Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Sunday 1 April 2012

Death of Bl. Emperor Charles 1922


Today is the ninetieth anniversary of the death in exile in Madeira of the Bl. Emperor Charles of Austria in 1922. He was not yet 35 and was worn out by exile, illness and poverty, as well as concern for his peoples. His body still lies in the church he wished to be buried in on the island. When as part of his beatification process his tomb was opened his body was found to be incorrupt.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_u1fKrl84dYo/TMhpIP4vEHI/AAAAAAAAC1A/Zj1giBpuLcE/s1600/karl+funeral.jpg

The Emperor on his deathbed

Image: ritadicascia.blogspot

As regular readers will be aware he is a monarch, and now also a beatus, in whom I have a strong interest. There is more about him, and about an exhibition about him in Vienna on the website of the Emperor Charles League of Prayer , and there is also that for the cause of his consort at
the Empress Zita cause.

Their life stories are deeply moving, lives of faith and dedication both to their Christian calling and that to the service of the peoples and life of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It is story of personal faithfulness and of loss, bereavement and sorrow, both personal and national, or perhaps in the case of the Habsburg monarchy, one should write supra-national.

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