royal wedding celebration

Isn’t it exhilarating when people of the past, whose names have been so frequently repeated in history lessons in a rather one-dimensional fashion, start to become really real to you? There is such a wonderful moment when a person who was nothing but a name on a page, remembered for one small incident of their life or death, seems to become flesh and blood again before your eyes. It is rather like bringing a cloudy picture into focus through a camera lens – once there was only a vague outline but little by little the vibrancy of colour and form take shape and there is a moment of absolute clarity.

The Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand is remembered primarily (and, for the most part, solely) as the man whose murder was the catalyst to the First World War. If you Google Franz Ferdinand, the main sites that appear recount only his death (or, more frequently, the more recent music band ‘Franz Ferdinand’!). Where sites or books go a little further than the event of his death, he is described simply as unpopular, aloof, angry and not really a very attractive character.

Some time ago, I became fascinated by this man for whom, for some obscure reason, I feel great warmth. Like so many historical royalties, he is written off so glibly in one or two sentences but, the more I learn of him, the greater warmth I feel towards him. No one is ever quite so one-dimensional as history seems to present him/her.

As this is set to be a year of joyful royal weddings in Britain, here is a wonderful clip of original film footage of another joyful royal wedding, a hundred years ago: that of the lovely Archduke (future Emperor) Karl of Austria, and Zita of Bourbon-Parma. Franz Ferdinand appears several times in the clip and far from being the aloof character of popular description, he appears like any other happy participant in any other happy wedding at any time in history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whDQfFyoGEE

Incidentally, while attending one of many funerals last year (thank goodness it is now 2011 and 2010 is over!), it was striking to me to see the same mourners, the same setting, the same movement as is seen at every other funeral throughout the ages, whether it be on old film footage or in paintings. Weddings, births, Christenings and funerals - the continuity of life, the continuity of the cycle of life – there is something quite lovely in the way that, no matter how advanced and sophisticated we think we are, we still move with the same seasonal cycles, as individual families and as humanity as a whole.

Apart from the cars and the clothing, the lovely clip of Karl’s wedding, could be from any era. If you look at the faces of the people in the background, it is just a happy family occasion. There is something so beautiful about it and about the way that old film footage gives us an insight into the characters of people which often contrasts sharply with the story that is presented by historians.

I am so grateful to the person called ‘storicus’ who has uploaded so many beautiful videos to YouTube.

It bothers me a bit when institutions beatify or canonise someone because it often seems they strip that person of their true humanity, their true light, and use them for some political or religious end.

I spent my childhood among saints - studying, labelling, listing every one I could find, trying to learn everything about them, who was patron of this or that (ask me now and I can still tell you at once the patron saint of just about anything from cab drivers to charcoal burners or from heart conditions to haemorrhoids!!) - and attempted to imitate their impossible virtues, most of which involved a great deal of unnecessary suffering. Suffering, martyrdom and all kinds of self-abasement went with the territory of being a saint, unless you were one of the wacky Irish saints who sailed across oceans on cabbage leaves, or my 'patroness' the Roman martyr, Christina, who was noted above all for being unable to bear nasty smells to the extent that she rose out of the stink of her own coffin! Saints are such a strange lot! In the olden days, the wackier the better but since the Reformation, politics moved in and people were canonised or hailed as heroes by different denominations to suit the politics of the institution at the time. The idea is then that they are 'worthy of imitation'...and it all smacks of something unpleasant nowadays. How can anyone be 'worthy of imitation' if everyone is unique and beautifully brought into being by a beyond beautiful Divinity who has infinite variety? Imitation is folly and unworthy of anyone.

Karl of Austria is a man I hugely admire. I admire his humanity, his singular presence at the funeral of his uncle, Franz Ferdinand, and his offer to take care of Franz Ferdinand's children. I admire his devotion to his own children and his love of his wife; his opposition to the use of gas and the killing of civilians in WW1 and his attempts, as soon as he came to power, to broker peace. I fear that, as the Catholic Church has beatified and may soon canonise him, he will be transformed from a flesh and blood man into another plaster cast saint to suit political purposes.

The same is true of John Henry Newman, whose writings I first read when I was about 12 years old, and which moved me immensely. His understanding of Nature was beautiful (though typically Victorian verbose) and the final lines of 'Lead Kindly Light', regarding life beyond this earthly life, are so beautiful:

"The night is gone
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

I loved that man's sensibility but, while I understand it - he was a Victorian after all! - did not like his dogmatism. He wrote:

From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.

