L to R: Professor Roberto de Mattei, Marquis Luigi Coda Nunziante, Marquess Virginia Cod Nunziante, Duke of Maqueda, Archduchess Monica of Austria at the Nobility Book launching at the Historic Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C. – September 28, 1993
After emphasizing once again the importance of the nobility’s fidelity to Catholic morals, Pius XII outlines a fascinating picture of the qualities that the nobility should manifest in order to correspond to the hopes he places in it. It especially interests the present study to note that these qualities should shine in the nobility as a fruit of long family traditions. These traditions are clearly hereditary and comprise something unique to the noble class.
“And yet—you may ask Us—what exactly must we do to achieve so lofty a goal?
Following the Washington, DC event was the Italian Nobility Book Launching in Rome, Italy.
“First of all, you must maintain an irreproachable religious and moral conduct, especially within the family, and practice a healthy austerity in life. Let the other classes be aware of the patrimony of virtues and gifts that are your own, the fruit of long family traditions: an imperturbable strength of soul, loyalty and devotion to the worthiest causes, tender and generous compassion toward the weak and the poor, a prudent and delicate manner in difficult and grave matters, and that personal prestige, almost hereditary in noble families, whereby one manages to persuade without oppressing, to sway without forcing, to conquer the minds of others, even adversaries and rivals, without humiliating them. The use of these gifts and the exercise of religious and civic virtues are the most convincing way to respond to prejudices and suspicion, since they manifest the spirit’s inner vitality, from which spring all outward vigor and fruitful works.” (1958 allocution to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility.)
Nobility Book Launching in Vienna, Austria, November 2008.
Here the Pontiff shows his illustrious listeners an adequate way of responding to the invectives of today’s vulgar egalitarian, who is opposed to the survival of the noble class.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A Theme Illuminating American Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), 40.
To read about the Washington, DC Book Launching, click here
To read about the Rome Book Launching, click here
To read about Vienna’s Book Launching, click here
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