'Viva la Vida'

One of my sisters insisted to me that I listen to the Coldplay song 'Viva la Vida'. She said it was about Louis XVI. I doubted that anything with a Spanish title, written by a liberal like Chris Martin, with Delacroix's painting honoring the 1830 Revolution on the cover, could have anything to do with my beloved Martyr-King. But I listened to humor her. And then listened again and again and again. I am now convinced that, in spite of the title and revolutionary imagery, the song is an ode honoring the immolation of His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVI. I have pondered the lyrics and what they express about his life, his passion and his death. At my sister's request, I have jotted down my thoughts here. The lyrics are from the Coldplay website. The comments in bold are mine.

I used to rule the world

At his coronation on June 11, 1775, Trinity Sunday, Louis XVI held the orb, which was a globe symbolizing the world beneath a cross, and so Louis as the Most Christian King was first among the rulers of the world.

Seas would rise when I gave the word

Louis XVI rebuilt the French navy, which defeated the British in the American War for Independence.

Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

During his trial in late 1792 and early 1793, Louis XVI was separated from his wife and family and was in solitary confinement in the Temple prison even on Christmas Day, when he wrote his Will. I am not sure what the reference to sweeping the streets means, except that Louis was treated by the Temple guards with insults and disrespect.

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy’s eyes

 Louis hated gambling, although it was rife at court. He did gamble when he chose to help the Americans, which was a successful gamble, and when he summoned the Estates-General in 1789, an unsuccessful gamble, which was used to overthrow him.

Listened as the crowd would sing
Now the old king is dead long live the king

Louis XVI was exceedingly popular when he came to the throne at 20 years old in 1774 at the death of his grandfather Louis XV.

One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me

Louis was given the keys of the city of Paris when he formally visited in 1774 as Dauphin with his wife Marie-Antoinette, the city where he would eventually become a prisoner in October 1789.

And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

The "pillars of salt" I am guessing refers to the refusal of the court to let go of the past, and the resistance, even in the royal family, to the reforms of Louis and Antoinette. The "pillars of sand" must refer to the bankruptcy inherited by Louis XVI from the last two monarchs, which he had to deal with from day one, in spite of the demands of the people for a glamorous court.

I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing

Perhaps a reference to the heritage of crusader kings Louis VII and St. Louis IX. Louis XVI was named for the latter, with the saint's exact name of "Louis-Auguste."

Roman cavalry choirs are singing

The French monarchy was long regarded as a defender of the papacy and was thus given the title of Eldest Daughter of the Church.

Be my mirror, my sword and shield

Louis was gradually deprived of the splendor of his palace, his armed forces and his public worship of God. The "mirror" might refer to the famous Hall of Mirrors. Louis' "sword" I think represents the army he built up, and the "shield" means his Catholic faith, all of which were materially stripped from him. What did he have left until the last few months? His children, his sister and his wife. Marie-Antoinette was his mirror, sword and shield when all else was gone. And she defended him until the moment of her own death.

Missionaries in a foreign field

The Jesuit martyrs of North America are famous but people forget that Louis XVI sent out his own missionaries in the Lapérouse expedition.

For some reason I can’t explain
Once you’d gone there was never
Never an honest word
And that was when I ruled the world

Louis XVI was plunged into an acute depression when his oldest son Louis-Joseph died after a painful illness in June of 1789, just as Louis had to deal with the Estates-General and the chaos that followed.

It was a wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in

Louis XVI would never have been king except that his older brother died of tuberculosis, a slow suffocation which people believed was caused by "bad" air. His son died of the same illness a few months before the mob broke into the palace and captured the Royal Family as prisoners.

Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn’t believe what I’d become

This appears to refer to the raids upon the Palace of the Tuileries in June and August of 1792, in which much damage was done. On August 10, 1792, the Royal Family fled the mob to take refuge with the National Assembly, where they were arrested. The Swiss Guards were massacred.

Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate

There were those who early on sought the death of the entire Royal Family. Louis, his wife and his sister, were guillotined.

Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh who would ever want to be king?

When Louis was under house arrest at the Tuileries he was basically a puppet. In his Will he lamented the misfortune of being king.

