Austria 100 Euro Gold Coin 2010 The Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, Series: Crowns of the House of Habsburg
A relic of mystical proportions due to the legitimacy bestowed on those crowned with it, the Crown of St Stephen takes its name from the first Christian king of Hungary. The ‘Latin Crown’, as it is also known, is the superb third coin in our Crowns of the House of Habsburg series.
Splendidly depicted on the coin’s obverse, the crown’s peculiar bent cross has been the source of much speculation over the centuries. But while this has fuelled the mythology surrounding the crown, its most probable explanation is a prosaic one, the cross being bent by the heavy lid of the case in which the crown was kept. The coin’s reverse shows the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa on horseback following her coronation as ‘King’ of Hungary in 1741 in Pressburg, present day Bratislava. Required to ride up the Royal Hill in full coronation regalia, the King then had to swing a sword while pledging to defend the borders of the Kingdom of St Stephen, with the castle that still dominates Bratislava to this day for a backdrop.
quality: proof
collection: Crowns of the Habsburgs
face value: 100 Euro
date of issue: 10.11.2010
coin design: Thomas Pesendorfer / Mag. Helmut Andexlinger
diameter: 30.00 mm
alloy: Gold Au 986
fine weight: 16.00 g
total weight: 16.23 g
The Holy Crown of Hungary (Hungarian: Szent Korona, German: Stephanskrone, Croatian: Kruna svetoga Stjepana, Latin: Sacra Corona, Slovak: Svätoštefanská koruna), also known as the Crown of Saint Stephen, was the coronation crown used by the Kingdom of Hungary for most of its existence; kings have been crowned with it since the twelfth century. The Crown was bound to the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen, (sometimes the Sacra Corona meant the Land, the Carpathian Basin, but it also meant the coronation body, too). No king of Hungary was regarded as having been truly legitimate without being crowned with it. In the history of Hungary, more than fifty kings were crowned with it (the two kings who were not so crowned were John II Sigismund and Joseph II).
The Hungarian coronation insignia consists of the Holy Crown, the sceptre, the orb, and the mantle. The orb has the coat-of-arms of Charles I of Hungary (1310–1342); the other insignia can be linked to Saint Stephen.
It was first called the Holy Crown in 1256. During the 14th century, royal power came to be represented not simply by a crown, but by just one specific object: the Holy Crown. This also meant that the Kingdom of Hungary was a special state: they were not looking for a crown to inaugurate a king, but rather, they were looking for a king for the crown; as written by Crown Guard Péter Révay. He also depicts that "the Holy Crown is the same for the Hungarians as the Lost Ark is for the Jewish".
Since 2000, the Holy Crown has been on display in the central Domed Hall of the Hungarian Parliament Building.