1st–10th century In antiquity, the lands of the
Carpathian Basin covered by the contemporary state of
Hungary were inhabited by sedentary tribes of
Celts and
Illyrians (the Pannonians) in the parts west of the river
Danube — the region of
Transdanubia — and by nomadic tribes of
Scytho-Siberians (the
Iazyges) in the parts east of the Danube — the
Great Plain — with varying degrees of relations with each others. In the early years of the 1st century, the Celto-Illyrian western lands were incorporated into the region of
Pannonia in the
Roman Empire; the Roman military conquest of the region had already begun under
Augustus, who in 12–9 BCE had pushed the Roman frontier to the riverbanks of the Danube, and by the year 20 CE the permanent military camp of
Aquincum, located within the area which today is the city of
Budapest, had been founded. The Celts and Illyrians were partially
Romanised under the Roman Empire; this was especially true for their upper classes, while the population as a whole preserved their original cultures for a long time even under Romanisation. Religiously, the Roman authorities built temples of the official
Roman religion of the state, to
Jupiter,
Juno and
Minerva, but also
Romano-Celtic temples which continued the cults of the pre-Roman
Celtic religion. Mystery religions, focused on individual otherworldly salvation, originating from the southeastern provinces of the Roman Empire, also spread to Pannonia, including Greco-Roman-Iranian
Mithraism, Greco-Roman-Egyptian
Isis-Anubis-Serapis' mysteries, Greco-Roman-Semitic
Judaism, and also
Christianity from the 2nd century, and various places of worship of these faiths were built as well. . Rebuilt in 2011 on the site of the ruins of Roman Pannonian temple of the
mysteries of Isis. Roman Pannonia was periodically under attack by its eastern nomadic Scythian neighbours of the Great Plain, whom throughout the 2nd and 3rd century were joined by many
Germanic nomads, and at the turn between the 4th and the 5th century by the
Huns, a multiethnic confederation of nomadic tribes whose original core can probably be identified as the
Xiongnu of the Chinese sources, who came from
Inner Mongolia and the
Gobi Desert and against whom the Chinese built the
Great Wall, but by that time, and especially under their king
Attila ( 406–453), had absorbed many Germanic tribes, especially
Goths. In 409, and then in 433 by general
Flavius Aetius, the Romans yielded the lands of Pannonia to the Huns, who made them their central settlement; this marked the beginning of an ethnic transformation of the population of the region: as the Roman power waned, the local Celto-Romans, although their population shrank significantly, were not completely displaced by the newcomers, who culturally and linguistically absorbed them. Little is known about the religion of the Huns, apart that a winged griffin may have been their
totemic animal-ancestor. Between the 6th and the 8th century, the regions of Pannonia and the Great Plain were dominated first by the Germanic
Gepids and then by the
Avars, a multiethnic alliance of nomadic tribes akin to the Huns, who brought other totemisms and the theme of the many-layered
world tree which reaches the utmost sky, which together with earlier Hunnic beliefs would have continued in the beliefs of the later Hungarians; the regions were also settled by significant communities of
Slavs. In 803, the Frankish emperor
Charlemagne defeated the Avar rulers in Pannonia, and this region became part of the officially Christian polity of the
Carolingian Empire of the Franks, as the
March of Pannonia until 895, while the Great Plain fell under the sphere of influence of the
First Bulgarian Empire. According to some historical accounts, some Avar governors converted to Christianity once they were defeated by the Franks, but there is no trace of Christian elements in the large Avar cemeteries of the epoch. Foundation of the
Hungarian state is connected to the
Hungarian conquerors, who arrived from the
Pontic-Caspian steppe as a confederation of
seven tribes. The
Hungarians arrived in the frame of a strong centralized steppe-empire under the leadership of Grand Prince
Álmos and his son
Árpád, they became founders of the
Árpád dynasty, the Hungarian ruling dynasty and the Hungarian state. The religion thought to have been practiced by the majority of the Hungarian tribes consisted of
animistic and
shamanic elements according to scholars, and is hypothesised to have been similar to
Siberian shamanism-
Tengrism. Scholars have also compared it to
Sumerian and
Scythian religions. The conception of a supreme God, akin to the pan-Siberian
Tengri (meaning "Heaven" or "God" in Turkic), has also been hypothesised. Some scholars, however, have disputed the identification of the Hungarian shaman-like figures, the
