Note (Back) — Chapter XXIV
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493. The Golden Bull, 1222.—During the century and a half which followed the reign of Stephen the consolidation of the kingdom, despite frequent conflicts with the Eastern Empire, was continued. The court took on something of the brilliancy of the Byzantine model, and in the later twelfth century King Béla III. inaugurated a policy—that of crowning as successor the sovereign's eldest son while yet the sovereign lived—by which were introduced in effect the twin principles of heredity and primogeniture. In 1222 King Andrew II. (1204-1235) promulgated a famous instrument, the Bulla Aurea, or Golden Bull, which has been likened many times to the Great Charter conceded to his barons by King John of England seven years earlier. The precise purport of the Golden Bull is somewhat doubtful. By some the instrument has been understood to have comprised a virtual surrender on the part of the crown in the interest of a class of insolent and self-seeking nobles with which the country was cursed. By others it has been interpreted as a measure designed to strengthen the crown by winning the support of the mass of the lesser nobles against the few greater ones.[647] The exemption of all nobles from taxation was confirmed; all were exempted likewise from arbitrary arrest and punishment. On the other hand, it was forbidden expressly that the titles and holdings of lords-lieutenant should become hereditary. The most reasonable conclusion is that the instrument represents a compromise designed to afford a working arrangement in a period of unusual stress between crown and nobility. Although the document was amplified in 1231 and its guarantees were placed under the special guardianship of the Church, it does not appear that its positive effects in the period immediately following were pronounced. The Golden Bull, none the less, has ever been regarded as the foundation of Hungarian constitutional liberty. As such, it was confirmed specifically in the coronation oath of every Hapsburg sovereign from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.