Frequently Asked Questions
The Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George is an international Catholic order of chivalry. The Order had already received numerous signs of Papal recognition and support from the middle of the 16th century and, by the end of the 17th century, it had members throughout much of Italy, with a large community in Spain as well as smaller numbers of knights in Austria, Hungary, Poland, Croatia (then part of the Kingdom of Hungary), and even the Spanish-American colonies. Pope Clement XI, in the 1718 papal bull Militantis Ecclesiae, confirmed the Order as a religious-military order of the Catholic Church, and it has been the beneficiary of many subsequent papal privileges. In 1910 Pope Pius X restored the office of Cardinal Protector of the Constantinian Order, the last incumbent of which died in 1927 (the position of Cardinal Protector no longer exists in canon law), while in 1915 Pope Benedict XV dedicated the chapel of the Order in the Basilica of Santa Croce al Flaminio, which remains in use by the Order today. Among the members of the Constantinian Order who contributed funds to the construction of the chapel was Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli, later elected Supreme Pontiff as Pope Pius XII.
The provable history of the Order dates from the mid-16th century. In 1698, the grand mastership of the Order passed to the House of Farnese, in the person of Francesco Farnese, reigning Duke of Parma. and was formally invested in the Farnese family and its heirs by Pope Clement XI. In 1731, the grand mastership passed to the Royal House of Bourbon as heirs of the Farnese, where it has remained ever since.
In the 16th and 17th centuries the Order had religious houses in northern Italy and Spain; the members, who were mostly professed knights, carried out works of charity. With the acquisition of the grand mastership by Francesco Farnese, the Order also took on a military mission. At the siege of Vienna in 1683, Constantinian knights fought under the King of Poland, Jan Sobieski, who had given his protection and various privileges to the Order. The Constantinian Regiment sent in 1716 to fight the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans under the supreme command of Prince Eugene of Savoy earned the Order praise and further privileges. The Order provided support for the poor and sick in southern Italy during the 18th and 19th centuries and, after the unification of Italy, it established youth groups, taking on many activities in support of the Church which, with Italian unification, had suffered considerable persecution and the confiscation of its property. During the First World War it provided first aid and help to prisoners of war. It repeated this role during the Second World War, when it assisted with the return of prisoners of war, working with the Allied Command in Southern Italy (the Allied Military Governor, Major General Edgar Erskine Hume, U.S. Army, was a knight grand cross of the Order). It reprised this role again at the time of the breakup of Yugoslavia, while also assisting refugees from the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. The Order awards scholarships to seminarians in Italy and Spain and recently contributed to a seminary in Mali. It provides humanitarian aid to Christian communities in the Middle East, and it has given direct aid to the victims of recent earthquakes in Italy and other natural disasters. In May 2017 it organized a special exhibition in Barcelona in conjunction with the Ministry of Education about the reign of King Charles III of Spain, who was Grand Master of the Constantinian Order from 1731 to 1759 (when he resigned the grand mastership to his son, later King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies). See https://ordenconstantiniana.org/inauguracion-de-la-exposicion-carlos-de-borbon-de-barcelona-a-napoles/?lang=en
In 2022, the Order began delivering supplies to war-ravaged Ukraine, including three fully equipped ambulances and other medical supplies. One of the ambulances, with supplies, was personally driven into Ukraine by His Royal Highness the Grand Master.
The Order’s spiritual life is central to its existence, with regular monthly Masses organized by the Italian regional delegations, while the royal commissions in Italy, Spain and Portugal carry out many other activities in support of the Church. The newer royal commissions of France, Luxembourg, Great Britain, Austria and Liechtenstein, and the United States are expanding activities to assist the spiritual life of their members, as is also expected of the regional delegations in Germany, Scandinavia and Hungary.
The major feast days of the Order are St. George’s Day (April 23) and the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14).
The Grand Master of the Constantinian Order is His Royal Highness Prince Don Pedro of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duke of Calabria.
His Royal Highness holds several dignities.
He is Grand Master of the Constantinian Order by right of male primogeniture, as the senior male line descendant of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, Grand Master of the Constantinian Order.
Separately, he is Head of the formerly reigning Royal House of the Two Sicilies, according to the succession laws of that dynasty. He is therefore the grand master of that dynasty’s senior chivalric order, the Order of St. Januarius (San Gennaro).