táltoses, as shamans in the typical Siberian sense, and have found no clear evidence of shamanic rituals. Based on later prohibitions from Christian regulations, there is evidence that they practised sacrifices at holy groves and springs. Meanwhile, Islam was practiced by a sizeable minority of the settled Hungarian tribes. Muslims of this period described the majority religion as involving a belief in the “Lord of the Sky”, abstention from pork, the worship of natural forces and fire, and containing elements associated with
astrotheology. The evidence that Christianity was practised among the Hungarians before the 950s is weak. The question of the continuity of Christianity in the region since Roman times is unresolved; Christian places of worship that were built in the 3rd and 4th century in Transdanubia, the former Roman province of Pannonia, and under Carolingian rule in the 9th century, would have been rebuilt and reused by the Hungarians only in the 11th century. Some Christian communities of the pre-Hungarian populations of the regions, however, likely persisted under the newcomers, and Christian slaves, as well as trade with neighbouring Christianised Slavic and Germanic lands, probably made the Hungarians acquainted with Christianity. The first attested Hungarian converts to Christianity were the chieftains
Bulcsú and
Gyula, who adopted
Eastern Christianity in the mid-10th century, followed by other local lords.
11th–16th century . Medieval Hungarian chronicles incorporated Pagan myths, and transmitted them into the folklore; these include the myth of the brothers
Hunor and Magor led by a divine stag to new lands, and the myth of the divine origins of the
House of Árpád — the dynasty to which all the
great princes of the Magyar tribes and later kings of Hungary from the 9th to the early 14th century belonged. According to this myth the Árpád's forefather
Ügyek was born from the union of a mortal woman, Emese, with the
Turul, a divine bird of the Hungarian indigenous religion. The presence of various
Turkic tribal groups in medieval Hungary, such as the
Pechenegs and
Kipchaks, further contributed to the religious landscape of the region. The religious practices of these Turkic communities were diverse, with Islam and
Tengrism being prominent amongst the Pechenegs. Hungary emerged to statehood at the turn between the 1st and the 2nd millennium, when the federation of the Magyar tribes was reformed into the
Kingdom of Hungary, and
Western Christianity, specifically
Catholicism, was chosen as the
state religion. Although the Kingdom of Hungary was undoubtedly shapen by Western Christianity, minorities of Eastern Christianity, specifically
Eastern Orthodox Christianity, continued to be present throughout the nation's history.
Stephen I ( 975–1038), the first sovereign who assumed the title of
King of Hungary, adopted Catholicism and laid the foundations of the Catholic Church among the Hungarian people by establishing ten dioceses. Stephen started a program of
Christianisation of his subjects, which at first met the resistance of Pagans and took place at least in part through coercion, through a system of legislative prohibitions of Paganism, Christianising regulations, and penalties for their violations. Within the 12th century, Paganism had been more or less eradicated and was portrayed in a dark light in historical records, although, in the late 13th century, ancient myths were reclaimed to give the ruling dynasty and the people glorious origins. Thenceforth, the principle of "patronate" of the state towards religions, or earlier royal care of spiritual matters, remained firm up throughout the 20th century. A deep change in the country's religious composition took place during the 16th century, when
Protestantism was quickly adopted by a majority of the Hungarians, especially in the forms at first of
Lutheranism from
Germany and shortly afterwards of
Calvinism (Reformed Christianity) from
Switzerland. The
Protestant Reformation began to spread into Hungary from historical
Upper Hungary (which included
Northern Hungary but also areas which today are in
Slovakia), originally as unclear eclectic theologies brought in the 1520s and 1530s by German itinerant preachers, which in the 1540s stabilised along the lines of the doctrine of Lutheranism, with minorities professing
Anabaptism. Protestantism reached Hungary when the Catholic kingdom was in struggle with the Islamic
Ottoman Empire and the central power was weak, since the Hungarian throne was contended between
Ferdinand I of the
Austrian
House of Habsburg, the house which also held the throne of the
Holy Roman Empire, and the Hungarian aristocrat
John Zápolya (1487–1540). In 1526, after the
