The Benedictine Abbey of Tihany is one of Hungary’s ancient holy sites. The church, aligned with the rising and setting sun, has as its treasure the tomb of King Andrew I (1046–1060). He founded the monastery on a peninsula protruding into Lake Balaton in 1055. He intended it as a place where prayers would be said for him and his family. The foundation charter was written in Latin, attesting to the presence of European culture in the Carpathian Basin a thousand years ago, and the Hungarian words in the Latin text also attest to the presence of our Hungarian-speaking ancestors. Today, the foundation charter of Tihany Abbey has become a national heritage, a holy relic, the herald of the thousand year Hungarian presence. The founder of the Abbey, Andrew I wisely put his intentions in writing, so that, in the words of the charter, there would be no ‘yielding to improvident forgetfulness’ by which they might ‘come to naught in the times of our descendants’. The special value and esteem it is held in today, however, is due to the large number of Hungarian words (mainly names of places and persons) included in the Latin text.
The foundation charter mentions ‘the appurtenances required to properly serve the said church,’ but these are not described in detail in the main text and were listed later on the back. This ‘inventory’ suggests that an ‘apostolic college’ of the customary twelve monks came to Tihany at Andrew’s invitation: it mentions six chasubles and twelve choral vestments.
The foundation charter is also a charter of donation: its longest section is a description of estates and chattels that the ‘good king’ donated to the Abbey: ‘we have provided everything they might need as regards food, drink and clothing’. According to the customs of the time, all of these needs were provided by grants of land.
All clues to the size of the abbey church founded in 1055 have been obliterated by subsequent alterations and the deepening of the floor, but the nave could have been no larger than the present church.
The church had a nave and two aisles and a chancel, in the traditional eastern alignment. The chancel was slightly narrower than the nave and had a higher floor, under which was a space of the same area, the founder’s burial place. It was accessed by stone stairways at the east ends of the aisles.
The monks’ quarters connected to the south of the church. Seventeenth and eighteenth century restorations and the gradual deepening of the ground level have removed all traces of them.
The monastic life in Tihany was extinguished in 1534, a victim of the Ottoman conquest, and not revived until the eighteenth century. After the wars of liberation against the Ottomans, the previous owners of land, or their heirs, were obliged to pay ‘redemption’ to the imperial treasury in order to regain their estates. Since this was beyond the means of the Benedictine Order in Hungary, Tihany became the property of the Benedictine abbey of Alternburg in Lower Austria in 1701 and remained so until the Archabbey of Pannonhalma repurchased it in 1716.
Vilibald Grasso (1677–1740) recalled, ‘When I first went to Tihany Abbey after my appointment as abbot [in 1719], I saw through tears a church that had shared the suffering of God, and [I recognized] my betrothed rather as Leah than as Rachel. It was level with the ground, and no stone remained on stone.’
The reconstruction and fitting out of the abbey lasted the entire eighteenth century.
There were three great and disparate abbots during that period, each associated with a distinct architectural phase. In his twenty-one years of governance, Grasso did all he could to rebuild the ruined buildings and return his abbey to its former glory. The wide vaulted church was complete by 1735. The medieval crypt was retained under the chancel, and a monks’ crypt was built under the nave. The church was not yet fitted out, even with altars. The monastery, however, was fully completed, its wings forming a regular square with the church.
In 1740, the Abbey came into the charge of a highly cultured patron of Baroque architecture, Agoston Lecs (1698–1760). Although he took charge of an almost complete building, he set out to make a substantially larger, more ornate abbey in Tihany. He halted the work in progress, and in 1744, he started on the expansion of the whole complex. The church was complete by summer 1754, and the liturgical fittings and appurtenances were made continuously over the ensuing twenty years.
The third eighteenth-century abbot was Samuel Vajda (1718–1795), who held the post between 1760 and 1787. It was during his tenure that building work was completed, and only the sacristy block was due to him. The Abbot’s puritanical, ascetic lifestyle and deep, fiery faith made him a charismatic personality among his contemporaries, many of whom came to Tihany to meet him. The activity of Tihany was aimed at religious devotion, centred particularly on propagating the cults of the Madonna of Mariazell and – later –the Sacred Heart. This has left its mark in two side altars that still stand in the church.