He is also a member of the Family of the King of Spain. He faithfully carries out all duties assigned to him by King Felipe VI, his second cousin, including the duties of President of the Council of the four Spanish military orders (the Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, Alcántara and Montesa). He was appointed President of the Council by King Juan Carlos.
(In the honors system of the Kingdom of Spain, the Constantinian Order and the Order of St. Januarius are treated on the same footing as the Orders of Malta and the Holy Sepulchre.)
The succession to the position of Grand Master of the Order is unique among Catholic orders of chivalry, in that it passes by male primogeniture within the Royal House of Bourbon (as heirs of the Farnese family).
In 1698, the grand mastership of the Order was acquired by Francesco Farnese, Duke of Parma. Pope Innocent XII’s apostolic brief Sincerae Fidei in 1699 and Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I’s imperial decree Agnoscimus et notum facimus of the same year confirmed to Francesco Farnese and his heirs the position of Grand Master, as a dignity separate and apart from the House of Farnese’s sovereignty over the Duchy of Parma.
In 1705, the Farnese grand master granted the Order new statutes, approved the following year by the Pope, which established the grand mastership as an ecclesiastical office passed by primogeniture among the male heirs of the Farnese family, a requirement confirmed again in the 1718 papal bull Militantis Ecclesiae.
In 1731, the House of Farnese died out in the male line. The positions both of Grand Master of the Constantinian Order and Duke of Parma then passed, as separate dignities, to Prince Charles of Bourbon, Infante of Spain, who was considered the heir of the House of Farnese as the eldest son of Elisabeth Farnese and King Philip V of Spain. Charles was forced to surrender the Duchy of Parma in 1736, but he retained the separate position of Grand Master of the Constantinian Order and continued to administer the Constantinian Order’s Parma estates and membership, despite no longer being Parma’s sovereign duke.
Charles’s succession as Grand Master of the Constantinian Order occurred in 1731. He subsequently became King of Naples and Sicily in 1734.
In 1759, the same Charles, still King of Naples and Sicily, inherited the throne of Spain in succession to his childless elder half-brother. Two months later, he abdicated the thrones of Naples and Sicily to his second surviving son, Ferdinand. (Ferdinand then became King Ferdinand IV of Naples and King Ferdinand III of Sicily. In 1816, after the two kingdoms were joined, he became King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies. For the sake of simplicity, we shall refer to him here as King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies). Some ten days after abdicating the thrones of Naples and Sicily, Charles abdicated the position of Constantinian Grand Master to the same Ferdinand. Thus, Charles remained Constantinian grand master after ascending the Spanish throne and after abdicating the thrones of Naples and Sicily. In his Constantinian abdication, he delegated to his son Ferdinand the position of “first born Farnese heir”, as this was a necessary condition of Ferdinand’s becoming Grand Master.
These separate abdications in 1759 underlined the fact that the Constantinian Order and its grand mastership were separate from the Crowns of Naples and Sicily (later the Crown of the Two Sicilies). Charles’s abdication of the thrones of Naples and Sicily when he became King of Spain was in execution of the Pragmatic Decree of 1759, which specified that the Crown of Naples and the Crown of Spain must not be united and held by the same monarch. The Pragmatic Decree was intended to address questions concerning the balance of power in Europe and was enacted under the provisions of two international treaties (in 1737 and 1759).
For his part, King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies confirmed the independence of the Constantinian Order from the Crowns of Naples and Sicily in a 1796 decree, which stated in part: In his (Ferdinand’s) royal person there exists two very distinct qualities, the one of monarch of the Two Sicilies, and the other of grand master of the illustrious, royal and military Constantinian Order, which though united gloriously in the same person form nonetheless at the same time two separate independent lordships.
At the time Ferdinand became Constantinian grand master, the Holy See fully recognized that succession to the position of Constantinian grand master, a dignity based in canon law, was separate from other positions, such as the secular position of King of Naples and Sicily. The Holy See recognized this again in 1861, when the Two Sicilies dynasty lost its crown. Indeed, the Holy See continued to accord privileges and recognition to the Constantinian Order for decades after the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had ceased to exist.
The Order’s Statutes of 1919, confirmed by the Holy See, and the revised Statutes of 1934-1943 (in the articles governing the succession to the grand mastership) state explicitly that the “dignity of Grand Master, reserved to the House of Bourbon, as heirs of the House of Farnese, is transmitted by male primogeniture.”