Battle of Mohács, large portions of the southern and eastern Kingdom of Hungary, including
Southern Transdanubia and the whole Great Plain, were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, the Hungarians of
Transylvania further east, who had not fallen under the domains of either the Kingdom of Hungary or the Ottoman Empire, came under the rule of John Zápolya, who proclaimed himself the legitimate king, while the throne of the western main kingdom was claimed by Ferdinand I; while, at first, the latter tolerated Lutherans, Zápolya presented himself as a preserver of Catholicism. Transylvanian Hungarians were, however, the first among whom Calvinism and
Unitarianism (a
nontrinitarian doctrine) took root — first introduced among local
Transylvanian Saxons — and, given that Lutheranism became increasingly associated with ethnic Germans throughout all the Hungarian lands, Calvinism became the most successful Protestant doctrine among ethnic Hungarians, first in Transylvania, abetted by the support of the son of Jon Zápolya, King
John Sigismund Zápolya (1540–1571), himself a Unitarian convert, and soon afterwards also in Ottoman Hungary. Important Calvinist reformers were
Márton Kálmáncsehi (1500–1550) and
Péter Melius Juhász (1532–1572), the latter of whom made the
Bible and other religious writings available in the
Hungarian language and made
Debrecen in the Great Plain the centre of Hungarian Calvinism, the "Hungarian
Geneva" or the second "Calvinist Rome". Calvinism flourished in Ottoman Hungary, thanks to the tolerant Ottoman policies on religions, and was even supported by the Ottomans themselves against Catholicism because of its independent communal organisation and strict discipline, which were appreciated by the Ottoman administration. Calvinism also spread to the eastern parts of Upper Hungary, already penetrated by the Lutheran doctrine. Even in the western Kingdom of Hungary, where Catholicism had survived while elsewhere it had become residual, the nobility supported Lutheranism. The
Hungarian Reformed Church became the symbol of national culture, since it popularised the Bible in the vernacular language and contributed to the education of the population through its school system.
17th–19th century in Budapest. While the Protestant Reformation was spreading rapidly throughout Europe, the House of Habsburg, which also held the throne of the Kingdom of Hungary, bolstered the program of
Counter-Reformation devised by the Catholic Church to thwart the spread of Protestantism. In the Kingdom of Hungary, the Protestant nobility experienced some freedom in the 17th century, but its influence was soon curbed by the re-Catholicising efforts of the Habsburgs. In 1699, the
Treaty of Karlowitz ended the
Great Turkish War between the
Holy League, of which the Holy Roman Empire of the Habsburgs was a constituent member, and the Ottoman Empire; the former won, and Ottoman Hungary was yolden to the Kingdom of Hungary, so that Hungary was reunified and the Counter-Reformation was extended to the whole country. The sway of the Habsburg state was also strong on the internal affairs of the Catholic Church, especially during the period of the
enlightened absolutism of
Josephinism in the 18th century — i.e. the imperial rule of
Joseph II, 1765–1790 — when, for instance, contemplative religious orders were dissolved. The Counter-Reformation had some success, but Hungary was never entirely converted back to Catholicism and maintained a strong pluralism of religious denominations, aided by a deeply characteristic tolerant approach of the Hungarians towards religious matters, although there were some periods of conflict between Catholics and Protestants, which nonetheless begot a "fruitful tension" which enriched national and local culture. At the end of the 18th century, the Calvinist and Lutheran religions regained complete freedom to be practised, although their legal status remained far from being equal to that of the Catholic Church. The legislation issued in the period of the
1848 Revolution, which took place against the Habsburg dynasty, declared the equality of all accepted religions in Hungary, which included all the historical Christian denominations but excluded Judaism. Jews became emancipated only in 1867, and by the end of the century their number had grown to represent over 5% of the total Hungarian population, and the liberal climate of the period led to their quick assimilation into Hungarian society. According to 1890 laws, religions in Hungary were distinguished between "incorporated" ones — namely Catholicism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, Orthodox Christianity, Unitarianism and Judaism, whose representatives held seats in the upper house of the Parliament — and "recognised" ones, which had fewer rights.
