Tea at Trianon: In Search of Paradise

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, March 24, 2013

In Search of Paradise

King Alfonso X wrote a musical form of monastic devotional literature.

As a musical form of monastic devotional literature, the collection of cantigas also presents the reader with orthodox theological teaching promulgated by the Church during the thirteenth century: such cantigas as 306 and 320, the former of which recounts the story of a heretic who is cleansed of his lack of belief in the virginity of Mary, and the latter praising Mary for restoring the goodness to earth that Eve had taken away, respond to the ecclesiastic debates and formation of doctrine that were taking place during these years of the Central Middle Ages. In response to the formation of Catholic dogma taking place at this time, Greenia very nicely states that Alfonso X designated himself a “national broker in the economy of salvation” and that “he seemingly felt that he owed it to his people to serve them in facilitating their salvation.” His Cantigas “formed an ongoing project for the religious welfare of the masses, and as an unobtrusive educational tool.” (Read entire post.)