1: The Beginnings
Books by Macartney || 2: The National Kingdom >>
No STATE in European history has a beginning so precisely definable as Hungary. It was
brought into being well-nigh full-panoplied, by a single act, when the Magyars, until then
a people without fixed abode, entered the basin of the middle Danube, a place at that
juncture as good as masterless, and made it their home. This was in the last years of the
ninth century A.D.
Many writers, not Hungarians alone, have dilated on the 'natural unity' of the Middle
Danube Basin, which now became Hungary. The parts of it seem, indeed, designed by nature
to form one harmonious whole. Through the heart of it the great river itself runs a course
of nearly 600 miles, most of it through flat or flattish lands which form an oval plain,
about 100,000 square miles in extent, 400 miles at its greatest width from west to east,
300 from north to south. This plain is surrounded by a ring of mountains, whose valleys
converge on the central plain; of the rivers of Historic Hungary, only one flows north, to
join the Vistula; one, like the Danube itself, cuts its own way through the Transylvanian
Alps; all the rest join the Danube on its central course. The mountains, which in the
north and east form an almost continuous wall, rarely broken, with the dense forests which
up to recent times covered their slopes, form a natural defence for the plain, especially
towards the east. The products of plain and mountain are mutually cornplementary, linking
their inhabitants in a natural community of destiny.
But if there is to be unity here, it can never derive from uniformity, but only from a
synthesis of mutually disparate components. And this disparity is not only between plain
and mountain. The vast plain itself consists of two parts which differ in important
respects, both in their own characters and in their natural connections and relationships
with the outer world. The smaller, western portion, which is contained within the crook of
the Danube, the Pannonia of the Romans, called by the Hungarians the Dunántúl - the land
beyond the Danube - hardly deserves the name of plain. It contains some large flat spaces,
but most of it is a pleasant, undulating country of hills and valleys, the geographical
continuation of the outliers of the Eastern Alps and the Balkans, from which, and from
their hinterlands, it is easily accessible. On the other hand, what lies between the left
bank of the Danube and the Transylvanian foothills - the Alföld, or lowland proper - is
an open, featureless expanse, a true steppe-land, a sort of outpost of the vaster Pontic
and Caspian steppes, from which only the Carpathian wall separates it; and in that wall,
solid as most of it is, there are breaches at least one of which was in the older days
easier to force than the crossing of the mighty Danube itself.
Even if we disregard the high mountains and Transylvania, which usually lived its own
life, the fates of the two parts of the plain in early times and the Dark Ages were often
very different, sometimes sharply opposed. The western half was usually peopled and
intermittently controlled from its immediate or remoter central European, or Italian,
hinterlands; for several centuries it belonged to Rome. By contrast, the Great Plain was
recurrently occupied by waves of nomadic horsemen, the overspill from the seemingly
inexhaustible reservoir of these peoples which then filled the Pontic, Caspian and central
Asiatic steppes. Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns (with their Germanic subjects), Bulgars and
Avars all successively sought in it a refuge from more powerful neighbours, and a home.
These two elements - Europe and Asia - strove for mastery, and neither ever achieved it
quite completely. The horsemen, when they arrived, were usually the stronger in the field
and some of them carried their conquests across the Danube and as far as the western
forests, but in time they always weakened, their empires collapsed and Europe reasserted
itself. On the other hand, the Europeans seldom ventured beyond what was for them the
greatest of natural defensive lines, the Danube; the Romans themselves, who for a while
held Transylvania as well as the west, left the Great Plain alone, even during a long
period when its nomadic population was exceptionally weak. There were other times when
neither Asia nor Europe was present in force, and when the whole Basin was little more
than a no-man's land, and the end of the ninth century AD. was one of these times. The
Avars, the last invaders to enter the Basin in force, had ruled the whole of it for the
unprecedented span of over two centuries, but their power, too, bad decayed with time, and
at the opening of the century Charlemagne had destroyed it utterly. The German Empire had,
however, limited its subsequent extension of its political frontiers to the old Pannonia
and the areas flanking it north and south, and even there it had done no more than set up
a series of dependencies, governed by Slavonic 'dukes', whose allegiance was often
insecure. One of these vassal states, Croatia, had made itself fully independent in 869,
and Sviatopluk, Duke of Moravia, which then included the: area between the Danube and the
Gran, had been in open defiance of his overlord for as long.
