Tea at Trianon: The Confraternity of Shoemakers

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, October 28, 2012

The Confraternity of Shoemakers

From Nobility:

Saints Crispin and Crispinian are the patrons and models of the pious confraternity of brother shoemakers, an establishment begun by Henry Michael Buch, commonly called Good Henry. His parents were poor day-labourers at Erlon, in the duchy of Luxemburg. Henry was distinguished from his infancy for his parts and extraordinary piety and prudence. He was put apprentice very young to a shoemaker. With the duties of his calling he joined constant devotion and the exercise of all virtues. Sundays and holidays he spent chiefly in the churches, was a great lover of holy prayer, and studied earnestly to know and contemn himself, to mortify his senses and to deny his own will. He took SS. Crispin and Crispinian for his models, and, at his work, had them before his eyes, considering often how they worked with a view purely to please God, and to have an opportunity to convert infidels, and to relieve the poor. It was to him a subject of grief to see many in the same or the like trades ill instructed, slothful in the practice of virtue, and engaged in dangerous or criminal habits; and, by his zealous and prudent exhortations and endeavours, he induced many such to assist diligently at catechism and pious instructions, to shun ale-houses and dangerous company, to frequent the sacraments, to pray devoutly; especially to make every evening acts of faith, hope, divine love, and contrition, and to love only virtuous company, and whatever promoted piety and religion. (Read entire article.)