Saint Stephen's Crown

▪ Hungarian crown

      greatly venerated crown of Hungary, the symbol of Hungarian nationhood, without which no sovereign was truly accepted by the Hungarian people. It is made from an 11th-century jeweled circlet of Byzantine style, augmented early in the 12th century by the addition of arches and an upper rim composed of alternate pointed and round-topped plaques of enameled gold. Small pendants hang on short chains on both sides and at the back. The cross on the top is crooked, because the screw hole in the knob it stands on was set at an angle, suggesting that originally it was not meant to occupy the top of the crown but to go on a sloping surface, possibly the curve of the foremost arch.

      The crown was given to a U.S. Army unit by a Hungarian honour guard to keep it from being seized by advancing Soviet troops after World War II. It remained in U.S. guardianship at Fort Knox until it was returned in 1978.

* * *