The East Roman Empire, of which the Serbia of the day was a loose dependency, disputed
Syrmia with the Western Empire, but did not look across the Danube-Drava line. Bulgaria
may have exercised suzerainty over the Alföld, and perhaps Transylvania, but its rule
over either area was at best shadowy. Thus a number of Powers claimed rule over parts of
the Basin, but all of them were peripheral to it, their own centres far distant from it.
The native populations ruled by these Powers were as various as they.
There were Moravian Slavs in the north-west, Slovenes in Pannonia; in the north, and
along the banks of the Tisza, some more Slav settlements, and roaming the plains of the
Alföld, a nomadic people of Eastern origin, perhaps akin to the Magyars themselves: the
Szekels. The ethnic appurtenance of the then inhabitants of Transylvania is acrimoniously
disputed between Roumanian and Hungarian historians, the former maintaining that a Roman,
or alternatively, Romanised Dacian, population had survived the Dark Ages, the latter
pointing to the fact that all the pre-Magyar place-names of Transylvania are Slav, except
four river-names, which are not Latin; also that the first mention of 'Vlachs' in
Hungarian documents comes in the thirteenth century, when they figure only as roving
shepherds, and not numerous.
In any case, all these populations were sparse. The most densely populated area was
probably the foothills and open valleys of the north-west. The upper valleys and mountains
of the Carpathians were practically uninhabited. There were only one or two places larger
than hamlets in Pannonia, or in the Alföld. Transylvania, too, whatever the ethnic
appurtenance of such inhabitants as it possessed, consisted at that time mostly of
unpenetrated forest.
Such was the situation in the Basin when the Magyars appeared on the further side of
the Carpathian Gate.
To all appearance, the Magyars were just such another horde of Asiatic strangers as
their predecessors - the Huns (with whom their victims, and later, their own national
legend, mistakenly identified them), the Avars and the rest. The travellers, Arabs and
Greeks alike, who first came into contact with them, described them as 'a race of Turks'.
Ethnologically, this was incorrect. The linguistic evidence shows that the Magyars'
remoter ancestors belonged to the Finno-Ugrian family of peoples whose habitats in olden
days extended from the Baltic to the middle Urals. In their original homes, which were
densely forested, these peoples lived a primitive existence as hunters and fishers, hardly
acquainted even with agriculture and possessed only of the most primitive political and
social organisation. But early in the Christian era some causes unknown to us seem to have
driven the Magyars' direct ancestors, who were the eastmost of these peoples, across the
Urals, and thence southward into the steppes, and here, under the influence of geography
and, presumably, of the Turki and Iranian peoples with whom they came into contact (how
far, if at all, this contact took the form of conquest it is now impossible to say), they
exchanged their former way of life for the nomadic herds-men's existence appropriate to
their new environment.
They now also became exposed to the fate of all the steppe-dwellers, attack by a
stronger neighbour - nearly always on their east - forcing them to change their feeding
grounds; an easy matter for nomads provided that their western neighbours, in their turn,
were weaker than they. The Magyars' moves west seem to have begun in the fifth century
A.D. Recent research has thrown doubts on what had been the accepted version of their
movements during the next four centuries, and we may omit a conjectural account of it
here. We reach firmer ground about A.D. 830, when we find them established - by all
evidence, newly so- above the Maeotis, on the right bank of the Don. This body of them
consisted of seven hordes, or tribes, but they had certainly shed some parts of the nation
on the way: some 'Magyars' are attested as still living in the Ural steppes in the ninth
century, others, a century later, in the Caucasus. The name of 'On Ogur' or Ten Arrows
(the word 'Hungarian' is a Slavicised form of this Turkish term) by which their neighbours
knew them may enshrine a memory of their earlier condition, or may refer to their
organisation in the ninth century, for on the Maeotis they were joined by three dissident
hordes - known as Kavars -of the Khazars, the powerful Turki nation, famous for its
conversion to the Israelite faith, which at that time held the mouths of the Volga.
By this time the Magyars were indeed 'a race of Turks' to all outward appearance. They
subsisted by pasturing their herds in summer over the grasslands round their base,
retiring in winter to the shores of the Maeotis and the banks of the Don. Although they
now practised a little agriculture, their chief sustenance was meat, mare's milk and fish.
Much of their lives was spent in the saddle, and their raids and campaigns, too, were
conducted on horseback. Their favoured arm was the bow and arrow.
