Tea at Trianon: Philip IV vs Pope Boniface VIII

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

Monday, January 4, 2016

Philip IV vs Pope Boniface VIII

From author Andrew Latham:

In the late 13th century, the French king, Philip IV, began taxing members of the French clergy in order to help finance his war against England. While formally prohibited by a decree of the Fourth Lateran Council, the papacy had long acquiesced in the practice of French lay rulers taxing their clergy without explicit papal authorization, largely because it depended on French support in its perennial conflicts with the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1296, however, Boniface decided to apply the prohibition to France as well as the Empire. Historians disagree as to why he made this fateful decision. On the one hand, there are those who assert that the new pope was simply acting on the basis of his firmly held hierocratic belief that ecclesiastical power was superior to temporal power. On this view, Phillip’s decision to tax the French Church presented Boniface with his first real opportunity to assert ecclesiastical authority – an opportunity he seized enthusiastically. (Read more.)