Tea at Trianon: Evening Isles Fantastical

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, May 11, 2016

Evening Isles Fantastical

From Charles Coulombe:

Before ever they had heard of the Faith, they were aware of unseen presences all around them — some they deemed good, and others evil. At times these might erupt very strongly into vision, if the stories they told had any reality to them at all. And when at last the Church reached them, she not only gave them a means of understanding these occurrences, she gave them powerful weapons against their unpleasant aspects. From this mixture arose the folklore of Catholic and Orthodox countries in a process that continues to-day in mission lands. Although differing wildly in specifics from place to place, in general outline it was remarkably similar from Ireland to Russia, and later from Spanish New Mexico to Portuguese Indonesia.

As we know from everyday experience if not from history, fallen nature is always with us; from the beginning the remarkable march of spiritual (and sometimes military) conquest of which we spoke was accompanied by defections due to various heresies. Perhaps the most vociferous of these, Islam, has threatened at times to sink the whole Christian world in blood. But instead of drawing ever closer in the face of the threat, Western and Eastern Christendom split. Where they have remained most similar, however, is precisely in this realm of folklore — that is, in popular response to the unseen. Certainly, that background, combined with miraculous relics, shrines, and images, and indeed, the Sacraments themselves, created a world of wonder. (Read more.)