Copy of the Hungarian coronation robe

Created: Vienna, 1613

Material, technology: black (ink) faded to brown on silk muslin, dyed with yellow, green, and (at one time probably) blue mineral dyes, on 18th cenutry red taffeta, repaired, hemmed with a 1-cm-wide strip of ribbed fabric

Size: h: 136 cm, diam.: 297 cm

Description: Péter Révay, keeper of the Hungarian crown, describes how the coronation robe had to be transported to Vienna in 1613, so that a copy could be made for Pope Paul V. Inventories of the Vatican holdings provide no evidence of such a gift. It may have simply remained inVienna. Joseph de France, imperial treasurer, discovered the robe and in 1754 Ferenc Balassa, a student of Teresianum and later a Croatian-Dalmatian bán and captain, in collaboration with Erasmus Frölich wrote a stellar dissertation about it. On 23 February 1758 Joseph de France started taking inventory of valuable relics: Ein nach alter arth gemachter mantl von schlaier, welchen der heilige Stephanus, könig in Hungarn, getragen, und ist solches aus der darbei ligenden beschreibung zu ersehen. At the prompting of her confessor, Maria Theresa distributed numerous relics to church institutions within the empire. In 1775 she visited the Archabbey of Pannonhalma, and four years later she donated the robe (1779).