Two Murdered Kings in January

Mr Coulombe looks at King Louis XVI and King Charles I, both judicially murdered in January. There is a prayer for the Beatification of King Louis in the sidebar.

From One Peter Five

By Charles Coulombe, KCSS, STM

I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are about the shed may never be visited upon France.

— Last Words of Louis XVI

I go from a corruptible, to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.

—Last Words of Charles I

January as a whole is part of Christmastide, during which we are still celebrating the birth of the King of Kings. On January 6, in the Latin Rite of the Church, we commemorate the visit of the Three Kings. It is perhaps in keeping with the Season that two anniversaries show up within nine days of each other in late January, of two Kings who believed that following Christ in their profession might very well lead to their own respective Calvaries – as indeed it did.

Of course, we to-day are used to thinking of Kings as tyrants and are never entirely comfortable with the notion of the Kingship of Christ. Through one of those accidents of history that make Mankind so funny to watch, the Medieval order in Church and State was preserved as a desiccated structure in Great Britain and Scandinavia – reflecting the Protestant mind’s instinct for compromise – and utterly destroyed in Catholic countries, given the anti-Catholic revolutionaries’ continuingly Catholic desire for absolute truth. This ironic development makes it difficult for American Catholics, assimilated as they have been into the most purely Protestant or post-Protestant nation on Earth, to understand Catholic Monarchy at all.

Nevertheless, January 21 approaches. It is the date upon which in 1793 Louis XVI was guillotined in what Pope Pius VI referred to at the time as a martyrdom. It is a common but false perception that Louis XVI was a weak and foolish King; this is a patently wrong view, but widely held. Indeed, it needs to be widely held, because unless he was what he is so often portrayed as, the French Revolution loses its legitimacy. Since all of our current republican regimes – save, to a degree, that of these United States – derive their ideology from that struggle, so too do most of the political establishments plaguing the Modern World.

Indeed, the biggest mistake His Most Christian Majesty ever made was his intervention in the American Revolution in 1778. Although it made a rebel victory possible, it bankrupted France, and set the stage for the King being forced to call the Estates General and setting in motion the events that would destroy him, his country, and ultimately the peace of the Continent. His intervention on behalf of the rebels also ended George III’s interest in Catholic Emancipation, thanks to that King’s feeling of betrayal by his brother Monarch.

In any case, the French Revolution did occur, and its melancholy progress was highlighted by the judicial murder if Louis XVI. The Restoration would see his body and that of Marie Antoinette’s taken and decently reinterred near his ancestors at the Royal Abbey of Saint Denis north of Paris. The site of the burial saw the building of the Chapelle Expiatoire, near the Place des Pyramides. Despite Pius VI’s conviction that Louis was a martyr, his cause has never been introduced, as every French regime since 1848 has been dependent to a greater or lesser degree on the revolution for its legitimacy, and the Holy See has thus far always avoided anything that might annoy the gouvernement du jour. But in 2017, the cause of Louis’ sister, Madame Elizabeth, murdered by the revolutionaries on May 10, 1794, has been reopened.

Nevertheless, Requiem Masses for both Louis and his Queen on their anniversaries became a regular part of the French calendar and remain so until to-day. There are two claimants to the French Throne: the Legitimist Louis, Duke of Anjou, and the Orleanist Jean, Count of Paris. Without delving into which has the better claim to the throne of St. Louis, between them, their followers across France sponsor a great many Requiems for their common collateral ancestor, on and about January 21. Of course, despite the disparity between the sponsors of said Masses, there is a good bit of overlap in the attendees. This year the Orleanist Action Francaise will sponsor a torchlight procession tomorrow in Louis’ memory from the Places des Pyramides near the site of his burial to the Place de la Concorde, where he was guillotined. This Sunday will see a Legitimist-sponsored Mass at the Chapelle Expiatoire, starting at 10 AM. The Royal Parish Church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois in Paris shall see a Mass under Orleanist auspices. So it shall be throughout most of the country, and in a few places elsewhere (New York used to see one annually at the church of St. Anne; but that ceased when the Archdiocese closed the church and sold the property in accordance with what has become local custom).

