Author Archives: Matthew Scarince

The Queen and the Emperor: 1917

21 Saturday Oct 2017

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In a world of broken promises, the Mother of God had kept her promise. It remained to be seen how many, even yet, would hear and heed her words and help her by their prayers, and by lives more pleasing to God, to change the course of history…

Charles [of Austria] explained that he sought peace not only because of a “military condition”- the strain and losses of war- but above all “as his solemn duty before God, towards the peoples of his Empire and all belligerents.” In a tempestuous ocean of aggressive and intolerant nationalism, here at last a concern for all Christendom from someone other than the Pope- most fitting in the heir to the Holy Roman Emperors who had been responsible for the temporal welfare of Christendom as a whole…

Generally condemned in consequence of these actions[¹] as a disturber of the peace, Charles- the only sovereign of the powers engaged in the First World War who had conscientiously sought peace- was banished to the Portuguese island of Madeira,  without a source of income… Madeira was Portuguese territory, Fátima not so very far away. Had Charles and Zita heard of Our Lady’s coming there? 

-Warren H. Carroll, 1917: Red Banners, White Mantle 

On the 12th of April in 1918, the last chance of a peaceful resolution to the First World  War was destroyed by French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Nearly a year before on the 13th of May in 1917, Our Lady appeared to three shepherd children at Fátima in Portugal, calling upon all who would listen to pray the Holy Rosary for the end of the war and the return of peace, which the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XV, had been advocating since the start of the war. No one among the great powers would heed the Pope’s call to peace, save for one devout son of Our Lady, the Most Catholic Emperor whose peace offers the Entente would utterly reject, Karl of Austria.

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Europe is the Empire: Contra the False “Christendom” of The Paris Statement

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

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Nationalism is also present wherever the nation is ranked above communities of even higher value, such as larger communities of people or mankind as a whole… The horrible heresy of nationalism not only destroys the unity of the West, but also corrodes each individual nation from within.

-Dietrich von Hildebrand, Austria and Nationalism

The authors of the so-called Paris Statement or “A Europe We Can Believe In” seem to believe that the true meaning of Europe is incompatible with “political empire” and that “resistance to empire” is part of invaluable heritage which Europe is losing to the “faux Christendom of universal human rights”. The authors admit that the “allure of the imperial form endured,” but that “the nation-state prevailed, the political form that joins peoplehood with sovereignty.” Yet is this really true? Is the nation-state “the hallmark of European civilization” that this manifesto claims it to be?

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Der Kaiser ist Online: The Emperor’s New Website

06 Friday Oct 2017

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A new authorized website for His Majesty Karl von Hapsburg-Lorraine was recently presented at the Ordensresidenz of the Knights of St. George of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. I highly encourage any Austro-German fluent readers and Hapsburg Restoration Movement members to visit this website, which includes  biographical information concerning the current head of the Imperial and Royal House, weekly articles concerning important topics, a history of the House of Habsburg, and information regarding the Order of the Golden Fleece, the Paneuropa Movement, the Knights of Saint Sebastian in Europe, and the Order of St. George.

The website is available at:

http://www.karlvonhabsburg.at/

Gott erhalte unsern Kaiser!

Lipka Tatars: Forgotten Heroes of the Battle of Vienna

12 Tuesday Sep 2017

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Our Tatars are entertaining themselves with falcons they have brought with them; they are guarding the prisoners, and are proving to be loyal and trustworthy.

-Jan III Sobieski, Letters to Marysieńka

Justly renowned as the saviors of Christendom, many remember King Jan Sobieski of Poland and his army, particularly the Wing Hussars, as the heroes of the Battle of Vienna of 1683, and rightly so. However, the heroic Polish warriors were only part of a much larger force which it seems popular history has forgotten. Some of the battles participants have been marginalized (such as Duke Charles of Lorraine), others such as Emperor Leopold I have been demonized with nationalistic vehemence. Still others have been simply forgotten by the popular imagination, as is the case of the Lipka Tatars.

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On Pope Leo XIII and the Legitimacy of Authorities

25 Friday Aug 2017

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“Did not Pope Leo XIII declare, in an Encyclical to French Catholics, that a new authority might, for the sake of the Common Good, receive the right to rule, when the rightful authorities have been removed and are no longer available, and a chaos has arisen so that the maintenance of order requires that new powers be established?

This is to be answered, new legitimacy comes from such emergency power only when the old Authorities and their rightfully appointed successors are not only removed from power, but no longer actually exist. In that case the path lies open, indeed it creates a new necessity, for the establishment of a new legitimate authority.  So long as the rightful Authorities are merely hindered and incapacitated, the emergency order is only permitted as an emergency order, that is to say as a curator or guardian, for so long as the rightful Authority is repressed and its Restoration hindered. However it must not set itself in opposition to this. It is therefore merely legal.”

-Dr. Hans Karl von Zeßner-Spitzenberg, Legitimität und Legalität

(The full text of Dr. H.K. von Zeßner-Spitzenberg’s Legitimität und Legalität is in the process of being translated and will be published in full on The War for Christendom)

By the Grace of God

18 Friday Aug 2017

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This era no longer wants us! This era wants to create independent nations-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. The Monarchy, our Monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian peoples. Our Emperor is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty; no other is as apostolic, no other majesty in Europe is as dependent on the Grace of God and on the faith of the peoples in the Grace of God… The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God.

-Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

Shadows of the Double-Headed Eagle

07 Monday Aug 2017

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A recent interesting article by Gerald J. Russello published on First Things, recalls the Pan-European vision of Stefan Zweig and its origins in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Though it goes deep into the problem of European Identity and Nationalism, it can only provide the shadows of hints of the solution. Like Zweig himself the article is “pessimistic about the future, but… equally convinced that the European idea remained possible.” Yet as to what the idea truly is, it remains silent. True the last concrete links to the Sacrétemporal Order have been severed, many of them centuries ago. Still the intangible remains, those who have killed the body have not killed the soul of Catholic Civilization. Indeed, the article itself asserts;

no single cultural force has been able to substitute for empire, language, or faith.

These are the three foundations of European Civilization, the Universal Catholic Faith, the Universal Language of Reason and Philosophy, and the Universal Holy Roman Empire. No cultural secularism or nationalism can replace the unity that they bring to the West, and those that have tried have only succeed in bringing wanton bloodshed and tragedy.

The Honor of the Austrian Emperors

03 Thursday Aug 2017

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This War is a scourge on Mankind; I see, with a broken heart, how it threatens to strike against the lives and possessions of thousands of my loyal subjects; I feel deeply this very moment the severe trial which this war is for my Empire, which is progressing on the path of ordered internal development, and for this requires perpetuity of peace. But the heart of the monarch must remain silent, where only honor and duty have command. Dire times have already come and passed over this Crown, which I inherited unblemished from my ancestors; the Glorious History of Our Fatherland gives witness that, when the shadows of Revolution which threaten the Highest treasures of Mankind, threatens to spread over the whole World, Divine Providence often used its servant the Sword of Austria to disperse the shadows with its lightning. We stand again on the eve of such a time, when the Revolution against all of existence is no longer merely proclaimed by sects but sent into the world by the very Thrones of power.

When I am forced to grasp the sword, it so receives this ordination, to be a guard for the Honor and Good Law of Austria, for rights of all peoples and states, for the holiest treasures of Mankind.

However, to you my peoples, who through your loyalty to your ancestral Noble House are an exemplar to all the peoples of the Earth, I send forth my call: stand to fight by my side in this turmoil with enduring loyalty, devotion, and willingness to sacrifice; your Sons, whom I have called into the ranks of my army, I your warlord, salute with my blade; You may look with pride upon them, in their hands the Eagle of Austria will be borne forth in high honor.

With God for the Fatherland!

-Emperor Franz Josef I, Excerpted from The Imperial Manifesto on the Austro-Sardinian War

Pietas Austriaca

27 Thursday Jul 2017

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By the 19th century the Hapsburgs had acquired the reputation of being the most Catholic of all European reigning houses. The historical tie with the triumphs of the Counter Reformation had left an indelible impression on the European consciousness, and as if to give their own expression to it a special form of Hapsburg piety had evolved, the Pietas Austriaca, in which family traditions clustered about the devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Cross, and the Immaculate Conception. The presence of members of the dynasty at the annual Corpus Christi procession in Vienna testified to the vitality even in the 20th century of such family traditions… The Catholic Church undoubtedly owes its survival in Danubia and other parts of Europe to the Hapsburgs… Because a Hapsburg ruler had such a compelling sense of the Grace of God that had established his family in such a position of authority he tended to be excessively scrupulous in making decisions and in weighing their moral implications… Though if often seemed that they had been motivated by dynastic interest rather than ideals, the very quest for power produced as its legitimate consequence a number of political communities in various parts of Europe, and Europeans nations would find shelter and security under Hapsburg rule. The recent tragic experience of the peoples who once composed the most outstanding of these Hapsburg creations, the Austrian monarchy of Danubia, has encouraged observers to take a more nuanced and positive view of the truly unique Hapsburg achievement.

-W.B. Slottman, The New Catholic Encyclopedia The House of Hapsburg 

Victory Beyond Defeat: Lessons from the 1938 Legitimists

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

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[This New Order] is something quite different from the Old, the Universal, the peoples-binding, the Christian established position in official life, the boundedness also of the Order of Justice and the Eternal Order proceeding from God, the faith in a moral and not naked power Order among States and Peoples, the Justice also towards men of other language and race.

-Dr. Hans Karl von Zeßner-Spitzenberg

On the morning of March 18th, 1938 in the Church of Mary of Sorrows in Grinzing, Dr. Hans Karl von Zeßner-Spitzenberg was arrested by the Gestapo during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. He was denied the reception of Holy Communion, taken to the prison on the Elisabethpromenade, and four months later transferred to the concentration camp at Dachau. When asked by the Camp Commander the reason for his imprisonment, he replied, “Because I see in Faith in God and in a Christian Austria under the Leadership of the House of Hapsburg the only Salvation for the Independence and Sovereignty of my Fatherland.” He later died of injuries sustained during his transport to Dachau, giving his life as a witness to the Legitimacy of “the Emperor who never dies.”

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