Guardians of the Holy Crown

The Crown Guard was restored as an Army unit in 2011 after six decades. This is a unique development in a republican State, and marked one of the first explicitly traditionalist actions in the political and aesthetic realms taken by the Orbán government. It is also a testament to the importance of the Holy Crown in Hungarian political culture, derived from the Doctrine of the Holy Crown, a political-legal formulation that ties the Hungarian State and its citizens to the Crown as an object and as a “body”. The Doctrine drew its legitimacy from the sacredness attributed to the Crown itself by St. Stephen’s dedication of it, and of the Kingdom itself, to the Virgin Mary. The importance of the Crown-as-an-object led to the creation of the Crown Guard, and its consolidation as a prestigious unit within the Hungarian Army, a status that was inherited by the revived body. This article analyses the restoration of the Crown Guard from a traditionalist perspective, contextualising it within the resurgence of the Holy Crown in public discourse and the rise of traditionalist-inspired historical revivalist policies pursued by the Hungarian government throughout the 2010s.