Queenship and Revolution in Early Modern Europe: Henrietta Maria and Marie-Antoinette

Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine d'Autriche

Henriette-Marie de France

From History of Royal Women:

Queen Marie-Antoinette, wife of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I of England were two of the most notorious queens in European history. They both faced accusations that they had transgressed social, gender and regional norms, and attempted to defend themselves against negative reactions to their behaviour. Each queen engaged with the debates of her time concerning the place of women within their families, religion, politics, the public sphere and court culture and attempted to counter criticism of her foreign origins and political influence. The impeachment of Henrietta Maria in 1643 and trial and execution of Marie Antoinette in 1793 were also trials of monarchical government that shaped the English Civil Wars and French Revolution.

I was lucky enough to receive a copy from Palgrave Macmillan of Queenship and Revolution in Early Modern Europe: Henrietta Maria and Marie Antoinette by Carolyn Harris, which is a part of their Queenship and Power series. Marie-Antoinette has had much written about her, while Henrietta Maria seems to have been quite forgotten. I only recently received a new biography about her.

The comparison between Marie-Antoinette and Henrietta Maria is perhaps not one that immediately comes to mind, but both women lived in a time of civil unrest, albeit over 100 years apart. Both women were childless for the first part of their marriage and suffered for it. It’s a rather interesting comparison, and I especially enjoyed reading about Henrietta Maria’s impeachment, about which so little appears to have been written. Henrietta Maria managed to escape to France, but without her husband who was eventually executed in 1649. Marie-Antoinette and her family also attempted to escaped, but they were caught, and both Marie-Antoinette and her husband were executed by guillotine. (Read more.)

  My books on the two Queens available HERE. Share

Racialized DEI Hiring Is Bad for Everyone

 From AMAC:

Jason Arday was found dead on Friday. After large parts of the black Cambridge academic’s work and life story were revealed to be fraudulent, the 41-year-old chair of sociology of education resigned in early August and, many suspect, took his own life.

Western liberals have rushed to blame those who criticized Arday, accusing them of “racist” attacks that led him to commit suicide. But while Arday’s death is undoubtedly a tragedy, it does not illustrate the dangers of anti-black racism. Instead, it demonstrates the destructive nature of so-called “antiracist” DEI policies to everyone involved. Those who pushed Arday forward because of his race and not his merit and those who for years turned a blind eye to his dishonesty bear far more blame than any supposedly “racist” critics.

Jason Arday was the hero of a fairy tale irresistible to western liberals. The son of immigrants from Ghana to the U.K., he told people his childhood was spent in special education schools for physical and intellectual disabilities. He also said that he didn’t learn to speak until age 11 and to read until 18. Dyslexic and deaf in one ear, he said he developed epilepsy as a teen from enduring beatings by neighborhood kids. (Read more.)

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Did the Hittites Record the Fall of Homeric Troy in Cuneiform?

 From The Collector:

Homer’s account of the Trojan War in the Iliad, written in the 7th century BC, is one of the world’s most enduring stories. But was it purely fantasy, or based on real historical events? In the search for confirming evidence, scholars have examined clay tablets containing the historical archives of the Hittite kings at Hattusa. They preserve details of Anatolian politics in the 13th century BC, the time when the Trojan War was supposed to have been fought. While these administrative texts do not speak of golden armor or meddling gods, they do record a century of real conflict over the legendary city the Hittites called Wilusa, which many scholars believe was ancient Troy.

The Hittite Empire ruled over much of Anatolia throughout the Late Bronze Age, the era between approximately 1550 and 1150 BC. Numerous Hittite documents have been uncovered and translated. In particular, thousands of clay tablets were unearthed at Bogazköy in modern Turkey in the early 20th century, containing administrative records kept by Hittite royal scribes of the Hittite capital of Hattusa. This collection contains diplomatic letters between rulers, quite a few of which refer to attacks on western Anatolia by a nation called the Ahhiyawa. While not universally accepted, the majority of scholars agree that the Ahhiyawa were the Mycenaean Greeks. The ethnonym “Ahhiyawa” is held to be a Hittite version of “Akhaioi,” the Greek form of “Achaeans.”

As soon as these documents were uncovered and translated, historians began to realize their potential significance regarding the Iliad. According to Homer’s epic poem, a thousand Greek ships were launched against Troy in western Anatolia in the 13th century BC. This was not a war against just one city but against Troy’s many allies all over western Anatolia as well. Hittite documents dating to the same period appear to confirm that the Ahhiyawa were engaged in large-scale warfare in western Anatolia at this time. (Read more.)

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The Forgotten Prince of Versailles, Part I

 

From Philip Diaz-Lewis at Rationis Fines:

In December 1765 the heir to the French throne died at Fontainebleau, aged thirty-six. Louis-Ferdinand, Dauphin of France, had been trained from childhood for kingship and had spent fifteen years attending the councils of his father Louis XV. He would never reign. Three of his sons eventually did. The (in)famous career of his son, Louis-August, the future Louis XVI, would overshadow the memory of his father.

