Zita of Bourbon-Parma

Zita Maria delle Grazie of Bourbon-Parma was born on 9 May 1892 at the Villa Pianore in Tuscany, in the Kingdom of Italy, the daughter of Robert I, the last reigning Duke of Parma, and his second wife, Infanta Maria Antonia of Portugal. The ducal household was exceptionally large and devoutly Catholic: Robert had twenty-four children from two marriages, and Zita grew up among many siblings in an atmosphere of strict piety, dynastic consciousness, and multilingual education. The family divided its time among Italian properties and Austrian estates, notably Schwarzau am Steinfeld. She was educated by the Salesian Sisters at Zangberg in Bavaria and later at the Benedictine abbey of St Cecilia on the Isle of Wight, acquiring several languages and a lasting attachment to Benedictine spirituality and traditional Catholic practice.

In 1911 she married Archduke Charles of Austria, a great-nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph I, at Schloss Schwarzau. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 made Charles heir presumptive to the Dual Monarchy. Upon Franz Joseph’s death in November 1916, Charles succeeded as Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, and Zita became the last Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. During the First World War she was a politically engaged consort of strongly conservative Catholic views and encouraged her husband’s unsuccessful efforts to negotiate a separate peace, most notably through her brother Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma in the Sixtus Affair of 1917. The imperial couple had eight children. The military collapse of 1918 and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary forced the family from power.

After two failed attempts by Charles to recover the Hungarian crown in 1921, the former emperor was interned and died of pneumonia on the island of Madeira in April 1922. Zita, widowed at twenty-nine, devoted the rest of her long life to her children, to the memory of her husband, and to the Catholic faith. She never remarried and customarily wore mourning black. The family lived in Spain and then in Belgium; after the German invasion of 1940 they fled to North America, spending the war years in the United States and Canada. After 1945 she returned to Europe and eventually settled in Switzerland, residing for many years at Zizers in the canton of Graubünden. She remained a living symbol of the vanished Habsburg monarchy and of traditional Catholic kingship, and she raised her children in that same dynastic and religious spirit.

In old age she witnessed a partial rehabilitation of the Habsburg name in Austria after the easing of exile restrictions and was able to visit the former imperial lands, including a notable return in 1982. A reputation for personal holiness, fidelity in widowhood, and unwavering Catholic practice led after her death to the opening of a cause for beatification; she has been declared a Servant of God, though she has not been beatified or canonized. Zita died on 14 March 1989 at Zizers, aged ninety-six. She was buried with Habsburg ceremonial in the Imperial Crypt of the Capuchin Church in Vienna, the traditional resting place of the dynasty, while her heart was interred at Muri Abbey in Switzerland beside that of her husband.