If any earlier conquest of the primitive Finno-Ugrians by a more warlike Turki people
had ever taken place, all memory, and all trace, of it had vanished. Except for the penal
slaves, the Magyars were 'all free men'; elaborate social differentiation between them was
unnecessary, for they supplied themselves adequately with slaves by raiding the
neighbouring Slavs. They supplemented their incomes by selling the surplus in the Crimean
markets.
The basic social unit was the clan, the members of which acknowledged a real or
imagined common ancestry. A varying number of clans went to the tribe. The authority of
the tribal chiefs seems to have been hereditary, but when we first hear of them, the
tribes were united only in a loose federation, owning no single supreme authority. They
were at one time in an alliance, which may not have been quite an equal one, with the
Khazars, and according to one source the Khazar Khagan tried to unite them by marrying his
daughter to the most powerful of their chiefs, but the marriage proved barren, and with
it, the attempt.
The same source ascribes to the Khagan a second, and this time successful attempt with
another chief. The Magyar national tradition, ignoring the Khazar element, says that,
having decided to migrate, the seven chieftains elected the most powerful of their number,
Árpád, son of Almus, to lead them, swearing with ritual drinking of mingled blood to
accept him and his male issue in perpetuity as heads of the nation. (Almus was then still
alive, but presumably too old to be an effective leader.) According to this tradition, the
decision to migrate was motivated by pressure of population on the feeding grounds;
foreign sources reveal that in fact the Magyars had suffered defeat at the hands of a
nation newly arrived from the East, the Petchenegs, who had evicted them from their
feeding grounds. This was in A.D. 889, and Árpád now led his people westward in quest of
a new home. The Kavars came with them, as did half a dozen small hordes of Turki or Ugrian
origin.(1) Their journey brought them to the outer slopes
of the Carpathians, and by the favour of fortune, to a new life beyond them.
For had the passes been held strongly against them, this would have been the end of
their national existence; those not destroyed by the Petchenegs would gradually have lost
their national identity, as refugees in foreign lands and mercenaries in foreign armies.
But far from finding their road barred, they were actually invited to enter on it. In 892
the Emperor Arnulf enlisted a contingent of them to help him against his rebellious
vassal, Sviatopluk. The weakness of the land was revealed to them. In 894 they were back,
raiding Pannonia on their own account, and in the autumn of 895 or the spring of 896 the
entire nation, with their auxiliaries, crossed the mountains for good. A little fighting
left them in possession of the Alföld (where the Szekels submitted themselves
voluntarily) and put an end to any resistance from Transylvania. The Germans and Moravians
patched up their differences in view of the common danger, but by A.D. 900 Frankish rule
in Pannonia had vanished. The final destruction of Moravian rule in the north-west came in
906. In 907 a Bavarian army was annihilated at Ennsburg and the Magyars' rule extended up
to the Avars' old frontier where the Enns runs into the Danube.
The Magyars had thus entered on possession of their new homes speedily and completely,
far more so than, as far as we know, any of their predecessors. It is important to
emphasise that what had been done was indeed to establish a nation in a new home, not, as
the Normans did in England or Russia, to impose the rule of a relatively small band of
conquerors on a subject people. The invaders did not, of course, exterminate the
indigenous populations, and may even have admitted some of their chieftains into their own
ranks, with their status unimpaired; but most usually, they were allotted as subjects or
tributaries to one or another of the Magyar tribal chiefs, or at best, given a semi-free
status. The polity was exclusively that of the Magyars and their confederates.
We have no certainty as to the invaders' numbers; one of their chroniclers gives the
number of the Magyar clans at 108, which reads like genuine tradition, but his statement
that each of the 108 could produce 2,000 armed men seems more dubious. The Magyars and
their allies were, however, numerous enough to occupy in sufficient force all the then
habitable parts of their new home, viz. the plain, using the term in its widest sense.
Árpád's own horde settled in the Dunántúl, between Székesfehérvár, on the site of
which, or near it, he made his headquarters, and Buda. Of the six other Magyar hordes,
three settled respectively north-west, west and south-west of the leading tribe, one on
the middle Tisza and one on the upper. The seventh, the tribe of Gyula, after first
settling in the west, moved to the approaches of Transylvania. The plain of the lower
Tisza and its tributaries was allotted to the Kavars, while the 'Kuns' took the northern
fringes of the Great Plain.
