Tea at Trianon: Sacred Heart Badge

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

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Sacred Heart Badge

"We rose hastily," says Madame Royale . . . "My poor brother was asleep; they pulled him roughly from his bed to search it . . . They took from my mother the address of a shop, from my Aunt Élisabeth a stick of sealing-wax, and from me a Sacred Heart of Jesus and a Prayer for France."
That Sacred Heart of Jesus and that Prayer for France were closer bound together than would seem at first; and perhaps she needed all her faith in the one to be able at that moment to pray for the other.
~from The Duchesse d'Angoulême by C-A Sainte-Beuve

Accompanying devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus are the little badges which over the years have had great significance on many levels. In 1793, when the peasants of the Vendée revolted against the anti-Christian character of the French Revolution, they wore the Sacred Heart Badge into battle, with cries of "Rembarre!" The gallant revolt was viciously put down by the Revolutionary government; in the name of liberty, many peasants were tortured and massacred. To don the emblem of the Sacred Heart was to be an enemy of the new world order. Share

6 comments:

Terry Nelson said...: I would like to have my shirts made for me with the Sacred Heart image replacing the Polo insignia. Wouldn't that be neat?; June 8, 2008 at 4:34:00 PM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Totally.; June 8, 2008 at 4:47:00 PM EDT
wendybirde said...: I have always been moved by this.

Nothing goes deeper than the Sacred Heart, nothing. Love is probably the ~true~ revolution anyway...which most revolutions don't even remotely understand....; June 9, 2008 at 1:50:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Now isn't that the truth....; June 9, 2008 at 7:41:00 AM EDT
Catherine Delors said...: One of the most surprising things I learned about Fouquier-Tinville, the chief prosecutor of the Revolution Tribunal, is that he wore a medallion of the Sacred-Heart under his shirt.

How do you reconcile that with the character? It remains a mystery to me.; June 9, 2008 at 5:04:00 PM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Yes, Catherine, I heard that as well, that Fouquier-Tinville wore a religious medal when he condemned Marie-Antoinette, which his family later liked to show to guests. Who can fathom the heart of such a character? Of course, sometimes people in those days used such things in a superstitious manner, as a sort of a good luck charm, rather than as a pledge of love and devotion. And many wore such things out of habit, forgetting the deeper significance.; June 9, 2008 at 5:26:00 PM EDT