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DR. FERENC BADINY-JÓS

 

THE GODLY CONQUERORS

 

(The Religion of the Homecoming Magyars)

 

            It has been widely taught, in schools and in churches, that Great Árpád and his people, forefathers of the Hungarians, were “godless pagans”.

            In spite of the fact that, in the last one thousand years, the Hungarians have managed to live down this name, there has again recently arisen an organized movement whose goal is to reestablish this undesirable description of them, in order to justify the Hungarian genocide which resulted from the christianization of Hungary.  The belief that it was not worth writing the history of “such a pagan people, sentenced to death and destruction”, as the Magyars were described by Pater Liebert, spokesman for Pope Pius XII, in 1945,[1] led the anti-Árpád movement to date the beginning of Hungarian history from the time of Saint István and to call everything which preceded this era “pagan and barbarian”.  It is appalling that, at the same time, this anti-Árpád movement, which had its root in the ideology of the Roman Catholic Church, supported the right of foreigners to rule in Hungary and, like the present Marxist regime, use this theory to justify their presence in Hungary and choke the feeling of nationalism.

            Many people call this endeavor “the Saint István complex”, which hides under a veil the many centuries of suffering the Hungarians had to endure under foreign rule.

            Even among Hungarians, there are still many who retain the attitudes of the former ruling class and who still do not understand or do not want to acknowledge that a nation can survive only if it preserves its traditions and cherishes the inheritance of its ancestors with a religious fervor.  They say that there are enough relics from the time of Saint István to the present.  That is true but, if we examine closely these so-called relics and customs, or rather laws, which were the guidelines for life in Hungary, introduced by the Holy Roman Empire and existing until 1945, when the Soviet Marxist rule took over, then we can see that very little remains on the side of the scale which holds the real heritage of the Hungarian nation.  On the other side of the scale are the oppression of the Hungarians, all their sufferings, the thousand years of feudal capitalism of the Church and foreign aristocracy, the present day destitution caused by the foreign “elected” few, the Hungarian freedom-fights and the merciless retaliation, the exile of Rákóczi and Kossuth and the extermination of many innocent people after the Revolution of 1956 . . . which not only weigh the scale down to the ground but even to the gates of Hell.

            On that side of the scale, we also find the many sufferings which were brought with the change of faith to Christianity.  The Hungarian martyrs, beginning with Tonuzóba (who was buried alive with his wife and his horse), Imre, Gyula, Vászoly (who was blinded and had liquid lead poured into his ears) and Koppány (whose body was cut into four pieces and each piece hung in each of his castles), were all princes of the Árpád Dynasty.  There is also the slow but certain extermination of the Árpád House, the placing of the Hungarian princesses into convents or the arrangement of child-marriages like that of Saint Erzsébet, the foreign wives of the princes of the Árpád Dynasty, the Mohács disaster in 1526 (which marked the 160 year Turkish rule in Hungary), the heated throne of Dózsa, the leader of the peasant revolt and the deaths of 60,000 of his followers on the wheel and the 400 years of Hapsburg atrocities. 

            The Roman Church itself acknowledges the suffering and martyrdom of the Hungarian nation because almost 40 martyrs from the Árpád House have been declared “Saint”or “Blessed”. I know that some people will argue that not only martyrs and sufferers have been considered for the distinction of sainthood because there is also Saint László who was a king and King István, whom many regard as a saint and who has even been called Saint István.  I can say to these people that the Hungarians must have loved their King László, under whose leadership they chased the foreigners out of the country.  The circumstances and the reasons for the canonization of Saint László are not the subject of this study. Just for the purpose of comparison I ask why there is not one saint among the Holy Roman Emperors.  How is it possible that, among the royal houses of the cultured West, there is rarely to be found a saint whereas, among the “barbarian and uncultured” Magyars of the Árpád Dynasty – as I have already mentioned – the Roman Church has declared numerous people to be “Saint” or “Blessed”?  Foreign kings sat on the Hungarian throne from A.D. 1301, for a total of 618 years.  Out of these 618 years, the Hapsburgs ruled for almost 400 years and, among their rulers, there was not even one whom the Roman Church considered suitable for sainthood.  We can also say that, from the Hungarian point of view, these foreigners were oppressors and, under a merciless totalitarian rule, the Hungarian people were the oppressed.  On this side of the scale of Hungarian life, we find all those factors which drag the fate of the Hungarians down to the gates of Hell.

            If I wish to proclaim the glory of Great Árpád the Conqueror, I have to make a comparison.  I do not intend to compare the persons of Árpád and István I. but the Hungarian life under their rule.  Therefore, I state and emphasize that I have no objection to King István I., who is also called Saint István, but rather I am opposed to the well-organized ideology which used the glorification of Saint István to justify and sanction the presence of foreign rulers in Hungary, whose rule is against Hungarian interests.  It is unfortunate that the strongest advocators of this organized ideology are members of the Roman Catholic Church.  I intend to serve the historical truth of the Hungarian nation when I compare the life in Hungary following the “Magyar” conquest of the great Árpád with life during and after the “conquest” of foreign rulers who followed István I. or Saint István. 

            Anyone, who has another opinion or who serves the ideology of supporting the foreign rule in Hungary by glorifying Saint István, might ask how it is possible to make this comparison when we have hardly any sources of information about the time of Prince Árpád.  This objection should be restated that we have hardly any information in Hungarian about this era.  Stated this way, it is understandable because starting with the “foreign conquest” during the reign of István I., it became a duty of the Church to destroy any relics of the “pagan” past, just as the conquistadores destroyed the culture of the Incas in South America and the Mayan and Aztec cultural wonders in Central America, under the pretext of spreading Christianity.  Even so, we have enough historical proof to conduct this investigation because the “foreign conquest” of the time of “Saint” István I, left plenty of writings which record the life in Hungary at the time of Árpád.

            Let us take first of all the decree of “Saint” King István, which can be found in the Corpus Juris, in Book II. Chapter 19.[2]

            “In order that the people of this country may remain peaceful and free of disturbance and accusations from the part of the servants and maidservants, the decision of the King’s Advisory Council absolutely forbids any servant to make any kind of accusation against his lord or his lady for any reason whatsoever.”

            What conclusions can we draw from this law about life in Hungary?  We know that the Magyars at the time of the Árpád Conquest were all free and belonged to a clan.  It is very unlikely that, in that difficult settlement of the Carpathian Basin, which they accomplished with amazing military techniques, they would have brought with them foreign servants.  However, if they had servants, after the settlement, then they were probably foreigners and prisoners of war.  The Magyars at the time of Árpád, therefore, were free and they took part in the establishment of the will of the people.

            To understand the law of Saint István quoted above, we should read the sixth chapter of “The Great Legend of Saint István”, which has been translated into Hungarian by Károly Szabó: A magyar vezérek kora (Budapest, 1878. P. 248)

            “After the defeat of Koppány, Saint István zealously advocated the conversion of the prisoners who came into his hand and forced them to accept Christianity.  Those among them who still clung to their ancient beliefs and who strongly resisted the christianization, and certainly there were not just a few, were stripped of their freedom and place into shameful servitude.”  (See also: Marci Chron. P. 26, Chron. Budapest, p. 49 and Thuroczy, II. Chapter 13.)

            After the “foreign conquest” which took place during the reign of King István I., life in Hungary changed.  The foreigners became the lords, the aristocrats and the Hungarians, formerly free men, became the servants.

            Beside the servitude much sadder was the fratricide which followed.  István rewarded the foreigners, who had aided him against Koppány, with bountiful gifts and generous grants of land, and those Magyars who accepted Christianity were likewise rewarded.  Ajtony, one of the Magyar leaders, was an Eastern Orthodox Christian and did not want to become a Roman Christian and one of his high-ranking men, Csanád, converted to the new religion and killed his master, Ajtony.  István rewarded Csanád for this deed with the estate of Ajtony.  Many other such cased divided the formerly strong Magyars into two camps. . . However, the laws of Saint István also inform us that such Hungarian opportunists and turncoats finally had enough of the foreign rule and wanted to return to their former religion and help their oppressed brethren.  Against this, this law of the “Saint-king” was established: “If anyone of the aristocracy should meet a pagan, corrupted heretic, he should punish him with the loss of his right hand.” (Corpus Juris, 11. 15)

            From this time on, the expression: “Az elhajított jobb-kezek” (the amputated right-hands) became common among the Hungarian people.  The “Saint-king” ordered that all heretics should lose their right hand.  This merciless law not only reflects the merciless law of the Old Testament in Roman Christianity, but also reflects the “absolute rule” of the new rulers in that it destroyed the will of the people. 

            Let us now compare the two ruling systems.  Let us begin with the ruling system of Great Árpád, the Conqueror, who inherited it from hís father, Álmos.  This system is based on a faith of charismatic origin.

