The King in the Mountain and the Patience of Authority

The Lamentation of King Arthur or King Arthur Carried to the Land on Enchantment by William Bell Scott (1811-1890)

Previous: The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and the Discipline of Waiting

If the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus concerns the discipline of the faithful under persecution, the European motif of the King in the Mountain addresses the withdrawal of legitimate authority from a world no longer capable of receiving it. Together, the two form a coherent Christian understanding of time—one that recognizes not only the preservation of faith through waiting, but the suspension of sovereignty itself when order collapses.

Where the Seven Sleepers retreat in order to survive, the King in the Mountain withdraws because authority, when severed from order, ceases to act as such. The king does not perish, nor is he truly overthrown. He recedes. His absence is not failure but power held in reserve until it may once again be exercised without distortion.

Federico II di Svevia leads five thousand
knights into the fiery crater of Mount Etna

In Southern Italy, the figure most often associated with this motif is Frederick II, Stupor Mundi, emperor and king of Sicily, whom medieval legend placed not in a tomb but within Mount Etna (Mongibello) itself. There, beneath the mountain, Frederick II was imagined as a sovereign withholding himself from a disordered age.

This tradition was not limited to imperial figures alone. Medieval romance literature also placed King Arthur beneath Mount Etna. There he was said to dwell under the care of Morgan le Fay, the Fata Morgana (Fairy Morgana), not as a defeated king, but as one withdrawn from the world, preserved in enchantment until the proper hour.

In the Sicilian imagination, Etna thus became a shared locus of suspended sovereignty—imperial and legendary alike—where rightful authority was hidden rather than extinguished.

Contemporary politics presumes that legitimacy must constantly assert itself—through visibility, action, and consent. The older Christian intuition was austere: when authority is rejected, it does not acquiesce—it withdraws. Like the faith preserved by the holy youths of Ephesus, sovereignty abides intact outside the churn of history, awaiting a time when it may once again be exercised without sacrilege.

Seen in this light, the King in the Mountain is not a promise of imminent restoration. It is a warning. Authority, like faith, cannot be manufactured by agitation, nostalgia, or procedural imitation. Both must sometimes endure absence. Both must wait.

For the traditional Catholic today, this completes the lesson begun by the Seven Sleepers. We inherit not only a faith that survives through patience, but the memory of a legitimacy that has withdrawn because the world has lost the capacity for order. Our task is therefore twofold: to preserve belief without illusion, and to honor authority even in its absence.

The Seven Sleepers awaken when the world can recognize the faith. The King in the Mountain returns only when the world has recovered order. Neither can be forced. Both depend upon an order not of our making.

Until then, fidelity waits. Authority waits. And history is permitted to exhaust itself.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, February 6th, Feasts of Beato Angelo da Furci and Santa Dorotea