Tea at Trianon: Cardinal Maury

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, September 10, 2013

Cardinal Maury

From Madeleine Doak:

Jean-Sifrein Maury was born in Valréas in 1747 and died in Rome in 1817. He successfully, for the most part, navigated the churning water that was France during the transition from ancien régime to the Bourbon Restoration, seemingly by jumping from life raft to life raft and supporting whomever was at the helm. During those years, he went from Abbé to Cardinal and received honors and recognition for his speaking and writing. He was especially known for his dry wit.

During the early years of the Revolution, the abbé was a member of the Académie Française and the Estates General. In the National Constituent Assembly, he was a defender of the monarchy known for his oratory contests with Mirabeau in which he was "though always defeated on the vote, was not seldom the conquerer in the debate," according to New Advent online Catholic Encyclopedia. In 1792, he joined the French émigrés in Coblenz where he was hailed by Louis XVIII as a defender of the Church and of the monarchy. As the tides turned, he supported Napoleon and his pursuit of divorce from Josephine which resulted, later, in suspension and imprisonment by the Pope. Cardinal Maury's health suffered as a result of his months in prison and he died in May 1817, rosary in hand. Despite his steadfast support of the monarchy years earlier, Louis XVIII never forgave Maury's association with Napoleon and refused to allow him to be buried in his titular church. (Read more.)