            The roots of the Hungarian origin can be found in the legend of the Turul bird.  According to the results of the present-day researches in Mesopotamia, the Turul bird, which returns to Emese as ancestor of the Magyars, can trace back the Hungarian origin to the enormous lion-headed bird of the beliefs of the Chaldeans.  Since this SUN-BIRD raises the newly reviving SON OF THE SUN to Heaven, it thus bestows on the origin of the Hungarians the mystery of coming from Heaven, for this can be the only reason that, in the legends of the Hungarians, Álmos and his descendants are called “the sons of Heaven” who, as godly people, have divine powers and are called to fulfill divine responsibilities.  Thus the ruling system, which was established by Álmos and raised to a constitutional system by the Blood Union of Árpád, believed that the prince, “who was sent from Heaven”, ruled his people by God’s laws and executed the orders of the SUN-GOD, the God of the Magyars, actually the ONE GOD.  

            The western ruling system bears the characteristics of the state where western Christianity was formed, that is the Roman Empire.  The Roman system of law and order has long been interwoven with the new system of law and order, formed in the interest of the Holy Roman Empire, where the Holy Roman Empire is not a “SON OF HEAVEN” but, as Dümmerth writes:[3]  “The ruler of the Roman Christians, Charlemagne, who restored the Holy Roman Empire, found a method by which, using the ceremonies of the Christian religion, he raised himself almost to the level of God.”

            Since the other descendant of the Roman Empire was the Byzantine Emperor, let us see Dümmerth’s opinion of him: “. . . It stood there, the Byzantine Empire, without breaking continuity, where the idea of the ‘God-emperor’ ruled in spite of the Christian beliefs.  Here, the Emperor was on the same level as God.”

            In the interest of complete historical research, I suggest that we examine the “concept of King”, as it is viewed by the aforementioned powers.

            The concept of King in the Árpád Dynasty, up to István I. can be called “sense of vocation”, where the “Son of Heaven” was the ruler of the Magyars who, because he was a godly person, was at the same time “Prince-King”.  He was the vicar of the “KING OF HEAVEN”, the true God on Earth, who executes the will of the people.

            According to the Western Roman concept of king, the person of the Holy Roman Emperor was regarded as “divine” and, with a hierarchical structure, his rule was absolute.  Therefore, it was not the will of the people which was decisive but the personal decision of the Emperor which decided the life of the people.

            In the Eastern Roman Empire, that is Byzantium, the God-Emperor was the ruler but the Christianity which was called “Eastern” tried to break away from that corrupt and immoral ruling system where the Emperor ruled as a god and, from the religious point of view, it was also opposed to the Western Roman Christianity and to the Roman Empire, which was supporting the struggle between the Eastern and Western Christians.

            The analysis of the “concept of King” and the “ruling-systems” opens up an interesting historical truth which is worth remembering and should be kept in mind when we analyze the history of the Árpád era.  It would be helpful if I treat this separately:

1.      It is only from this Hungarian concept of King, which is deeply rooted in tradition, that the long-standing Hungarian unity could have arisen and that, by the will of the people, the whole nation, with a sense of vocation, took up arms and, for example, at the Battle of Pozsony (now Bratislava) destroyed the united European armies.  (Here I have to mention, reproachfully, Mr. Komjáthy, who, in his book The Thousand Years of the Hungarian Art of War, written in English, forgot or purposely omitted to mention that amazing military technique.)

2.      The Magyars, who believed in Jesus and who knew Eastern Christianity, actually had their first contact with the hierarchical system of the Western Roman Christianity when they had to fight against archbishops, bishops and canons, who were leading the armed forces against them.  This historical fact indicates the interesting organization of the Western Roman Christian Church, by which the ruling clerics possessed not only churches and monasteries but also well-equipped, strong armies.  To the Magyars, who had reconquered the Carpathian Basin on the basis of their ancient rights, this did not reflect the “Christian love” which the Church had been teaching and preaching.  It must have been a big surprise to the Magyars to see on the battlefield the dead bodies of archbishops and bishops, with swords in their hands.  Historical research indicates that the churchmen of the Eastern Orthodox Church were the complete opposite.  The notion of the Western Roman Church to exterminate the Magyars can be found in the Little Legend of Saint István and other legends, which are all the products of the writings of the Western Roman Church, the present-day Marxist official historical view and those emigrant Hungarians who, under the pretext of glorifying Saint István, are actually serving the foreign regime and they are using these sources of information as accepted historical sources.  Thus, it is written in the Little Legend of Saint István,[4]: “. . . Since the barbarian nation of Magyars has for a long time been erring in unbelief and has worshipped haughty, sacrilegious idols, in the manner of pagans, it pleased the Savior in His mercy, to put an end to their sins. The devilish deception will disappear and at least the remainder of this nation shall be saved.”

     When I present my proofs of the Godly Conquerors, we shall remember this again and we shall see how blinded and full of hate was the spirit of the writer of the Little Legend, when he wrote of the godly and highly-civilized nation with its own writing-system, which he simply called “pagan and barbarian”.  This description is largely due to the fact that Hungarian tradition attributes their origin and religious beliefs to Atilla.  (The Roman Church never forgot that Atilla almost destroyed Rome, but turned back at the pleading of the Pope and turned his horse toward the River Tisza.”  At the same time, Alarich and the other Goth leaders were never blamed because they destroyed the Holy City three times.)  Dümmerth writes in and interesting way about the Hungarian connection with Atilla.[5]

“The Magyars, whom tradition, in truth or in error, binds with Atilla, . . . at the beginning of the tenth century, became so highly-respected for their military strength, that their neighbors, the Germans, who outnumbered them, had to think twice about attacking them.”

Naturally, not even Dümmerth dares to write about the Battle of Pozsony, where Árpád destroyed the united European, French and German “superpowers”, but his remark quoted above, refers to it, because the Germans did not even dare to attack the Magyars during the time of the Princes of the Árpád House, up to the time of Saint István.  The German Emperors, Otto I., II. and III. were forced to accept the fact that the Hungarian borders were invincible, and so a hundred years passed without any German attacks against Hungary.  The Magyar unity became so strong, under the charismatic rulers of the Árpád House, that the Magyar nation prospered in every respect, materially, spiritually and numerically.

  I know that there are many who do not want to accept this but to these let Dümmerth answer because he did not mention the Battle of Pozsony but writes of the Magyar defeat at Augsburg, when the Germans massacred the Magyars who were unarmed. 

“Our present-day historical writings reflect the historical writings of the Hapsburg Monarchy, in that we seem to be competing with the foreign historical writers in painting a horrifying picture of the Augsburg massacre of AD 955.  However, if we pay attention to the source of information, we shall see that this was not an “annihilation” of the Hungarians, as we sometimes read  (e.g. in Komjáthy’s book. Insert by Badiny) and it did not even break their will to continue to fight.”[6]

I mention the above-quoted date as an example to prove that the Magyar Conquest under Árpád created a Hungarian unity and, on the basis of the Árpádian concept of King, by adopting the Constitution of the Blood Union, the Magyars prospered undisturbed until István I. opened the gates of the country to the Western Roman Church and the wandering German Knights and effected the “Foreign Conquest” of Hungary. 

With this “Foreign Conquest”, a new concept of King was created in Hungary and the first representation of this new concept was István I., and the stepmother of István, Adelhaid, who did not shrink from killing a man, played a rôle in its development.  We cannot blame István’s father, Géza, for what happened, because the Western sources of information tell us that Adelhaid ruled her husband.[7]   The young István, who was called Vajk before he became Christian, when he adopted Judeo-Christianity, became King of the Hungarians and was anointed with oil according to the Jewish custom, as Dümmerth mentioned in his afore-mentioned book, in the chapter entitled: “The Anointing of the King and its Symbols”.[8]  King István had to deny his origin as described in the legend of the Turul bird and he had to deny that his ancestor, Álmos, was the “Son of Heaven”.  He had to deny the godly concept of King.  He had to deny his duties as “Priest-King” and his sense of vocation and he had to give the souls of his people to the foreign priests who answered to the Pope in Rome.

Here begins the great Hungarian tragedy and today, as we stand over the grave of the nation, when the foreigners, who have settled in Hungary and divided among themselves three-quarters of the Hungarian territory, today, when a foreign regime rules the remainder of the Hungarian land, we can state that, while the Árpádian concept of King gave unity to the Hungarian nation, the new concept of King, which came in with István I. and the foreign conquerors, was the cause of the Hungarian disunity and fratricidal wars.  If anyone contradicts this statement I would ask him to look around among the emigrant Hungarians.  The nourishing of the tradition of Árpád advocates brotherhood and would like to create Hungarian unity, yet it is sad to see how few there are throughout the world who glorify Árpád and his concept of King.  For example, in Buenos Aires, Father Pesti and I did everything we could to establish an Árpád Day in some of the Hungarian communities, but our appeals fell on deaf ears.  On the other hand, in the largest Argentinian newspaper, at a great deal of expense, an article was published about Hungarian history, in which the writer called the Hungarians before Saint István “half-barbarians”.  Naturally, Saint István’s concept of King was glorified in this article.

  I ask everyone to meditate for a moment about the Hungarian fate.  Let us recognize that the Hungarian nation stands on the brink of destruction, and that the concept of King of Saint István brought the nation to this point.  During the one thousand years following Saint István, exactly that has happened which he forecast in his “INTELMEK” about the fate of the Hungarians and the direction it was to follow, which is the result of the concept of King which he introduced.  Thus, he wrote in the “INTELMEK” Chapter 8., para. 1.:[9]

“Let it be known that the greatest honor of the kingdom is to follow in the footsteps of the previous kings, to follow the honored forefathers and, if somebody dislikes the decrees of his ancestors and does not care for the laws of God, he will perish.”

