Lent at Versailles

Versailles is not usually associated with Lenten penance, but fasting and abstinence, as well as some mortifications, were observed there by many during the old regime. For one thing, there would be no plays or operas performed; all the public theaters were closed in France during Lent. The daughters of Louis XV were known for their scrupulous observance of fasting and abstinence, although Madame Victoire found such penance especially trying. According to Madame Campan:

Without quitting Versailles, without sacrificing her easy chair, she [Madame Victoire] fulfilled the duties of religion with punctuality, gave to the poor all she possessed, and strictly observed Lent and the fasts. The table of Mesdames acquired a reputation for dishes of abstinence....Madame Victoire was not indifferent to good living, but she had the most religious scruples respecting dishes of which it was allowable to partake at penitential times....The abstinence which so much occupied the attention of Madame Victoire was so disagreeable to her, that she listened with impatience for the midnight hour of Holy Saturday; and then she was immediately supplied with a good dish of fowl and rice, and sundry other succulent viands.

Their nephew Louis XVI was also known for his fastidious observance of Lent, as recorded once again by the faithful Madame Campan:

Austere and rigid with regard to himself alone, the King observed the laws of the Church with scrupulous exactness. He fasted and abstained throughout the whole of Lent. He thought it right that the queen should not observe these customs with the same strictness. Though sincerely pious, the spirit of the age had disposed his mind to toleration.

Some of the King's tolerant behavior included the permitting of certain games at court during Lent. During the Lent of 1780, the Austrian ambassador Count Mercy-Argenteau was shocked to discover Louis XVI playing blind man's bluff with Marie-Antoinette and some members of the Court. Count Mercy described the scandalous scene to the Empress Maria Theresa:

Amusements have been introduced of such noisy and puerile character that they are little suited to Lenten meditations, and still less to the dignity of the august personages who take part in them. They are games resembling blind man's bluff, that first lead to the giving of forfeits, and then to their redemption by some bizarre penance ; the commotion is kept up sometimes until late into the night. The number of persons who take part in these games, both of the Court and the town, makes them still more unsuitable ; every one is surprised to see that the King plays them with great zest, and that he can give himself up wholly to such frivolities in such a serious condition of State affairs as obtains at present.

Given the long hours that Louis XVI devoted to affairs of state and the fact that people often complained that he was too serious and reserved, it seems that Mercy should have been pleased to see the King come out of his shell a little and take some recreation. But then, Mercy often tried to cast Louis in an unfavorable light. As far as the Empress was concerned, however, Lent was not the time for any games. Louis' devotion was sincere all the same; he was constant in prayer and good works, observing the fasts of the Church for Lent and the Ember days even throughout his imprisonment.

The King's sister, Madame Elisabeth, also steadfastly kept the discipline of Lent in both good times and bad. In the Temple prison, the jailers mocked the princess' attempts to keep Lent as best she could. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette's daughter, Madame Royale, who shared her aunt's imprisonment, recorded it thus:

Having no fish, she asked for eggs or other dishes on fast-days. They refused them, saying that in equality there was no difference of days; there were no weeks, only decades. They brought us a new almanac, but we did not look at it. Another time, when my aunt again asked for fast-day food they answered: "Why, citoyenne, don't you know what has taken place? none but fools believe all that." She made no further requests.

As for Marie-Antoinette herself, she did not fast and abstain through every day of Lent as Louis did; her health did not permit it. However, after baby Madame Sophie died in 1787, it was noted that the Queen became more fervent in her devotions, especially during Lent. Jean Chalon in Chère Marie-Antoinette (p.235) notes that in 1788 she gave orders that her table strictly comply with all the regulations of the Church. Even the Swedish ambassador remarked: "The queen seems to have turned devout."

(Photo: http://www.cyrilalmeras.com/)
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Tranny Shooters

 From Tierney's Real News:

These are the people who liberal women defend and want to make a “protected class.” Why? If nothing else, I hope this latest nightmare will encourage us all to stop using the fake word “transgender” or “trans” to excuse away this madness. Men aren’t women. This man was NOT a “trans woman.” IMHO, women didn’t go through feminism to end up being surrounded by medicated men in dresses in our locker rooms, in our boardrooms, in Congress, playing in our sports and murdering their families in our name. Language is the way that liberals twist, deceive, and gaslight. I, for one, am going to try hard to remove the words “trans” and “transgender” from my vocabulary.

