English:
Coat-of-Arms of Leopold II and Francis II,
Holy Roman Emperors.
Deutsch:
Wappen des Kaisers Leopold II.
und Franz II. (HRR), Gold Schild.
Date: 8 January 2014.
Source: [With supporters] Otto Posse.
Image with supporters.
Inescutcheon:
Author: Tom Lemmens (in collaboration with Heralder).
(Wikimedia Commons)
Text from “The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 13.
Time After Pentecost.
Book IV.
Henry of Germany, the second King, but the first Emperor, of that name, was the last crowned representative of that branch of The House of Saxony descended from Henry the Fowler, to which God, in the 10th-Century, entrusted the mission of restoring the work of Charlemagne and Leo III.
This noble stock was rendered more glorious in the flowers of sanctity adorning its branches than in the deep and powerful roots it struck in the German soil by great and long-enduring institutions.
The Holy Spirit, Who divideth His gifts according as He will, was then calling to the loftiest destinies that land which, more than any other, had witnessed the energy of His Divine Action in the transformation of nations.
Won to Christ by Saint Boniface and the continuators of his work, the vast country, which extends beyond The Rhine and The Danube, had become the bulwark of The West, and for many years had been the scene of devastation and ruin.
Far from attempting to subjugate to her own rule the formidable tribes that inhabited it, pagan Rome, at the very zenith of her power, had had no higher ambition than to raise a wall of separation between them and the Empire: Christian Rome, more truly mistress of the World, set up in their very midst the Seat of The Holy Roman Empire re-established by her Pontiffs.
The new Empire was to defend the rights of the common Mother, to protect Christendom from new inroads of barbarians, to win over to the Gospel or else to crush the successive hordes that would come down on her frontiers — Hungarians, Slavs, Mongols, Tartars, Ottomans.
Happy had it been for Germany if she had always understood her true glory, if the fidelity of her Princes to The Vicar of The Man-God had been equal to her people’s faith.
God, on His part, had not closed His hand. Today’s Feast shows us the crowning-point of the period of fruitful labour, when The Holy Ghost, having created Germany anew in the waters of the Sacred Font, would lead her up to the full development of a people’s perfect age.
The rest of this Article can be read in
“The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 13.
Time After Pentecost.
Book IV.
Pages 103-109.
Available from THE CENACLE PRESS
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