In 1782, Joseph II started to dissolve the religious orders. The Benedictines had to leave Tihany in January 1787, with the sole exception of a monk who became the parish priest.
The monks were able to return in 1802, but the Abbey had lost its eighteenth-century momentum; calm and stasis characterized almost the whole of the nineteenth century.
The buildings had severely deteriorated by 1880, raising the spectre of having to demolish the church and rebuild it. In the end, the buildings were renovated to plans by the architect Győző Czigler in 1889/1890. The apparently serious structural problems were resolved, the facades were renovated and there was a slight alteration to the Abbey’s internal layout to meet the demands of the time.
The monks were expelled from the Abbey again in 1950. Only the parish was allowed to remain. The building was used as a poor house and later became a museum. The Benedictines returned to Tihany in 1990, although possession was regained from the government only in 1994. Restoration of the church interior (frescoes and altars) started in 1992, and renovation of the entire complex started in 1996, going through several phases until the interior and exterior spaces and surroundings attained the form required for monastic life in the twenty-first century.
THE LAST HUNGARIAN KING IN TIHANY
Blessed Charles IV was crowned King of Hungary in the middle of the First World War, on 30 December 1916. The failure of his attempts to achieve peace and the military defeat of the Central Powers caused the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to collapse in autumn 1918. The victorious powers set about dismantling the Monarchy. Hungary was particularly hard hit: it was to lose two thirds of its territory and half of its population, finalized by the Treaty of Trianon signed on 4 June 1920. On 11 November 1918, Emperor Charles of Austria issued a declaration that he was withdrawing from Austrian state affairs, and two days later, in the Eckartsau Declaration, he did the same as King of Hungary.
The King received encouragements to return in the form of delegations and messages from some politicians in Hungary as well as the Pope and the Hungarian Prince Primate. After the unsuccessful ‘Easter royal coup’ of between 26 March and 6 April 1921, he came to Hungary again on 21 October 1921, proceeding via Sopron towards Budapest. The government had no military units near Budapest that could be called out at short notice and was obliged to call on the assistance of student volunteers, who were armed and sent to prevent the King’s entry to Budapest. On 23 October, there was a clash between the two forces, involving fatal casualties, and the royal units were held up at the line of Budaörs. The King was dismayed by the developments. He went into retreat on 24 October, but the government forces soon caught up and surrounded him. The royal party and his remaining supporters were taken captive by the National Army and taken first to Esterhazy Castle in Tata and then, on 26 October, to Tihany Abbey.
Tihany Abbey consisted of a two-storey building, very small compared to Pannonhalma Archabbey and the urban Benedictine houses.
At 1 pm on 26 October, a guard of honour assembled in front of the Abbey. The Benedictine monks, led by the Abbot, made their way in procession to the Abbey entrance. Around 2 pm, a bugle sounded and the Abbot’s coach and four arrived with the royal couple. When the royal carriage stopped, the King jumped down and helped the Queen down. The royal couple were led to their quarters by Colonel Tihamer Simenfalvy, appointed as commander of the Abbey. He ordered that the guards and secret policemen were to take occupation of the Abbey passages only when everybody had taken occupation of the rooms assigned to them. Thus the guests could feel that they were indeed guests and were not in Tihany as internees.
At the demand of the Entente powers, and in response to memoranda by the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) threatening to invade the country, the Bethlen government attempted to persuade the King to abdicate of his own accord. If that was not possible he would be dethroned by parliamentary resolution. Attempts to have the King abdicate came to an end with a resolution of the Conference of Ambassadors on 28 October. This ordered Charles to be transferred to the British Navy until his final place of residence was assigned. On the afternoon of Monday 31 October, Simenfalvy, reported to the royal couple that he would transport them to Baja via the train departing at 7 pm, where he was to hand them over to the British. Before departure, the King and Queen summoned the Abbot, who joined them in the chapel to say the Itinerarium, the prayer said before setting out on a journey. This was the last day spent in Hungary by the last king of Hungary. Charles was taken by the British Navy to Funchal on the island of Madeira in the Atlantic, where he died of the Spanish Flu on 1 April 1922 at the age of 34.