On February 16, 2026, at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena near Providence, Rhode Island, during a high school boys' hockey game, a 56-year-old male, identified as Robert Dorgan (also known as Roberta Dorgano or Esposito), opened fire around 2:30pm ET killing his ex-wife and son - and critically injuring three others in what Rhode Island authorities bizarrely described as a “familicide stemming from a domestic dispute.” JOKE. Aidan Dorgan, 23, was murdered by his “sick” father - alongside his mother Rhonda, 52, at his younger brother’s hockey game.

Aidan’s grandparents were also among those shot. They are currently in critical condition, fighting for their lives. They were there because it was literally Senior Night at their grandson’s high school hockey game. Rhonda’s youngest son Colin Dorgan, 17, who is captain of the Blackstone Valley Schools’ hockey team, watched his father murder his brother and mother from the ice and shoot his grandparents. Colin and his sister Ava, a 20-year-old nursing student, are heartbroken by the loss of their mother and older brother. (Read more.)

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Fully Human Lives: The Jazz Greatness of Kurt Elling

 Jazz is to some people what opera is to me. From Mark Judge at Chronicles:

Elling is the premier male jazz vocalist in America. He’s been nominated for eight Grammys and won two. Elling also very plainly adores American jazz music. That seems like an obvious thing to say about a jazz singer, but in Elling’s case, it is clear that his love for it is all-consuming because it is infectious. His heart seemed to expand whenever he lovingly spoke of “this music” or of artists like Duke Ellington, Wayne Shorter, and John Scofield.

Even as so much of our culture stares into a digital AI void , the best music, Elling said, still comes from acoustic instruments, which hit you in the “right here.”  When he said “here” Elling put a fist to his chest—as well as to the backside and the brain. No matter how much AI takes over, Elling was saying, we are souls. We want to live fully human lives and feel things with all of our being.

I’ve been following Elling since 2008, when I first saw him perform—and at the same location. Elling, a former divinity student at the University of Chicago, had then commingled the lyrics of the jazz standard “My Foolish Heart” with the poetry of St. John of the Cross. Seeing him do this in concert for the first time, I was seized with a kind of spiritual rapture. As the Biblical translator Stephen Mitchell once said about encountering God, it was a feeling so big that it wasn’t inside of me but I was inside of it.

In 2010 I was able to interview the singer at Blues Alley in Georgetown. This time around, in 2026, I got to meet Elling backstage before the show. He was joined by Daniel Jamieson, the conductor of the new Strathmore Jazz Orchestra.

“When I agreed to take on the role of conductor of the Strathmore Jazz Orchestra,” Jamieson said,

one of my core stipulations was that this orchestra would never function as a backup band. The musicians themselves are the heart of the project. I want this ensemble to be presented with the same artistic importance and visibility as any guest soloist we bring in. The players are the identity of this orchestra, and I am committed to building a culture that places them at the center of every performance. 

There was no mistake about that at this concert as the orchestra was the beating heart of the performance. (Read more.)

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Marie-Antoinette: Lent and Abstinence

From East of the Sun, West of the Moon, via Vive la Reine:

At Versailles, Lent would have been marked by sermons given at least once a week, depending on who was chosen to give the special sermons and how often they were able to–or wanted to–preach. Marie Antoinette wrote to her mother on March 15th of 1773 on the subject:

This Lent we have a very good preacher three times a week; he talks of the good moral principles in the Gospels and tells everyone many truths; however I prefer the Massillon series of sermons for Lent, because they are more to my taste.

The ‘Massillon’ Marie Antoinette referred to in her letter was Jean-Baptiste Massilon (24 June 1663 - 28 September 1742); a famous bishop and preacher, well known for eloquent and poetical sermons which deal less with questions of dogma and more with issues of compassion, morality and humanity.

