Tea at Trianon: Miraculous Statue of the Infant Christ

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

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Miraculous Statue of the Infant Christ

What is referred to in the article as a "doll" is actually a statue. From The Catholic Herald:

A 15th-century doll of the Christ Child that survived an Italian earthquake will be displayed as part of a forthcoming exhibition in Cambridge. The Christ Child had been confirmed as an object of the “Madonnas and Miracles: The Holy Home in Renaissance Italy” exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum before the earthquake took place last year. But in October, the monastery of Santa Chiara, where the doll is venerated, was struck by an earthquake which reduced most of the building to rubble. Miraculously, the doll survived unscathed. The doll will leave Italy for the first time to be featured in the exhibition. It was created in the 15th century for St Camilla Battista da Varano, a princess-turned-nun who had visions of the Madonna kissing the Christ Child. St Camilla Battista was canonised in 2010.

During the Renaissance era, many Italian women had similar dolls which they dressed and cared for to mimic the Virgin Mary’s bond with the baby Jesus. Every year, hundreds of people make pilgrimage to the church where the doll is kept to kiss it during the feast of the Epiphany. The exhibition will also feature three groups of ex-voto paintings from the 15th and 16th centuries, none of which have ever been on display in Britain before. Ex-voto paintings were created as offerings to the Church in acts of gratitude or devotion. The exhibition aims to challenge the “idea of the Renaissance as an age of increasing worldliness” and “shows how religion remained a powerful force that coloured every aspect of daily life”.(Read more.)

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