Exactly that has happened to the Hungarian nation.  It abandoned the holy traditions of its ancestors and, from the time of István I., refuted the decrees of Árpád, kicked aside the Holy Constitution of the Blood Union and so became a nation without roots.  Therefore, it is dying. 

Yet, how whole-heartedly we sang the old song:

      “Árpád, our father, worry not

      About your ancient nation.

      It is not lost, if up to now

      It has held on. . .”

And now let us say that the nation is standing at the edge of the grave.  The past thousand years of foreign rule have brought it here.  The historians are already singing the funeral dirge.  They are competing with each other to present the ancestors of the Hungarians in the worst possible light to the foreigners and to the Hungarian youths who have been brought up in Hungary without any knowledge of their history.  They do that so that the Hungarian youths conceive a loathing for their own race and so that they will not acknowledge their noble national consciousness.  I shall give just one example of this:  The rock-opera “King István” in which the historians present Prince Koppány as and earth-grabbing peasant who rolls on top of the manure-heap and who chases the goats like a wild man.  But worse than these historians in Hungary, most of whom are of foreign origin, are the emigrant Hungarians, those who live well in the free world, who sing the same funeral dirge.

Even if I remain alone, the cuckoo in the great Hungarian forest, sounding a warning, I still wish you to hear my voice because I am calling every Hungarian to come to the aid of the nation which is standing at the edge of the grave. 

I am calling every Hungarian to a spiritual rebirth in honor of his ancestors because he, who is able to join with God in the rebirth of the love of his ancestors and his past, becomes immortal.  This applies both to the individual and to the nation. 

I have spent more than half my life in the research of my ancestors, in the investigation of the true Hungarian origin.  I have followed the tracks of the legends of the Turul bird and the White Stag to the Middle East and today, I can determine, with the help of written documents, the two starting points of the Árpádian traditions.  To find the first starting-point, we must go from the Árpád Dynasty into the past and, if we want to follow the path from the past towards Árpád, the starting-point is to be found in the Carpathian Basin. 

Let us begin with the Árpád Dynasty.  The Byzantine Emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, wrote about the great-great grandsons of Árpád, Tormás and Bulcsú, whom he had honored with the title of “Visiting Friends of the Byzantine Empire”, that these great-great grandsons of Árpád declared themselves to belong to the Szabir (Subarean) nation. Tracing back from “Szabir”, we find “Szabiria” in that location where the late Viktor Padányi placed Dentumagyaria.  We now know that the Mesopotamian land of SUBIR was also their homeland, because the “Su-bar, Su-bir, Sa-bir” identity has been acknowledged by the Russian professor Djakanow in his book The History of the Szabirs.   However, the fact that the Szabirs were living in ancient times in the Carpathian Basin has recently been revealed with the decipherment of a prayer on the Tararlak tablet, found in Transylvania.  The signs on the lower right-hand quarter of the tablet, which read SA-PIR-AB, inform us of a really surprising new discovery.  This is the ancient starting-point which leads us to the people of Árpád and this explains that stubborn will and desire, which repeatedly re-appears in the legends of the origins of the Hungarians, where the people of the Huns and the Magyars always want to return to their ancient land in the Carpathian Basin.

With this in mind, you will understand my decision, which came like an inspiration, to have a copy of the text of that Tatarlak tablet cast on a silver medal, so that those who are able to join with God in the rebirth of the love of their ancestors may wear this medal as a reminder.  This seven-thousand year-old text of a prayer also reminds us that SZA-PIR means “sunshine-faced”, “bright-faced”, “son of the sun” or “son of light”.  We also have to know that the red of the dawn (in Hungarian “hajnal-pir”) is the earthly manifestation of the life-giving power of God, while the SA-PIR is the human counterpart of this, where the light of the Spirit is reflected in the face of the man who lives in honoring his holy traditions. 

Now, I ask you: Is it possible for a “bright-faced”, “sunshine-faced” “son of the sun” to be a pagan?  Can he be godless, living without God?  Never, because he knows that he can only be “bright-faced” if the power of God, living in his soul, is reflected in his face.  Such people were the Godly Conquerors of Árpád. 

One might then ask: “Why then are they called pagans?”  I ask in return: “Who called them pagans?”  Only in the remaining writings of the Roman Church can be found this inglorious label because, until the decision of the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, in 1962, anyone who was not Catholic was a pagan and a heretic.  Only with the decision of this Council were the Christians of other sects acknowledged to be God-fearing Christians.  This was stated in the minutes of this Council, which were published on December 7, 1965, with the title: “Libertas Religiosa sub Luce Revelationis”.[10]  Therefore, the expression “pagan”, referring to the Magyars at the time of István I., simply meant “non-catholic”.

On the basis of the decision of the Second Vatican Council, I ask the priests of the Roman Catholic Church and the Hungarians who glorify Saint István to comply with the order of the Pope.  Cease calling the Great Árpád and his people “pagan” and change this derogatory label, in accordance with the decree of the Council of 1962, to “non Roman-Catholic”.

That is the truth.  Árpád and his people were not Roman-Catholics but belonged to the Eastern Christianity.  Here we have come to the most important part of our investigation.  Even some of the sources of information about the spread of Roman Catholicism contain proofs that Árpád and his people were Eastern Christians.

The first concrete date in our investigation can be found in the decrees of Saint László.  He gives the following order in Book I. Chapter 3:

To those priests who are living in the married state, in their first lawful marriage, bound by love and the Holy Spirit, we give permission to continue in this state until the Holy Father gives us advice about them.”[11]

This decree indicates that, from the death of István I. to the time of Saint László (about the same number of years as from the end of World War II. to the present), there still remained in Hungary priests who were married and who had families.  Such priests who, according to the laws of some of the Eastern Christian churches, were married, were forced to adopt Roman Christianity.  That they did not of their own free will adopt the new religion is self-explanatory, because they were married, and this proves the enforced Christianization.  The decree of King Endre I. can be found in the Corpus Juris Hungarici:[12]

“It is ordered that any Hungarian or foreigner in Hungary, who will not give up the ancient pagan Scythian customs and go back to the true religion of Jesus Christ and does not listen to the laws that glorious Saint István gave to us, be punished with the loss of his head and his possessions.”

It is obvious that the priests of the well-established Eastern Christian Church found themselves under this enforced Christianization of István I., in a situation where they were considered by the Canon Law of the christianizing Roman priests, to be heretics and pagans and not Roman Catholics.  These priests were converted to the Roman Catholic faith and were able to retain both their priesthood and their marriage.  It seems that István I. tolerated the priests in their married state, because Saint László in his decree speaks of the second marriage of priests in Book I., Chapter I.:[13]

“We command those priests and deacons, who have married for the second time and those who are living with a widow or a separated woman, to send her away and, after doing penance, to return to the order of the priesthood.

“Those who do not want to give up their forbidden marriage should, according to the Canon Law, step down to a lower position.

“If any priest is living with his servant girl as his wife, he should give her up and, if he does not want to do this, he should sell her and hand over the money to the bishop.

“If any bishop or archbishop disregards the law of the Council and allows any priest to live in a forbidden marriage, or who does not want to break it up, or who agrees with him and gives him a parish, or who allows him to continue his priestly duties, he should be tried by the King or his fellow bishops and punished as they see best.

“If the arch-deacon is the one who tolerates this sinful state of his priests, without the knowledge of the bishop, then the bishop may punish him as he pleases.”

The laws of celibacy of the Roman Catholic Church must have caused a big problem for the converted Eastern Christian priests, and not only in one or two isolated cases, if an order from the King was necessary to solve the problem.  We can conclude that not only the Eastern Christian priests but the whole organization of the Eastern Church was taken over and re-christianized by the Western Church.  If it were not so, then the text of the foundation document of the Abbey of Pannonhalm would have been written in Latin and not Greek.  It is written in Greek, which is a prime proof that the Bendictines did not found the abbey, but took it over. 

An organized pragmatic method of research is needed to find out to which of the Eastern Christian Churches the Magyars of Árpád’s time belonged.  This investigation should have been started a long time ago but, in the past thousand years, there was no possibility of doing so because, if they were not Roman Catholic, and they were not, in the terminology of the Roman Catholic Church, they could only have been pagans.  To the Church, everyone who did not belong to the Roman Catholic faith was pagan and a heretic.

As I have mentioned, with the decision of the Second Vatican Council, that old terminology was changed and so the Árpádian Magyars, if they belonged to one of the Eastern Christian religions, were included in that decision which was announced in the publication of the Council: “Religious Freedom in the Light of Divine Revelation”[14] but even if they did not actually belong to the Eastern Christian Church, we accept the writings of the Byzantine writers about their religion and, on the basis of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholics have to accept this religion because they were worshippers of “One God”, which one of the well-known Hungarian historians has stated and has named his sources of information.[15]  I quote a Hungarian historical work of 1878:

“The religion of our ancestors was based on the worship of One God, through the natural elements which He created, fire, water, air and the Earth and they believed in the immortality of the soul and everlasting life.”