One of Massilon’s Lent sermons, ‘On the Fast of Lent,'  was possibly written for a sermon given at the chapel of Versailles–it certainly seems as if he was targeting those in the upper reaches of society, in any case. His words may have resonated with the young Marie Antoinette, who had been exposed to the hypocrisy of many courtiers–including those among her new family–at Versailles; who herself was turning frequently to amusements and pleasures, perhaps to occupy her mind with something other than her sorrows; and who wrote to her mother that she did not always find abstaining from meat to be easy. Perhaps Massilon’s words reminded her that, despite her mild complaints about abstaining from meat, that if those who had almost nothing gladly fasted from meat during Lent, that she–who had everything at her fingertips–could certainly abstain as well.

Of particular interest is a passage, targeted at those who complained about the Catholic tradition of abstaining from meat during Lent and sought dispensations for avoiding it:

Were you, however, to examine impartially into the state of your health, you perhaps would discover that the constant aversion you feel for self-denial and penance, has led you into an error on this subject; and that you imagine that your constitution is weak, because you never have had piety and resolution sufficient to induce you to try its strength.

If this be the case, as it probably is, can you pretend that the very reason which makes penance more necessary, is a sufficient plea for a dispensation? Your imaginary weakness is itself a crime, and ought to be expiated by extraordinary austerities, instead of exempting you from those which are common to all the faithful.

If the Church were to make any distinction among her children; if she was inclined to grant privileges to some, and none to others, it would be to those whose lowly arid dependent station exposes them to the hardships and fatigues of toilsome labour who suffer from the severities of the seasons, from hunger, from thirst, from public oppressions, and from private wrongs who have only a distant view of the pleasures which this world affords and whose happiness has attained its greatest height when a bare sufficiency is procured for themselves and families. But as for those on whom the world has lavished its choicest gifts whose greatest unhappiness arises from the satiety and disgust which is inseparable from sensual felicity, they can pretend to no other distinction than that of increased austerity, and a prolongation of the canonical rigours of penance.

But what is their conduct? The opulent, the independent, the higher classes of society the men who alone seem to need repentance the men for whom this penitential time is principally intended, are almost the only ones who plead for a dispensation; whilst the poor artisan, the indigent labourer, who eats his bread in the sweat of his brow whose days of feasting and merriment would be to the rich man days of penance and mortification, whilst he, I say, bows down with respect and submission to this holy law, and even in his poverty retrenches from his usual pittance, and makes the time of Lent a time of extraordinary suffering and penance

But, my God! the time will come when thou wilt openly espouse the cause of thy holy law, and confound the advocates of human concupiscence. The Pharisees in the gospel disfigured their faces, in order that their fasting might be remarked by men: but this is not the hypocrisy of the present day; no: after a year spent in excess, in murmurings, and in sin, the pampered disciples of a crucified Jesus put on a pale, a weak appearance at the commencement of this holy time, for the sole purpose of setting up a plausible pretext to violate in peace the law of fasting and abstinence.

The full sermon can be read here. (Read more.)

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Democrats Defund DHS

 From AMAC:

Democrats seem determined to undermine homeland security – now defunding DHS, which includes a wide swath of federal law enforcement. The potential for national disruption is high. Democrats target ICE enforcement of administrative warrants and deportation orders, but most Americans want rule of law.

In a credible February poll, 73 percent of Americans think entering the US illegally is “breaking the law,” 61 percent support “deporting” illegal aliens –  95 percent of Republicans, 64 percent of swing voters – and 58 percent reject Democrat calls to “defund ICE,” with 54 percent expressly supporting ICE.

In states like Maine, a Democrat-dominated “sanctuary” state, citizens support ICE, 84 percent in one poll supporting ICE across the state. Yet Democrats persist.

Democrats are now blocking all DHS funding – including for ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, Transportation Security Administration, US Secret Service, US Coast Guard, FEMA, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, National Infrastructure Protection Center, National Infrastructure Advisory Council – which advises the president on national cybersecurity threats.

While “essential personnel” continue to work unpaid, Democrats have adopted a lose-lose posture. They seem content to allow threats to proliferate as and if manning falls, to attack federal law enforcement – ICE – which has public support.

As of Monday, February 16, the Associated Press is reporting neither congressional Democrats nor the White House see “signs of compromise … in their battle” over ICE, which has now triggered another indefinite “partial government shutdown.” (Read more.)

