This is as much a book about Hungarian history during the lifetime of Mindszenty as it is a biography of the Cardinal. Produced under auspices of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Margit Balogh’s meticulous research is based on a plethora of primary sources: the Hungarian Government and Communist Party, the United States’ Department of State, the Vatican and diocesan records. In addition to virtually every written communication from Mindszenty, the author culled information from three US presidential libraries, newspaper reports and post-event biographical reflections from the Cardinal’s supporters and detractors alike. The footnoting is extensively detailed, dates are delivered in full: e.g., blessing a convent took place on precisely October 6, 1929 (p. 66). Scholars of religion will appreciate the successful explanation of arcane ecclesiastical concepts such as “apostolic administrator sede plena,” and its canonical difference from sede vacante. This nuance is key to understanding how Pope Paul VI relieved Mindszenty of his position as Hungarian Prince Primate (pp. 592-635). Not infrequently, the author simultaneously assesses the intentions of actors she classifies as Stalinist, pro-American politicians, Hungarian nationalists, Vatican diplomats and adds her take on the moods of the long-suffering Cardinal. This thoroughness makes for a rewarding, if taxing read, since it saddles events with subjectivized and contradictory interpretations.

Balogh purposefully avoids purple patches to extol or condemn individual actors, resulting in a neutral but plodding academic prose. I commend the excellent translation by Andrew T. Gane, which even explains certain particular Hungarian expressions (e.g., p. 441). Moreover, the editors managed to accurately reproduce names and places in several languages, including in Hungarian with its challenging accent markings.   In short, this book contains everything you need to know about Hungarian politics and history in the life of Mindszenty and even some stuff you didn’t think relevant. I only wish the publisher had provided a map to help the reader find less well-known Hungarian cities and perhaps a timeline that listed the confusing political twists of movements and parties through two world wars and under different governments.

I confess to having met briefly with Cardinal Mindszenty in May of 1974 in New York City and coming away with a negative impression. As stated by Balogh, he was “a cold, haughty and supercilious man” (p. 58). Today, however, he is awaiting beatification by the Catholic Church for his “implacable opposition to dictatorship” (p.16). To the patient and informed reader, this book is an invaluable guide to resolving these contradictory assessments. However, I fear persons lacking familiarity with Hungarian history will be unable to fully appreciate the author’s representations.  

Ordained a priest in 1915 during I World War, Josef Pehm was parish curate in the small town of Zalaegerszeg during the post-war tumult that produced in rapid succession a democratic and pacifist Hungarian Republic, a short-lived but radical Communist government at war with neighboring states, and finally a right-wing military autocracy under Miklós Horthy. The future Cardinal’s constant aspiration was to restore the Habsburg monarchy. Citing Roman law and privileges afforded to the first Catholic King of Hungary, he endorsed the traditional understanding that only installation with the original crown of St. Stephen made a ruler legitimate.  Mindszenty long insisted on a Hungarian monarchy and would eventually name himself “knight banneret” (p. 486ff.) to assume regency as “Prince Primate” over Hungary until the rightful Habsburg king was crowned. This heroic, if stubborn, legitimist conviction earned him the epithet, “Victim of History” from Pope Paul VI (p. 12).  

