Robert was a French-born prelate in the Kingdom of Hungary in the first decades of the 13th century. He was Archbishop of Esztergom between 1226 and 1239 and Bishop of Veszprém from 1209 till 1226. He played a decisive role in the establishment of the short-lived Diocese of Cumania. He was sharply opposed to the employment of Jews and Muslims in the administration of the royal revenues. He even put Hungary under interdict to force Andrew II of Hungary to dismiss his non-Christian officials.

The coronation of the Hungarian monarch was a ceremony in which the king or queen of the Kingdom of Hungary was formally crowned and invested with regalia. It corresponded to the coronation ceremonies in other European monarchies. While in countries like France and England the king's reign began immediately upon the death of his predecessor, in Hungary the coronation was absolutely indispensable: if it were not properly executed, the Kingdom stayed "orphaned". All monarchs had to be crowned as King of Hungary in order to promulgate laws and exercise his royal prerogatives in the Kingdom of Hungary. Starting from the Golden Bull of 1222, all new Hungarian monarchs had to take a coronation oath, by which they had to agree to uphold the constitutional arrangements of the country, and to preserve the liberties of their subjects and the territorial integrity of the realm.