20th century , in
Szeged After the end of
World War I and the
Treaty of Trianon in 1920, national conservative forces came to dominate the political and cultural life of the Kingdom of Hungary, and they rescinded some of the liberal legislation of the foregoing period. In March 1944, during
World War II, Hungary was occupied by
Nazi German forces, and in the following few months three-quarters of the Hungarian Jewry were deported to
concentration camps and killed in the
Holocaust. During the
1946–1949 Hungarian Republic, the system of "incorporated" religions of 1890 was abolished, and all religions were treated as equal on the level of the "recognised" ones. With the
Communist takeover in 1948, and the establishment of the
Hungarian People's Republic in 1949, religious freedom was curtailed, education was nationalised and religious schools abolished, theological faculties were separated from national universities, religious orders were banned, the properties of churches were confiscated by the state, and numerous religious leaders were arrested, including the cardinal
József Mindszenty, leader of the Hungarian Catholic Church, who in 1949 was tortured and sentenced to life imprisonment. Between 1948 and 1949, the leaders of all the major churches who had not been arrested, including the Catholic Bishops' Conference, signed agreements with the government, acknowledging the emerging Communist power. The State Office of Church Affairs exercised control over all churches, and while the collaboration between the state and minor denominations was easier, within the Catholic Church such collaboration brought to a rupture in the clergy, since the government claimed the right to regulate the nomination of bishops, and even minor priests, for itself. In the 1960s, state pressure began to relax, and in 1964 the
Holy See of the Catholic Church in Rome signed an agreement with the Hungarian government to define the procedure to be followed in the appointment of bishops, the oath of the clergy on the state's constitution, and the postgraduate education of the Hungarian clergy at the
Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome; the competence of the Holy See in matters of religion was also acknowledged in the document. These stipulations were a unique development in the
Communist Block, and from that year onwards representatives of the Hungarian government and of the Holy See met twice a year, once in
Budapest and once in the
Vatican City. In the late 1980s, the state's control over religions were loosened significantly, historical denominations experienced more freedom and new denominations were recognised. The collapse of the Communist Block in the early 1990s opened a new era of religious freedom and church–state relations in Hungary, inaugurated in 1990 by the "Act of Freedom of Conscience and Religion and the Churches".
21st century with the Holy Crown, on Kő Hill, in Bánhida, Tatabánya. The Turul'' is a divine bird in old Hungarian religion and shamanism, and has become one of the main symbols of contemporary Hungarian national identity. Several statues representing it have been built across Hungary, especially after 2010. Since the 1990s and throughout the early 21st century, Hungary has become more religiously diverse; all the major
world religions, and both domestic and international
new religious movements, can be found in the country nowadays — apart from historical and new denominations of Christianity and Judaism, the country has seen the rise of movements and organisations of
Buddhism,
Hinduism,
Islam, the
Baháʼí Faith,
Taoism,
Ősmagyar vallás and other
Neopaganisms, and
New Age. The censuses of the 1990s and of the early 21st century have recorded an overall decline of Christianity among the Hungarians — affiliation to which shrank from 92.9% of the population in 1992, to 74.4% in 2001, 54.2% in 2011, and 42.5% in 2022 — accompanied by a rise of the unaffiliated people and people who declined to answer the census' question about religion. Adherents of new religions might be over-represented among the unanswering population, and contemporary studies on the general beliefs of the Hungarians have shown that among those who do not identify themselves as Christians,
syncretism of elements from different religions and
esotericism are indeed popular. Contemporary Hungary is a secular state, where the
Constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief and practice, and of irreligion, to all Hungarian citizens, as well as the neutrality of the state in matters of religion, safeguarded by a complex set of legal norms. The wording of the Hungarian Constitution on religious matters is similar to that of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, although the Constitution also acknowledges the right of citizens not to espouse any religious convictions. The acknowledged neutrality of the state towards religions implies its
separation from any particular church, that the state and churches function separately, but does not entail indifference towards religions and