The invaders did not then attempt to occupy the mountains, which were not adapted to
their economy. These, and certain marshlands, were deliberately left as an uncultivated
and impenetrable belt, known as 'gyepü', the passages across which were watched by
permanent guards, a service to which most of the Szekels were assigned. Beyond this again,
there were perhaps isolated outposts.
For the next half-century the Magyars were the scourge of Europe, which they raided far
and wide, striking terror into the hearts of their victims with the suddenness of their
descents - for their little, lithe horses outdistanced any news of their coming - the
ferocity of their attacks, their outlandish and, to Western eyes, hideous appearance,
their blood-curdling battle-yells. Historians have counted thirty-three expeditions
between 898 and 955 some of them to places as far afield as Bremen, Cambrai, Orléans,
Nimes, Otranto and Constantinople, and there must have been innumerable smaller
enterprises of which no record has survived. Most of these raids were simple profit-making
expeditions, in which cities and churches were ransacked and gold and treasure carried
off, with captives for domestic use, re-export or re-sale in return for ransom.
Alternatively, Danegeld was exacted. In addition, the Magyars often hired out their
services to one or another warring prince, against his neighbours.
In this half-century they inflicted dreadful damage on Europe, but even for themselves
this mode of life was not invariably profitable. Arnulf of Bavaria almost annihilated one
of their armies in 917. In 933 Henry the Fowler gave them a frightful beating near
Merseburg. Finally in 955 Otto the Great inflicted a terrible defeat on them outside
Augsburg. Their leaders were taken and shamefully hanged and according to legend only
seven of the whole host escaped, to beg their way round Hungary, disgraced men for ever.
By now the west had organised its defences, and the Hungarian nation itself was
changing. The flower of it had perished in the barren fighting, and among the survivors,
miscegenation must have thinned out the old, fiery 'Scythian' blood. Possibly, too, the
natural increase of home-bred slaves was enough to make the acquisition of new ones
unnecessary.
Another influence was that of Christianity. It was the age when Rome and Byzantium were
competing for the souls of the east European peoples. The Eastern church had secured the
allegiance of the Bulgars, the Serbs, the Russians and, for a while, the Moravians. Rome
had then wrested the Moravians from it and had gained the Slovenes, the Croats and, of
course, all the Germans. Both churches were anxious to add the Hungarians to their bag. In
the middle of the century the Eastern church gained the adhesion of two important
Hungarian chieftains, but the advantage lay with its Western rival. Not only was its faith
that of the Hungarians own Moravian and Slovene subjects, but it was also being vigorously
propagated from Bavaria, with which Hungary had drifted into a not unfriendly
relationship. The decisive step came about A.D. 970. Árpád's grandson, Taksony or Toxun,
died and was succeeded by his son Géza, who, breaking with his father's policy, sent
ambassadors to Otto's court and established friendly relations with him. The raids in the
west ceased. A great missionary activity set in under the auspices of the Bavarians
Wolfgang and Pilgrim of Passau, later reinforced by Adalbert of Prague. Géza moved his
capital to Esztergom and surrounded himself with a bodyguard of Bavarian knights, on whom
he bestowed large estates. Progress was delayed by conflicts in Germany, but when Henry II
recovered the dukedom of Bavaria in 985, he renewed the old alliance with Hungary. His
successor, Henry III, consented to the marriage of his sister, Gisella, to Géza's son
Vajk, who had already been baptised under the name of Stephen (István). The marriage took
place in 996. A year later, Géza died.
Under St Stephen (he was proclaimed Saint in 1083), the best-beloved, most famous and
perhaps the most important figure in Hungarian history, and largely through his personal
genius, the transition begun under Géza was completed.
Stephen's own position depended on the success of the new trend, for he was still a
young man when his father died(2) and there were elder
members of his family alive. One of these, a certain Koppány, claimed the succession
under the principle of senioratus, and it was only the help of his father's and
his wife's heavy cavalry from Bavaria that brought Stephen the victory, after a severe
struggle. Then, in A.D. 1000, he applied to Rome for recognition as a king.