In the future, no-one should be allowed to call the Árpádian Magyars “pagan” because, at the end of the minutes of the Second Vatican Council on October 28, 1965, it is written:[16] 

“Consequently the Church, as an unfamiliar truth from the spirit of Christ, from now on condemns all discrimination and persecution based on race, color, social standing or religion.”

This interdiction of the minutes of the Council applies from the time of Moses to the present.[17]  Árpád and his people are much closer in time to us.  Therefore, this law of interdiction of discrimination on the basis of religion is more applicable to them.  In any case, we have to state that the Second Vatican Council equally condemns racial and religious persecution in the present and in the past.

With words of love and peace, we ask those who glorify Saint Stephen that, in their glorification of Saint István, they avoid using derogatory statements about the Great Árpád, incorrectly calling him “pagan”.  With words of love and peace, we ask them, and all Hungarians, to accept the statements of the Byzantine historians that the Árpádian Magyars worshipped One God and these worshippers of the One God, whom they called the God of the Magyars, entered the Carpathian Basin as GODLY CONQUERORS. 

 

THE RELIGION OF THE GODLY CONQUERORS

 

The study of the religion of the Godly Conquerors is one of the most important segments of the distorted Hungarian past to be re-evaluated.  It is this religion that the Roman Catholic Church, by their christianization, wanted the succeeding generations to forget for, if the Western missionaries had acknowledged the religion of the Godly Conquerors, how would they have justified the spiritual and physical destruction of the Hungarians.  Their only reasoning was that it was the “will of the Savior”, so it was not they, the missionaries, but Jesus Christ himself, who annihilated the pagans.  In this way, the ancestors of the Hungarians came to be declared “pagan” and the ancient religion of the Hungarians became the “public enemy number one” of Christ Himself, who is accepted as a descendant of the Jews.

It was just this concept that the Hapsburg Emperor used after the suppression of the Freedom Fight of 1848, not only to legalize the vilification of the ancient Hungarian language, but also to erase the study of the ancient Hungarian art of war and the history of law from the curricula of the universities.  Since then, there has been no re-instatement of these subjects and the modern-day historians, who promote the theory of the Finno-Ugric origin of the Hungarians play a leading rôle in the reviling of the ancient Hungarians. 

It is now time, not merely to mention but to shout out this historical reproach so that, in the interest of establishing the historical truth and in the interest of the nation, historians will begin to use the authentic historical sources.  The first and most important chapter in the search for the Hungarian historical truth is the research of the religious view or, in modern terms, the religion of the conquering Magyars, because, from it are formed the mentality and character of the people, in other words, the whole society.  History shows us that those people whose religion is based on honoring the natural elements, that is those people with a cosmological way of thinking, established a society with a healthy, positive attitude and good will and never intended to force their religious beliefs on other societies.  They believed in one Creator, who created the Universe and who was Almighty and who, like the Sun which shines equally on everybody, cannot be claimed by one people as its own, because all people have the right to honor and worship Him and pray for his help. 

The religions based on political viewpoints have an entirely different philosophy.  These religions are merciless and their mercilessness is based on the belief that theirs is the only way to God and God can only be represented as He is in their philosophy.  If anyone thinks or believes otherwise, his God is automatically condemned and, according to the laws of these religions, the destruction or annihilation of heretics is actually the performance of “service of God”. 

At the time of the “conversion” which took place under István I., these two religious viewpoints opposed each other.  The ancient religion of the Árpádian Magyars was cosmological, as we have already mentioned, as stated by Theophilactus Simocatta,[18] according to whom the ancestors of the Hungarians “honored the elements but worshipped only one God, who created the Universe.”  This cosmological view is based on the knowledge of astronomy which gave birth to mythology.  Here we have to know that nature was actually the temple of the cosmological religion and the dome of the temple was the starry sky.  According to this religion, the laws of God are written in the stars, in the “Book of Heaven”.  The stars indicate the course of the exercise of the religion, its outline, its calendar and the order of the Universe.  In this way, life on Earth is synchronized with the laws of the Universe.

Roman Catholicism, based on Judaism, is diametrically opposed to this view.  God, or Jehovah, who created the Universe, is the Lord.  He does not manifest Himself in nature but He “talks” to his Chosen People.  He orders them to kill believers of other religions (Joshua VII. 1) and this God Himself takes part in their destruction, (Joshua. X. 6.) just as in the Conquest of Canaan:

Meanwhile the Lord said to Joshua, ‘Do not fear them, for I have delivered them into your power. Not one of them will be able to withstand you.’” 

In the Bible, the Holy Book of this politically oriented religion, these examples appear as orders coming from God, and serve as a model for the Inquisition of the Roman Church.  The “new religion” introduced by István I. did not acknowledge any other religion.  Every other religion was declared to be the work of the Devil and its followers were persecuted and destroyed.  The survivors were forced to accept the new religion as can be seen in the Corpus Juris Hungarici, the Laws of István I., Book II. Chapter 8.

“The priests and bailiffs and the village judges should make certain that every person, big or small, man or woman, attends church on Sunday. . .

1.      If somebody is stubborn and will not go, they should hit him and shave his head.”

These laws were in effect for a thousand years.  During these thousand years, the Reformation took place and many historians have researched the religion of the Godly Conquerors.  A few facts have emerged from the fog of the past but the four-hundred years of Hapsburg spiritual terror, together with the feudal capitalist regime, which was dependent upon the Hapsburgs, made sure that those few traces disappeared again.

In order to clarify the ancient Hungarian religion, we have to introduce a very systematic investigation, in which we should not ignore even the smallest facts.  For a long time, I have contemplated where we should start this investigation.  The remains of the Árpádian runic script, which were carved on wood, were burned by the priests of the new religion.  The Hungarian Chronicles, which were recorded in the writings of the Roman priests and scribes, only mentioned that the Árpádian Magyars were pagans.  This is where we have to start, with paganism.  We have to determine what were the components, elements and parts of paganism and, in so doing, we shall be able to collect enough data that the mosaic pieces will make a picture of paganism.  

An interesting book was published by the Kisfaludy Society in 1861: Ferenc Kállay: Pogány Magyarok Vallása  (The Religion of the Pagan Hungarians).  The author received a prize of fifty pieces of gold for his outstanding work.  The first lines of the book are:[19]

“To deny that the pagan world was void of truth is to do them a great injustice because their superstitions were based on faith.  The spiritual life of the people called “pagan” was not empty, not meaningless and cannot be regarded as a life filled with lies because their knowledge of God always influenced their life, their strength, their art and their science.”

One can see, therefore, what a confusion of ideas arises when a people, which has its own writing system and mythology and an advanced knowledge of astronomy, is stated to be “pagan”.  I ask: How can we call a people “pagan” when it has a high level of civilization and believes in God?  It is just not possible.  Especially since the Hungarian chronicler, Anyonymus, who was a member of the priesthood and lived strictly by the laws of the Roman Catholic Church, writes of the conquering Prince Árpád:[20]

“Árpád prayed to the One God.”

The same statement is also mentioned in the Turóczi Chronicles so, beside the contemporary Greek historians, we have Hungarian sources stating that the Árpádian Magyars were godly Conquerors and not pagan but let us continue our investigation.  First of all, we have to establish that, after the crushing of the Freedom Fight of 1848, under the Hapsburg intellectual terror, the Hungarian language was categorized into the Finno-Ugric group of languages of the northern primitive peoples and, in the same way, the foreign intellectual leaders of the Hungarians, like Szinnyei (Farber), Hunfalvi (Hunsdorfer), Toldy (Schedel) and others did the same thing with the religion of the ancient Magyars, delegating it to the primitive, superstitious beliefs of the Finno-Ugric peoples and attributing to Árpád and his people the customs and superstitions of the shamans.  It is interesting to note the methods they used in order to do this.  Beginning in 1894, Jules Krohn, a researcher of the traditions of the Finnish people, wrote a book entitled: The Finno-Ugric Peoples’ Customs of Worship.  In this work, he writes of his own people: “During several centuries of Swedish domination, no light was shed on the darkness of the past of the Finns in Finland.”  He offers data about the Lapps of the XVI. century, the Cheremiss of the XVIII. century and the customs of the Votyak people from 1878 to the present.  The earliest information he presents about the folklore of the Voguls and Ostyaks, he takes from a handwritten Russian document which is dated 1715.  He also mentions Antal Reguly, who in the early nineteenth century, lived among the Voguls and recorded their customs and pagan superstitions.  In spite of the fact that the author, Jules Krohn, neither mentions the ancient Hungarian religion, nor compares it to the old Finno-Ugric customs of worship, the Hungarian Academy of Science published a Hungarian translation of this book by Aladár Bán, in 1908, in which the primitive Finno-Ugric customs were identified as the ancient Hungarian religion, which was practiced 800 years prior to these customs which have been recorded from the seventeenth century on and which are still in use.  This translation is a very subjective interpretation and, in the manner of the Finno-Ugric historians, Aladár Bán writes:[21]

“The remains of the ancient Hungarian religion, which appear in the Chronicles and some documents from the era of Árpád, in their own poverty offer enough proof that the ceremonies of the religion of the conquerors, for the most part, are identical to those of the Finno-Ugric peoples, with whom they at one time lived. In this short chapter, we shall show that our ancient Hungarian religious traditions perfectly fit into the frame outlined by Krohn.  These traditions convince us that we have authentic historical data only concerning religion:  In a narrower sense, the conquering Magyars obviously had a mythology, just like any other pagan people, but in the historical sources, we hardly find any trace of their myths.”

