Holiness Doctrine
As is the case with all European Christian crowns, it symbolizes a halo and thus signifies that the wearer rules by Divine Right. According to popular tradition, St Stephen I held up the crown during the coronation (in the year 1000) to offer it to the "Nagyboldogasszony" (the Virgin Mary) to seal a divine contract between her and the divine crown. After this, the "Nagyboldogasszony" was depicted not only as patrona (patron saint) for the Kingdom of Hungary but also as regina (i.e. "queen"). This contract was supposed to empower the crown with divine force to help the future kings of Hungary and did help reinforce the political system based on the so-called "Doctrine of the Holy Crown" (Hungarian: Szentkorona-tan). Péter Révay, a Crown Guard, expounded this doctrine in his works Commentarius De Sacra Regni Hungariae Corona (Explanation of the Holy Crown of the Kingdom of Hungary, published in Augsburg, 1613) and De monarchia et Sacra Corona Regni Hungariae (About the Monarchy and the Holy Crown of Hungary, Frankfurt, 1659). At the core of this doctrine was the notion that the crown itself had personhood and as a legal entity is identical to the state of Hungary. It is superior to the ruling monarch, who rules "in the name of the crown".
Read more about this topic: Holy Crown Of Hungary
Famous quotes containing the words holiness and/or doctrine:
“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)