Tea at Trianon: Rediscovering Hesiod

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

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Rediscovering Hesiod

Why it is important for Christian education to include the ancient Greeks. To quote:

The Ancient Pagan writers were inspired in heart, mind, and soul; they kept the sparks of truth alive until Christ came to fan them into flames. C.S. Lewis confirms that “the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there.” The wisdom of pagan poets is the mercy of Divine Providence.

In the Homeric age, around 700 B.C. there was a shepherd named Hesiod born in the ancient city of Askra near Mt. Helicon, a land that the shepherd himself described as “a cursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant.” Out of that hard land grew Hesiod, who became known as the Father of Greek Didactic Poetry. His writing was inspired by the nine Muses born from Memory. One day Hesiod received a commission from the Muses to be their prophet and poet and they “breathed a sacred voice into” his mouth; that same “sacred voice” that is the pagan image of the “sacred breath” we know to be the Holy Spirit. (Read more.)