I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing
Roman cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can’t explain
I know St Peter won’t call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

Hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing
Roman cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can’t explain
I know St Peter won’t call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

  "For some reason I can’t explain/ I know St Peter won’t call my name." This verse breaks my heart because I think it is a reference to how Louis XVI was originally advised by clerics to sign the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which created a church independent of the papal supremacy. Louis felt so guilty he became ill, and when he eventually received guidance from the Pope on the matter he did everything he could to work against the document he had signed. Refusing to receive his Easter Communion in 1791 from a priest who had taken the oath to the government, he attempted to flee Paris with his family, to be captured at Varennes on the Feast of Corpus Christi. From the beginning of the ordeal, Marie-Antoinette refused to take the oath to the Civil Constitution and she and Madame Elisabeth, Louis' sister, arranged for secret Masses with priests who had not betrayed the papacy. Nevertheless, Louis' earlier perceived betrayal is the reason that has been given for why the Catholic Church, which he loved, has never beatified him.

"Never an honest word/ But that was when I ruled the world." Louis as ruler often had to go against his feelings and preferences. Although he was known to be blunt and forthright he had learned as a child to keep his thoughts to himself.

Anyway, this song captures the majesty of all that was great about the patrimony of the French monarchy, and how Louis had to take upon his shoulders the satanic rage of the fall of Christendom, while embodying in himself all the past courage, faith and mercy.

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Memorial Day, the Triumphal Arch, and the Veterans Suing to Block America's 250th Birthday Arch

 From Alexander Muse at Amuse on X:

On Memorial Day, the country pauses to honor the men who died in its uniform, and the men who came home and continued to serve the republic in quieter ways. It is a day for plain speech about loyalty, sacrifice, and the difference between the two. So it is worth being plain about the piece CBS News published this morning under the headline, “For a group of Vietnam vets, opposing Trump’s arch is about being ‘loyal to the country.’” The piece profiles Shaun Byrnes and Jon Gundersen, two of the Vietnam veterans who, alongside a third veteran and an architectural historian, sued in February to stop construction of the 250-foot Triumphal Arch planned for Memorial Circle on Columbia Island, the empty traffic circle between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. CBS frames them as career diplomats, decorated veterans, and reluctant non-partisans who have been roused from retirement by a uniquely alarming threat to the republic. The framing is the story. The men are props. And the framing collapses the moment one consults the public record.

Consider how the framing works. CBS allows Byrnes to compare the arch to the architecture of “authoritarian dictatorships,” which he says have “no rule of law, no consent of the governed,” and “monuments for the leaders.” CBS reports, with no audible skepticism, that both Byrnes and Gundersen view the arch as a monument to Trump rather than to the country’s 250th anniversary. The reader is invited to receive this as the sober judgment of patriots who have set politics aside. The reader is not told that Gundersen appeared in a 2020 video titled “Vietnam Vet and Ukraine Diplomat Talks Voting Against Trump as a Republican,” that he has spent years using his veteran status to attack the president’s Ukraine policy from a maximalist pro-Kyiv posture, or that Byrnes publicly attacked President Trump and Richard Grenell when they brokered the Kosovo-Serbia normalization, preferring the conflict to continue. The reader is not told that the burial threat in the piece, Byrnes saying he would “reconsider” interment at Arlington if the arch is built, is a rhetorical device, not a policy objection. The reader is told only what the framing requires. (Read more.)

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Audubon's 'Birds of America'

 From Country Life:

In November 2023, shortly after taking up the position of Heritage Lead at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, Claire McDade, a woman who positively thrums with all the compact energy and bright-eyed good cheer of a goldfinch on a sunny spring morning, removed the dust sheet that for the previous 30-odd years had covered a waist-high cabinet, about the size of a foosball table or perhaps a little larger, in a corner of the college’s upstairs library.

What lay beneath left her speechless.

A first edition of the first volume of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. ‘I hate to use the word, but, honestly, I was,’ she told me, ‘gobsmacked. I thought, “We’ve got to do something more with this.” I made it my mission.’

