This Day in History

April 1, 1922

:

Death Comes for an Emperor

   

This text comes from our book, Light to the Nations II: The Making of the Modern World. For ordering information on this text and our other books, please click here. 

 

  

Karl and Zita, with their son, Otto, at
their coronation as king and queen of
Hungary,  Budapest, 1916

It was a cold day in late October 1921 when a small airplane from Switzerland landed in western Hungary. The airplane carried Karl, the emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, and his wife, the Empress Zita. Loyal troops of the Hungarian army greeted the royal couple and swore allegiance to them. After hearing an open-air Mass, King Karl, Queen Zita, their generals and troops boarded a train that would take them to Budapest, where Karl hoped to take up once again the government of Hungary.

 

Karl knew this would be no easy task. This was his second journey to Hungary since the end of the war. In March 1921, he, with his loyal followers, had entered Budapest, where he met with Hungary's regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy. But though he claimed to rule in the name of King Karl, Horthy was unwilling to give over the government to him. Karl, who had fallen sick, was forced to leave Hungary -- but he promised he would return.

 

Thousands of Hungarians joyfully greeted the return of the king in October 1921. But though he had an army faithful to him, Karl faced tremendous difficulties. Since Horthy controlled the greater part of the army, he was very powerful. 

Karl von Habsburg-Lotharingen with an honor guard at a
train station in Hungary, October 21, 1921.

The regent also had the support of the British government, which did not want to see a Habsburg return to power anywhere in Europe. Finally, many of Karl's military leaders -- men who had sworn allegiance to him -- proved unfaithful. At last Horthy's army overran the troops faithful to Karl; and he, to avoid further bloodshed, withdrew from Budapest.

 

Karl and Zita were detained at Tihany Abbey in western Hungary until the Allies decided what to do with them. At Tihany, Karl received a visit from Hungary's primate archbishop, Cardinal Czernoch. Czernoch later wrote that at Tihany he had expected to find "a broken, fearful, suffering king," but instead, he discovered that Karl needed no comfort. "I have done my duty, as I came here to do," he told the cardinal. "As crowned king, I not only have a right, I also have a duty. I must uphold the right and the dignity of the crown." The king said "Our Lord and Savior had led me to try to regain the throne."

 

Tomb of Blessed Karl on Madeira

On October 30, Allied authorities removed Karl and Zita from Tihany to a port on the Danube River, where they were placed on a British ship. They did not know their destination, but they would soon learn that it was Madeira, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic, 535 miles off the coast of Portugal. This would be the place of exile for the royal couple and their children. But Karl's sojourn on Madeira was short. In March, he caught a cold that soon turned to pneumonia. On April 1, 1922, Karl, the last reigning Habsburg emperor, died, while gazing on a crucifix Zita held for him in her hands. The emperor's last words were, "Thy will be done. Yes, yes. As you will it. Jesus!"

 

Karl's title of emperor passed to his eldest son, Otto -- who, as a man, later dedicated himself to work for the good of the peoples over whom his family once had ruled. Yet, though Karl and Zita's family lost the imperial power, a greater honor awaited them. On October 3, 2004, Pope John Paul II declared Karl "blessed" -- the last step before being proclaimed a saint of the Catholic Church. The Church remembers Blessed Karl on October 21, the day he and Zita were married in 1911.

 

An Imperial Burial

 

The burial ritual for those belonging to the Austrian imperial family is a trenchant reminder to the rich and powerful that they are but human and sinners. The clip below shows the burial in 2011 of Otto von Habsburg, the son of Emperor Karl and Empress Zita. Otto's remains are brought to the crypt of the Habsburg imperial family in the Capuchin Church in Vienna. The grand chamberlain, thrice striking a cane on the church doors proclaims that "Otto von Österreich" (Otto of Austria) begs entrance. He then proceeds to read a long list of Otto's imperial titles, only to be met with the response from the priest within: 

 

"We do not know him."

Otto von Habsburg Funeral - Kapuzinerkirche [HD]

Once again the door is struck, and the priest asks, "Who is there?" But this time the chamberlain asks admission for "Doktor Otto von Habsburg" -- telling of his personal accomplishments (including his stint as president of the International Paneuropean Union and a member of the European Parliament). Again, the priest says, "We do not know him."