The Order’s Royal Deputation in 1935 issued a lengthy historical statement in which the separate nature of the Order from the Crown of the Two Sicilies was emphasized.
It is worth emphasizing too that succession to the Constantinian grand mastership and succession to the dignity of head of the Bourbon Two Sicilies dynasty are governed by two very different sets of laws. Under canon law, because the dignity of Constantinian grand master is an ecclesiastical office with episcopal powers (powers delegated to the Order’s Grand Prior, now Cardinal Müller), the grand mastership can only be held by males. If the male dynasts of the House of the Two Sicilies were to die out, the grand mastership would pass to the senior male of the next line of descent from Elisabeth Farnese, the House of Bourbon-Parma. In contrast, under the Two Sicilies dynastic laws, in the event the male dynasts of the House of the Two Sicilies were to die out, the succession to the dignity of head of the dynasty would pass to the female dynast most closely related to the last dynastic head.
Since the accession of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies to the position of Constantinian grand master in 1759, the Constantinian grand mastership has passed by strict male primogeniture among his direct descendants in the male line of the House of Bourbon.
The present Grand Master, HRH Prince Pedro of Bourbon, Prince of the Two Sicilies, Duke of Calabria succeeded his father as Grand Master in 2015. Prince Pedro is the senior living descendant of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies by male primogeniture. The Grand Master’s heir is his eldest son, HRH Prince Jaime, Duke of Noto and Grand Prefect of the Constantinian Order.
Since 1759, the position of Constantinian Grand Master has passed by strict male primogeniture among the descendants of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies.
Although all Constantinian grand masters from 1759 to the present have been members of the Royal House of the Two Sicilies, the Constantinian Order is not a chivalric order of the House of the Two Sicilies but is instead a dignity separate and independent from the House of the Two Sicilies. The Constantinian Order is subject to the authority of the Holy See, and its character as a religious order with an hereditary grand master (a position based in canon law) has been repeatedly confirmed by Popes from the 16th to the 20th centuries. (See the response above to the question “How is the Grand Master chosen?”).
A junior prince of the Two Sicilies dynasty, HRH Prince Charles of Bourbon Two Sicilies (whose assumed title of Duke of Castro has now been acknowledged by the Duke of Calabria) claims to be Grand Master of the Constantinian Order and Head of the Royal House of the Two Sicilies, in place of the legitimate Grand Master and dynastic head, HRH Prince Don Pedro, Duke of Calabria.
The Duke of Castro’s claim to be Constantinian Grand Master is mistaken.
HRH Prince Pedro, Duke of Calabria, is the senior living descendant by male primogeniture of Ferdinand I, Constantinian Grand Master and King of the Two Sicilies, and is thus the Constantinian Grand Master. (See the response above to the question “How is the Grand Master chosen?”). Among today’s living descendants of King Ferdinand I in the line of male primogeniture, the Duke of Castro, as a member of a cadet line of the dynasty, is in 2023 only 6th in line.
The Castro claim derives from an unfortunate dispute within the Two Sicilies dynasty that dates back more than 60 years. In 1960, the undisputed Head of the Two Sicilies Royal House and undisputed Constantinian Grand Master, Prince Don Ferdinand Pio, Duke of Calabria, died without surviving male issue. His next younger brother, Prince Don Carlo, had died before him, leaving one surviving son, Prince Don Alfonso, Infante of Spain, who succeeded as Two Sicilies dynastic head and Duke of Calabria (and was immediately recognized as such by the Heads of the Royal Houses of Spain, Parma and Portugal, among others). But a junior prince of the Two Sicilies dynasty, Prince Rainieri (grandfather of the present Duke of Castro), challenged the dynastic succession. Rainieri claimed to have become both dynastic head and Constantinian grand master.
As has already been explained, any claim that the Constantinian Order grand mastership is united with the Two Sicilies Crown is entirely mistaken. (Again, see the response above to the question “How is the Grand Master chosen?”).
The Duke of Castro’s claim to be Head of the Royal House of the Two Sicilies, while also mistaken, is more complicated to address. A detailed treatment of the flaws in his claim is beyond the scope of this website, which is dedicated to the Constantinian Order, but a brief mention of a couple of key points may be helpful to the reader.