By May 2026, with necessary funding secured and conservation work done, her mission was accomplished. As of this week, the college’s Audubon is, for a few precious hours every Monday, available for public inspection. (Read more.)

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Marie-Antoinette's Mantilla

Here is the veil the Queen wore at Mass, particularly on feast days when she received Holy Communion. It is kept at the shrine of Notre-Dame de Bétharram near Lourdes. 

Is the Duchesse de Berry wearing it, here?

And is Marie-Antoinette's daughter wear the same veil, here?

 

Here is a picture of the last Tsar's niece Princess Iryna Alexandrovna in her wedding dress. It is said her veil belonged to Marie-Antoinette. Share

Why SpaceX's S-1 Is the Century's Most Important Corporate Document

 From Alexander Muse on Amuse on X:

Yesterday, Starship Flight 12 lifted 45 tons of payload to orbit, the largest single launch by mass since the Saturn V hauled Skylab in 1973. Two days earlier, SpaceX completed its S-1 registration statement with the SEC, the document that will govern the company once it begins trading under the ticker SPCX on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas. Most readers will treat these as separate stories, one a feat of engineering and the other a paperwork milestone. They are the same story. The S-1 is the corporate-law expression of what makes Starship possible, and what makes Boeing’s Starliner an embarrassment. I spent several hours reading the filing and the two exhibits containing Musk’s compensation awards, and I want to explain why every serious founder taking a company public over the next decade should study this document the way constitutional lawyers study the Federalist Papers.

Begin with the basic architecture. Before the IPO, SpaceX has three classes of common stock, but the structure investors will actually buy into is cleaner than that. As part of the offering, all of the existing Class C shares will be reclassified into Class A, leaving the public company with two classes of common stock. Class A carries 1 vote per share. Class B carries 10 votes per share. The economics across the classes are identical, meaning equal dividends, equal liquidation rights, and equivalent consideration in any sale or merger. Public investors are not subordinated economically, not by a penny. What they do not receive is the right to overrule the founder on strategic questions. The exact ownership and voting percentages are left blank in the S-1 pending final pricing, but press coverage of the filing has reported that Musk will hold somewhere around 93% of the Class B shares and approximately 85% of the total voting power after the offering. Class B holders, voting separately, are entitled under the S-1 to elect a majority of the board, which the charter sets at 51% rounded up. Class B shares automatically convert into Class A on any transfer outside a narrow set of permitted exceptions, which means the supervoting control is personal to Musk and cannot be auctioned to the highest bidder. This is the dual-class structure Larry Page defended in his 2004 Google founders’ letter, refined and hardened. (Read more.)

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Earliest English Poem

 From Euronews:

A 9th-century manuscript held in Rome has revealed the earliest known Old English poem, Caedmon’s Hymn, hidden within a copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. In the archives of a Roman library, researchers have made an astonishing discovery: a 9th-century manuscript copy of the oldest known poem in the English language - missing, until now.

The lost copy of the Hymn of Caedmon was uncovered in the archives of the National Central Library of Rome. The author of the nine-line poem is said to be a cowherd from Whitby in North Yorkshire, who was inspired after a divine visitation. The composition praising God for the creation of the world, was composed in the 7th century, and survived thanks to its inclusion in some copies of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, an 8th century history of England written in Latin by the venerable Bede, a northern English monk and saint. (Read more.)

 

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L'Ordre du Saint-Esprit

Louis XV conferring the cordon bleu

Louis the Dauphin wearing the Saint-Esprit

The Pentecost, depicted in the Royal Chapel

 The Order of the Holy Spirit was the highest of French orders of chivalry. The Ordre du Saint-Esprit was founded by Henri III in 1578 to celebrate his succession to the throne on Pentecost Sunday. According to Heraldica:

