The richest libraries in Hungary are the National Library at Budapest; the University Library, also at Budapest, and the library of the abbey of Pannonhálma. Besides the museums mentioned in the article Budapest, several provincial towns contain interesting museums, namely, Pressburg, Temesvár, Déva, Kolozsvár, Nagyszeben: further, the national museum at Zagrám, the national (Székler) museum at Maros-Vásarhely, and the Carpathian museum at Poprád should be mentioned.
At the head of the learned and scientific societies stands the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, founded in 1830; the Kisfaludy Society, the Petöfi Society, and numerous societies of specialists, as the historical, geographical, &c., with their centre at Budapest. There are besides a number of learned societies in the various provinces for the fostering of special provincial or national aims. There are also a number of societies for the propagation of culture, both amongst the Hungarian and the non-Hungarian nationalities. Worth mentioning are also the two Carpathian societies: the Hungarian and the Transylvanian.
Bibliography.—F. Umlauft, Die Länder Österreich-Ungarns in Wort und Bild (Vienna, 1879-1889, 15 vols., 12th volume, 1886, deals with Hungary), Die österreichische Monarchie in Wort und Bild (Vienna 1888-1902, 24 vols., 7 vols. are devoted to Hungary), Die Völker Österreich-Ungarns (Teschen, 1881-1885, 12 vols.); A. Supan, “Österreich-Ungarn” (Vienna, 1889, in Kirchhoff’s Länderkunde von Europa, vol. ii.); Auerbach, Les Races et les nationalités en Autriche-Hongrie (Paris, 1897); Mayerhofer, Österreich-ungarisches Ortslexikon (Vienna, 1896); Hungary, Its People, Places and Politics. The Journey of the Eighty Club to Hungary in 1906 (London, 1907); R. W. Seton-Watson (“Scotus Viator”), Racial Problems in Hungary (London, 1908), a strong indictment of the racial policy of the Magyars, supported by exact references and many documents, mainly concerned with the Slovaks; René Gonnard, La Hongrie au XXe siècle (Paris, 1908), an admirable description of the country and its people, mainly from the point of view of economic development and social conditions; Geoffrey Drage, Austria-Hungary (London, 1909), a very useful book of reference; P. Alden (editor), Hungary of To-day, by members of the Hungarian Government (London, 1909); see also “The Problem of Hungary” in the Edinburgh Review (No. 429) for July 1909. The various reports of the Central Statistical Office at Budapest contain all the necessary statistical data. A summary of them is annually published under the title Magyar statisztikai Évkönyo (Statistical Year-Book of Hungary).
(O. Br.)
II. History
When Árpád, the semi-mythical founder of the Magyar monarchy, at the end of A.D. 895 led his savage hordes through the Vereczka pass into the regions of the Upper Theiss, the land, now called Hungary, was, for the most Magyar conquest. part, in the possession of Slavs or semi-Slavs. From the Riesengebirge to the Vistula, and from the Moldau to the Drave, extended the shadowy empire of Moravia, founded by Moimir and Svatopluk (c. 850-890), which collapsed so completely at the first impact of the Magyars that, ten years after their arrival, not a trace of it remained. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats and Avars in the southern provinces were subdued with equal ease. Details are wanting, but the traditional decisive battle was fought at Alpar on the Theiss, whereupon the victors pressed on to Orsova, and the conquest was completed by Árpád about the year 906. This forcible intrusion of a non-Aryan race altered the whole history of Europe; but its peculiar significance lay in the fact that it permanently divided the northern from the southern and the eastern from the western Slavs. The inevitable consequence of this rupture was the Teutonizing of the western branch of the great Slav family, which, no longer able to stand alone, and cut off from both Rome and Constantinople, was forced, in self-defence, to take Christianity, and civilization along with it, from Germany.
During the following seventy years we know next to nothing of the internal history of the Magyars. Árpád died in 907, and his immediate successors, Zsolt (907-947) and Taksony (947-972), are little more than chronological landmarks. This was the period of those devastating raids which made the savage Magyar horsemen the scourge and the terror of Europe. We have an interesting description of their tactics from the pen of the emperor Leo VI., whose account of them is confirmed by the contemporary Russian annals. Trained riders, archers and javelin-throwers from infancy, they advanced to the attack in numerous companies following hard upon each other, avoiding close quarters, but wearing out their antagonists by the persistency of their onslaughts. Scarce a corner of Europe was safe from them. First (908-910) they ravaged Thuringia, Swabia and Bavaria, and defeated the Germans on the Lechfeld, whereupon the German king Henry I. bought them off for nine years, employing the respite in reorganizing his army and training cavalry, which henceforth became the principal military arm of the Empire. In 933 the war was resumed, and Henry, at the head of what was really the first national German army, defeated the Magyars at Gotha and at Ried (933). The only effect of these reverses was to divert them elsewhere. Already, in 926, they had crossed the Rhine and ravaged Lotharingia. In 934 and 942 they raided the Eastern Empire, and were bought off under the very walls of Constantinople. In 943 Taksony led them into Italy, when they penetrated as far as Otranto. In 955 they ravaged Burgundy. The same year the emperor Otto I. proclaimed them the enemies of God and humanity, refused to receive their ambassadors, and finally, at the famous battle of the Lechfeld, overwhelmed them on the very scene of their first victory, near Augsburg, which they were besieging (Aug. 10, 955). Only seven of the Magyars escaped, and these were sold as slaves on their return home.
