page_title: Coronation of the Hungarian monarch
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Coronation of the Hungarian monarch / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Coronation of Maria Theresa, 1741, PressburgMagyar: Mária Terézia koronázása a Szent Márton székesegyházban, Pressburg, 1741
context_page_description: The Coronation of the Hungarian monarch was a ceremony in which the king or queen of the Kingdom of Hungary was formally crowned and invested with regalia. It corresponded to the coronation ceremonies in other European monarchies. While in countries like France and England the king's reign began immediately upon the death of his predecessor, in Hungary the coronation was absolutely indispensable: if it were not properly executed, the Kingdom stayed "orphaned". All monarchs had to be crowned as King of Hungary in order to promulgate laws and exercise his royal prerogatives in the Kingdom of Hungary. Starting from the Golden Bull of 1222, all new Hungarian monarchs had to take a coronation oath, by which they had to agree to uphold the constitutional arrangements of the country, and to preserve the liberties of their subjects and the territorial integrity of the realm.
context_section_description: In the Middle Ages, all Hungarian coronations took place in Székesfehérvár Basilica, the burial place of the first crowned ruler of Hungary, Saint Stephen I. The Archbishop of Esztergom anointed the king or queen (however the Bishop of Veszprém claimed many times his right of crowning the queen consort, as an established tradition). The Archbishop then placed the Holy Crown of Hungary and the mantle of Saint Stephen on the head of the anointed person. The king was given a sceptre and a sword which denoted military power. Upon enthronement, the newly crowned king took the traditional coronation oath and promised to respect the people's rights. The Archbishop of Esztergom refused to preside over the coronation ceremony on three occasions; in such cases, the Archbishop of Kalocsa, the second-ranking prelate, performed the coronation. Other clergy and members of the nobility also had roles; most participants in the ceremony were required to wear ceremonial uniforms or robes. Many other government officials and guests attended, including representatives of foreign countries.
  According to legend, the first Hungarian monarch, Saint Stephen I, was crowned in the St Adalbert Cathedral in Esztergom in the year 1000. After his death he was buried in the Cathedral of Székesfehérvár which he started to build and where he had buried his son Saint Emeric. This cathedral became the tradiitonal coronation church for the subsequent Hungarian monarchs starting with Peter Orseolo, Saint Stephen's nephew in 1038 up to John Zápolya coronation, before the Battle of Mohács in 1526. The huge Romanic cathedral was one of the biggest of its kind in Europe, and later became the burying place of the medieval Hungarian monarchs.
  After the death of King Andrew III, the last male member of the House of Árpád, in 1301, the successful claimant to the throne was a descendant of King Stephen V, and from the Capetian House of Anjou: King Charles I. However he had to be crowned three times, because of internal conflicts with the aristocrats, who were unwilling to accept his rule. He was crowned for the first time in May 1301 by the archbishop of Esztergom in the city of Esztergom, but with a simple crown. This meant that two of the conditions for his legitimacy were not fulfilled. After this, he was crowned for the second time in June 1309 by the archbishop of Esztergom, but in the city of Buda, and with a provisional crown, because the Crown of Saint Stephen was not yet in his possession. Finally, after obtaining the Holy Crown, Charles was crowned for his third time, but now in the Cathedral of Székesfehérvár, by the archbishop of Esztergom and with the Holy Crown.
  After the death of King Albert in 1439, his widow, Elizabeth of Luxembourg, ordered one of her handmaidens to steal the Holy Crown that was kept in the castle of Visegrád, and with it she could crown her newborn son as King Ladislaus V. The relevance of the strict conditions from the coronation were fulfilled without questioning, and for example King Matthias Corvinus ascended to the throne in 1458, but he could be crowned with the Holy Crown only in 1464 after he recovered it from the hands of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor. Only after this did Matthias start his internal and institutional reforms in the Kingdom, having been considered as the legitimate ruler of Hungary.
  When the Kingdom of Hungary was occupied by the Ottoman armies in the decades after the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the following Habsburg monarchs could not reach the city of Székesfehérvár to be crowned. So in 1563 St. Martin's Cathedral in Pressburg (today Bratislava) became the cathedral of coronation and remained so until the coronation of 1830, after which coronations returned to Székesfehérvár, but not to the massive cathedral built by Saint Stephen, because that had been destroyed in 1601 when the Christian armies besieged the city. The Ottomans used the cathedral for gunpowder storage, and during the attack the building was destroyed.
caption: Coronation of Queen Maria II Theresa at St. Martin's Cathedral in 1741, in Porzony/Pressburg, site of Hungarian coronations between 1563 and 1830
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