Three documents are usually read at these Masses – be they Tridentine or Novus Ordo. The first is the King’s Will. It is a remarkable document, which is redolent of the murdered sovereign’s deep Catholicism:

I pardon with all my heart those who made themselves my enemies, without my have given them any cause, and I pray God to pardon them, as well as those who, through false or misunderstood zeal, did me much harm.

This is a typical expression in the touching document.

The second document is Louis’ private consecration of his Kingdom to the Sacred Heart – an attempt on the soon-to-be-martyred ruler’s part to fulfil St. Margaret Mary Alacoque’s unfulfilled request to Louis XIV. This work opens with Louis’ musings as to the cause of Frace’s then-current disquiet:

Well dost Thou see, O my God, the great sadness that oppresses my heart, the grief that wounds it and the depth of the abyss into which I have been cast. I am assailed by countless evils from all sides. To the oppression of my soul, the horrible tragedies that have befallen me and my family add up to those that cover the whole extension of the realm. The clamoring of all the misfortunate and the moans of our oppressed religion reaches my ears, and an inner voice suggests to me that perhaps Thy justice holds me accountable for all these calamities for not having restrained, during the days of my power, their main causes, which are the people’s licentiousness and the spirit of irreligion, and for supplied heresy, now triumphant, its weapons by favoring it by laws that gave it redoubled strength and enough boldness to dare anything. 

He then goes on to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart, and promises to do so publicly if he is released.

The third document is Pius VI’s allocution, Quare Lacrymae, offering this observation on his death and the revolution in general:

By a conspiracy of impious men, the most Christian king Louis XVI has been condemned to death, and the sentence has been carried out. But what sort of a sentence this was, and with what reason it was passed, We will briefly call to your attention: it was brought about without authority and without law by the National Convention – for that Convention, when the form of the more excellent monarchical regime had been abolished, placed all public power at the disposal of the People, who are governed by no reason or counsel; who perceive no distinction of things; who judge few things by truth, and many by opinion; who are inconstant, and easy to deceive and lead into every base deed; who are ungrateful, arrogant, and cruel; who rejoice in human blood, in slaughter and in funerals; and who are filled with pleasure by the pains of the dying, just as was seen in the amphitheaters of the ancients.

The Pontiff then goes on to back up his assertion that the King is a martyr – and citing, among others, the King’s ancestress, the Servant of God, Mary Queen of Scots.

The night before his trip to the scaffold, Louis XVI asked for two books; one was the prayerbook of the Order of the Holy Ghost, the leading order of Knighthood in the Kingdom. The other was a life of his and his Queen’s ancestor, Charles I of England, Scotland, Ireland, and their American colonies. As it happens, the anniversary of that King’s murder falls nine days after that of his descendant’s, on January 30. As with Louis, most of what we think we know about King Charles is a tissue of lies; but to a very large degree the legitimacy of the current regimes in Britain and the Commonwealth – and even partially of the United States – depend upon those lies.

There were three major reasons why King Charles I was murdered by Cromwell and Parliament. The first was his refusal to sanction the abolition of the Episcopate in the Church of England. Now Leo XIII would clarify the invalidity of Anglican orders two and a half centuries later in Apostolicae Curae. But two and a half centuries earlier the question was far from clearly resolved – and the Anglican Archbishop Laud of Canterbury (murdered already by Parliament in 1645) had twice been offered the red hat by the Pope of the time.

While Laud had laughingly refused the offer both times, it could not have been offered without the King’s consent; this points to the second reason he was murdered: his interest in reunion with Rome. In a letter of April 20, 1623, Charles I wrote to Pope Gregory XV:

Never did they [his ancestors] carry the standard of Christ’s Cross against his most violent enemies with a more cheerful spirit than I will use and endeavour, that the peace and unity of the Christian Commonwealth, which hath been so long banished, may be brought back, returning, as it were, from captivity or the grave; for, since the subtlety and malice of the father of discords hath sown the seeds of such unhappy differences among those who profess the Christian religion this measure I deem most necessary… Wherefore by your Holiness be persuaded that I am and ever shall be of such moderation as to keep aloof, as far as possible, from every undertaking, which may testify any hatred towards the Roman Catholic religion; nay, rather I will seize all opportunities by a gentle and generous mode of conduct, to remove all sinister suspicions entirely; so that, as we all confess one undivided Trinity, and one Christ Crucified, we may be banded together unanimously into one faith. That I may accomplish this, I will reckon as trifling all my labours and vigilance, and even the hazards of kingdom and life itself.

