Tea at Trianon: Millennial Medievalists

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

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Millennial Medievalists

I do not agree with everything in this article but some interesting points are made. From The Christian Review:

In the Age of Discovery, Christian missionaries found half-dressed savages, with tattoos and piercings, and civilized them. Now, their work is decried by secular millennials who emulate the “Noble Savage.” In the same vein, they attack Christopher Columbus who helped to Christianize the western hemisphere as if he was a conquistador. In the name of the god called Diversity, they give equal status to all religions. Reality and illusion, truth and falsehood, goodness and evil are all thrown into their lukewarm stew of mediocrity. “Whatever” is the motto of secular millennials, who are also fascinated by the Dark and Middle Ages, but for them, these are merely settings for cable series with lots of sex and violence. The lack of creativity in this generation is also manifest by countless sequels of films.

Meanwhile, devout Catholic millennials are busy building figurative ramparts and moats to keep the barbarians away. They fill their lungs with incense and watch young priests donning amices in long liturgies that increasing resemble Eastern Orthodoxy. Ironically, the great minds of the Middle Ages broke out of the Dark Ages and made great progress. Hopefully, millennial medievalists will do likewise. (Read more.)