 

For the third and last time, the chamberlain strikes the door. The priest asks, "Who is there?" The chamberlain says, only, "Otto, a sinful, mortal man."

 

The priest says, "So let him come within."

 

Entombed in the crypt, Otto joined his mother, Zita, Emperor Franz Josef, Archduke Franz Ferdinand von Österreich-Este (whose assassination sparked the First World War), and their ancestors -- all but Blessed Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen, whose body remains on the island of Madeira. To this day, the Austrian government will not allow Karl's remains to rest in the tomb of his ancestors.

 

For those who have the time, here is a link to the entire Requiem Mass for Otto von Habsburg.

Otto Habsburg - Das Requiem - Stephansdom in Wien - 16.7.2011

Online History Classes

The Catholic Textbook Project's General Editor, Christopher Zehnder, has been teaching an online history course, "The Making of the Modern World," through Homeschool Connections. Last semester's classes were recorded and are now offered through Homeschool Connections Unlimited Access. The second semester classes will be available late May. 

Mr. Zehnder's course is based on the CTP text Light to the Nations II: The Making of the Modern World and he describes the course as follows:

This course examines how the Modern World --- our world --- came to be. It looks at the revolutionary ideas that created, first in Europe and then the entire world, an understanding of man and his relationship to God, the Church, and the state that was in many respects radically different from the understanding of these things that prevailed in the Middle Ages. Ideas influence deeds, and thus the course examines historical events, showing how they flowed from the struggle between those who held to traditional conceptions and those who embraced the new ideas. Events influence ideas, and thus we study how the events of history helped modify and develop both the new ideas and the traditional vision of the world. The course is divided into two parts. Part I (first semester) begins with the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries and concludes with the attempt to reestablish the ancient regime after the fall of Napoleon's empire. Part II (second semester) continues the story, beginning with a study of Romanticism and concluding with Vatican II and the post-conciliar world. 

For more information on Homeschool Connections Unlimited Access or to sign up, go here.

To view Homeschool Connections Spring/Summer 2014 Recorded Course Catalog, go here.

For the 2014/2015 school year, Mr. Zehnder will be teaching a course using Light to the Nations I: A History of Christian Civilization through Homeschool Connections. Information for registering for the live, interactive classes will be posted soon. 

This Day in History

March 23, 1801

:

Assassination of a Tsar

   

This text comes from our book, Light to the Nations II: The Making of the Modern World. For ordering information on this text and our other books, please click here. 

  

It was night. All was quiet in the Michailov Palace in St. Petersburg. The members of the imperial family were in their beds, asleep -- all except the grand prince, Aleksandr Pavlovitch Romanov. He would not sleep that night. Agitated and fretful, he paced his room, fully clothed, waiting. At last, he threw himself on his bed. The night seemed endless.

Mikhailov Palace, St. Petersburg

The reigning tsar and emperor of Russia, Pavel (Paul) I, had made the Michailov Palace into a sort of fortress. The short, balding, and ugly Pavel had had a difficult life. His mother, Katerina the Great, had deposed his father, Tsar Pyotr III, who then was killed under strange circumstances. Katerina reigned for the next 34 years - years during which her son, Pavel, thought he rightly should have been ruler.

Tsar Pavel I

Upon becoming tsar after Katerina's death in 1796, Pavel proved that he was not an entirely bad ruler; indeed, many of his policies had been wise. Yet Pavel was insane, and his insanity led him into acts of cruelty and into a strange admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte. Pavel had made many enemies, powerful enemies -- Russian nobles and leaders of the Russian army. To protect himself, he had raised towers and battlements around the Michailov Palace.

It is said that Tsar Pavel feared his own sons, the Grand Prince Aleksandr and his brothers, and was contemplating imprisoning them. At least, this is what Pavel's enemies may have told Aleksandr. Such a tale, along with Pavel's increasing insanity, is perhaps what convinced the grand prince to agree to a plot that the tsar's foes had suggested to him -- the deposition of his father.

Thus, on the night of March 23, 1801, the 23-year-old Aleksandr, fearful and alone, awaited the news that the plot against the tsar had succeeded. The hours passed slowly until about 1:00 a.m. on the morning of March 24, when Aleksandr heard a knock on his door. The prince sat up on his bed as in walked Count Nikolai Zubov.  Standing before Aleksandr, Zubov said in a hoarse voice, "All is over."