The Castro claim derives from a declaration, called the Act of Cannes, signed in 1900 by HRH Prince Carlo of the Two Sicilies, great-grandfather of the current Grand Master, HRH Prince Pedro, shortly before Don Carlo’s marriage to the Princess of the Asturias, the then heiress to the throne of Spain. In essence, as discussed below, the Act of Cannes specified that Prince Carlo renounced his eventual rights to the Two Sicilies Crown in the event his wife were to succeed to the Spanish throne and he were to become King Consort of Spain.
King Charles III of Spain in his Pragmatic Decree of 1759 had confirmed the right of all his male line descendants to both thrones, but prohibited the union of the Spanish Crown with that of the Two Sicilies in one person, in order to preserve the European balance of power. The Act of Cannes expressly stated that it was signed “in execution of the Pragmatic Decree [of 1759]”, and “in accord with the laws and customs of our family.” The Pragmatic Decree and the family laws and customs merely prohibited the union of the two crowns. The Act of Cannes was intended to address a possible future event: what would happen if the Princess of the Asturias became Queen Regnant of Spain and her husband Don Carlo King Consort of Spain. If this condition were to occur, Don Carlo would have had to renounce his Two Sicilies rights to a younger son. (There were many instances of marriages between princes and princesses of both kingdoms between 1759 and 1960 without any consideration of the possibility that these might prejudice the rights of their descendants. Indeed, in 1900, weeks before Carlo’s marriage, the Spanish Minister of Justice had stated in the Spanish parliament, the Cortes, that there was no need for any renunciations by either Prince Don Carlo or his future wife, and if one was made it would in any case by null and void, in part because the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had ceased to exist in 1861.)
In the event, the Princess of the Asturias never became Queen of Spain and her husband never became King Consort. Therefore, the possible event on which the conditional renunciation of Prince Carlo was predicated never came to pass. Thus, the Act of Cannes did not prejudice any of the Two Sicilies rights of Prince Carlo and his descendants. A conditional declaration is of no effect if the condition on which it is based does not occur.
It is important to note that the Act of Cannes pertains solely to the Two Sicilies succession and has no relevance whatever to the separate position of Grand Master of the Constantinian Order. Indeed, the grand mastership of the Constantinian Order was not even mentioned in the text of the Act of Cannes.
Some of the most prominent legal scholars of various countries have analyzed the Act of Cannes and come to the same conclusion: namely, that it did not affect any of the Two Sicilies rights of Prince Carlo and his descendants.
The legality of the succession in 1964 of Prince Pedro’s father, the late Prince and Infante Carlos, Duke of Calabria, to the Headship of the Royal House of the Two Sicilies and to the Constantinian Grand Mastership was in 1983 and 1984 investigated by five of the highest state bodies of the Kingdom of Spain. All five independent state bodies (headed by the Council of State) reported unanimously to the King of Spain that Don Carlos, Duke of Calabria was the legitimate heir to both dignities. These five Spanish state institutions were: the Institute of Heraldry and Genealogy; the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Ministry of Justice; and the Council of State.
This legal examination was ordered by King Juan Carlos of Spain when, after the restoration of the Spanish monarchy in 1975, the junior Two Sicilies branch had sought the King’s recognition and had sent numerous documents on the dispute to His Majesty. Because King Charles III of Spain (who had also been King Charles VII of Naples and Sicily) had promulgated the rules of the Two Sicilies succession in his Pragmatic Decree of 1759, which he had signed in execution of several treaty obligations to which Spain remained bound, it was thought that the Spanish Crown, under King Juan Carlos as successor of King Charles III, was the appropriate authority to interpret the provisions of the succession and to resolve the dispute in a definitive manner.
CLICK HERE for a book on the Order published by the Boletin Oficial des Estado, the official organ of the Spanish State – see pages 477 to 488 for the full report of the Spanish Council of State.
More recently, on 28 November 2014 the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared the Constantinian Order and the Order of St. Januarius to be “under the protection and historically tied to the Crown of Spain” and on 2 June 2017 a further declaration by the Ministry confirmed that the Constantinian Order and the Order of St Januarius are “historically tied to the Crown of Spain”. This “historic” tie derives from the fact that King Charles III of Spain was Constantinian Grand Master even after he became King of Spain (he succeeded as King of Spain on 10 August 1759 and resigned as Constantinian Grand Master on 16 October 1759), and he retained the grand mastership of the Order of St. Januarius (which he had founded in 1738) until December 1766.
