The Exiled Crown and Mitre.

Roland Flores
Jun 5
6 min read

Ave Maria! May Our Lady, Queen of the Rosary, bless us with her Divine Child Jesus, and together with St. Joseph, St. Clotilde, St. Fernando and St. Joan of Arc, pray for us! The past few days in the Roman Calendar have followed a certain theme. Starting with May 30, the feast of both King St. Fernando of Castile and St. Joan of Arc, only to be followed by the feast day of the Queenship of Mary. Then came June, the Month dedicated to the Sacred Heart, a royalist banner and symbol. June 3 was then the feast of St. Clotilde, the wife of King Clovis, the first Chrisitan-Frankish King. The theme, if you have not been able to spot it, is monarchy. This gives me a wonderful opportunity to discuss the situation of the Christian State and the Church.

The brief history of Carlism.

During the 1988 Epsicopal Consecrations by Archbishop Lefebvre, only one Royal was present, Don Sixto Enrique de Borbón, the Carlist claimant to the Spanish throne. In order to understand who Don Sixto is, we first have to go back to the French Revolution. Yes, back to that revolution that destroyed the Monarchy St. Clotilde helped establish and St. Joan helped restore. This revolution, which killed not only the French Monarchs but over 900 priests and 50,000 people, also spread across Christendom. These triumphant rebels then spread their war against the state and Church and in 1808 French revolutionaries under Napoleon invaded Spain. The Napoleonic Forces forced the Catholic Monarch, King Fernando VII to abdicate and installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the Spanish throne. This sparked uprisings in Madrid and ignited nationwide resistance. Despite Spanish regular armies being largely defeated by French forces, civilian militias rose up and proved highly effective. The Spanish armies and militias were repeatedly beaten and driven to the mountains, but they would always regroup and relentlessly return and demoralize Napoleon's troops. Eventually, in 1814, Napoleonic forces retreated out of Spain and King Fernando VII was restored. Spain proved to be a much needed thorn in the revolution’s side, which bogged down Napoleon's troops and allowed the rest of Europe to challenge him once more, culminating in his defeat in 1814. For Spain however, the damage was done. The revolution introduced liberal ideals to Spain, especially among the elite, like the Constitution of 1812, a document that was highly revolutionary for its time, which drastically limited the power of the church and crown, and is considered a foundational cornerstone of modern liberal democracy in Spain and Latin America. Upon the restoration of King Fernando VII, a bitter cycle of repression and liberal rebellion began until 1833, when King Fernando VII promulgated a new law on his death bed. This law, which focused on royal succession, was outside the framework of Spanish law at the time and passed the throne to his three year old daughter Isbaella II rather than his brother Don Carlos Maria Isidro de Bourbon. Unfortunately, Ferdinand VII was deeply influenced by his liberal wife and fell prey to a liberal and masonic cohort that had infiltrated his court. This law was enacted by the liberals in Spain because his brother, Don Carlos was a devout Catholic and a traditionalist opposed to liberalism. Don Carlos denied the validity of the Pragmatic Sanction that abolished the semi Salic Law since even if it was legal, it did not apply to him since he was born before 1830. Thus began the Carlist wars, Carlism coming from the name Carlos or the first rightful king to be dethroned by the revolution. The country splintered into two factions as the Isabelinos and Carlists. The Isabelinos supported Queen Maria Cristina and her government, and were Liberals. The Carlists advocated for the traditionalist Catholic Don Carlos. The Carlists were primarily composed of rural and traditionalist elements, and were more successful initially but were ultimately defeated in 1840 by the liberal forces. The Liberals were aided not only by France but also the United Kingdom, Portugal, and provided financial, naval, and military support to the liberals. The Only nations to support the Carlists were Austria and Russia but were unable to amount any kind of support. Two more wars followed, the Second Carlist war started in 1846 and ended with another Carlist loss in 1849, this war was rather minor and primarily fought in the Basque Country with only 5,000 Carlists fighting a force of over 50,000 Liberals. Then the third Carlist War began in 1872, when Isabella II the liberal Queen of Spain abdicated the throne in favor of the unpopular Freemason Amadeo I, son of King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy. This war saw the creation of the first Spanish Republic under Amadeo. By 1876 Carlists suffered yet another defeat, yet despite this the Carlists succeeded in slowing down liberal reforms. By 1843, the Liberals in Spain had managed to force the seizure of all Cathedrals. Similarly they had banned all male Religious orders, closed over 1,500 monasteries and closed most Catholic schools and hospitals. Under Liberal rule the number of parishes and priests was limited by the state, and all Church property was seized. The Liberal authorities also did little to stop the mob violence of the anti-clerical outbursts in the urban areas.

“the churches [were being] profaned, vandalized, burned; priests degraded, publicly insulted, murdered with impunity; asylums of virtue turned into schools of dissoluteness; monks and virgins consecrated to God [were] begging, fleeing, and falling victims of barbarism. In short, religion agonizes, and the country calls for help." However, throughout all this the Carlists always emerged as defenders of the Church. At the start of the first Carlist War, Our Lady was named General of all Carlist forces. As the decades passed, Carlism continued to fight for the Church and state not to be separated. In 1860, Carlism's royal spokesman Maria Teresa, Princess of Beira, issued several remarkable ideological proclamations “the truths, certain and infallible, of the Catholic faith form the very solid foundation of our political, civil, and domestic life." And finally in 1931, the Sacred Heart was made inserted into the Carlist Coat of Arms. In 1932, during the Second Spanish Republic, Carlist claimant Don Alfonso Carlos, made the following statement after the promulgation of the Constitution of 1931 which separated Church and State: "Catholic without qualification, as all the members of my family always were, in front of this banner and with the faith of an old crusader, always ready to sacrifice one's own life, I proclaim all the rights of the Catholic Church, which correspond to her totally unquestionable spiritual sovereignty in the midst of a people like ours, the most Catholic of all nations on Earth. For the same reason, I reject with all the force of my soul the principle of religious freedom designated by the Constitution." Then on 18 July 1936, the Bishops of Spain called for a National Crusade against the Republic, and its Communist and Anarchist allies. Under the Second Republic, Spain saw extensive violence against the Catholics. Thirteen bishops, six Thousand priests, monks, and nuns and tens of thousands of Layfaithful were killed in what historians describe as the most severe persecution since the Roman Empire. The first to answer this call were the Carlists. The Carlists fought fiercely and helped liberate Spain from the communists and their allies. And still to this day Carlism continues to fight for the Church, with their current claimant Don Sixto. No wonder, that last Catholic King of Christendom, exiled from his throne, would attend the consecrations which were exiled by the French Revolution within the church. The parrelles of the liberals occupying the church and state buildings, while the king and bishop sit exiled under tent. To this day, the Traditonal Carlist circle and Don Sixto have a personal chaplain who is an SSPX priest.

Carlism is the oldest political movement that still exists today, which remains absolutely Catholic and Monarchical. It stands as a bridge between Christendom and the present and continues to defend the political structures of Christendom. I will finish this conversation with the words of Don Jaime III in 1919: "above all other aspirations, I desire the reign of Jesus Christ over rulers and nations, in the individual and in society, because I am convinced that there is no salvation outside Him for either society or the individual."