Grand Prince Aleksandr, 1800

"What is over?" said the astonished prince. Zubov would not say, but he addressed Aleksandr as "Sire" and "Your Majesty" -- titles given only to the reigning tsar. Frightened and full of foreboding, Aleksandr questioned Zubov further -- until Zubov was forced to tell the whole story.

Tsar Pavel was dead. The conspirators, including Zubov, had climbed by a back stairway into the apartments of the imperial family in the Michailov Palace. They had entered the tsar's apartment and demanded that he abdicate and name his son, Aleksandr, tsar in his place. Pavel refused. What happened next is uncertain; but in the end, Pavel lay dead on his bed. He had been strangled. Horror overcame Aleksandr. He had agreed to his father's deposition, not his death. What now would he do? How would the Russian people react to his father's murder? Would they blame him? How could he justly take up his father's authority, purchased at the price of his father's blood?

A Composer Who United East and West

Dmitry Bortniansky (1751-1825) was a composer of Ukrainian origin who, beginning in 1796, served as director of the Russian Imperial Chapel Choir under both Pavel I and Aleksandr I. A prolific composer of opera and instrumental works, Bortniansky is perhaps most well known for his compositions of Russian Orthodox liturgical music. His liturgical works have elements both of Western and Eastern sacred music, including polyphony, which Bortniansky had studied in Italy. The following piece is an example of Bortniansky's genius.

Dmitry Bortniansky, Let My Prayer Arise, 

Russian Icon Painters

This Day in History

March 21, 1800:

Power Politics and a Papal Coronation

 

This text comes from our book, Light to the Nations II: The Making of the Modern World. For ordering information on this text and our other books, please click here. 

It was no easy task to gather the cardinals for the conclave to elect a new pope. Scattered over Italy after the exile of Pope Pius VI and unable to meet in Rome, the cardinals finally 

decided to gather in Venice, a city under the control of the Holy Roman emperor. Emper-or Franz II had offered to pay most of the expenses of the conclave -- a welcome offer, since the curia and individual cardinals had very little money. So it was that on the First Sunday of Advent, November 30, 1799, in the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, 34 cardinals out of an expected 46 gathered to begin their deliberations over who should be the next pope.

Cardinal Consalvi

The man chosen to oversee this assembly was the able cardinal-deacon, Ercole Consalvi. As the secretary of the conclave, Consalvi had to use all of his diplomatic skills -- for the cardinals were a cantankerous bunch of men, princes of the Church though they were. The cardinals were as divided among themselves, as were the political leaders of the time.

Cardinal Hrzan had come from Austria to represent the emperor, who wanted a pope who would favor the interests of the Habsburgs. Opposed to Hrzan and other pro-Austrian cardinals was another group of cardinals that stood for Fernando IV, the king of Naples, who wanted a pope who would favor his family, the Bourbons. A few cardinals, including Cardinal Jean-Siffrein Maury, wanted a pope who would be friendly to France. Cardinal Maury represented Louis XVIII, who claimed to be the rightful king of France. Yet, though he wrote frequent letters to Louis XVIII describing the events of the conclave, Maury wanted a pope who would not be hostile to the new French government of the First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte.

Cardinal Jean-Siffrein Maury

Split by these factions, the cardinals could not agree on a papal candidate. Weeks and months dragged on, but no one man could obtain the required number of votes to be elected pope. Cardinal Hrzan used the emperor's veto to block the election of a cardinal who had received enough votes to be elected. (According to the canon law of the time, the emperor could veto the election of any candidate, even if a majority of the conclave voted for him.)

The winter of 1799-1800 passed, spring approached, and still no pope had been chosen. It was Cardinal Maury who finally found a candidate that could please all the factions. He was Cardinal Barnaba Luigi Chiaramonti, the bishop of the northern Italian city of Imola. With another cardinal, Maury began working for the election of Chiaramonti and was able to win over a number of important cardinals to his cause. On March 14, 1800 (nearly four months after the opening of the conclave), the cardinals elected Chiaramonti, who -- after some hesitation -- accepted the choice of his brother cardinals.

The Bishop of Imola 

Chiaramonti once told how his mother, the Countess Chiaramonti, had foretold that he would be elected pope and, as pope, undergo bitter sufferings. Young Barnaba doubtless did not wish for such an honor; at age 16, he had joined the Benedictine monks of Santa Maria del Monte, near his hometown of Cesena in the Papal States. By becoming a monk, Chiaramonti cast aside hopes of worldly glory for a life of contemplation. 