The Grand Master is a prince of the Royal House of Bourbon, which reigned first in France and then in Spain, the Two Sicilies and Parma. (Today, the Royal House of Bourbon still reigns in Spain and in Luxemburg.)
Prince Pedro’s late father, HRH Don Carlos de Borbón y Borbón, Infante of Spain, Prince of the Two Sicilies, Duke of Calabria and Head of the Royal House of the Two Sicilies, was a first cousin of King Juan Carlos of Spain. Prince Pedro’s mother, HRH Princess Anne of Orléans, is the daughter of the late Head of the Royal House of Orléans of France.
All four of the Grand Master’s grandparents were members of the House of Bourbon.
His paternal grandparents were HRH Don Alfonso de Borbón y Borbón, Infante of Spain, Prince of Bourbon Two Sicilies and Duke of Calabria and HRH Princess Alicia de Borbón y Habsburgo, Princess of Bourbon Parma.
His maternal grandparents were HRH Prince Henri of Orléans, Comte de Paris and Head of the Royal House of Orléans and HRH Princess Isabelle of Orléans-Braganza, granddaughter of the Head of the Imperial House of Brazil. The House of Orléans from which each maternal grandparent descended patrilineally was a branch of the House of Bourbon and, under King Louis-Philippe of the French, reigned in France from 1830 to 1848.
The Grand Master descends directly from the following monarchs of the House of Bourbon: King Charles X of France (brother of King Louis XVI), King Louis-Philippe of the French, King Alfonso XII of Spain, King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, and Duke Robert I of Parma.
He is also related to many other dynasties.
He descends directly from King Pedro IV of Portugal (Braganza), Emperor Pedro II of Brazil (Braganza), Emperor Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire (Habsburg), Emperor Franz I of Austria (Habsburg), and Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany (Habsburg).
The grandmother of the Grand Master’s grandmother (Isabelle, Comtesse de Paris) was Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a first cousin of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert (Prince Consort of the United Kingdom), King Leopold II of Belgium and Empress Carlota of Mexico. Prince Pedro also descends from many other German dynasties, including Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, and Hesse and the Rhine.
In 2021, the Grand Master’s son and heir, HRH Prince Jaime of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duke of Noto married in Palermo, Sicily Lady Charlotte Lindesay-Bethune, daughter of a Scottish peer, the 16th Earl of Lindsay, who is an active member of the House of Lords.
The marriage prompted two members of the American Commission of the Constantinian Order to ask whether the Grand Master had any ancestral connections to the British Royal House.
The short answer is that he is only distantly related to the current British Royal House (his great-great-grandmother, Princess Victoria of Saxe Coburg and Gotha, was a first cousin of Queen Victoria) but that he has a very unique connection to the Royal House of Stuart, which reigned over Scotland from 1371 to 1714 and over England from 1603 to 1714.
The Grand Master is one of the many descendants of a Stuart, Princess Henrietta of England, who was a sister of King Charles II and King James II of England. Various historians have considered the question of who today would be the senior living representative of the Royal House of Stuart, or, put another way, who would be the British monarch today under the old succession laws, before Parliament in 1701 excluded Catholics from the line of succession. Some researchers have identified the Head of the Bavarian Royal House, Duke Franz of Bavaria (born in 1933), as the senior living representative of the Royal House of Stuart. Others have identified Prince Pedro, Duke of Calabria.
The analysis is somewhat complicated.
In 1685, King James II succeeded as King of England, Scotland and Ireland and as Head of the Royal House of Stuart. He had been raised as an Anglican but converted to Catholicism during the dynasty’s exile in France during the 1650s. Although Parliament viewed him as a threat to the Protestant succession, the government were mindful that his two children, Mary and Anne, were firmly Protestant. In 1688, however, James II’s second wife gave birth to a son, James Francis Edward Stuart, Prince of Wales, who was baptized as a Catholic. As a son, James, Prince of Wales immediately became his father’s heir apparent, ahead of his half-sisters. Faced with a Catholic monarch and Catholic heir apparent, Parliament quickly deposed King James II, who went into exile with his son. Parliament called James II’s elder daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange to the throne as joint sovereigns. James II’s younger daughter Anne later succeeded William and Mary as monarch.