From this quotation, we have to take out the following segment: “…… We have authentic historical data only concerning religion.”

Let us trace together these data which are “authentic historical” data and which “only concern religion” and together with these, let us collect all the data concerning the ancient Hungarian religion.  Let us examine the customs which all those, who support the theory of the Finno-Ugric origin and those who count the beginning of Hungarian history to be the time of Saint István, use to belittle the ancient Hungarian religion, by calling them “pagan customs”.   We can divide these pagan customs into two groups:

I.                    “pagan” religious customs

II.                 “pagan” national customs.

Let us examine both of these and see what result we shall get: 

 

I. “PAGAN” RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS

 

I.                   Honoring the Holy Places

The oldest data referring to these can be found in the Decrees of Saint László, Book I. Chapter 22.:

“Whosoever makes a sacrifice in the pagan manner well, or leaves gifts at a tree, a source or a rock, no matter who he is, he shall pay the penalty of one ox.”

As we can see, honoring water must have been one of the customs of the ancient religion named “paganism”.

Water, even today, is the “Fountain of Youth”, for without it there is no life and the spring is really a holy place of nature, for even we will drink with rapture from clear spring water.  The honoring of the waters, springs and rivers was a very old tradition of the Cushite people.  Even in the Bible, four rivers border the land of Cush.[22] 

The land of the people of Cush is called the “land of the four rivers”.  In MARI, the ancient city of Chaldea, which is located beside the Euphrates, in the large room of the King’s palace, is a fresco, painted around 3000 BC, which depicts the “four rivers” as a holy symbol.  These four horizontal lines, one above the other, representing the “four rivers”, form the most ancient pictographic sign.  This sign, in the pictographic language of the Sumerians, is pronounced “KI” and means “earth, country”.  Could it be co-incidental that these four lines appear in the coat-of-arms of Árpád and his people, who brought with them the ancient belief that they were also the descendants of the people of the “land of the four rivers”?  These “four lines” of the Árpádian people cannot possibly represent the four rivers of the Carpathian Basin, the Duna, Tisza, Dráva, Száva, because this sign was already present in their coat-of-arms when they arrived in the Carpathian Basin.  They brought this sign with them and, later on, they incorporated these four rivers into their possessions.  Even the name of Lake Balaton represents the honoring of the waters because its meaning, in the language of the ancestors of the Hungarians, the Szabir language which survived the Babylonian language reform, was BALATU – the fountain of youth.

The Roman Christianization forbade and still forbids the establishment of shrines in any place which has not been blessed by the Church.  According to the Church, the only water that is holy is that which has been blessed by a priest, including that which is present in the church.  Therefore, the honoring of water found in nature is forbidden.  Yet almost all of the present-day shrines of the Roman Catholic Church have been established around springs which have appeared through the intervention of the Virgin Mary, for example at Lourdes, Fatima or Máriaremete.  Therefore, if the Árpádian Magyars were “pagan” because they honored springs and water, then we too are pagan, for how many people expect a miraculous recovery after drinking or bathing in the “holy water” of Lourdes?

The ancient Hungarians regarded as “holy water” only the virgin springs and they honored them.  We, however, regard as “holy water” water which a priest has taken from a tap, brought into a church and which, after saying a few prayers, he has declared to be holy.

In considering the honor paid to water, perhaps we have to take into account the words of Jesus of Nazareth and presume that the Árpádian Magyars might have learned the teachings of Jesus in the East, without the Roman Catholic Church, and then we shall see that, among the Eastern peoples in Asia, three established churches taught the words of Jesus at the time of Árpád.  Let us consider the words of Jesus to Nicodemus (John, 3. 5.)

“Amen, Amen, I say unto you, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.”

Let us finally acknowledge that the Árpádian Magyars were not reborn in the waters of the Jordan but in some “holy water” in the “land of the four rivers”.  Perhaps Judeo-Christianity holds them as pagan because they did not believe in the curative waters of the River Jordan.

The ancient Hungarians also honored trees and this custom is reminiscent of the “tree of knowledge” which, in the Chaldean Bible (today called Sumerian), is represented as a gift from God and which grew to full strength in the garden of the Virgin Mother – INNANA.  Archeologists have recently found many data by which the so-called “pagan” customs may be understood.  Their connections with the Almighty and their ancient customs glorifying God can be today a spiritual nourishment to modern materialistic man, who turns away from nature.

In examining their customs of honoring the “holy places” (groves, springs, trees and watering places), we have to research and, this is most important, the origins of these customs.  We already know from the writings of Eusebius that, in the Parthian Empire, the followers of Jesus’ teachings were so persecuted by the Sassanid kings of Persia, who came into power by means of assassination, that 360 of their churches were destroyed.  However, the people remained faithful to their religion and formed a union of clans to fight against the oppressors and, instead of going to church, they gathered at the “holy places” to worship.  This custom became very cherished and reverent because, according to their religion, the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, also taught and worshipped “beside the lake”, “on the mountain” and “in the Garden of Gethsemane”.  So they were just imitating the Lord Jesus, when they held their ceremonies in the “holy places” and, on their long journeys, their church was the clean and indestructible temple of nature, whose dome was the sky and whose candles were the stars and man was not able to build a more beautiful or more majestic temple. 

The worship in these “holy places” takes us back to Jesus of Nazareth.

 

2.      The Sacrifice of the Horse.

 

It is very important to determine if the ancestors of the Hungarians really did sacrifice horses because not one chronicle mentions this ceremony.  Since the pragmatic history writers are unable to produce any concrete data in connection with this, they say:

“From the accounts of different travelers, who traveled in the territories of the Ural Mountains and Siberia, we can conclude that the customs of our ancestors were similar to those of the inhabitants in those areas.”[23]

This is indeed a minute proof that the ancestors of the Hungarians practiced horse-sacrifice because the data, which are offered, apply not to the Hungarians but to the Siberian people and refer to Siberian customs, not from the ninth and tenth centuries, but from the seventeenth century. 

If instead, we gather data from the former Hun territory in Asia, we will find plenty of references to the "white horse”.  In this connection, the observations of Marco Polo are noteworthy, for he mentions that, in his time, that is, in the thirteenth century, the Asian peoples, especially the Tartars, held white horses in high regard, mares in particular.  He writes:

“Every year, on August 28, Kubla Khan gives a thanksgiving feast.  On this day, he offers up the milk of a white mare.  First of all, he spills a drop on the ground in honor of his ancestors, then he and his chieftains take turns in drinking from the chalice.  At the beginning of the New Year, they dress in white because, for them, white is the sign of goodness.  On the occasion of the New Year, the Khan receives a hundred thousand white horses, among other gifts.”[24]

This thirteenth century report is in complete agreement with the earlier Chinese chronicles which talk about the Huns’ regiments of white horses.  In these chronicles, we can find mention of the custom of a feast in which they drank the milk of a white mare. 

The chronicles of Anonymus (Anonymus, chronicler of King Béla) also bear witness to the fact that the ancient Hungarians had the custom of a feast (áldomás) and not sacrifice (áldozat).  He writes:

“Et in eodem loco more paganismo occiso equo pingvissimo magnum aldumas fecerunt.”, (c. 46)  (And in the same place, after butchering a fat horse, they made a big feast.)

The word “aldumas” meaning “celebration” was changed, with the introduction of the Mass, to “áldozat” meaning “sacrifice”, by the Roman Catholic Church, which made Jesus the sacrifice, because it did not have the custom of celebration.  An interesting example of this forceful “inclination to sacrifice” is the gradual change of the Hungarian word “áld” meaning “blessed”, through the Judeo-Christian customs to “áldozás” meaning “sacrifice”.  The Hungarian language contains many expressions which can be formed with the word “áld” as their base, for example: “áldott jó ember” (blessed good man), “Istentől jön az áldás” (the blessing comes from God) and the word “áldomás” (celebration or feast) describing a form of celebration which takes place to give thanks for God’s earthly or heavenly blessings.  The Árpádian Magyars knew the word “áld” meaning “blessed” and used it together with the word “áldomás”.  There are data which prove that this word went from the Hungarian language into the Slavic languages.  The German linguist, Piringer, stated this in 1833.[25]

The Debrecen Grammar says that the word “áldoz” (sacrifice) is the abbreviated form of the Hungarian word “állatoz”, which was used to describe the Jewish ritual of sacrificing animals.  This is possible but it is certain that the Árpádian Magyars, just as the Avars and the Huns, did not know the word “áldoz” (sacrifice) but only used the word “áldomás” (celebration). 

In the “religion of light”, a word which suggested sacrificing anything to God was not even possible.  If it were so, then the Chaldean language, which I always call the Paleo-magyar language, would have the expression “leáldozott a nap” (sundown or literally the sun sacrificed itself) which came into use with Judeo-Christianity.  In that language, now called Sumerian, the rising sun was called PIR and the action of the rising of the sun was expressed as PIR-KA-AN, which means literally “the mouth of Heaven shines”.  The setting sun, in the Paleo-Magyar (Chaldean, Sumerian) language is SZIK and the action of the setting of the sun is AL-SZIK.  In this word, AL is a verbal prefix, identical in meaning with the modern Hungarian verbal prefix “el”, which means “away, off”.  Therefore the sun, when it set, according to the ancient religion “el-szik-kad” (dries up, weakens) and the modern Hungarian language still uses the 5000 year-old idea AL-SZIK, expressed in our word “alszik” (sleeps). 