The main [orders of chivalry] under the Old Regime were the Ordre de Saint-Michel (created in the 15th c. by Louis XI) and the Ordre du Saint-Esprit (Holy Ghost), created in 1578 with a limit of 100 on the number of knights: it was the most prestigious order in France, usually forbidden to foreigners (but the Spanish Borbons were often made knights in the 18th c.). Both were abolished in 1789, recreated in 1815 and abolished in 1830. A recipient of the Saint-Esprit always received Saint-Michel at the same time (they were collectively known as les ordres du Roi) though the converse was not true, of course. There was no requirement of nobility for Saint-Michel, but there were stringent ones for Saint-Esprit. The pendant of the Saint-Esprit was a Maltese cross azure, bordered argent, with a dove displayed pointing downward, and fleurs-de-lis between the branches of the cross. The necklace is made of alternating elements all shown surrounded by flames: the letter H surrounded by royal crowns (for Henri III, founder), a fleur-de-lis, and a military trophy. The sash of the Saint-Esprit was blue, and it was called in French le cordon bleu, though how the expression came to mean a first-rate cook I do not know.

Princes of the royal family were given the cordon bleu at birth but were not formally received into the Order until age twelve. The King of France was the Grand Master; below is a picture of young Louis XVI receiving the homage of the Chevaliers du Saint-Esprit, among whom unfortunately were his Orleanist cousins. How ironic, since the purpose of the Order was to unite the princes to their king.

The sash and badge of the boy-king, Louis XVII.

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The Thucydides Trap

 From Alexander Muse on Amuse on X:

There is a particular kind of intellectual fraud that flourishes only when no one with the relevant expertise is paying attention. The “Thucydides Trap,” a phrase invented by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison and elevated since 2015 to the status of a scientific law of international relations, is exactly that sort of fraud. Earlier this week, Victor Davis Hanson, the classicist who edited the standard scholarly English edition of Thucydides used in American universities, The Landmark Thucydides, finally said the quiet thing loudly. “There is no Thucydides Trap. If there were, it would not apply to us. If it did apply to us, we would not start a war. The entire notion that Premier Xi suggested is bankrupt.”

Three sentences. The mainstream international relations field will not recover from them, and it should not.

To understand why Hanson’s intervention matters, consider the scene that prompted it. On May 14, 2026, Xi Jinping sat across from President Donald Trump in Beijing and invoked the Thucydides Trap. A Communist autocrat, sitting atop a one-party police state, cited a Harvard political scientist to lecture an American president on a Greek text written by a man Xi has almost certainly never read in the original. The premier of a regime that censors its own historians reached for the authority of the Greeks to instruct the leader of the free world about the dangers of confronting authoritarian power. The inversion is so total that it borders on satire, and yet the press dutifully reported it as wisdom.

The reader will reasonably ask: why would Xi do this? Why would the head of state of a rising, or formerly rising, China reach for an obscure academic framework to explain his position to an American president? The answer is the entire argument of this essay. Xi reached for Allison because Allison’s thesis serves Beijing’s purposes. It is, and has always been, propaganda disguised as scholarship, and its function is to teach Americans to accept their own decline as a structural inevitability rather than a policy choice. (Read more.)

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Did the Apostle Thomas Travel All the Way to India?

 From The Collector:

The New Testament’s depiction of Jesus’s disciple Thomas has given him the nickname “Doubting Thomas.” Yet, ironically, according to church tradition Thomas’s faith in the risen Christ drove him to evangelize a greater distance from Palestine than even the Apostle Paul reached in his storied missionary journeys in Anatolia and Europe. Thomas may have gone as far as South India with the Christian gospel, establishing multiple churches along the way and eventually dying as a martyr on Indian soil.

When reconstructing the histories of ancient Christian figures like Thomas, historians often must rely on sources that contain legendary material. This is partly why it is customary to qualify historical claims with phrases like “according to tradition.” 

A key source for the life of Thomas is an early third-century work entitled The Acts of Thomas. This work is counted among the many pseudepigraphical narratives about the infancy years of Christianity, which tend to contain accounts deemed unreliable by modern historiographical standards. While The Acts of Thomas’s historical value is compromised as a result, the fact that a document about Thomas’s activities in India was being read in the third century suggests that both Thomas’s ministry and the backstory of the church in India were of interest to Christians in the early church. Ancient Christian writers from diverse areas also wrote of Thomas’s ministry in India. (Read more.)

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