Because neither William and Mary nor Anne had children, Parliament enacted legislation to ensure the Protestant succession. Statutes were passed attainting James II’s Catholic son, James, Prince of Wales, and depriving him and any descendants of their rights to the throne. When Queen Anne, the last Stuart on the throne, died in 1714, her distant cousin, a Protestant prince from Germany, Elector George of Hanover, became King George I of Great Britain. Parliament in effect had skipped over more than 50 people in the old, pre-1701 British line of succession, all Catholic princes and princesses living on the Continent, before reaching a Protestant, George of Hanover. Under the old, pre-1701 succession laws, which Parliament had abandoned, George of Hanover was only number 56 in the line of succession.
Meantime, on the Continent, James II’s only son claimed to be the rightful King of England, as King James III. The Papacy recognized the Jacobite King James III’s claim to be king and maintained that recognition from 1701 (when King James II died) until 1766 (when the Jacobite King James III died). He was succeeded in this claim first by his elder son, Charles Edward Stuart (“Bonnie Prince Charlie”), and then by his younger son, Henry Stuart, Cardinal York, Dean of the College of Cardinals. At the death of Henry, Cardinal York (whom legitimists considered to be King Henry IX) in 1807, the Stuart succession passed to his cousin, the former King Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia, of the House of Savoy, and then continued for several generations in the House of Savoy.
The present Duke Franz of Bavaria’s great-great-great-grandmother, Princess Maria Beatrice of Savoy, was the undisputed senior representative of the Royal House of Stuart from 1824 to 1840. She would have reigned in Britain if the old rules of succession had not been altered. She married her uncle, Archduke Franz of Austria, and had children.
This uncle-niece marriage, however, introduced an element of uncertainty into the putative Stuart succession under the old, pre-1701 succession laws.
In Britain, uncle-niece marriages were prohibited and were deemed invalid. In British law, the descendants of an invalid marriage would not inherit rights, such as rights to the throne. According to this theory, the invalidity of uncle-niece marriages would prevent the Stuart succession from passing to the descendants of Princess Maria Beatrice of Savoy (including Duke Franz of Bavaria). Instead, again under this theory, the succession would pass to the next senior line of descent (the descendants of Maria Beatrice’s sister), which today is headed by Prince Pedro, Duke of Calabria. In such circumstances, Prince Pedro would be the senior living representative of the Royal House of Stuart.
On the other hand, however, various legal scholars have emphasized that British law always recognized as valid those marriages lawfully contracted in other countries. Princess Maria Beatrice of Savoy and her husband had lawfully married in the Kingdom of Sardinia according to the rites of the Catholic Church, having obtained a special dispensation from the Pope. Under this theory, Duke Franz of Bavaria is indeed the rightful heir, because British law would accord recognition to this foreign uncle-niece marriage, and the descendants of the marriage would retain full rights.
It is important to emphasize that this analysis is purely hypothetical and is based upon a consideration of genealogy and law. Neither Duke Franz of Bavaria, who heads the Bavarian dynasty, nor Prince Pedro, Duke of Calabria, who heads the Two Sicilies dynasty, has ever made the slightest suggestion of having British rights of any kind. The only issue under consideration is who today would be the senior representative of the former Royal House of Stuart.
Separate and apart from the Stuart succession, Prince Pedro, Duke of Calabria is the heir general of Edward the Confessor, King of England as well as of King David I of Scotland. He inherited this representation from his late paternal grandmother, Infante Alicia of Spain, Princess of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (born Princess of Bourbon-Parma).
The legality of the succession in 1964 of Prince Pedro’s father, the late Prince and Infante Carlos, Duke of Calabria, to the Headship of the Royal House of the Two Sicilies and to the Constantinian Grand Mastership was in 1983 and 1984 investigated by five of the highest state bodies of the Kingdom of Spain. All five independent state bodies (headed by the Council of State) reported unanimously to the King of Spain that Don Carlos, Duke of Calabria was the legitimate heir to both dignities. These five Spanish state institutions were: the Institute of Heraldry and Genealogy; the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Ministry of Justice; and the Council of State.
