Tea at Trianon: Revolutionary

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Revolutionary

I do not know how this post for October 8 by Daniel Mitsui escaped me, but here it is now.

The word revolutionary is not a compliment. (Neither is the word humanist, which is used far more often in Catholic discourse, but that is a topic for another time.) Its use as a compliment is more worrisome than a mere malapropism; it reveals the frightening degree to which an antitraditional culture has infected the religious mind. For the last several centuries, history has been written by the humanists, the reformers, the enlightenmentarians and the modernists. Their legacy is one of death, failure, and the destruction of everything that was ever good, beautiful and true in mediaeval Christendom. Of course, they do not want to admit this, so in writing their histories, they proposed the most fantastic of fallacies - that change is good in itself, and that their heroes were great precisely because they changed things so much. Never mind that the changes were for the worse; the important thing is that they were original and influential.

wendybirde said...: Oh yes. Its amazing how much the middle ages are distorted into the "dark ages"', when in reality the beauty and spirituality then were perhaps richer than any other time. I just love the middle ages...

Peaceful Week,

Wendy; October 17, 2007 at 8:41:00 PM EDT
Enbrethiliel said...: +JMJ+

For the last several centuries, history has been written by the humanists, the reformers, the enlightenmentarians and the modernists.

The aforementioned thinkers themselves like to say that history is written by the "winners"--by which they mean that history is only the "official" version of events, not necessarily the truth. Not that I agree at all with what they're saying, but it's quite ironic how their favourite way of discrediting those they disagree with has come back to bite them in the bum!; October 18, 2007 at 8:44:00 AM EDT