Prayer for the emperor in pre-1955 Masses

[EphelDuath]

I’ve read that Pope Pius XII removed a prayer for the Holy Roman Emperor from the exultet in his 1955 liturgical reforms. Some questions about this:

(1) The Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist in 1806. The last person to hold the title “Holy Roman Emperor” was Franz II, who became Kaiser von Österreich (Emperor of Austria) during the Napoleonic Wars. After he died in 1835, nobody in his dynasty (the House of Habsburg-Lorraine) took the title “Holy Roman Emperor” again. The last emperor of Austria, Karl I, died in 1922, and both Austria and Hungary had become republics before then (in 1918). So why was the prayer not removed until 1955?

(2) Why was the prayer specifically for him, and not any of the other monarchs in Europe?

(3) Do traditionalist Catholics want this prayer to be reinstated?

Thanks. God bless.

 

[AJV]

I’ve read that Pope Pius XII removed a prayer for the Holy Roman Emperor from the exultet in his 1955 liturgical reforms. Some questions about this:

(1) The Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist in 1806. The last person to hold the title “Holy Roman Emperor” was Franz II, who became Kaiser von Österreich (Emperor of Austria) during the Napoleonic Wars. After he died in 1835, nobody in his dynasty (the House of Habsburg-Lorraine) took the title “Holy Roman Emperor” again. The last emperor of Austria, Karl I, died in 1922, and both Austria and Hungary had become republics before then (in 1918). So why was the prayer not removed until 1955?

(2) Why was the prayer specifically for him, and not any of the other monarchs in Europe?

(3) Do traditionalist Catholics want this prayer to be reinstated?

Thanks. God bless.

(1) Inherent conservatism in liturgical texts. In addition, there were a couple of other factors: the prayer was still used in Austria, even though the ruler did not assume the title, and the Church didn’t want to tangle with that kettle of fish (2) uncertain political conditions in the period immediately after did not lend to the removal fo the prayer (3) they did not wish to give the other titled heads an opportunity to press for their own names in the Exultet (4) I suspect also the particular idea of the prayer (see below), a dream of a unified Christian polity, remained somewhere as the reason for not removing it. For example, when Napoleon forced the Pope to concede a number of prayers for him in the Canon, Good Friday liturgy, etc. his name was added after that of the bishop, and not in the place of the Holy Roman Emperor.

(2) In several mediaevel manuscripts are found many variants of this formula for other temporal rulers of France, England, etc. In part, the commemoration of the Emperor can be traced to the fact that the missal is a descendant of the missal of the Roman Curia. But over that, the commemoration of the Emperor was very widespread because of a certain theology that was strongly promoted in Carolingian times:

God in his heaven, ruled the world, including a temporal City on earth which was governed by two viceregents, one spiritual and one temporal, who worked in harmony for the welfare of the entire Christian people. The spiritual was of course, the Pope and the temporal was the Holy Roman Emperor. The direct descendant of the Roman Empire in Augustine’s City of God was the Holy Roman Empire. Of course this idea still a few thorny problems, the most pressing of which was whether the two regents were equal - which became a VERY big problem in time. But the basic idea is that of a unified temporal-spiritual realm.

This theology, of a quasi-divine anointing, as it were, of one ruler (with however many sub-rulers) to safeguard the welfare of the Christian people was not new, and in fact, had its antecedent in the claims of the Byzantine Emperors. The Carolingians merely enlarged, elaborated and tweaked some of their ideas.