it was not until he was crowned with St Stephen's Crown, in [[1310]], that the coronation was seen as legally binding. Another, more recent, example of the powers of the Crown is the fact that inter-war Hungary &mdash; after the last Habsburg king of Hungary, [[Charles IV of Hungary|Charles IV]], tried and failed to retain the throne in [[1921]] &mdash; Hungary remained a kingdom without a king until [[1946]].

In such times the Virgin Mary would be considered a formal monarch of Hungary, but this venue was not pursued due to regent [[Horthy]]'s Protestant faith. Instead the favored idea was ''Szent Korona Állameszmény'', which assigned legal personhood to the Holy Crown and declared that all state powers of the monarch or the government stem solely from the sacred powers of the headgear. A monarch or a regent was formally seen as a mere arm for the crown. The concept was used to push Hungary toward a rightist regime intent on resecuring the [[Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen|Lands of St. Stephen]], a course which ultimately tied the country to Hitler's [[Third Reich]] and ended in severe [[WW II]] destruction.