www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Blessed Charles of Austria

Does anyone know where icons of Blessed Charles/Karl of Austria can be obtained? I am primarily looking for online sources. I have searched for some time and have found nothing.

Dear byzanTN,

I don't know where the icons can be found, but I'm not Catholic and would love to know some things about blessed Charles of Austria. I believe he had been mentioned quite a few times on this forum.

Zenovia

For you Zenovia:

http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintc8t.htm

Emperor Blessed Charles, pray for us that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ!

Dear Dr. Eric,

Thank you for the information. But boy am I dumb. I should have thought of googling it myself.

Zenovia

Judy Lauderbaugh of Charleroi, PA has written an icon of Blessed Charles of Austria. You can obtain prints of the icon from her. You can private message me for her contact information.

Fr. Matthew

Also, this is the official website of the Blessed Emperor Charles Prayer League:

http://www.emperor-charles.org

My mother's hometown is Charleroi, Pennsylvania.
Her late uncle was mayor there for 24 years.

The iconographer has given me her permission to publish her information on this forum. She is:

Judy Lauderbaugh
807 Oakland Ave
Charleroi, PA 15022-1850

rjlaud@comcast.net

Kaiser Karl was obviously a good person and tragic personality but I haven't heard much about his image among the Rusyns, Galicians or for that matter the Slovaks? Does anyone have anything on this?

They wouldn't exactly have a soft spot in their heart for the last guy to run a crumbling empire that used them as cannon fodder in a bloody and suicidal war.

--tim

His relics are enshrined in two Byzantine Catholic Churches: Saint Anthony in Carei, Romania and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Albuquerque, NM. Also, there was a two page flier at the Byzantine Catholic Church at Rozsak tere in Budapest about the pilgrimage in his honor in Budapest.

Galicians (who are just as much Rusyns as anybody else is) have a warm spot in their hearts for the Hapsburgs in general and Blessed Charles in particular. Their usual comment on Franz Joseph is that he was the best long-term government they had in the twentieth century. He's often referred to as "Цісарь - Дідо", which means the Emperor-Grandfather.

As to the beatification, have a look at the video of the ceremony - lots of people turned up from everyplace in Austria-Hungary, in national costumes and in the old Army uniforms.

And, of course, one should remember the Empress / Apostolic Queen Zita (the widow of Blessed Charles) presiding, in full regalia and within the altar rails, at the consecration of Bishop Daniel (Ivancho) in 1946 in Pittsburgh.

The expulsion of the Hapsburgs was accomplished quite undemocratically, against the will of the people, by England and France.

Fr. Serge

The reason I asked about the feelings of present-day people in the Old Country re Karl was because for many of us second, third generations our folks departed Austria-Hungary before Kaiser Karl's time. I know that my grandparents thought highly of Franz Josef even during the war while living in the US.

I have interviewed people in their 90s in northeast Slovakia who have recited various fables about Franz Josef and Maria Teresa, both of whom figure in folk tales in a similar way that Russian peasants told fantastic stories about the tsar (any tsar).

In fact, many of the stories are similar to the Russian versions.... Young Franz Josef disguised himself as a peasant and traveled the empire to find out what life is like and learned how poorly the peasants were being treated, and vowed to make their lives better, etc. etc.

None of them mentioned Karl I. And that makes sense. After two years of a horrible war, the old peasant belief in the goodness of the emperor (especially an ancient Franz Josef) wouldn't likely have transferred to the new guy. And even while Franz Josef lived, remember that Eastern Christians of the Empire, including Greek Catholics greeted the invading Orthodox Russians as liberators.

Frankly, I have never found nostalgia for Austria-Hungary among Slovaks or Rusyns. In fact, there's little consciousness of the empire at all. Remember that the chaos of the war was follwed by 20 years of the anti-monarchy atmosphere of the first Czechoslovak Republic. Then there was the chaos and disruption of World War II and, of course, 40 years of Communist oppression.

The one exception to that lack of Austro-Hungarian consciousness was a group of ambassadors from the successor states. I had a conversation with the Czechoslovak ambassador to the US before the country split up and she talked of a regular breakfast she had with the Polish and Hungarian ambassadors and waxed nostalgic about Austria-Hungary as a cultural and economic unit.

--tim

Leaving legendary material to one side, it is necessary to keep in mind both the distinction between Austria and Hungary and some other pertinent facts about Europe after World War I.

One would hardly expect non-Magyars who had lived in the Hungarian Kingdom to push for a restoration of Austria-Hungary, even though, had they been endowed with second sight, that would have been in their best interests. A restored Empire could probably have stopped Hitler dead in his tracks before he seized Czechoslovakia, and prevented the Fascists from taking power in Hungary. Never mind; Czechoslovakia paid for its folly in full measure.

In the early twenties, Horthy would gladly have restored the Apostolic King, if only because he knew full well that the Hungarians themselves seriously wanted the King back, and that Charles would have rewarded the Regent appropriately. However, the Regent could not restore the King in the teeth of Anglo-French opposition plus the mobilization of Czechoslovakia - Masaryk and his government were Masonic, and in league with the former Entente to keep the Empire in the history books and the Emperor as far away as possible.

When Emperor Charles attempted - twice - to regain his throne in Budapest, he acted at the express urging of the Pope, who was alarmed at the prospects of the Communists coming to power in Eastern Europe. Time has proved that the Pope was right.

While still in possession of the throne, Emperor Charles had set measures in motion to provide a much stronger share of the government for the Slavs in both Austria and Hungary. One should also note that he made no attempt to resist the break-up of the Empire by force of arms, even though he could have put up quite a fight - neither then nor later would Charles instigate a civil war; he had seen more than enough bloodshed in World War I. In consequence, he is still known as the Peace Emperor, which was among the main motives for his beatification. We need his intercessions today.

Fr. Serge