Pannonhalma Abbey

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The 12th-century chronicler, whose name is not known and who has hence come down to us as Anonymus, writes of the invading Magyars camping at the foot of Saint Martin's Hill late in the 10th century, drinking the waters of the Sabaria spring and watering their cattle there.

View of Pannonhalma Photo Szabolcs Hámor, MTI

When they climbed the hill they delighted in the view of the lands of Pannonia. Around a hundred years after that event, very likely in 996, monks expelled from Prague (Saint Adalbert) settled there on Mons Sacer Pannoniae, which the heathen prince Géza chose as their domicile towards the end of his reign.

King Stephen, Géza's son, who christianized the country and who was canonized in the century in which he lived, made Mons Sacer Pannoniae his base in his crucial campaign against his rebellious heathen kinsman Koppány. After the battle, Stephen donated the title of Koppány's lands to the abbey and also accorded it the nullius privilege, extraordinary at the time, which placed the abbey, like Montecassino itself, under direct papal jurisdiction. So the Charter of Privileges dated 1002, the first Hungarian document, tells us.

A late 11th-century library inventory is evidence of the role which the Abbey was already playing in nurturing traditions of scholarship. It lists eighty volumes, mostly liturgical or theological works but there is also a volume each by Cicero and Lucanus.

The East Crypt of the Abbey Church, ante 1224.

Chameleon on the Spur of a Pillar Base in the Abbey Church, ante 1224.

A few decades after this inventory, the Venetian Cerbanus managed to obtain a copy of the works of Maximus the Confessor through the help of the abbot, and he began his Latin translation of the Greek text with a eulogy of the library: "The monastery of Saint Martin is amply supplied with hagiographies of the Fathers of the Church, their teachings, and exegeses of Holy Writ." It is certain that this was the site of the first monastic school, where Maurus, later abbot, and later still Bishop of Pécs, was taught. He is the author of the Legend of Saints Zoerard and Benedict, the first literary work produced in Hungary. Surviving evidence of the legal and literary work of the monks include the formularies of the locus credibilis which operated there in the Middle Ages, and a 15th-century MS of a sermon, which is reckoned a rarity. Pál Forgách, a 16th-century monk produced the Forgách Codex, a richly illustrated Evangelistarium and Benedictionale.

Only wall-fragments survive of the first, double-sanctuary church which was built around the year 1000. The above mentioned 11th-century inventory lists its furnishings. A royal palace was built in the vicinity of the Abbey, King Coloman Beauclerc (1095-1116) there received Geoffroi de Bouillon, leading the First Crusade, when he passed through Hungary. A Royal Decree of 1137 speaks of the rebuilding, renovation and extension of the church. The church, which still stands today, renovated for the second time, was consecrated in 1224, in the presence of King Andrew II (1205-1235). It is the work of Abbot Urias (1207-1247), one of the best preserved works of architecture of the House of Árpád period. Abbot Urias spent a lifetime defending the wealth and standing of the Abbey. He visited the Papal Court on five occasions, accompanied his king on the 1217 Crusade, and finally, successfully confronted the Tatar host in 1242.

Mid-14th-century abbots played a major role in the efforts to reform the Benedictine Order. Abbot Gulielmus Hammer took part in the 1342 meeting of the chapter of the order which was held in Visegrád. His successor, between 1355 and 1362, was Abbot Sigfried who restored the monastery in a worthy manner. Abbot Siegfried had earlier travelled to England on a diplomatic mission on behalf of King Louis the Great.

The late Gothic ambulatory was completed in 1486 under King Matthias Corvinus. On the eve of the Reformation, his successor Vladislav II was responsible for an organizational reform of the Abbey, and with it the Benedictine Province of Hungary. Abbot Máté Tolnai (1500-1535), who had earlier been a chancery official, created a union of all abbeys that were royal foundations and did much to restore monastic discipline and the religious way of life.

Following the disastrous defeat at Mohács (1526), much of Hungary was occupied by the Ottoman host. There was much fighting in the area and the monastery was often the site for the marshalling and the billeting of troops. In 1586 the monks left and the buildings on the hill were then used as a frontier outpost, now by the Hungarians, now by the Turks.

Justus van der Nypoort: A View of Pannonhalma, 1686.

Friedrich Krepp: The Western Prospect of Pannonhalma, 1869.

The monastery was finally ravaged in 1683 by the Ottoman host under the Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha on its way to besiege Vienna. In 1701, however, this, the first Benedictine Abbey in Hungary, was able to celebrate its first seven hundred years in a time of peace. Abbot Benedek Sajghó (1722-1786) erected the Baroque cloister which still stands, including the refectory, with frescoes by David Antonio Fossati. His successor Dániel Somogyi (1768-1801) planned the reconstruction of the whole ensemble, but his plans were aborted because of the dissolution of the monasteries under Joseph II (1786).

The Benedictines were able to resume educational duties in 1802. Up to the mid-20th century they founded secondary grammar schools (gimnázium) in Gyõr, Sopron, Pápa, Nagyszombat (Trnava), Esztergom, Komárom (Komarno), Pozsony (Presporek, later renamed Bratislava), Kõszeg, Budapest, Pannonhalma and Csepel. Benedictine scholar or scientist teachers in the 19th century included Gergely Czuczor, the poet, Ányos Jedlik, the physicist who invented the dynamo in 1861, and Flóris Rómer, the medievalist and archeologist. Under the arbitrary action taken by the Communist state, the number of Benedictine schools in Hungary was reduced to two (Pannonhalma, Gyõr).

Pannonhalma, the Library Interior, 1824-1835.

Members of the Province of Hungary of the Benedictine Order are at present active in Pannonhalma, Gyõr, Tihany, Budapest, Tiszaújfalu, Komárom in Slovakia and Sao Paolo in Brazil.

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Joseph Franz Engel-Johann Baptist Packh: The Library and Church Spire at Pannonhalma, 1824-1835