Tea at Trianon: The Renaissance Myth

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, March 20, 2014

The Renaissance Myth

Was the Renaissance the Age of Discovery or was the Middle Ages? A misunderstanding is cleared up. To quote:

Now if there was a Dark Age, it might be argued, with some show of reason, that there must have been a renaissance to end it. This is perfectly correct. There was one, and it happened in the twelfth century. This fact has, it is true, not entirely escaped the notice of historians, and it has become common to speak of "the twelfth-century renaissance" and also of a "Carolingian renaissance" in the ninth century. But, as the qualifiers in the names suggest, these are thought of as pale forerunners of the Renaissance - good efforts for their time, perhaps, but hardly to be compared with the real thing. But the Carolingian renaissance did not amount to much, and the capital-R Renaissance was, as we have seen, more like two steps back than one step forward. The twelfth century, though, had a real, true, and unqualified renaissance.

Simply on the level of material remains, the sudden change from what went before is absolutely clear. The few buildings surviving in England from the times of Bede and Alfred the Great are room-sized piles of rubble with a hole in them; by contrast Durham Cathedral (begun in 1093) is as big a church as there is any point in building, and is only the best of a number built at the same time. The engineering skill of the builders of the Leaning Tower of Pisa becomes better confirmed each year. (Read more.)