The funeral preaching at once made him into the exemplary figure of an ideal Christian prince. First the Jesuits, then the bishop Loménie de Brienne, then the abbé de Boismont, lined up to preach orations. In their eyes Louis-Ferdinand was a model of rational religion (religion eclairée), and piety (pieté).1 His former confessor, the abbé Soldini, then composed in 1766 the work Essai sur la vie de Mgr Louis Dauphin. He set Louis-Ferdinand against the sensualism and materialism that had come to characterise the radical French Enlightenment of the philosophes.2

Scarcely had his body been laid to rest, however, that his legacy would be contested. For the poet and literary critic Antoine-Léonard Thomas had written a great elegy in his praise, likening the prince to ancient Roman heroes and sages like the general Germanicus, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Catholic admirers complained that he was turning the late Dauphin into a virtuous pagan instead of a Christian.3 (Read more.)

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A Flawed Covid Study and the Amish

 From Sharyl's Substack:

A study was published entitled: “Closed but Not Protected: Excess Deaths Among the Amish and Mennonites During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” It appeared in the Journal of Religion and Health on June 11, 2021.

But I noticed serious flaws with the study and decided to challenge it. Among the problems I saw:

• For their study population, the researchers grouped together a sample of Mennonite and Amish— even though Mennonites typically followed CDC guidelines while the Amish did not.

• They excluded the largest Amish population in the US in Lancaster, the one that was actually the subject of the news reports.

• And their study headline was at odds with what their own data showed: even with their skewed sample, the Amish fared no worse than the rest of the US for not having shut down.

After examining the study, I tried to get further information to determine if corrections were warranted. Among other things, I wanted to know:

• Who were the peer reviewers who had signed off on a deeply flawed study?

• What did the actually study notes and data show about why the most obvious study sample population was excluded?

• What were some of the internal communications before and after publication?

With scientific studies, all the data is supposed to be available for public review and replication for obvious reasons. Studies aren’t considered scientifically valid without this kind of transparency. And. in many cases, we actually own the data because our tax money paid for the study—or some of it— or pays the salaries of some of the people involved.

But in this case, as with other with other times I’ve pursued study information, the scientific establishment found a way to exempt itself from the common sense oversight guidelines. (Read more.)

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The Terrain of Neuroscience: Brain, Consciousness, and Identity (Part 1)

 From Church Life Journal:

Philosophers use the terms “identity,” “self,” and “subject” frequently, yet much less frequently do they define them adequately; something similar is true for neuroscientists studying self-awareness. In my historical work, I have shown that “identity” has meant three distinct but related ideas in the history of philosophy and related disciplines.[4]

The first meaning, or Identity1, is endurance through time. I am the same person I was yesterday, and I will be the same person if I wake up tomorrow. This is the most basic sense of identity, as well as the most ancient meaning of the term. Identity2 concerns what the Platonic schools called the “true self.” When I answer the Delphic Oracle’s command to “know yourself,” what is it that I know? Identity2 is the most central meaning of identity. Identity3 is how I experience and know myself, both emotionally and cognitively. This is the realm of consciousness, and it is the most accessible aspect of identity.

Here I will focus on the last meaning of identity, for the simple reason that neuroscientists tend to reduce this multivalent term to this one meaning. They are not alone in doing this; the whole trajectory of modern thought on identity promotes this reduction, as I show in my book Body and Identity. Like all reductions, however, much is lost, and it promotes many unnecessary confusions.

After surveying common patterns and specific proposals in the field of consciousness studies (analytic philosophy, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience), I will at a later time describe the various conceptual problems that arise within it. There I will sketch a better account of consciousness and bring us back to the topic of identity and draw a few conclusions. (Read more.)

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The Affair of the Necklace

On August 15, 1785, the "Affair of the Necklace" broke upon France, just as Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were about to assist at the Mass of the Assumption, the patronal solemnity of the realm. Cardinal Louis de Rohan, who was supposed to offer the Mass, was publicly arrested in his pontifical robes for his part in the debacle. The Diamond Necklace scandal was one of the events which precipitated the French Revolution of 1789 and the fall of the monarchy. After perusing the internet I think it becomes necessary to affirm once again that Marie-Antoinette, according to several major biographers, was an innocent victim in one of the most sordid intrigues in history. She never sought to possess the necklace. For one thing, the necklace was not to her liking; she preferred light, aerial creations. A few scholars even doubt that Madame du Barry, whom the jewelers had in mind when they originally designed the huge, garish necklace, would have cared for it, her taste being not quite so grotesque as is generally assumed. Also, by 1785 Marie-Antoinette had cultivated simpler tastes; she was very much under the influence of Madame de Polignac, who never wore diamonds. It is known that when Boehmer tried to sell her the necklace, she remarked that France needed ships, not diamonds.

