Not many historiographical monographs cover more than 900 years of history. This book, written and edited by the late János Bak—who taught at various institutions of higher learning in Germany and the United States, and, in the last decades of his life, at the Central European University—and by Géza Pálffy from the Institute of History (formerly of the National Academy of Sciences), gives an overview of the long, complex, and fascinating history of how Hungarian kings and queens were crowned. Coronations were complicated state and church rituals that were essential for the legitimacy and authority of the rulers, and therefore often contested. The anointing of the king since the eleventh century firmly established the Hungarian state and nation among the peoples of Western, Catholic civilization.
This is also a history that is told not only by documents, but, almost more importantly, by artifacts—the coronation insignia, of which the crown is...