Within Hungary’s complicated history, however, many of the convictions of Mindszenty that appear outlandish to outsiders are parts of the Hungarian mainstream. For example, he changed his German-origin last name to the Hungarian for “All Saints” after the parish church in his birthplace, Csehimindszent, adding the final “y” connoting nobility according to Balogh (p. 92). The switch occurred in 1942 when German Nazis controlled Hungary. Change to a Hungarian last name was not an uncommon tool to reaffirm one’s national identity. In fact, from 1835 to 1956, over 300,000 families did so, including famous leaders: Rákosi/Rosenfeld, Kun/Kohn, Kádár/Czermanik.
Demanding the restoration of a Hungarian king and avowing the symbolic power of the crown was a dramatic form of opposition to the 1920 Treaty of Trianon that dismembered the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a co-partner of the defeated monarchy of polyglot ethnicities, the treaty had punished Hungary by stripping away 72% of its territory, its sea access, five of its ten biggest cities and all of its gold and silver mines. The First World War’s victors established themselves as arbiters for territorial boundaries of new nations, ignoring objections from the defeated Hungarians. Nearly three and a half million ethnic Hungarians were separated from their motherland and reduced to minority status within new, and often chauvinistic, ethnic republics. Mindszenty is only one of many who rejected the legitimacy of the treaty’s provisions, while promoting the territorial restoration of “Greater Hungary.” Balogh states that Phem welcomed Hitler’s assigning of Muraköz, a Croatian district, to the Horthy government. As Abbot Phem, he supervised the religious incorporation of the district to his ministry, despite the conflict generated with Zagreb’s Archbishop Stepinac (pp. 93-104). Although the cession of pre-1920 territory to Hungary by Hitler had been only a ploy to win Hungarian support for Axis powers, the future Cardinal’s embrace of awarded land would haunt him when Communists later tried him for cooperation with the Nazis.  Nonetheless, the dream of reversing Trianon continues in Hungary today, even if Mindszenty’s solution of a restored monarchy has not.

Pope Pius XII named Mindszenty as Bishop of Veszprém in 1944 shortly before Hungarian Fascists in the Arrow Cross Party took power for Hitler’s Nazis. The new bishop refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Arrow Cross government and was imprisoned by the Fascists on that account. Perhaps as reward, he was elevated to the Primacy of Esztergom a year later in 1945. His insistence on monarchy meant he opposed both a Republic of Hungary and also the Soviet-supported Communist client-state that replaced it. Imitating the Stalinist show trials, writes Balogh, Hungarian Communists tortured Mindszenty, found him guilty of treason in 1948, and jailed him until the ill-fated insurrection in October of 1956.

Balogh asserts that Mindszenty had little influence in the 1956 effort to establish Hungarian neutrality under socialism. Moreover, she considers his flight to the United States’ Embassy to have been a mistake. She documents how the Kádár Communist government subsequently identified Mindszenty as a tool of an enemy United States because of where he was housed. Washington thwarted his efforts to continue his rule of the Hungarian Church from inside embassy doors (pp. 467-471), and staff were frustrated when “the guest” treated them as servants (p. 484).  His fifteen-year sojourn disappointed even the Vatican that expected bishops to remain with their flock and accept martyrdom instead of fleeing to asylum (pp. 451-461).

The relationship of the Hungarian Catholic Church with successive national governments from 1944 until the II Vatican Council in 1962-64 remained nominally governed by an 18th century royal concordat that provided state support for schools, hospitals, and clergy. However, funding was conditioned upon church recognition of government prerogatives. Mindszenty’s absolute refusal to recognize the Kádár government penalized the functions of the Catholic Church in Hungary. He repeatedly urged the excommunication of the so-called “peace priests” who had pledged allegiance to the Communist government in order to practice ministry. The Cardinal declined attendance at two papal conclaves and the II Vatican Council because he feared he would be denied reentry to Hungary. When finally ordered to resign as Primate of Hungary, he refused, even accusing Paul VI  of surrender to “extortion” (p.637). At the end, however, he simply claimed obedience to the pope as the rationale for resignation and left an embassy happy to be rid of him.

Balogh couches her explanations of these later events in the context of Catholicism’s “opening to the East” which was linked to the softening of Cold War enmities. Mindszenty’s loyalty to Catholicism’s anti-Communist stance of the early 20th century clashed with the policies after the Vatican Council. Simply put, he had become an anachronistic hinderance.

Cardinal Mindszenty spent the last years of his life traveling to settlements of Hungarian 1956 émigrés around the world, particularly in Canada and the United States. Many of his harsher political opinions such as those about Protestants and Jews softened in the process. Balogh notes that once relieved of the burden of his unrealistic political choices, he became a symbol of resistance to tyranny and an icon for Hungarian cultural identity.

            While there will be new books written about Mindszenty, I think all future publications will be well advised to incorporate the exhaustive historical achievements of Victim of History.