Tea at Trianon: Marriage by Proxy

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

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Marriage by Proxy

Marie-Antoinette's first wedding ceremony. To quote:

On 19 April 1770, the Archduchess Marie Antoinette married Louis, the Dauphin of France, by proxy. At 6:00 pm, the 14 year old bride, wearing a glistening and luxurious gown of cloth of silver, with a train carried by Countess Trautmannsdorf, entered the Church of the Augustine Friars, where her parents had got married too 34 years ago. Her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, led her up the aisle, before sitting down, next to her son Joseph, on a dais to the right of the altar.

The ceremony was officiated by the Papal Nuncio, Monsignor Visconti. Marie Antoinette's proxy bridegroom was her brother the Archduke Ferdinand. His role was easy. Antonia Fraser, in her biography of Marie Antoinette, says that Ferdinand "simply had to take the Latin vow, 'I am willing and thus make my promise,' kneel beside his sister and enjoy the nuptial supper at her side." Then, the vows were taken and the rings blessed. (Read entire post.)