Tea at Trianon: Modesty as the Language of Mutual Respect

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, July 3, 2014

Modesty as the Language of Mutual Respect

From Jennifer Fitz:

It is normal and good to want to earn a decent living for your family. It is vile to be consumed by greed. It is normal and good to desire a large family. It is vile to be consumed by envy. It is normal and good for a woman to be attracted to a man who shows her kindness, respect, and admiration. It is vile for her to abandon her husband in order to run off with such a man. It is normal and good for a man to find a woman’s beauty riveting. It is vile for him to be consumed with lust.

Somewhere in between perfect detachment and vile sin is the range of ordinary human weakness in which modesty operates.

If we were all perfectly detached from the goods of this world, we could with perfect equanimity rejoice when our friends feasted, with no regard for our own lack. We could appreciate the kindness and beauty of others, with never a moment’s temptation towards impurity. It would be Heaven.

Modesty is not the response to greed, envy, adultery and lust. No amount of modesty can keep these sins from consuming the one who consents to them. (Read more.)