He seemed like a free spirit but one so bound up in the intellectualism of his age. I loved his Englishness and, as an English Catholic at that time, growing up in quite a world of Irish Catholicism, I loved the way he bridged that gap, but found his need to adhere to some 'system' so stifling. What was worse, and this I think is the major theme of the Victorian age, was the idea that somehow everything that is good and 'holy' involves suffering, was the idea of some kind of need for martyrdom. His conversion to Catholicism was painful because it cost him the respect of his peers and the love of at least one member of his family, but the idea that that makes him holy is abhorrent to me and dominates much of his writing.

Later in life, once he had regained acceptance by being made a Cardinal, he seems to have mellowed. He wrote:

Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not... We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.
And that, I think, is what is being done - that distorting of facts - when making someone into a saint. Newman, like dear Karl of Austria, is a man whom I admire and yet his humanity (including his love of his friend) is in danger of being distorted.

In the fairy tale of 'The Sleeping Beauty', the prince must cut his way through century-old brambles and briars to break the spell of the wicked fairy, reach the castle and wake the sleeping princess. Like all fairy tales, there is an inherent truth in the story that can be applied to many situations and it becomes increasingly apparent how apt a metaphor 'The Sleeping Beauty' is for delving into the past. 'Sleeping' kings and queens especially are surrounded by brambles and briars of lies, planted sometimes by victors who wished to justify and conceal their own faults and sometimes by the hypnosis that leads us to take everything at face value.

Richard III of England, Nicholas II of Russia and Marie Antoinette of France are three such 'sleeping beauties' surrounded by scathingly simple adjectives as murderous, foolish or weak, when in fact all three were quite different from the popular myths. Richard, happily still loved in the north of England, was been so defamed by the usurper, Henry VII, that even all these centuries later, many still see him as the 'murderer of his nephews'. Marie Antoinette is still seen as a silly and frivolous girl who said nothing apart from 'Let them eat cake...' and did not care a hoot for her people - and it is quite forgotten that she might have escaped from France but remained there because she would not desert her husband in his hour of need. And Nicholas - Nicholas-the-weak - who was anything but weak, who tried harder to prevent the First World War than any other monarch attempted; who had such a desire for peace in the Balkans that he worked from dawn till dusk and late into the night, seeking solutions - which King George shot grouse and the Kaiser took his Norwegian cruise and poor old Franz Josef was duped by his war council. And then there is the last Austrian Emperor, Karl, whom I admire more by the day, the more I learn of him. Seen as a traitor by his own people because - having seen the mindless carnage with his own eyes - he desired to end the war that he had no part in starting.

Nothing is ever as it appears and no matter how many times lies and myths are repeated, and no matter how many professors cast judgement on men and women in whose shoes they have not walked, I think anyone who wishes to take more than a cursory glimpse at history needs first and foremost a basic understanding of psychology and empathy to cut through the briars and brambles and awaken the really beautiful people of the past.

I think it is rather unfortunate that the Catholic Church decided to beatify Karl, the last Emperor of Austria-Hungary, not because I do not admire this man, but because as soon as someone is turned into a saint (or on the way to becoming a saint) it always seems that their true personality and humanity is lost in the mirage of 'sanctity'. They seem to lose their immediate appeal as fellow human beings as they are placed on some kind of holy pedestal (and deemed 'worthy of imitation' - though how it is possible for the average person to imitate an Emperor of Austria is rather unclear).

Perhaps that kind of unexpected elevation is rather appropriate in Karl's case. When he was born in 1887, the likelihood of his coming to the throne was minimal. Crown Prince Rudolf was still alive (just about!) and several others stood between Karl and his great uncle, the aging Emperor Franz Josef. Even after Rudolf's tragic death at Mayerling, others stood between young Karl and the throne, most notably, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose murder not only raised Karl to the position of heir, but sparked the First World War.

I admire Karl for several reasons but primary because he was the sole member of the family to take the trouble to be present when the bodies of Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were brought back to Vienna after their murder in Sarajevo. The vile minister, Monenuovo, who hated Franz Ferdinand, had arranged that their bodies should arrive in the middle of the night to avoid a public display of respect for the murdered archduke, but Karl was there. I think of him on that dreary platform, paying his genuine respects to the dead and grieving for Franz Ferdinand and Sophie's children. Karl also promised to take care of those children.

When, in the middle of the First World War, he became Emperor, he was seen by the war cabinet as a liability. He objected to the use of poison gas, the killing of civilians and he sought to make a separate peace. This, of course, is seen as treacherous in war time, but Karl, unlike many of those war-mongering ministers, had seen the slaughter first hand and - along with so many other ordinary soldiers - saw the pointlessness of it all.

He was a devoutly religious man, and his religion undoubtedly was an essential part of him, but I think that making him a saint is really the last thing this unassuming man would have wanted. It smacks of some kind of political motive to me and I hope that this very real human being, caught up in the trauma and tragedy of World War One, isn't turned into some kind of plaster-cast caricature of the interesting and well-meaning person that he was.