He was uniquely fortunate in the moment of his application. Other aspiring rulers
before him had made the same request. Sometimes the Pope had rejected it (legend has it
that the Duke of Poland applied almost simultaneously with Stephen, and was refused);
sometimes he had granted it and the kingdom failed to maintain itself, owing to the
Emperor's hostility. Some crowns the Emperor granted, and the absence of Papal endorsement
allowed rivals to question their validity. But precisely in A.D. 1000 both the Pope and
the Emperor of the day were remarkable figures, and an unique relationship existed between
the young Otto III, who dreamed of 'renewing the Empire', and Sylvester II, who had been
Otto's tutor, was still his friend and mentor, and was able to make him see the Empire
rather as an oecumenical community of Christian nations than as a Germanic temporal
dominion. So it came about that with Otto's agreement, Sylvester sent back Stephen's
emissary bearing, if the legend is true(3), the
gifts of a crown and an Apostolic cross, joint tokens of Stephen's royal dignity and
status and of his authority to establish a national church. The coronation and unction
took place on Christmas Day, A.D. 1000.
It is impossible to over-emphasise the importance of these ceremonies. By them both
Stephen's own status and that of his people were transformed. The act of conversion
changed the Hungarian people from an outlaw horde against whom a Christian Prince was not
only free, but bound by duty, to take up arms, into a member of the Christian family of
nations, and their prince into one of those rulers by the Grace of God whose legitimate
rights his fellow-princes could not infringe without sin. The royal crown made its wearer
a true sovereign, not indeed the Emperor's equal in status, but in no respect subject to
his overlordship, while the Apostolic insignia made the Hungarian church free of any other
authority save that of Rome alone - an enormous reinforcement of the country's real
independence.
Coronation also transformed Stephen's position vis-à-vis his own people, for
the political philosophy of the day conceded to a crowned king practically unlimited
powers, subject only to the precept of Christian morality that he should exercise those
powers with justice and mercy. Hungary was again fortunate in that Stephen had the
capacity to attack his new task seriously, and was granted length of years (he died only
in 1038) to consolidate it, at home and abroad. The maintenance of Hungary's international
status gave him no serious trouble. He easily repelled a single attack, which seems to
have been quite unjustified, launched on him in 1030 by the Emperor Conrad; apart from
this, and from some minor brushes with Poland and Bulgaria, his reign was untroubled by
international conflict. At home, he had one more struggle against a malcontent relative,
this time his maternal uncle, who had established a quasi-independent principality in
Transylvania, and another against a certain 'very powerful prince in south-eastern
Hungary, named Ohtum or Ajtony, who was probably the last of the Kavars; at any rate, they
are not heard of again, as a unit. With the defeat of these two men the royal authority
became unchallenged through all Hungary.
By that authority, Stephen seems to have claimed and exercised all the recognised
prerogatives of mediaeval kingship: the conduct of international relations, with the jus
belli et pacis, the jus legis ferendae, the right to appoint any man of his
choice to any office, the right to dispense justice. In the book of precepts which he had
compiled for the guidance of his son, he advises him to take council with elders and to
defer to their advice, and his laws mention a 'Senatus', but in a context which suggests
that this was a purely advisory body. One document records, in rather obscure language,
that a wider body, the 'tota communitas', was consulted on a question of nation-wide
importance and its decision accepted, but there is no evidence of a general,
institutionalised national assembly.
On the other hand, Stephen believed in law and held that the laws of every country and
people should be appropriate to themselves. He did not, therefore, touch the traditional
national structure more than was necessary to adapt it to the new situation. The body of
freemen - i.e., the descendants in the male line of the old conquerors, in so far as they
had not forfeited their status by rebellion or individual crime, together with any new
elements admitted to the same status - retained their special position. They were not
merely a privileged class of subjects: they were the sole positive element among them; if
not the king's partner in the polity, then at least his counterpart. They, and only they,
were entitled to participate in such consultations on policy as took place and to hold
public office: they and they alone had direct access to the king's justice. Stephen
imposed on them the obligation of paying tithes to the church, but they paid no other
taxation; their obligation towards the polity was discharged by military service, which it
was their duty and their prerogative to perform whenever required. Lands held by them jure
primae occupationis were truly their own, and Stephen laid down that they should be
free to, bequeath them to any member of their families, or to the church. Otherwise, the
national tradition had it that a man's land, failing traceable heir, reverted to his clan
(it must be remembered that the bulk of the Magyars were then still living in clan
communities).