So the Sun-God worshipping ancestors of the Hungarians did not sacrifice horses but, as a celebration, they roasted horses.  Later on, the ox-roast took the place of the horse-roast in the folk customs.  During the celebration, they drank a toast.  The Huns and the Magyars were horse-breeders and had such large herds, that all the horses which were not suitable for the warriors, were used as a food supply for the people.  They had skilled butchers to cut up the meat and these butchers were called MIZ.  This was a serious and responsible occupation because they had to have knowledge of cleanliness or, as we would say today “hygiene”.  This is why the butchering of these animals was bound by certain rules which we now call “rituals”.  The Huns and the Avar Magyars were very numerous and they needed many “MIZ” and, just like the “mágus”, they passed on their knowledge from father to son.   The collective name for the “mágus” was MAG-AR, while the collective name for the MIZ was MIZ-AR, which developed into “miz-ar-us” and the modern Hungarian “mészáros” meaning “butcher”.  I have very diligently researched the possibility of the custom of horse-sacrifice among the Asian people.  The only place in which I have found reference to horse-sacrifice is in the Rig Veda where the title of the second Veda is “Aswameda”, which means “horse-sacrifice”.  In the ceremonies described here, there is no mention of killing horses, but the exact opposite, setting them free.  They caught the horse, tied it to a stake, sprinkled it with water from which the priest had drunk and then set it free.  The majority of the Asian people practiced a religion because, honoring nature in the starry sky, there is still the chariot of the Sun (Ursa Major) and the chariot of the Virgin of Light (Ursa Minor), both of which in mythology were pulled by horses.  According to their beliefs, the horse served not only man but also God.  Therefore, it is the noblest of animals and it is unthinkable that they would have killed the noblest of animals.  Rather, they set it free in a ceremony, so that God might choose for himself the best stallion to pull his chariot, in other words, a magic steed.

As we can see, the “pagan customs” mentioned here do not appear to be pagan, but the distortion and misrepresentation of these customs was the reason for the belittling and the persecution of the ancient religion.

 

 

II.               “PAGAN” NATIONAL CUSTOMS

 

The Roman Catholic Church brought accusations against the Hungarians before the Inquisition, that their customs were “pagan customs”.  Therefore, not only were the customs forbidden, but those who practiced them were punished.

Such national customs were:

1.      Raising up the leader on his shield.

2.      A public meeting where, according to the Constitution of the Blood Union, the will of the people triumphed.

3.      The carrying of the “bloody sword” around the whole country to recruit people to the army.

4.      The kissing of the ground which occurred when the Magyars conquered a new land, or when they left it. (Pope John Paul II. uses this same symbol, when he kisses every new ground on which he sets foot during his missionary journeys, obviously to show that he has conquered that land for the Roman religion.)

5.      The most important custom in the culture of the ancient Hungarian people was the use of the Magyar Runic Script.  This was also destroyed by the new foreign conquerors in Hungary.

6.      The early writings mention one of the decrees of Saint István which, “following the advice of Pope Sylvester II.”, forbids the use of the old Magyar “pagan” writing and orders the destruction of any writing carved on wood.  Many Hungarians today, who praise Saint István and forget Árpád, doubt the existence of such a decree.  There are some emigrant newspaper editors, who vehemently attack anyone who dares to imply that such a law existed.  Yet the use of this runic script was counted among the “pagan customs” which were forbidden by Saint István and Saint László.  That this decree actually existed is proven by the Corpus Juris of King Endre (1046-1061).  How could Endre I., who was always described by historians as “Catholic” and who practiced the “love of Christ”, reconcile himself to enforce a law which ordered that anyone practicing a different religion should be executed.  That this decree, ordering the destruction of the ancient runic script, actually existed is proven by the fact that epigraphists have acknowledged the antiquity and perfection of the Magyar Runic Script.  Foreign epigraphists have identified it with the Hun Runic Script and have also called it Scythian, although there are very few remains of this runic writing, either from the Hun era or from the Árpád era, since the “new conquerors”, with their new religion, burned everything they found and punished by death anyone who dared to use this Magyar system of writing. 

The existence of the Árpádian culture is proven by the splendid treasures found in the graves.  Gyula László has already stated that the Árpádian Magyars lived in houses, in villages and cities and, through his archeological research, has proven the statement of Anonymus: “Dux Árpád conductis artificibus praecepit facere egregias domos ducales:” c. 44. (Prince Árpád had groups of rich houses built.)

Taking all this into consideration, it becomes clear that the “new foreign conquerors” intended to adopt for themselves the Hungarian fund of knowledge and the Hungarian culture, and to declare the people of Árpád to be uncultured, pagan people, otherwise how could they justify their presence and their rule in Hungary?  They took over the Magyar knowledge and reduced the Magyars to the level of animals and claimed that it was they, themselves, who developed the Western Civilization, they, who did not even know what underwear was; they who, in their ignorance, could not understand how the Magyar soldiers could preserve food by making powdered meat and powdered milk, and how, one thousand years ahead of their time, they had perfected a method of producing food supplies for the army. 

The priests of the Roman Catholic Church, beginning with Abbot Regino (908), declared from the pulpit that the Magyars of Árpád’s time and the Hun-Scythian ancestors of the Hungarians were “wild and merciless”, and called the conquering Magyars “cannibals”.  If anyone systematically researches their reasons for doing this, he will easily come to the conclusion that the Western historians wanted to attribute the Magyar culture to themselves, in order to cover up their own lack of culture.  The honest researcher will quickly conclude that, while the Magyars at the time of Árpád had a Constitution, laws of society and a strict code of honor, at the same time, the leaders of the Franks and the Goths lived an immoral life, practiced polygamy and beat their wives with sticks,  actions which had to be controlled by orders from the Pope.  Even so, the Pope could not do much about the immorality and godlessness of these western lords.  He could only issue a decree to regulate the length of the stick with which a man beat his wife. . . All in the love of Christ.

At the same time, Anonymus informs us that the people of Árpád strictly practiced monogamy.[26]   Bonfini describes the Magyar soldiers, who were at war with the West:

“We found among the Magyar soldiers of that time a great austerity and restraint, for they were repulsed by unfaithfulness and unlawful love.  The majority of them were married and had children and sometimes had to be away from home for as long as three years, but they never broke their marriage vows.”[27]

So we inherited the conquering unfaithfulness from the “cultured” West and the greatest corruption took place in the courts of the foreign wives of the Hungarian kings.  Let us think of Bánk Bán and Melinda, the only case recorded in history, since the happenings at the Court of Maria Teresa are only hearsay. 

Bonfini’s writings refute the accusations that the Magyar soldiers raped the nuns in the convents and, if we are at the point of mentioning the wanderings and robbery campaigns of the Magyars, then we also have to mention the Hungarian historian, Mátyás Fehér, who in several of his books, proves that, in these campaigns, the Magyars were trying to repossess the treasures that the West took from the Avars.  We cannot fail to mention the western historian, Luitprand, who writes: [28]

“The Magyars were incited by Pope John XII. to sack the German Empire.”

Since the Magyars always shared their booty with their allies, we can conclude that they must have paid dearly for the encouragement that they received from the Pope.

If they were working so closely with the Pope, perhaps the ancestors of the Hungarians were not such “godless pagans” after all.

But I ask, how can we explain and understand such a godlessness, attributed to the Árpádian Magyars, when Saint Gellert discovered among them the custom of honoring the “Mother Goddess”, whom they called “Boldogasszony”, and he suggested to King István I. that, from that time on, the mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, be called by that name (Boldogasszony).  This can be found in the Érdy Codex (p. 554 b. which is mentioned in Dr. Bobula’s book: A Magyar Ősvallás Isten-asszonya).

“Az ő tanácsának intéséből akkoron kele fel, hogy az zyz Máriát az Magyarországban bódog-asszonynak, avagy ez wylagnak nagy azzonanak hivnák, zent István királ ez zegeen országot bódog azzon orzagaanak newezze.” (On his advice, in Hungary, the Virgin Mary was to be called ‘boldogasszony’ (the great lady of the world). Saint István called that poor country the country  of Boldogasszony.)

If Árpád and his people honored seven Boldog Assony and among them the Great Boldog Assony, the one who gives life, who protects life and health, who gives abundance and fertility, the harvest and the plants, the animal and human reproduction, then we cannot call them “pagans” but rather GODLY CONQUERORS.

The honoring of the “Virgin Mother” is not only decisive proof that the Great Árpád and his people were believers in God, but it also proves that their religion belonged to those Eastern Christian religions which held in high importance the honoring of the Virgin Mother.  Our investigation is slowly narrowing down because the decisive proofs are already in our hands.