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How the Kingdom of Aragon Built a Mediterranean Empire

 From The Collector:

In the 9th century, the County of Aragon was part of the Frankish dominion, ruled over by the Carolingians. Its people had weathered the storm that accompanied the fall of the Roman Empire and the ensuing chaos afterwards. In the 900s, Aragon came under the rule of the Kingdom of Pamplona (also known as Navarre). The county’s capital was located in the small city of Jaca in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula.

After the death of King Sancho III of Navarre in 1035, his kingdom was partitioned into multiple territories. One of the territories contained Sobrarbe, Ribagorza, and Aragon, all of which went to different nobles. However, the rulers of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza both died, enabling Sancho’s illegitimate son Ramiro to annex both territories into his realm. Despite being nominally linked to Navarre, Ramiro’s expanded Aragon now became one of the larger states in the region.

Ramiro never personally called himself the King of Aragon, although his subjects referred to him as king, and he is known to history Ramiro I of Aragon. His rule was brief and focused on expanding the kingdom’s borders. In 1063, he died while unsuccessfully besieging the city of Graus from the Castilians. He was succeeded by Sancho Ramirez, his eldest son. (Read more.)

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"If Ever I Cease To Love"

It is Mardi Gras. "If Ever I Cease To Love" was once the theme song of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It is a song which does not make sense, but then neither does love, most of the time. Tomorrow it will be Lent.

In a house, in a square in a quadrant
In a street, in a lane, in a road.

Turn to the left on the right hand
You see there my true love's abode

I go there a courting, And cooing to my love like a dove;
And swearing on my bended knee, if ever I cease to love,
May sheep-heads grow on apple trees, If ever I cease to love.

Chorus:
If ever I cease to love, if ever I cease to love,
May the moon be turn'd to green cream cheese,
If ever I cease to love

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Marco and Munich

 From Tierney's Real News:

Marco Rubio just gave a keynote address at the 62nd Munich Security Conference in Europe, the premier global forum for international security policy.

His speech is one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard against Godless Communism - and it succinctly explains the nightmare and foolishness of Europe (and America) abandoning God and national sovereignty to appease the atheist one-world-order Globalists - in 20 minutes.

If you only listen to one thing this weekend - let it be this. In fact, I think this speech is so powerful of an explanation that it should be played in every Christian church in America on Sunday morning. I’m not kidding.

Rubio said that Europe and U.S. belong together bound by “centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry” and that since WW2 mistakes have been made:

• Outsourcing “our sovereignty to international institutions”

• Imposing energy policies that impoverish our people “to appease a climate cult”

• Opening doors to mass migration “that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people.”

Rubio says “We owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward to rebuild.”

Some highlights:

MARCO RUBIO: “We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline!

We are prepared to do this alone but it is our preference, and our hope, to do this together with you, our friends in Europe.

America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The men who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories, the traditions, and the Christian faith of our ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.

We are part of one civilization, Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have now fallen heir.

And if at times we disagree, our disagreements come from our profound sense of concern about a Europe with which we are connected, not just economically, not just militarily. We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally. We want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe and the West must survive.” (Read more.)

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Chevalier de Bayard: The Knight Without Fear and Beyond Reproach

 From The Medieval Scholar:

Pierre Terrail, known as Chevalier de Bayard, a man who’s resolve was unyielding. Praised by his contemporaries for his gaiety and kindness he was known as “The Good Knight.” Fearless and unwavering in battle, he’d be remembered as the knight without fear and beyond reproach. Bayard, a descendant of a noble French family with a strong military tradition, was born at Château Bayard in Dauphiné, near Pontcharra in southern France. His family had a history of sacrifice in battle, with three generations of his Terrail ancestors falling in combat from 1356 to 1465. 

Bayard began his career as a page to Duke Charles I of Savoy, but in 1490, the Duke passed away. At just thirteen, Bayard impressed King Charles VIII of France with his exceptional horsemanship during a display for the Duke of Savoy, earning him the nickname “piquet” which means spur. In 1490, Bayard began serving as a man-at-arms in the household of Louis de Luxembourg, seigneur de Ligny, a close confidant of King Charles VIII of France. Even in his youth, Bayard was admired for his good looks, charm, and skill in jousting. On July 20, 1494, Bayard took part in a tournament in Lyons attended by King Charles and his court. Although not yet eighteen, he won the highest honors, impressing the king once more. (Read more.)

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