Hivatali eskü a magyar közszolgálatban
Official Oath in the Hungarian State Administration

Summary/Abstract: This study proposes an archaeology of the official oath in the royal Hungarian administration, from the first centuries of the Christian statehood to the end of the monarchy in 1918. The evolutions of the oath pronounced by the councilors (in various medieval councils, dicastries and later in the 19th century’s ministries) allows replacing in the longue durée this complex phenomenon, the persistence of which until today shows a remarkably long-lasting tradition. First to be addressed here is the issue of implementing a mandatory oath for the king’s and later the state’s servants, crystallizing the bureaucratization and professionalization of the administration. The second issue is specific to the 19th and 20th centuries, and focuses on the multiple reformulations of official oaths during revolutionary periods: how did evolve the duty of loyalty between allegiance to the king, the constitution, the country and finally the nation? In order to achieve this study, oath-templates were collected from various official sources (Corpus Juris Hungarici, Rendeletek Tára) as well as from archival oath-repositories (libri juramentorum). The political as well as ritual dimensions of the oath taking (and its refusal) are just incidentally part of our study.

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