Tea at Trianon: Tibidabo

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

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Tibidabo

A mountain in Barcelona. In the words of William Newton:

The city of Barcelona occupies a plain surrounded by a natural amphitheater of hills and mountains, known as the Sierra de Collserola. Its highest point, more than 1600 feet above sea level, has been known as the Monte de Tibidabo since early Christian times. The name “Tibidabo” comes from the following passage in the Vulgate translation of the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 4 verse 6, in which the Devil takes Jesus up to a high mountaintop, and offers Him the rule of all of the kingdoms of the world if He will bow down and worship Satan: “…et ait ei tibi dabo potestatem hanc universam et gloriam illorum quia mihi tradita sunt et cui volo do illa” [emphasis added.] Fortunately for us, of course, Christ refused so to do.