Tea at Trianon: The Death of Arius

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

Thursday, May 16, 2013

The Death of Arius

The Arian heresy spread like wild fire in the early Church but its founder came to a bad end. To quote:

Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, stood strongly opposed to Arius’s anti-Trinitarian teachings. That courageous stand proved costly for Athanasius — he was exiled from Alexandria five different times because he refused to compromise. Yet, during his forty-five years of ministry, Athanasius held the line of orthodoxy without wavering. As a result, in God’s providence, the truth about the Trinity was faithfully passed down to subsequent generations.

Arius died in 336, just eleven years after the Council of Nicaea. Significantly, the account of his death comes from none other than Athanasius. In a letter Athanasius wrote many years after the fact, the Alexandrian bishop not only explained how Arius died, but also extrapolated on why he died. I think you’ll agree it’s a pretty dramatic story. (Read entire post.)