The fault of the King and Queen was in attempting to be too above board in the handling of the proceedings. Instead of trying to settle the disaster quietly, there was a public trial of the Cardinal, for whom Marie-Antoinette harbored resentments. Not only had Cardinal de Rohan rudely infiltrated one of her garden parties, but he had told ribald jokes about Marie-Antoinette's mother. He had many mistresses (including Bonnie Prince Charlie's daughter). He symbolized the worst decadence of the French nobility and the corrupt higher clergy. He was grand almoner of Versailles due to his ancestral prerogatives, but neither the king nor the queen had any use for him. The scandal rid them of him, but at a very high price. They could never have known at the onset the cast of bizarre characters with whom the Cardinal was involved, who were brought into the light of day. The Queen's name was dragged through the mud by being associated with such people in the gazettes, people who were complete strangers to her. Biographer Maxime de la Rocheterie believed that even if the king and queen had tried to suppress the scandal, the results would have been disastrous nevertheless.

How did it all come about? Through a woman who lied. Each lie told by Madame de la Motte was more outrageous than the last, yet individuals motivated by lust or ambition or greed believed her tales. She told people that she was an intimate friend of the Queen, who had never even heard of her. The swindle was tragic for all involved, especially for the innocent Marie-Antoinette, for it confirmed in the popular imagination all the salacious gossip which portrayed her as a loose, extravagant woman.

For details of the Diamond Necklace Scandal, read my book Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars.

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Welfare Fraud Racket

 From Tierney's Real News:

The 64-page report titled Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of Gender Medicine reveals that more than 225 hospitals and health systems made more than $50 MILLION in profit by building pediatric gender programs nationwide and exploiting insurance billing codes. They used diagnoses like “endocrine disorder, unspecified” and “precocious puberty” to get coverage to perform these disgusting procedures in minors. In other words, they mutilated children for profit.

JD VANCE: “It turns out that convincing vulnerable children to reject their gender can create patients for life, earning hospitals tens of thousands of dollars in additional revenue per child. For years now, some hospitals and healthcare providers have been subjecting children to horrific, experimental treatments in service of radical gender ideologies.

Today, thanks to the Wolves in White Coats report released by the HHS, we know why: profit. It turns out that convincing vulnerable children to reject their gender can create patients for life, earning hospitals tens of thousands of dollars in additional revenue per child.

The report contains deeply disturbing allegations, and I encourage every American and every parent, to read it. More than just pushing these procedures on kids, hospitals and providers may have been defrauding Medicaid and private insurers by using misleading or fraudulent billing codes to get insurance to cover the costs.

People were getting wealthy by DOING these procedures on kids, LYING about medical implications, and collecting REWARDS!”

More than 225 hospitals and health systems built pediatric gender programs. Then they HID what they were doing to kids behind FALSE billing codes.

• $50 MILLION in puberty blockers were billed under E34.9 — “Endocrine Disorder, Unspecified”

• More than $11 MILLION found billed as “precocious puberty” for kids aged 13-17.

That’s not a paperwork error. That’s how you hide the abuse you inflicted on children.

These providers created lifelong patients (hormones, surgeries, follow-up care) - with average costs for such treatments far exceeding routine pediatric care (tens of thousands to over $100,000 per patient in some estimates cited). (Read more.)

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Merciful Love through Mary

 From Vultus Christi:

Those familiar with the devotion of total consecration to Jesus through Mary will be familiar with all these ideas. Saint Louis de Montfort says that, through Mary, every little work becomes acceptable, and even its imperfections are entirely cleansed. He recommends Mary as merciful. He states that those who take other ways have more (not less) “obscure nights, combats, strange agonies, craggy mountains, cruel thorns, and frightful deserts.” But he affirms that “by the path of Mary, we pass more gently and more tranquilly.” And because the offering of ourselves is so little, he states that we do well to offer ourselves through Mary so that Mary will offer herself with us.

Perhaps the most remarkable similarity, though, is the way that both the Oblation to Merciful Love and Total Consecration to Mary involve the handing over of everything: all we are, have, and possess, such that we die and show up at the judgment seat with empty hands, without a single good work or spiritual treasure. And yet in the case of both, this engenders confidence. We are freed to do everything and give everything — no matter how small or imperfect — for love alone with confidence that, if we truly keep nothing for ourselves, neither farthing or penny, we will be clothed with riches that are not our own, the riches of Jesus Christ and His Holy Mother. With such similarities, the question naturally arises about the compatibility of the two. Is it merely the case that some are attracted to offering themselves to Merciful Love and others to Mary, or is there, perhaps, a way in which the two fit together into a single whole? This is the question we hope to explore over the coming days.

But first, let us take a closer look at true devotion and total consecration to Mary. (Read more.)

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