The catastrophe of the Lechfeld convinced the leading Magyars of the necessity of accommodating themselves as far as possible to the Empire, especially in the matter of religion. Christianity had already begun to percolate Hungary. A large proportion Acceptance of Christianity. of the captives of the Magyars had been settled all over the country to teach their conquerors the arts of peace, and close contact with this civilizing element was of itself an enlightenment. The moral superiority of Christianity to paganism was speedily obvious. The only question was which form of Christianity were the Magyars to adopt, the Eastern or the Western? Constantinople was the first in the field. The splendour of the imperial city profoundly impressed all the northern barbarians, and the Magyars, during the 10th century, saw a great deal of the Greeks. One Transylvanian raider, Gyula, brought back with him from Constantinople a Greek monk, Hierothus (c. 950), who was consecrated “first bishop of Turkia.” Simultaneously a brisk border trade was springing up between the Greeks and the Magyars, and the Greek chapmen brought with them their religion as well as their wares. Everything at first tended to favour the propaganda of the Greek Church. But ultimately political prevailed over religious considerations. Alarmed at the sudden revival of the Eastern Empire, which under the Macedonian dynasty extended once more to the Danube, and thus became the immediate neighbour of Hungary, Duke Geza, who succeeded Taksony in 972, shrewdly resolved to accept Christianity from the more distant and therefore less dangerous emperor of the West. Accordingly an embassy was sent to Otto II. at Quedlinburg in 973, and in 975 Geza and his whole family were baptized. During his reign, however, Hungarian Christianity did not extend much beyond the limits of his court. The nation at large was resolutely pagan, and Geza, for his own sake, was obliged to act warily. Moreover, by accepting Christianity from Germany, he ran the risk of imperilling the independence of Hungary. Hence his cautious, dilatory tactics: the encouragement of Italian propagandists, who were few, the discouragement of German propagandists, who were many. Geza, in short, regarded the whole matter from a statesman’s point of view, and was content to leave the solution to time and his successor.
That successor, Stephen I. (q.v.), was one of the great constructive statesmen of history. His long and strenuous reign (997-1038) resulted in the firm establishment of the Hungarian church and the Hungarian state. The great Stephen I. work may be said to have begun in 1001, when Pope Silvester II. recognized Magyar nationality by endowing the young Magyar prince with a kingly crown. Less fortunate than his great exemplar, Charlemagne, Stephen had to depend entirely upon foreigners—men like the Saxon Asztrik[13] (c. 976-1010), the first Hungarian primate; the Lombard St Gellert (c. 977-1046); the Bosomanns, a German family, better known under the Magyarized form of their name Pázmány, and many others who came to Hungary in the suite of his enlightened consort Gisela of Bavaria. By these men Hungary was divided into dioceses, with a metropolitan see at Esztergom (Gran), a city originally founded by Geza, but richly embellished by Stephen, whose Italian architects built for him there the first Hungarian cathedral dedicated to St Adalbert. Towns, most of them also the sees of bishops, now sprang up everywhere, including Székesfehérvár (Stuhlweissenburg), Veszprém, Pécs (Fünfkirchen) and Györ (Raab). Esztergom, Stephen’s favourite residence, was the capital, and continued to be so for the next two centuries. But the Benedictines, whose settlement in Hungary dates from the establishment of their monastery at Pannonhalma (c. 1001), were the chief pioneers. Every monastery erected in the Magyar wildernesses was not only a centre of religion, but a focus of civilization. The monks cleared the forests, cultivated the recovered land, and built villages for the colonists who flocked to them, teaching the people western methods of agriculture and western arts and handicrafts. But conversion, after all, was the chief aim of these devoted missionaries, and when some Venetian priests had invented a Latin alphabet for the Magyar language a great step had been taken towards its accomplishment.
The monks were soon followed by foreign husbandmen, artificers and handicraftsmen, who were encouraged to come to Hungary by reports of the abundance of good land there and the promise of privileges. This immigration was also stimulated by the terrible condition of western Europe between 987 and 1060, when it was visited by an endless succession of bad harvests and epidemics.[14] Hungary, now better known to Europe, came to be regarded as a Promised Land, and, by the end of Stephen’s reign, Catholics of all nationalities, Greeks, Pagans, Jews and Mahommedans were living securely together within her borders. For, inexorable as Stephen ever was towards fanatical pagans, renegades and rebels, he was too good a statesman to inquire too closely into the private religious opinions of useful and quiet citizens.