Mass in memory of Louis XVI

File:Chapelle expiatoire Paris interieur.jpg

Interior view of the Expiatory Chapel, where a mass of suffrage for Louis XVI is celebrated every Sunday before January 21, in the presence of Prince Louis of Bourbon

A requiem mass for Louis XVI or mass in memory of Louis XVI is a mass celebrated for King Louis XVI. These masses take place around January 21, the anniversary of Louis XVI's execution in 1793. He is usually celebrated as a "martyr king".

History

Composed by Sigismund von Neukomm in 1813–1815 on a commission from Talleyrand, the Requiem in memory of Louis XVI was performed at a ceremony in honor of Louis XVI organized during the Congress of Vienna.

In 1817, two years after the Restoration of the monarchy by Louis XVIII and twenty-two years after the death of the last king of the Old Regime, it was the turn of the Requiem in C minor for mixed choir composed the year before by Cherubini to be performed at court.

Then, in 1823, Charles-Henri Plantade's mass for the dead was performed in memory of Queen Marie Antoinette, for the 30th anniversary of her death.

Masses in memory of Louis XVI have been celebrated every year since 1815, and popularized since the bicentennial of his execution. They are a tradition in many cities. They are often called "masses for France" and sometimes the Testament of Louis XVI is read.

Ceremony

The historian Francis Balace identifies the faithful attending these masses as traditionalists. They were also counter-revolutionaries and royalists. These masses were most often celebrated in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, but not systematically. Members of the royal families took part.

Tis sort of manifestation of adhesion towards the French monarchy have been known to take place all over France and Brussels. In Lyon, for example, masses are said every year in memory of Louis XVI with the participation of the hunting horns of the Diane Lyonnaise or the Echos du Lyonnais: for the Legitimists at the call of the association Presence of the Bourbon Memorial in Lyonnais, Forez and Beaujolais and in the presence of Prince Rémy de Bourbon-Parme (representing Prince Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Anjou), and for the Orleanists at the call of the White Carnation and the Action française and in the presence of Prince Jean d'Orléans, Duke of Vendôme.

In 2016, conductor Jean-Claude Malgoire revived Neukomm's Requiem in Memory of Louis XVI, and had it performed by the Chamber Choir of Namur. This work is one of the pieces traditionally performed in memory of Louis XVI every January 21, along with Cherubini's Requiem in C minor and Charles-Henri Plantade's funeral mass.