His interest in reunion did not lessen after marrying Henriette Marie of France; but the worsening situation with Parliament made it impossible to pursue.

However, as with Louis XVI, he did make a vow while captive, concerning the restoring of Church-Lands, dated at Oxford, April 13, 1646: 

I, Charles Stuart, do here promise, and solemnly vow, in the Presence, and for the Service, of Almighty God, That if it shall please His Divine Majesty of His Infinite Goodness, to restore me to my just Kingly Rights, and to re-establish me in my Throne, I will wholly give back to His Church, all those Impropriations which are now held by the Crown; and what Lands soever I now do, or should enjoy, which have been taken away, either from any Episcopal See, or any Cathedral or Collegiate Church, from any Abby, or other Religious House. I likewise promise for hereafter, to hold them from the Church, under such reasonable Fines and Rents, as shall be set down by some conscientious Persons, whom I promise to choose with all Uprightness of Heart, to direct me in this Particular. And I most humbly beseech God to accept of this my Vow, and to bless me in the Designs I have now in Hand, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. CHARLES R., Oxford, 13. Ap. 1646. 

Oxford was besieged by the Puritans at the time. Days later the King managed to sneak out past the enemy’s lines and reach the Scots army besieging Newark. But eventually the Scots turned him over to Cromwell, with the results we know.

The third reason for the King’s murder was his opposition to the enclosures – the enclosing of common lands by landowners that drove tenants off the land. The King had stood for the customary rights of his poorest subjects – an effort not appreciated by the oligarchy that dominated Parliament. On January 30, 1649, he was executed in front of the Banqueting House at Whitehall. As with his descendant, Louis XVI, handkerchiefs were dipped in his blood and used as holy relics. The Anglicans canonised him in 1660 – after the Restoration. His death day was made a feast in the Book of Common Prayer; so it remained until 1852. 

But while an Act of Parliament removed it from the Book of Common Prayer, the Oxford Movement was already underway – such as Keble and Newman were great devotees of the Royal Martyr. The 1890s saw the birth of the Society of King Charles the Martyr (SKCM) in both Great Britain and America. At the same time (and with some of the same people) began the Neo-Jacobite societies, such as the Order of the White Rose (now represented by the Royal Stuart Society). Some members of the Personal Ordinariates see in the murdered King Charles I – bearing in mind that Eastern Catholics are allowed to venerate certain post-1054 Orthodox Saints – thanks to his desire for reunion, a sort of protomartyr of the Ordinariates. One of England’s largest Ordinariate churches, St. Agatha’s in Portsmouth, has a very impressive shrine to him. In any case, every January 30 sees first a wreath laying ceremony at the King’s statue in Trafalgar Square, immortalised by Catholic poet Lionel Johnson’s, “By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross.” Shortly afterward, the SKCM conduct an Anglican Mass at the Banqueting House, right by the site of his murder.

Of course, one might well wonder why modern people would think about – let alone venerate the memories of – two history’s most famous losers. Well, part of it is undoubtedly because the winners shaped much of the horror we see around us to-day. Apart from that, both represented – quite consciously on their parts – something we are not used to: participating in Christ’s Kingship, whether it be in His triumphs as on the Epiphany or Palm Sunday, or else His seeming defeat on Good Friday. Of course, both Louis XVI and his Queen Marie Antoinette descended from Charles I; from Charles also descended Bl. Karl of Austria, and his wife, Servant of God Zita. From Charles’ sister, Elizabeth, the likewise-murdered Tsar Nicholas II of Russia descended. A careful study of the deaths of all of these figures reveals similar sentiments – and above all, that their deaths should not bring punishment to their peoples, but pardon. We are used to leadership that are happy to have us die for them in droves; we have no experience of leaders for whom our well-being, in this world and the next, is the greatest good. If contemplation of these rulers can teach us nothing else, we should at least learn that there have been better leaders in the past than what we have now – and so we may pray to have it again.  Let us hope that if God does answer such prayers, the leaders he sends are better served than these were.

Pictured: Memorial to King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, at the site of their relics interred at the Basilique cathédrale Saint-Denis.