Let us now examine those religions which belonged to the Eastern Christianity.  Let us look in the East for that religion in which we shall find the honoring of the Great Boldog Asszony and her seven daughters.  We have to begin our research by asking the following questions:

“Why did there exist a Western Christianity and an Eastern Christianity?” This question is immediately followed by another:

“What is the difference between Eastern and Western Christianity?” To determine the difference, we have to learn the tenets of both Chuches.

Western Christianity was not established by Jesus of Nazareth but by the Rabbi, Saul, who is now honored by the Christian Churches as the Apostle, Paul.  His doctrine is called the “Pauline” theology, whose basis and essence was developed by the scholastic philosophy of the Church.

The liturgy was based on the renewal of the Hebrew rites of sacrifice, reflected in the sacrifice of Jesus.

The essence of Western Christianity was not the renewal of man, but the renewal of God, who sacrificed his only-begotten Son for the salvation of man.   Jesus, as the only-begotten son of God, (Jehovah), was the long-awaited Messiah (Hebrew), Christos (Greek) or Savior.

The Roman Catholic Church today and the “Reformed” churches which broke away from it, all advocate that their church was founded by Jesus, or that it is the Church of Christ.

There are many theological works circulating which deny this claim, reasoning that Saul-Paul never saw and never heard Jesus and had no knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, but he taught that Jesus fulfilled the prophecy, according to the Law of Moses, as the long-awaited Messiah of the Old Testament.  Eastern Christianity believes that the apostle, Andrew, the brother of Peter and the disciple of Jesus, was the founder of the Church and its formation was according to the orders of Jesus.

Actually, the Eastern Christian Church strengthened its orthodox form, when Constantine the Great in A.D. 324, established his capital in Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. 

Constantine declared himself to be a bishop and he did not seek to Christianize his empire by an organized evangelization, but instead, he named Christianity as the official religion of the Empire.

The liturgy neither mentions the Messiah, nor does it include the renewal of the Hebrew rites.  The essence of Eastern Christianity was the personality of Jesus.  In A.D. 325, at the Council of Nice, Eusebius de Cesaria read aloud the decision, according to which:

“Jesus of Nazareth is the only-begotten son of God, who always was and who was created before all time.”

In connection with the Council of Nice, it is important to note:

1.      Pope Sylvester did not appear personally at the Council but he sent two observers.

2.      On the original protocol of the Council, there are no traces of the appendages, which appear much later on the copy of the minutes of the Council such as:

a.       The Virgin Birth

b.      The Crucifixion of Jesus under Pontius Pilate.

c.       The canonization of the Torah or the text of the Old Testament.

Therefore, in the time of Constantine the Great, the Byzantine or Eastern Orthodox Christians did not acknowledge the teachings of Paul, nor did they teach about any Jewish roots.

They taught exclusively about the essence of the person of Jesus.  Constantine, as a bishop, taught a completely new description of Jesus, which was the opposite of the teaching of Saul-Paul.  According to Constantine:

“Jesus is identical to God the Father.” (Homo-usios)

On the other hand, the Bishop of Alexandria, Ario, taught: 

“Jesus is not identical to God but similar to Him.” (Homio usios)

Even from these conflicting opinions, we can state that Eastern Christianity was not messianic but instituted in its teachings the infinite worship of the Son of God, the Son of Light.

His origin from “Light” is supported by the institution of the Day of the Sun-God in AD. 331.  This is Sunday in English. (After the Roman conversion in Hungary, forgetting the connection with the Son of Light, Sunday became incorrectly called “Vásárnap” “Market Day”)

But the worship of Jesus, as the Son of the Everlasting Light, became even stronger in the Eastern Orthodox Church, after the old Greco-Roman religious holiday, the day of the invincible Sun-God, on December 25, was designated the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, in the year AD. 358.

Probably around the turn of the fourth century, the Eastern Orthodox Church began to feel the effects of Paulinism and began to accept Messianism.  The influence of Judaism in Byzantium could have begun in the years 428-431.  The Patriarch of Byzantium, Nestor, was not willing to accept it.  He objected to the concept of Jesus as a “sacrificial lamb”, and he advocated reformation.  His teachings are now known as Nestorianism.  Soon they spread far into Asia and the Persians of the Zoroastrian religion allowed the Nestorians to practice their religion.  This is a very important fact, because the Persians did not allow the spreading of the Eastern Orthodox Church which was influenced by Judaism, but actually helped the followers of Nestorianism.

The spread of Nestorianism in Persia was due to the patience of the Persians and, at the same time, proves that Nestorianism, which began in Byzantium, was actually the ancient Mágus religion, revived by Jesus, which took the form of Manicheism in Persia and which fit in well with the Byzantine Christianity.  The center of the Manichean religion, which started out in the Parthian Empire, was at that time in Samarkand, in Central Asia.  The Manicheans had to move to this place because one of the Persian kings, after the disappearance of the Parthian Empire and the strengthening of the Persian Empire, executed Manes, the high-priest of this religion, in AD. 275 and demolished 360 of their churches.  So the people migrated to the North and, as Uighurs, spread their religion as far as China.  When the Nestorian priests appeared in Persia, with the intention of spreading their religion, they found among the remaining believers of the Manichean religion, people who were receptive to them, because the basics of the two religions were identical.  

Manicheism was a religion based on the teachings of Jesus, in which the Holy Trinity was made up of the Father of Light (the Sun-God), the Virgin of Light (Boldog Asszony, the Mother-Goddess) and the Son of Light (Jesus).  In this religion, we find the honoring of Boldog Asszony and her seven daughters, which is none other than the remains of the ancient religion of the Chaldean Sumerians.  This ancient magus religion was renewed by Jesus and, a good two hundred years later, was called Manicheism, in which Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was accepted as the reincarnation of the ancient Virgin Mother – INNANA – ISTAR – ASTARTE – ISIS – with  the divine power of creation from a woman. 

Thus we can understand the teachings of Manes, as he professes the word of Jesus and says:

“The friend of Jesus is also my friend and the enemy of Jesus is also my enemy.”[29]

It is important to know that the Manichean religion, based on the Chaldean-Sumerian tradition, taught about Jesus:

“Jesus of Nazareth is the envoy of the spiritual word of God, who can take on the form of a man and cast it off whenever He wishes.”[30]

Thus this afore-written statement contradicts the Saul-Paul (Pauline) theology, which changes the suffering and death of Jesus into dogma.  Manes thought:

“The divine person cannot suffer and has no part in evil.”[31]

These sources from Manicheism mention Jesus as the Son of the Father of Light, in the company of the Virgin of Light and state:

“They are the Trinity, which calls our soul to life.”[32]

These writings from the Parthian Empire are of interest to us today because the same thing is written about Jesus in the NAGHAMADI, which was found in 1954 and published in 1977, a handwritten document containing the gospels of the Apostles.  I suggest the reading of the translation of this text, originally written in the Coptic language, which can be found in the following works:

1.      J. M. Robinson: Introduction to the NAGHAMADI Library. (NY. 1977)

2.      Elaine Pagels: The Gnostic Gospels (Vintage Books, NY. 1981)

We should know that the mother of Manes was a descendant of the royal family of Arsak the Great, so he had the blood of Parthian kings.

 

                                          *                      *                      *

 

Now let us jump forward to the time of the Conquest of Árpád.  In the ninth century AD, these religions still existed and all of them, except for Nestorianism, were nine-hundred years old.  Nestorianism at that time was five-hundred years old. 

All of these religions were highly-organized and spread from Persia to the Black and Caspian Seas, into Central Asia, as far as the Great Wall of China.  They were organized into bishoprics and parishes and churches, monasteries, schools, universities and seminaries.  Gyula Moravcsik presents very clearly the different Christian organizations in this territory, from the third century AD on, in his work: A Honfoglalás előtti Magyarság és a Kereszténység (MTA, Budapest, 1938).

Here he not only maps out the bishoprics of the Huns, Szabirs, Onogurs, (whom Gyula László today calls Magyars), Uigurs, Alans, Scythians, and Royal Scythians, but he also presents, in Greek, the ancient sources of his information.  We learn that, even the Hephthalites, called the White Huns, had bishoprics and there were bishoprics in the territory of Meotis and Kiev at the time of Álmos, the father of Árpád.  A Byzantine theological document names the bishops of the “western migrating Onogurs” and, among them, Avars and Magyars.

After reading Moravcsik’s work and picturing the bishoprics of the Byzantine Orthodox Christianity, the Nestorian Christianity and the Uigur Manicheistic Christianity, we can boldly ask those who call the Great Árpád and his people “unbelievers” and “pagans”, how the Magyars could have come as “pagans” from some Asian territory, when there was not even one square mile of that territory, which had not been converted to one or other of the Eastern Christian Churches.

In those territories, where there may not have been Christianity, there was a strong Buddhist system, in which the appearance and customs of its members were sharply different from those of the followers of other religions.  There are also important data in our research.  We have always been taught that the conquerors did not come from one single ethnic group but, according to some historians, they consisted of seven tribes and, according to others, one hundred and six tribes.  In other words, we can say that they did not share the same place of origin and the tribes all originated from different Asian territories.  The Onogur and Kabar tribes are well-known and we know that the Szabirs were the leading tribe.  From contemporary writings, we learn that the conquering Magyars allowed everyone to practice his own religion and we can assume that, beside the religion of the leading Szabir tribe, they allowed the practice of the Byzantine Orthodox Church, which was established at the time of the Avar conquest,  and the Nestorian religion, with churches in the Carpathian Basin like that at Fenékpuszta, which has just been unearthed and which archeologists have dated to the fourth century AD.  Dr. István Erdély, the leader of the excavation at Fenékpuszta, preserved the remains of the ancient Christian basilica, and noted that this basilica was used up to the beginning of the Middle Ages. 

