Tag Archives: Legitimism

Legitimacy and Legality Part II: A Brief Outline of the System 1.-4.

17 Tuesday Aug 2021

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Zessner_Spitzenberg

By Dr. Hans Karl von Zeßner-Spitzenberg

Translated by M. T. Scarince

Translator’s note: This is the second part in a series of posts translating the work of Austrian Legitimist philosopher Hans Karl Freiherr von Zeßner-Spitzenberg (1885-1938), an active member of the Kaiser-Karl-Gebetsliga and a martyr for the cause of Austrian independence from the National Socialist occupation. Read Part I, Part III, Part IV.

For the purposes of this work, the following system is briefly outlined:

1. Morality and Public Law

Public powers and public legal systems are also essentially subject to the same moral principles and stand within the framework of the same Divine world order as private rights, powers and authorities. Here also, human beings are their bearers, responsible for their institution and exercise. Here also, we are dealing with the powers of individuals or entire communities in the fulfillment of a profession, which, like every profession, must serve (after God’s glory) not only the beneficiary himself or the community which he serves, but also the good of his fellow men.

Indeed, the power-competence in this case is necessarily more strongly directed towards authoritative ordering power of the rights of others than it is elsewhere, on account of the main goal of public order; here also it is only within the framework of the Eternal order, which protects and recognizes the appropriate vested rights and inviolable jurisdiction of individuals. From the moral point of view, therefore, public law can be distinguished from private law in these matters only in its object and in its particular purpose, but not in general demands and basic attitudes.

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Legitimacy and Legality Part I: The Introduction

17 Tuesday Aug 2021

Posted by in Christendom

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Zessner_Spitzenberg

By Dr. Hans Karl von Zeßner-Spitzenberg

Translated by M. T. Scarince

Translator’s note: This is the first part in a series of posts translating the work of Austrian Legitimist philosopher Hans Karl Freiherr von Zeßner-Spitzenberg (1885-1938), an active member of the Kaiser-Karl-Gebetsliga and a martyr for the cause of Austrian independence from the National Socialist occupation. Read Part II, Part III, Part IV.

True Power lies in Justice

-Klemens Metternich

The law of hereditary succession of European rulers according to the indisputable Rule of Primogeniture is the first amongst all conceived earthly guarantees of any success at all, the foundation of the Legitimacy of all the rest of just relations, thus of national fortune: its violation in a single State is a universal calamity for all co-existing States.

-Adam Heinrich Müller

Condemned: The injustice of an act when successful inflicts no injury on the sanctity of right. It is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes, and even to rebel against them.

-Theses 61 and 63 of the Syllabus of Pius IX

 According to the Catholic social conception, the nature of sovereignty appears most clearly when it is familial, that is to say, when the family is its bearer and the family stands as the sponsor of the body politic. As in the family other rights will be imparted through hereditary inheritance from generation to generation, so in this case also sovereignty. That family, which bears the spirit of the State, or who— as was the case especially in Austria— even created it, gain the hereditary right to preserve it. Nowhere does this appear more obviously than in the development and continuation of the multi-national monarchy of the House of Austria. Continue reading →

Brief Reflection on Localist Legitimism

19 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by in Christendom, HRM Archive

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Enrico Fratangelo, mayor of Castellino del Biferno in Mulise, is not a legitimist. He acts as a loyal public servant of the Republic of Italy and as he says he “sang the anthem of Italy at the top of my voice.” But in the past few months, due to the Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent crisis, Fratangelo is praticing what can only be called localist legitimist politics. He has begun printing money called ducati, bearing the Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, images of Our Lady or the Saints, and bearing the inscription:

“Flourishing and Peaceful community of the Kingdom of Naples, County of Molise, land of Workers and of Patriots called Brigands. From 1861, land of unemployment and emigration.”

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The Paradox of Metternich: A Dialogue

15 Thursday Mar 2018

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Or let us take the Metternich regime in Central Europe. Basically it had a rightist character, but having been born in conscious opposition to the French Revolution it had-as so often tragically happens-learned too much from the enemy. True, it never became totalitarian, but it assumed authoritarian features and aspects which must be called leftist, as for instance the elaborate police system based on espionage, informers, censorship, and controls in every direction.

-Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism 

Metternichian Theory

The Hapsburg Restorationist: I see what you are trying to do here, and appreciate it. However, if I may offer this criticism, the Neo-Metternichian movement neither reaches far back enough into the past, nor looks far ahead enough into the future. The “First-and-a-Half Reich” of Metternich only superficially resembles the original, and kept few of the eternal principles which served as the foundation of the first. And its flaws are not only that the Holy Alliance was a poor substitute for the Holy Empire. Its main weakness is mainly in the fact that it is a “reaction” and not a response. It is defined not only by its opposition to 19th century “liberalism”, but by its adherence to 19th century “anti-liberalism”, and thus bound to the circumstances of the 19th century.

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