laicism; the state can have an active role in providing an institutional legal framework and funding for churches, in order to ensure the free exercise of religion. The Constitution also affirms that religious convictions can be expressed in ways that are not contrary to laws, that citizens must not be discriminated on the basis of their religious convictions, and recognises the right of parents to determine the religious or non-religious education of their children. Statutory law guarantees the equal rights of all religious organisations and for their cooperation with the state. In 2011–2012, the Constitution was changed, and a new "Act CCVI on the Right of Freedom of Conscience and Religion, and on the Legal Status of Churches, Religious Denominations, and Religious Communities" was implemented. The new act, which replaced that of 1990, re-introduced a two-tiered classification of religious organisations, similar to that of 1890, distinguishing between officially registered "incorporated" churches, a higher status which also entails access to various privileges such as state funding, and "organisations conducting religious activities", with fewer rights and privileges. Many churches which had been granted official registration between 1990 and 2011 lost their status once the new Act CCVI was implemented. The new legislation was subject to an intense domestic and international criticism, and to lawsuits at the
European Court of Human Rights. The preamble of the 2011–2012 Constitution remembers that "Stephen built the Hungarian State on solid ground and made our country part of Christian Europe a thousand years ago", recognises "the role of Christianity in preserving the nation" and that "the various religious traditions of [the] country" should be honoured. In 2018, an amendment was made to guarantee "the protection of the constitutional identity and Christian culture of Hungary" as "an obligation of every organ of the State". According to Balázs Schanda, judge at the
Constitutional Court of Hungary, the Constitution continues to be neutral with regards to religions, and does not commit the state to the Christian religion in particular; the amendment only enshrined the protection of Hungarian culture in its historical nature, as historically characterised by Christianity. It merely recognised an historical fact, that is the role played by Christianity in the history of the Hungarian nation, and does not claim that Christianity plays an exclusive role nowadays. '' with flags representing various
Hungarian runes and Pagan symbols. According to the scholar István Povedák, elements from pre-Christian Paganism and shamanism, already preserved in the folk religiosity of Hungary as well as of Central and Eastern Europe, have been revived and reinvented in forms of Neopaganism, ethnic
Ősmagyar vallás, which have become integrated in various dimensions of contemporary Hungarian culture, often in syncretism with Christian elements. Before World War II, in some rural areas certain persons were still considered
táltoses, i.e. indigenous Hungarian shaman-magicians, by the local communities, and around the mid-1980s a neo-
táltos movement began to emerge, with links to international
neoshamanism. On 15 March 2012, the
National Assembly of Hungary gave a
Tuvan Tengrist shaman, Ojun Adigzi See-Oglu, the permission to perform a veneration ritual and cleansing ceremony on the
Holy Crown of the Hungarian kings, an object which holds both Pagan and Christian meanings, at the
Hungarian Parliament Building; Ojun was assisted by Éva Kanalas, a
táltos, and folk singer, who sang
Csángó folk religious songs during the ritual. The scholars Zoltán Ádám and András Bozóki identify a Pagan-Christian mixed character in the 2011–2012 Constitution, as a reflection of the eclectic reference to both Christianity and ethnic Paganism which has been a feature of the political discourse of the right-wing
Fidesz party and its leader
Viktor Orbán, the governing forces in the 2010s. Daniella Gáti quotes Magdalena Marsovszky saying that the renewed Constitution, despite the references to Christian culture, would be "ultimately not Christian as much as folk and Pagan". According to Ádám Kolozsi, said syncretic, "heterogeneous mixture of Christian and Pagan elements", is part of a "wider spiritual discourse of contemporary Hungarian nationalism". Such an attitude would reconcile two conflicting cultural aspects in the character of the Hungarian nation: the "Western" universal one represented by Christianity, and the "Eastern" tribal one represented by ethnic Paganism, between which the identity of the Hungarians has always swungen. According to László Kürti, such syncretism, present among the people and promoted by the governmental elite, would be coalescing into a new civil Hungarian religion with neoshamanism at its core. Another strong political party of the 21st century,
Jobbik, has on the other hand been seen as representing the "essentially Pagan, anti-Christian" fringe of the right-wing. Viola Teisenhoffer noted that the
Kurultáj, a major festival with a political and anthropological character holden yearly since the second half of the 2000s in
Bugac, in the
Southern Great Plain, is essentially connected with the Pagan revival, with many contemporary Pagan leaders and their followers taking part in the event. ==Religions==