Tea at Trianon: Alessandra di Rudini (1876-1931)

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, June 4, 2008

Alessandra di Rudini (1876-1931)

The Marchesa Alessandra di Rudini, known in Carmel as Mother Marie of Jesus, came of an old Neapolitan family. Her privileged childhood was marred by her mother's ill-health and her father's womanizing. Perhaps it was the problems between her parents that led her to question her faith, a crisis which was reinforced by an atheistic teacher when she was thirteen. As Alessandra di Rudini became a young lady she moved in the highest circles of European society. A Russian Grand Duke wanted to marry her but Alessandra would not renounce her Catholic faith as would have been required, showing that her convictions may have been deeper than her doubts. Here is an account of the spiritual odyssey of how she went from a worldly and scandalous life to one of penitence and sanctity in Carmel.