This legal examination was ordered by King Juan Carlos of Spain when, after the restoration of the Spanish monarchy in 1975, a junior Two Sicilies branch had sought the King’s recognition and had sent numerous documents on the dispute to His Majesty. Because King Charles III of Spain (who had also been King Charles VII of Naples and Sicily) had promulgated the rules of the Two Sicilies succession in his Pragmatic Decree of 1759, which he had signed in execution of several treaty obligations to which Spain remained bound, it was thought that the Spanish Crown, under King Juan Carlos as successor of King Charles III, was the appropriate authority to interpret the provisions of the succession and to resolve the dispute in a definitive manner.
For a discussion of these Spanish investigations, SEE the prior FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION, “Why does another Prince of the Two Sicilies currently dispute the rights of the Grand Master?”
In addition, in 1989 two internationally respected lawyers, the Lord Rawlinson of Ewell (a former Attorney General of England and Wales) and Colonel Gerald Draper (law professor and a former military prosecutor at Nuremberg) issued their own detailed examination of the questions of succession to the Grand Mastership of the Constantinian Order as well as of succession to the headship of the Two Sicilies dynasty.
For a description of the analysis of Lord Rawlinson of Ewell and Professor Gerald Draper, SEE:
The Grand Master of the Constantinian Order, HRH Prince Pedro of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duke of Calabria, Count of Caserta and Head of the Royal House of the Two Sicilies, is, in Spain, a member of the Family of the King.
Prince Pedro’s late father, the Infante Carlos of Spain, Prince of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duke of Calabria, Count of Caserta and Head of the Royal House of the Two Sicilies, was a first cousin of King Juan Carlos of Spain. Prince Pedro is a second cousin of King Felipe VI of Spain and serves His Majesty as President of
the Council of the four Spanish Military Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, Alcántara and Montesa.
On 27 June 1972, in a letter issued by his Private Secretary, the then Head of the Spanish Royal House, HRH Don Juan de Borbón y Battenberg, Count of Barcelona, set forth the line of succession to the Spanish throne as follows under the 1876 Constitution of the Kingdom of Spain, then the last monarchist constitution and the one in effect when King Alfonso XIII lost his throne:
- 1 – HRH Juan de Borbón, Count of Barcelona
- 2 – HRH Prince Juan Carlos de Borbón, Prince of Asturias
- 3 – HRH D. Felipe de Borbón y Grecia
- 4 – HRH Dña Elena de Borbón y Grecia
- 5 – HRH Dña Cristina de Borbón y Grecia
- 6 – HRH D. Carlos, Duque de Calabria, Head of the House of Two Sicilies
- 7 – HRH D. Pedro, Duque de Noto, son of the Duque de Calabria
- 8 – HRH Princess Cristina of the Two Sicilies
- 9 – HRH Princess Maria Paloma of the Two Sicilies
- 10 – HRH D. Alfonso de Baviera y de Borbón
- 11 – HRH Prince D. Alfonso de Orleans y de Borbón
- 12 – HRH D. Ataulfo de Orleans y Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
In January 1941, a month before his death, King Alfonso XIII of Spain had renounced his rights to the Spanish throne in favor of his son, Infante Juan de Borbón, Count of Barcelona. Juan de Borbón, Count of Barcelona, no. 1 on the list, was the father of Prince Juan Carlos (no. 2 on the list, who became King Juan Carlos of Spain in 1975) and the grandfather of numbers 3, 4 and 5 on the list: Felipe (now King Felipe VI of Spain), Elena and Cristina.
Carlos, Duke of Calabria and Head of the House of the Two Sicilies, no. 6 in the line of succession, later Infante Carlos of Spain, was the father of Prince Pedro, today Duke of Calabria and Constantinian Grand Master. No. 7 in the line is succession was Prince Pedro himself, then Duke of Noto.
This was the line of succession under the Spanish Constitution of 1876. That Constitution has now been replaced by the Constitution of 1978.
Under the 1978 Constitution, the first ten people in the line of succession after King Felipe VI are the latter’s two daughters and then the daughters and other grandchildren of King Juan Carlos.
Today, the Royal Family is defined as consisting of King Felipe and Queen Letizia, their two daughters (Leonor, Princess of Asturias, and Infanta Sofía), and King Felipe’s parents, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía.
The Family of the King is defined as consisting of King Felipe’s sisters and their children; the sisters of King Juan Carlos and their children; and Prince Pedro, his mother the Dowager Duchess of Calabria, his sisters, and their children.