Cathedral of Imola

Such a life, however, was not to be his, for the Chiaramonti family had a special friend -- Pope Pius VI. In 1782, Pius made Barnaba Chiaramonti the bishop of Tivoli. Three years later, the pope sent Chiaramonti to Imola and named him a cardinal. The quiet, contemplative Chiaramonti proved to be a very devout and able bishop. He was gentle, firm, and kindly. He welcomed exiled French priests to Imola and spent nearly half of his income on the poor. So much did Cardinal Chiaramonti lavish on the poor that, to attend the conclave in 1799, he had to borrow money for travel expenses from another cardinal.

Northern Italy in 1799.
The Cisalpine Republic appears in green.

Though many bishops had abandoned their sees when Napoleon invaded northern Italy in 1797, Chiaramonti remained with his flock. Seeking to spare his people from violence, he preached a sermon on Christmas 1797 and exhorted them to obey the new Cisalpine Republic. Democracy, Chiara-monti said, is not opposed to the Gospel of Christ. If the people of Imola "respect other people's rights" and "fulfill their own duties," said Chiaramonti, there will be true equality -- the "equality that teaches man what he owes to God, to himself, and to his equals."

"When you are wholly Christians," said Chiaramonti, "you will be excellent democrats."

Imola's neighboring city, Lugo, did not follow Chiaramonti's advice. It resisted the French; and when Lugo was conquered, the French General Augereau ordered it sacked. For three hours the pillage continued, until Chiaramonti appeared before Augereau and, on his knees, begged him to spare the city.

General Augereau

Yet the bishop did not love the French republic. When the Austrians later entered Imola, Chiaramonti exhorted his people to receive them as liberators. The French again took the city, but even then Chiaramonti did not flee. Appearing before his French conquerors, he justified his support of Austria. Because of his courage, the French did not carry out their threat to exile him from Imola.

It was because of Chiaramonti's willingness to make peace with the republic that Cardinal Maury thought him the right man to be pope. He knew, too, that Chiaramonti was willing to abide by the Peace of Tolentino, even if it meant that the Papal States would never recover their lost territories. Bishop Chiaramonti thought preserving the pope's spiritual authority was far more important than salvaging his temporal power as lord of the Papal States.

Peter Returns to His People 

Pope Pius VII

The coronation of the new pope on March 21, 1800, did not occur in Venice's beautiful San Marco cathedral but in the humble chapel of the monastery of San Giorgio. There, in that church, so unlike St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the man who had taken the name of Pius VII underwent ancient ceremonies that proclaimed the glory of his office and the smallness of his humanity. He watched and listened as, thrice, they burnt a tuft of cotton and thrice repeated the words, "Holy Father, so vanishes the glory of the world." He rose as a deacon removed the episcopal miter; then another deacon, approaching with the triple crown, placed it on his head. He heard the words of wonder and fear, spoken in papal coronations century after century, and trembled when he realized they were now addressed to him: "Receive the tiara with the three crowns, and know that thou art the father of princes and the leader of kings, yea, the vicar of our Savior Jesus Christ on earth!"

Following his coronation, Pope Pius VII prepared for his journey to Rome. It had been over two years since Pius VI had been forced to leave the city and, during that period, Rome had suffered much under what had been called the Roman Republic -- a tool of French power in Italy. But in the summer of 1799, the Austrians and Russians had taken Rome and overthrown the republic. The pope could now return and take up both his spiritual and temporal power.

 

...And 26 years later, the premier of a "Horror"

On March 21, 1826, Ludwig Van Beethoven's Quartet 13 in B Flat Major (Opus 130) premiered to what was probably a rather puzzled audience. Quartet 13 is one of Beethoven's "Late Quartets," which the contemporary composer, Louis Spohr, called "indecipherable, uncorrected horrors." Very different was the judgment of the 20th century composer, Igor Stravinsky, who said the Grosse Fuge (the last movement of the quartet) is "an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will remain contemporary forever." Let your own ear be the judge of whether this piece is indeed a horror or a rather great musical work.

Beethoven String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, 

Op. 130 (Grosse Fuge) - American String Quartet