Defenders of Christian Europe?

Hungarians like calling themselves the “Defenders of Christian Europe’ for having fought the eastern and southern pagan aggressors for a thousand years.

Such religious altruism is hardly an immanent characteristic of these formerly pagan nomads. Nor did we choose this role out of proselyte fervor in order to “expiate” former pagan aggressiveness. This task was rather imposed upon us by our unfortunate geographical situation.

It is true that Hungarians did fight with stubborn gallantry for centuries in the gateway of Christian Europe. It is also a fact that on many occasions these powerful aggressors offered to the Hungarians an alliance against the West, which had treated us with selfish cynicism anyhow. The Hungarians, as a nation always rejected these approaches, not because of their mythical mission as the “bastion of Christianity”, but because the moral and social ideology of the Mongols and Turks was alien to their conservative morality and freedom-loving individualism.

Thus the Hungarian ‘militant Christianism” must have deeper roots in the national character. When searching for this fundamental quality, one is struck by a symbolic coincidence. The little tribe which, during the long centuries of migrations, formed the nucleus of the future nation, called itself “Megyeri” – “Magyar” Both particles of this word mean “MAN” – in Ugrian and Turkic respectively. This word seems to point, in a symbolic way, to a basic quality: humanism.

Humanism, under its definition expressed by the philosophers of the Renaissance (the Hungarians’ favorite period), is a reaction against religious or secular doctrines which tend to subordinate men to abstract concepts of a philosophical, political or social nature. Humanism attaches primary importance to man, to his faculties and well being. It is a social attitude as well: respect for one’s fellow-human is compatible with the concern for one’s well-being.

The Hungarians’ humanism is based on the racial, cultural, moral and social concepts inherited from their ancestors in Asia and Europe. Therefore we may justly call their particular philosophy Euro-Asian humanism.

- by ZOLTÁN BODOLAI Dip.Ed., Ph.D. (Budapest)
tutor of hungarian History and Culture, University of Sidney