Stephen did not interfere with the institution of slavery, although he set his people
an example, which some of them followed, by liberating his own slaves. Manumission did
not, of course, confer admission to the national community, but to an intermediate
condition of personal freedom, not accompanied by political status. The proportion of the
population so situated was, already in his day, considerable, for, besides freed slaves,
it included also 'guests' or voluntary immigrants, some of whom were able to contract for
relatively favourable terms. Generally speaking, these men of this class, answering to the
Saxon geneats geburs or villeins, paid dues to their lord - the king or
another - for their lands.
The soil of Hungary now fell into three categories. There were the lands held by the
clans, communally or individually, jure primae occupationis. In principle all the
rest - and this amounted to a full half of the whole, for besides Stephen's own patrimony
and land confiscated from rebels, it included the gyepü and what lay beyond it, as well
as unoccupied areas within the belt of settlement - now became formally king's land. Some
of this, however, Stephen bestowed in the form of donations, to the church or to private
individuals, whose titles now ranked equally with those of the original freemen; and so
far as is known, they owed no obligation in return for them except that of personal
military service, although the big concessionaries, like their native counterparts, must
have been required to bring followers to war. The land retained by the king for his own
was divided for administrative purposes into units known by the Slavonic name of 'Megye'
(county), each under a king's. official, the 'Ispán' (another Slavonic term), who
administered the unfree population living on it and collected from them the taxation which
formed the royal revenue, national and local. Each Ispán maintained at his 'vár'
(fortress) or headquarters an armed force composed of freemen who took service under him,
or of persons freed by the king. In Stephen's day there were forty-two such counties. It
does not appear that the Ispáns of the day had any jurisdiction over the clan lands near
their várs, and the scarcity of várs recorded in the Kun area suggests that Stephen did
not introduce the system at all where large masses of freemen were living together. But it
was at the várs that the king or his deputy, the 'Comes Palatii', administered justice
between the local freemen when they went on circuit, and it is reasonable to suppose that
smaller bodies of clansmen followed the local Ispán in battle.
Géza's Christianity had been assumed for purely political purposes, and had not even
involved complete renunciation of the old beliefs. He is said to have declared himself
'rich enough to afford two Gods'. Stephen, on the other hand, had been brought up in the
new faith, receiving instruction, amongst others, from St Adalbert of Prague, and although
he was certainly not blind to the political connection between kingship and Christianity,
he was a sincere believer. In his Admonitions to his son, he names the Faith first among
the props of the royal power; the church second, and the priesthood third; and it was, in
fact, far rather on the ecclesiastical than on the lay arm that he rested his authority.
The conversion of the people, which he carried through (principally, perforce, through the
agency of foreign missionaries) went hand in hand with the establishment of a complete
ecclesiastical organisation. When he died, Hungary was divided into two archiepiscopal and
eight episcopal sees; there was one parish church to every ten villages. The sees and some
of the numerous monasteries founded during his reign were among the largest landowners in
the country.
1. These smaller hordes figure in the central Hungarian narrative
chronicles under the generic name of 'Kuns'. The 'Anonymus' translates this term as
'Cumani'. Hungarian historians have fallen into confusion by identifying Anonymus' Cumans
with the Kavars and by regarding the tribes enumerated by Constantine Porphyrogenetos,
with the Kavars and the Magyars themselves, as tribes of the Magyars. But the truth is
that the cortége consisted of (1) the Magyar nation, subdivided into seven tribes, all
calling themselves Magyars; (2) six or seven minor 'Kun' hordes; (3) three Khazar tribes,
collectively known as 'Kavars'. The Kavars were so independent that the national tradition
retains no memory of them.
2. The date of Stephen's birth is uncertain. Some chronicles give it
as early as 967, but the older of his legends describes him as 'still a child' when he
succeeded his father.
3. Some modern historians doubt whether these physical emblems were
really sent, and it is certainly impossible to accept without qualification the national
tradition which long identified the famous Holy Crown of Hungary, still in existence, with
Sylvester's gift, for the circlet which forms the lower part of the crown is demonstrably
Byzantine work of the eleventh century; it seems to have been sent, in or about A.D. 1075,
to the Hungarian King Géza I by the Byzantine Emperor Michael Dukas VII. There are,
however, no technical grounds against assigning an earlier date to the closed upper part
with which the circlet has been united (probably under Béla IV), and foreign sources, as
well as the Hungarian legend, attest the sending of a crown. The Cross is mentioned only
in the Hungarian legend.
Books by Macartney || 2: The National Kingdom >>
