By Sean Earner
January 30, 2024, marks 375 years since the death of Charles I.
Piety is an all-serving, all-mastering virtue by which to inhabit both the modern and the postmodern present alike. Its homely humility bears within itself a hidden power by which all the dryness, doubt, and darkness are made into the very conditions of its victory. We often hear the laments, or celebrations, of the rise of irreligion and attacks on faith by the forces of secularism. But what is often forgotten in such debates is that the present epoch is one that invites and unprecedentedly enables the virtue of devotion, for those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, and voices to lift in praise.
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer,” said the philosopher Simone Weil. And the opportunity to give attention is now more present than ever. One can read, listen, watch, and engage with far more than was possible before and multiply one’s experience by connection with others who wish to provide their testimony to the mystery they have sensed in the contemporary wasteland.
Many abuse this historical chance to exhaust their souls in excessive fandoms, pseudo-relationships with podcasters, shallow commercial monomanias, and other objects of sad passions. But that should not make us cynical about the potential for good that we have here and now. Technology and the pious disposition towards the world are not intrinsically opposites, contrary to both certain secularists and certain traditionalists, but can be and in fact in many cases are, partners towards a more flourishing human condition that brings together all the paradigms of human experience in a whole that is both rich in surface beauty and hidden depths as it moves with stately speed together towards a divine climax that we can only dimly imagine. In this brave divided world, still so old and so new at the same time, many are the icons to revere, many the rites in which to join the festive throng, many the sacred orders in which to receive initiation.
King Charles I, who was executed by the Parliamentarians at the conclusion of the English Civil War, yet raised to victory as a martyred saint in Anglicanism, is an unlikely occasion for devotion by an Irish-American Catholic. And in previous historical moments, it would never have happened. Yet the collapse of temporal and spatial boundaries that has accompanied the cyber present leads to unlikely meetings. I have always respected the beheaded monarch in a relatively cool state of mind. But, finding on social media a link to a High Mass in honor of his feast day January 30, I was enthralled by the ritual sounds and music of the liturgy as I drove home from work. More deeply though, I was moved as never before by the regal but vulnerable person at the center of this both mournful and triumphant Christian festival. When I got home, I looked up online a description of his end, fastening especially to the line said to his servant that “this is my second marriage day… for before night I hope to be espoused to my blessed Jesus.” Rich and deep associations with the writings of the saints and mystics—especially those of Carmel, to which I am bound as a secular member—were stirred.
I found an audiobook biography, Charles I: An Abbreviated Life by Mark Kishlansky, and listened to it, fascinated by someone who was both clearly very human yet also capable of striving for holiness and for the uncreated Good despite the sadness and perils of the world. In the midst of this I decided to link up and join the Society of King Charles the Martyr, making an offering to his memory and in hope of his intercession from among the crowd of witnesses that have been gathered from every age, place, and nation. In the course of 24 hours, the last word of Charles, “Remember,” had reached personal fulfillment in my own mind and heart. The relay of the centuries had reached its destination, in the seemingly unlikely hyper-mediated experience of the virtual.
Not only did the technological condition enable this meeting of souls but it added a new force to the experience. Piety when truly embraced by an emancipated modern subject has an intensified charm and enticement. That one embraces God and his saints is all the more worthy when the conditions on the surface are so unfavorable. It becomes a calling that we truly and undeniably chose. Religious liberty thus adds to the merit of fidelity.
The writer Jorge Luis Borges once wrote a short story, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” Borges considers Menard’s fragmentary Quixote (which is line-for-line identical to the original) to be much richer in allusion than Miguel de Cervantes’ “original” work. Borges’ analysis describes Menard’s efforts to go beyond a mere “translation” of Don Quixote by immersing himself comprehensively in the work as to be able to actually remake it, line for line. Menard’s text must be considered in light of world events since 1602. Borges feels that any man who chooses to repeat that novel in modern times in its entirety has given it a new meaning that cannot be reduced to its predecessor.
This paradoxical line can be invoked in the case of contemporary faith. That we choose to offer up prayers for God in the present epoch means we have added a unique note to the chorus of creation. To adore the Eucharist, to pray at the office, to wear on one’s person the mark of Christ and the saints, has an added beauty in an age in which God and the gods have left a space of emptiness and silence. We prove through prayers and deeds that the divine has not fled its post cowardly but has rather given us a testing ground and preparatory room to prove ourselves as true sons. Our modern freedom can, and is, gravely abused by some. But to many others is a way of participating in the mystery of Golgotha, and that of the empty tomb.
