Marie de Nazareth
To Jesus, through Mary
Hungary was inhabited in the 9th century by nomad tribes from the Asian steppes. The Magyars, mainly warriors, lived of breeding and looting. They settled in the year 955 and were eventually Christianized by Byzantine and Western missionaries, under the leadership of St. Adalbert, bishop of Prague.
Hungary, Kingdom of Mary
King Stephen wished to be crowned on the day of the Assumption of the year 1001. He wished that the image of Mary should be embroidered on his royal mantle and that a splendid church dedicated to Mary be built near the royal palace.
On the feast of the Assumption in 1038, the king renewed the act of consecration to the Virgin and offered her his crown. He asked her to watch over the young Church of the country, stating: "O Mary, Pious Virgin, deign to receive and guard my kingdom".
Bishop Saint Gerard of Csanád (d. 1046), a Benedictine, invited the Hungarians to invoke the Virgin as "Magna Domina", "Great Lady of the Hungarians", and to render to her all the honor that the people had formerly given to "Boldog Asszony", the pagan goddess of fertility and life.
The prayer of the Angelus, to be recited at dawn, noon, and in the evening, was introduced after the victory over the Turks in Belgrade in 1456. (1)
Muslim rule and the role of Marian congregations
After the occupation of Budapest by the Ottomans on August 29, 1541.
Budapest was occupied by the Ottomans (Turkish Muslims) from 1541 to 1686.
In 1693, Emperor Leopold I publicly renewed the national Act of Trust in Mary.
The miracle of tears flowing from the icon "Hodigitria" in Máriapócs took place in 1696.
And it was in 1697 that the Turks were finally expelled from the Austro-Hungarian territory.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Marian congregations provided an excellent religious formation to their members. They developed the Regnum Marianum, and spread religion among the population.
Many princes were educated in these congregations: Ferdinand II, Ferdinand III, Leopold I, Charles of Lorraine, Eugene of Savoy, Jean Sobieski, Francis Rákóczi II, Esterházy, Báthory, Zrinyi, as well as the most distinguished members of the Hungarian higher society. Prince Nicolas Esterházy gave a rosary to his son Ladislas as a gift on his feast day, after using it daily on behalf of his son for 16 years!
The spiritual center of those congregations was in Nagyszombat. The University of Nagyszombat made a solemn pledge in 1657 to defend the Immaculate Conception and to celebrate each year the feast of the Immaculate Conception with great solemnity.
Everyone - field laborers, shepherds tending their flocks, women spinning yarn… - used to recite the rosary during the day, in praise of the Virgin Mary. And most men wore the rosary attached to their garments.
Joseph II and the submission of the Church to the State
In 1765, Joseph II became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and co-regent of the Habsburg possessions until his death in 1790. His reforms consisted in subjecting the Church to the state: he reduced the number of seminaries, Congregations and religious orders deemed unnecessary, and suppressed the Marian shrines that were not constituted as a parish. He eliminated national expressions of diversity, and in the process dispelled the Hungarian ideal of living as a kingdom of Mary "Regnum Marianum".
The Catholic rebirth was slow to come back. In 1853, the great servant of Mary Primate Scitovszky revived the former congregation of academics at Nagyszombat, and Pierre Klobusiczky, archbishop of Kalocsa (1821-1843), propagated the devotion to Mary Immaculate, even among the members of the reigning dynasty and parliament.
Until 1848, the national anthem was a hymn to Mary, the coins bore the effigy of Mary and the national flag, with the image of the Virgin, bore the motto: "Matre monstrante Viam, Deo duce, pro Patria et Libertate Vivere aut Mori "(With the Mother who shows the way, and guided by God, to live or die for the country and freedom). The authentic demands of the insurrection of 1848 (Hungarian nationalism and respect for the working class) were not opposed to this reign of Mary.
In 1867, Hungary again became an autonomous nation, though still federated with Austria. The Emperor Francis Joseph and the Empress Elizabeth were crowned in the Marian Church of the royal palace. (2)
In the turmoil of the 20th century
In the Nazi Storm
The regent of the Kingdom, Miklós Horthy, sided with Nazi Germany in the 1930s, hoping to regain the territorial losses that followed World War I. The situation took a turn for the worse when, in October 1944, Hitler prevented Hungary from joining the Allies and replaced Horthy with a Hungarian Nazi collaborator, F. Szálasi, and his party of the Arrow Cross. After this change of government more than 450,000 Jews and several hundred Gypsies perished. (4)
In this dark context, Budapest’s mayor Charles Szendy repeated the consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary - made the year before on October 31, 1942 by Pope Pius XII - on June 27, 1943.
During the procession of the Blessed Sacrament, in all the parishes, the faithful present offered themselves, the country’s capital, and the whole universe to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary as Queen of the universe. This official act of consecration remains in all memory as an unforgettable event.
Many provincial towns followed suit: Szeged, Kecskemét, Szabadka, Baja, Kalocsa, etc. with great solemnity.
Caught in the Communist turmoil
In 1945, the Red Army completely occupied the country, and Hungary was forced to enter the Soviet bloc.
Shortly afterwards, on October 2, 1945, J. Mindszenty was appointed Cardinal and Primate of Hungary.
On August 15, 1947, while the government was preparing to celebrate the centenary of the Revolution of 1848, Cardinal Mindszenty opened the Marian Year. This dual celebration was possible because the revolution of 1848 was compatible with the Catholic ideals.
Cardinal Mindszenty declared in 1948: "My deepest wish is that a million Hungarian families would pick up their rosary and pray to Mary."
In one of his pastoral letters he wrote: "Let us return to the oldest sources of our Hungarian heritage! Let us give the Virgin Mary the name of Queen so that she may take our destiny into her hands."
And he offered this prayer to Mary: "Mary, our Mother, we offer our suffering to you as a means of expiation. Let the sighs and tears, the fear, the bitterness, the silent complaint of the world, serve as an atonement for our sins. We are ready to suffer, Mother so sorrowful, according to your Son’s will, as he sees fit for our salvation, but we pray to you, lift up our nation who is being tried like Job, and show that you are still our Mother." (4)
A large part of the population largely participated in these events, which raised suspicion from the government. In 1949 the cardinal was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason against the Hungarian state.
Released during the 1956 insurrection, Cardinal Mindszenty went to Budapest to encourage the insurgents, intervening on the radio to declare himself in favor of the anti-communist developments of the insurrection. When the Soviet troops entered into Hungary, he found political asylum in an embassy before taking refuge in Vienna.
The 1956 popular-democratic insurrection was not completely without results: it forced the rulers to somewhat relax their grip on religious and social freedom. (2)
Today
The first elections were held in 1990. Communist troops left in 1991. Hungary joined NATO in 1999 and became a member of the European Union in 2004.
There are presently in Hungary several hundred Marian congregations for the youth and the different classes of society, led by diocesan priests, Jesuits, Benedictines, Cistercians, Piarists, Premonstratensians, Franciscans, Salesians, etc. (3)
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(1) Clodovis BOFF, Mariologia sociale. It signifato della Vergine per la società. BTC 136. Queriniana, Brescia 2007. Biblioteca contemporanea, p. 158
(2) Attilio GALLI, Madre della Chiesa dei Cinque Continenti, Ed. Segno, Udine, 1997, p. 369-378
(3) Louis Nagyfalusy
(4) P. Werenfried van Straaten, in "L’Homme nouveau" magazine, June 15, 1975 issue
Françoise Breynaert