However, we know from the Chronicles of Thuróczi that, among the so-called “pagan” Hungarians, there were some whose heads were shaved and who wore a braid beside each ear.  Thuróczi writes that King Salamon ordered that these people be beaten.[33]  This certainly was not paganism but this custom of the shaved head was the Buddhist tonsure, which is the outward sign of Buddhism.  So there were even Buddhists among the conquering Magyars. 

That the generally accepted ancient religion was based on the honoring of Light is proven by the honoring of Nagy Boldog Asszony and her seven daughters.  This custom, which can still be found today, was a custom of Manicheism which was based on the ancient Chaldean-Sumerian religion. 

That the religious beliefs of Árpád and his people were connected with the religion of Light is best proven by the existence of the tribes and the tribal union because this union is none other than the basis of the Manichean Jesus religion, which says:

“Brotherly love is the basis of the state religion.”

Thus the national religion based on the Law of Love, which Jesus taught, because of the brotherly love of the powerful tribes provides not only the service of God fulfilled with a mutual satisfaction and harmony, but also unconditional national service everywhere and on every occasion and the believers felt that they were called by God.  This national religion taught about the nation’s charismatic origin and mission.  The legend of the charismatic origin still remains today among the legends of the origin of the Magyars.  Knowing the cuneiform signs, we can now say that all this is a Chaldean heritage, which was enlightened and clarified by the teachings of Jesus at the height of the Parthian Empire.

The knowledge of the afore-mentioned facts will bring us to the realization that, according to the charismatic beliefs, the nation of the Árpádian Magyars, who originated from Heaven, had an enormous spiritual treasure, that national religion which defended and protected the nation. 

The Western Roman Christianization eliminated the system of the godly state religion because, with the destruction of the so-called “paganism”, they actually eliminated the tribal union and, in so doing, they destroyed the beliefs of the ancient Magyar religion in brotherly love and the idea of national service. 

That they did a thorough job over a thousand years is proven by the emigration after the Second World War where,  among the Hungarian emigrants, instead of unity and brotherly love, we see a lack of unity, misunderstanding and the service of foreign interests. 

The darkness of the churches covers the light of the ancient religion and the antiquity of the religion of the Light of God. 

When are the Hungarians finally going to realize that the Hungarian regeneration will not come from a political direction or from a Christian religious movement, but only from the honoring of their holy traditions and their ancient religious customs.  This is the only way that they can unite the Hungarian strength which, up to now, has been struggling in different directions.

The international nature of the Christian (Judeo-Christian) religions will never aid the Hungarian regeneration because they all teach that the Jewish nation is God’s chosen people.

When Pope John-Paul II., first came  to Argentina and visited the Church of the Virgin of Lujan, the patroness of Argentina, he said:

“We Christians are just the adopted children of God.” (adoptivo)  

We will not find the Hungarian regeneration in the darkness of the churches and the help of the God of the Hungarians will be with them only if they step into the Light, only if they look into the face of God, that is, into the Sun and hold each others’ hands in true brotherly love and not false piety.

Hungarians!  What are we waiting for?  Let us stand with honor before the Sun, with the beliefs which were the strength of the Árpádian ancestors.  Let us put an end to the discord and unite those in whose eyes shine the charismatic beliefs of our ancestors.  There can be and there will be a Hungarian regeneration but only if we first revive the memory of Great Árpád the Conqueror, with the strength of the true Hungarian traditions.  The guiding star of the Hungarians will again be the spirituality of Árpád and the glory of the spiritual traditions. 

For a thousand years, we have been told that it was only through the westernization of Saint István that we have been able to survive and now we can see how the Hungarians have been destroyed during the past thousand years.  Where have we come to?  The Hungarians are waiting passively for the last hour to strike.

In my opinion, to forget Árpád is to die.  After the thousand years of servitude, all we can expect from the civilized West, is mercy killing.

Let us finally wake up to the fact that those Hungarian-speaking foreigners, who infiltrated into our nation, want to make us forget the glory of Árpád and his holy traditions because they know very well that the strength of the Hungarian charisma is invincible and could unite the nation.

Let us not wait any longer.  Let us turn the wheel of fate and let us return to the Great Árpád.  His memory will unite us, just as in his time, he united the Hungarian strength, the Hungarian knowledge and the Hungarian truth and he conquered the united European powers.

With Árpád we shall be victorious because the cherishing of the traditions with a religious fervor will give invincible strength to the people.  The abandonment of these traditions, on the other hand, is a death-sentence.  A nation which has no roots, has no future.  So, Hungarians, make your choice!

Before you stand the light of renaissance and the death sentence.  Whichever one you grasp will be yours.

I beg the God of the Hungarians, in His mercy, to help us to stand once again in the Light.

May the help of the Virgin Mother and Jesus our Lord be with us. 

    


 

[1]   Dr. Nagy, Töhötöm: Jezsuiták és Szabadkőművesek. (Open Letter to His Holiness, Pope Paul VI. Buenos Aires, 1965, p. 220)

[2]  Dr. Márkus, Dezső: Corpus Juris Hungarici, Magyar Törvénytár, 1000-1895. Millenniumi emlékkiadás (Franklin Társulat, 1899)

[3]  Dümmerth, Dezső: Az Árpádok Nyomában, (2nd. Edition, Panorama, Budapest, 1977, p. 131)

[4]  Árpádkori Legendák és Intelmek (Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1938, p. 17)

[5]  Dümmerth: Op. Cit.

[6]  Dümmerth: Op. Cit. p. 155

[7]  Szabó, Károly: A Magyar Vezérek Kora (Rathmor Publisher, Budapest, 1878, p. 401)

[8]  Dümmerth: Op. Cit. p. 147

[9]  Corpus Juris Hungarici: Saint István’s Decrees, I. Chapter 8, (1)

[10]  Concilio Vaticano II. (Biblioteca de Autores Christianos, Madrid, 1966, p. 695)

[11]  Corpus Juris Hungarici: Saint László’s Decrees, Book I. Chapter 3.

[12]  Corpus Juris Hungarici: The Orders of Endre I.

[13]  Corpus Juris Hungarici: Saint László’s Decrees, Book I. Chapters 1 and 4.

[14]  Concilio Vaticano II. Op. Cit. p. 695

[15]  Szabó, Károly: Op. Cit. pp. 431, 432, quotation from Theophilactus Simocatta, a Byzantine writer of the VII. century, who writes of the Turks (a name which the Byzantine writers called the Hungarian ancestors up to the XII. century.): “The Turks honor fire, air and water and they sing to the Earth but they only worship and pray to God, who created Heaven and Earth.” We find no proof in either Hungarian or foreign sources that our ancestors ever persecuted the people they conquered on account of their religion, nor that they forced their own religion on others, nor that they conducted religious wars against the Roman Christians in other countries. 

[16]   Concilio Vaticano II. Op. Cit. p. 733

[17]   Ibid. p. 730

[18]   See note 15.

[19]   Kállay, Ferenc: A Pogány Magyarok Vallása, Pest. Lauffer és Stolp, 1861

[20]  Chronicles of Anonymus. C. 39: “Dux Árpád, cuius ajutor erat Dominus Omnium ….” And the Chronicles of Thuróczi, p. 11 c. 13: “Árpád vero cum suis de Aqua Danubii Cornu implens, ante omnes hungaros super illo cornu Omnipotensis Dei clementiam rogavit, út dominus eis terram in perpetuum concederes.”  Freely translated: “Árpád and his companions filled their cups with water from the Danube and said their first prayer in that place to the Almighty, that Hungary might remain forever in their possession..”

[21]  Krohn Gyula: A Finn-Ugor Népek Pogány Istentisztelete, translated from Finnish by Aladár Bán.  MTA Budapest, 1908. Pp. 363- 372

[22]  Moses I. 10-14. (Károly Gáspár Bibliája)

[23]  Meiners:  Allgemeine Kritik Geschichte der Religion. I. p. 225

[24]  Marco Polo: Reise in der Orient (übers. Von Felix Peregrin, Leipzig, 1802, pp. 86 and 110)

[25]  Piringer: Die Magyaren Sprache, (Vienna, 1833, p. 171)

[26]  The Chronicles of Anonymus: “Non erant fornicatores, sed solummodo unus quisque suum habeat uxorem.”

[27]  Bonfini: Decad. IV. 1.8. p. 643

[28]  Kállay Ferenc: Op. Cit. p. 156

[29]  Asmussen Jes P: Manichean Literature – from Middle Persian and Parthian Writings. (Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, Delmar NY., 1975, p.103

[30]  Ibid. p, 111

[31]  Ibid. p, 111

[32]  Ibid. p, 111

[33]  Chronicles of Thuóczi: “Capitoa quippe Cunorum noviter rasa tamquam cucurbitas gladiorum ictivus dicsiderunt.” (p. II. c. 49.)