Tea at Trianon: The Emperor Intervenes

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

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

The Emperor Intervenes

From The Telegraph:

The papers, due to be auctioned in London on Thursday, include a tally of results from early voting in the papal election of August 1903 showing that another cardinal, Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, was by far the most popular candidate.

But Cardinal Rampolla, who had been the Vatican Secretary of State under the previous Pope, Leo XIII, was blocked by the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph through powers known as the Jus exclusivae, which allowed a select group of Roman Catholic monarchs to veto any would-be pope of whom they disapproved.

The procedure, used only a handful of times in history, allowed a king or queen of Spain or France or the Holy Roman or Austro-Hungarian emperor, to nominate one of the cardinals in advance to exercise their veto with instructions to step in if someone to whom they objected was about to be elected. (Read more.)