The Archabbey is dedicated to St Martin of Tours, who was supposedly born at the footof the 282m hill on which it stands – henceits alternative name, Márton-hegyi Apátság– though other accounts give his birthplaceas Szombathely to the west. Eitherway, St Martin links Pannonhalma directlyto Roman Pannonia, the great eastern pre-Christian province of the Roman Empire. Martin’s stay in Pannonia was brief, but when Benedictine monks came north fromItaly and lands further west in 996, to territory taken by the pagan Magyars a century before, the monastery lands that GrandPrince Géza granted them were duly dedicatedto him. Géza’s son King Stephen I further end owed the abbey, which became acenter of Christianization in the new Hungarian kingdom, but also of the transmission of Western European culture from Benedictine communities elsewhere. One ofthe earliest known documents to use Hungarian, the founding charter of the Benedictineabbey at Tihany near Lake Balaton,dating from 1055, is preserved in the Pannonhalma archives.
Pannohalma enjoyed royal patronage anda central place in Hungarian spiritual life all through the Middle Ages. Its early Gothic basilica was begun in the early 13th centuryand dedicated in 1224, above the remains of two earlier buildings. Much of the current fabric, though, dates from the reign of King Matthias, who found the abbey neglected and depopulated, and took it over in 1472 for his personal use. He decorated the nave,and built side chapels and cloisters in a more florid late Gothic/early Renaissance style.
When Hungary began its time of troubles after Matthais’s death, Pannonhalma suffered too, and was made an archabbey – independentof any local Christian hierarchy – in 1541, as the Turks drove deeper into Europe.The archabbey was fortified and monastic life continued, with difficulties, but in 1575 a fire damaged much of the fabric and led to its abandonment: the Turks occupied the site in 1594, and almost all of its interior furnishings were destroyed. The monks were able toreturn in 1638, but real recovery only began with the accession of Mathias Palfy as Abbotin 1683. From this period also dates the Pannonhalma Benedictine College, where Otto von Habsburg later studied, which was inaugurated in 1690. In the 18th century, Benedek Sajghó, Archabbot from 1722 to 1768, oversaw substantial Baroque additions to the Archabbey, including the current façade and the two storey refectory with its frescoes. The attached Chapel of Our Lady was begun in 1714.
The Archabbey’s revival was interrupted by Emperor Joseph II’s dissolution of the Benedictine Order in his domain in 1786, but Pannonhalma’s educational work ensured some continuity, with the monks able to stay on as teachers in the archabbey buildings. In 1802 the archabbey was re-established,conditional on its continuing educational role. Its library, built in the 1820s and 1830s, now holds some 360,000 volumes.
The archabbey also added its arboretum, which now boasts more than 400 plant species, in the 1830s. Furtherrenovation work in the 1860s and1870s added a new high altar, pulpit, windows and frescoes.
With the approach of the Hungarian millennium in 1896, Pannonhalma was awarded its own Millennium Memorial, also part of the present World Heritage Site. The currentmonument has been shorn of its original dome, which was dismantled in the late 1930s after substantial deterioration. In the 20th century, the archabbey’s secondary school benefited briefly from a gift of new buildings in 1941, a donation from Mussolini’s Italian government. But after1945, the Communists confiscated the site and its properties, though the secondary school was able to continue operating throughout the Communist period. Fortunately, the archabbey was little damaged, and following further renovation in 1995, received its World Heritage Site status. Modern revivals of the complex’s traditions include the rebirth of winemaking there, with the purchase of new vineyards in 2000.
Pannonhalma Archabbey exemplifies the same continuity down through European history and across Europe from East to West that Otto vonHabsburg himself represented. Truly a fitting resting place for the heart of an (almost) emperor.
