CHAPTER TWO

IUS RESISTENDI IN HUNGARY

Resistance as a Right

It is a safe assumption to make that some political precepts and ideas have existed throughout recorded . These ideas probably include the duty of government to maintain order; protect the lives and property of the subjects; sustain justice; secure rights based either on some natural quality or on service; the precept of freedom from unjustifijied interfer- ence; the obligation to keep agreements; and the duty of obedience to established authority. All of these may be considered near perennial fea- tures of social life. And so is resistance to authority and even the removal of those in power in some circumstances. For the duty of obedience to established power can never be unlimited. Even in fully autocratic states, resistance to authority, when successful, was habitually justifijied. By improving on Mommsen’s defijinition, Charles Diehl described Eastern as an ‘autocracy tempered by revolution and assassination.’1 Accordingly, if and when usurpation of power was accomplished, the authority of the successful new ruler was recognized as legitimate because the deposed incumbent was apparently inadequate or unworthy. On the other hand, when the challenger failed, he was labelled as merely a rebel. In sum, resistance to authority, and even tyrannicide, has been justifijied in society, post factum but not ex ante. It is apparent, therefore, that the sub- ject did not have the right of resistance to established authority. Resistance to authority as a right developed, after some antecedents, in medieval Europe where temporal authority was based on custom and was held therefore to be limited. In his classic monograph on divine right and the right of resistance in the early Fritz Kern argued that the subject ‘owed his ruler not so much obedience but fealty’ and fealty was conditional: it had to be reciprocal in character.2 Custom based on fealty produced the benefijiciary system of landownership with its hierarchy of

1 Charles Diehl, ‘The Government and Administration of the Byzantine Empire’, in The Cambridge Medieval History, vol 4, 1936, p. 729. 2 Fritz Kern, Kingship and Law in the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1948, pp. 87–89. 114 chapter two donor-donee relationships, based on fijidelity, in which each side pos- sessed rights as well as obligations towards the other. Whenever one side failed to meet its customary obligations, the other side invoked resistance on the offfending side as a customary right. The donor-donee relationships did not engender the complex social hierarchy east of the Elbe, typical in Western Europe. In kingdoms like Bohemia, Hungary and , there were only two levels and the donation of land was largely confijined to the ruler, as donor, and the noble as donee.3 Yet even here, the customary right of resistance was as vigorously exercised as in the western parts of the Continent. In Hungary, the medieval structure remained a fijirm foundation on which the right of resistance to authority was based for much longer than in the western part of the continent. Indeed, a convenient way to tease out the specifijic features of the Hungarian resistance to established politi- cal authority is to compare it to the growth of comparable features else- where. In western Christendom, the age of Reformation split the church into rival confessions. This was the chief reason for the rise of what was to prove to be the durable theory of social contract, which evolved in the sixteenth century, although at fijirst only to protect the faith of particular religious minorities. Radical Calvinists and Jesuits no longer justifijied resistance as a customary right based on mutual fijidelity and obligations, but on contract and agreement, as a deliberate act by the people. Accordingly, because the people had agreed to establish government for certain ends, they thereby had the right to resist and even remove the holders of power if they neglected or contravened those ends. In its radi- cal form, social contract theory justifijied rebellion by the people or rather some notables acting for them. The right of resistance in , Holland and was later refijined, largely under the influence of Locke, by the assumption that the social contract had created a civil society, to which everybody consented, prior to the setting up of government which was to use power for certain ends as a trustee on behalf of the community. And when the government by persistent misrule broke its trust, it was argued, it dissolved itself and the right to form a government reverted to the people. The people, i.e. civil society, then simply erected a new govern- ment without any major social upheaval. Rebellion by the people was, therefore, no longer necessary, as it had been in the religious wars of the

3 The terms ‘donor’ and ‘donee’ are not quite appropriate because the donated land was not a fijief but an allodium, a reward for past services without specifijic future obligations.