The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation are in many respects unresolved battles and this obviously affects how one is to view devotion to the Royal Martyr. There are interesting arguments to be made that the cultus of Charles can be someday considered a valid one from within the Catholic communion, taking up a place in the truly universal public worship of Christians everywhere. One can pray and work for such a victory of ecumenism, all the more beautiful, fitting, and necessary because it would be between Christians who take Catholicity seriously as the mark and heritage of the faith. The Church has already made great efforts to reconcile with the Eastern Orthodox that were estranged by schism. Through the Ordinariate, we have begun to take serious steps to reconcile the Anglican patrimony with the Universal Body of Christ. To accept and promote the cultus of Charles I would be a striking and gallant way of approaching ever greater and more perfect union. There is no more sure and more admirable way of loving our erstwhile enemies than to acknowledge that their dead are not lacking in worth and heroism.
For now, in my status as a private layman of Rome, I will pray for him as a fellow sinner and, if he is indeed among the elect, hope for his prayers in turn. May his beatitude, whether already realized, or to come, be preserved and magnified in the flickering votive candle of my soul.
What specifically inspires admiration in the person of Charles? To put it simply, it is his qualities as a good Christian layman, his fidelity to his role as king, and his imitation of Christ as a suffering servant.
As a private man, Charles I was marked by a sense of honor, an instinct for justice, and above all a spirit of clemency. As he would repeat to his confidantes, he believed that he would prefer to be deceived than to distrust. He did not have the private vices of meanness of spirit and paranoia that are the marks of a man without internal integrity in the exercise of power.
Further, like Emperor Charles I of Austria, with whom our English monarch shared a name and so much more, he was a loving husband to his wife and father to his children, with an exalted Christian sense of both roles. Significantly, he never took a mistress even though it was a common practice of crowned heads of state at the time. Despite the troubled beginnings of his marriage, he grew to treat his spouse as a true partner in divine union.
Finally, and most importantly, he was devoted to the Virgin Mary, the saints, the relics of the same, and the Blessed Sacrament, much to the consternation of his Protestant subjects and the joys of those who took the Catholic identity of the British church seriously. He was a true heir to the Renaissance and the Baroque, lover of the arts and humanist learning. But he did not cease to carry forward the banner of the age of faith. His mind and imagination remained formed by the ancient and medieval rhythms of divine worship and praise, preserving it in the midst of an epicenter of the Reformation.
One can debate indefinitely the wisdom of this or that detail of Charles’ reign, the forced vs unforced nature of his errors which led to the unprecedented execution of an English monarch. If political success is the ultimate criterion, then Charles was a resounding failure. But what cannot be denied is that Charles was faithful to the royal office despite many adversaries and setbacks, embracing the aura of kingship and playing out that role of life to the end. In him was fulfilled the mystery of the sovereign as a sacramental image of divine rule, a special image of mankind as the Vicegerent of creation. This, paradoxically, made him even more determined to be a servant to the People, and to be their martyr. His awareness of the sacred origin of his legitimacy led him not to take for granted his power over others. It was a true grace, and thus a true gift that, to use his own words, enabled the enjoyment of the subjects under the canopy of the radically distinct sovereign.
But what above all makes Charles such a powerful image of sanctity was his end. He went to the scaffold with courage, grace, and flair, praying for mercy towards those who had condemned him and presenting eloquently the case for his cause, conscious of living out a drama that was both religious, political, and uniquely personal. An earthly king, through defeat and disgrace, lived out the paradox of the crowned victim. His imitation of Christ reached its fulfillment in the conclusion of his life, giving away the corruptible that he had been blessed so abundantly with to possess the incorruptible. It is as hard for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle as for a rich man to gain heaven. But Charles Stuart suggested that this hard saying does not make the saving light unavailable even for those most blessed by birth in the favors of the world.
Charles impresses upon the mind an image of sanctity that fascinates and inspires with its goodness from his mundane private existence to his royal office to his glorious exit after the humiliation of defeat. He lived the life of a good ordinary Christian; but he did so while bearing the weight of a double calling to authority and sacrificial death. The king as an individual would have been a source of blessing in his compact sphere; but the calling to be ruler made him a shining solar sign all the more beautiful in its descent into the encircling gloom, promising a new rising to come.
All of these are part of the compelling Imago Dei that Charles presented and presents to the world. But there is the fourth. We began by affirming piety in the modern condition. Charles in his highly public but also personal way, showed how to practice this virtue of worshipful attention to each . In his devotion to God, family, and people during the tribulations of the early modern epoch, he showed the possibility of faith despite the forces of social and religious anarchy and breakdown. In him we see the possibility of a life in accordance with God despite all scoffing and persecution. And this experience allows one to encounter the contemporary not as a mere curse but as a condition for a heroic fidelity that not only remembers Jerusalem but rebuilds it, even out of the very stones of Babylon.
In the sign of the headless king, the restless heart with love is conquered anew.
This piece first appeared in the Fellowship & Fairydust issue Happy & Glorious: A Royal Celebration.