Tea at Trianon: Encarnacion Alzona

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, July 31, 2017

Encarnacion Alzona

From Aleteia:

Encarnacion was the first Filipina to complete her doctoral studies; she was a national scientist, and a pioneering advocate of women’s suffrage. Born in southern Luzon, she completed an undergraduate and master’s degree in history from the University of the Philippines (U.P.), and then went on to pursue further studies as a pensionado scholar in the U.S. There, she completed a second master’s degree at Radcliffe College, and a Ph.D. at Columbia University, both in history. After Columbia, she returned to the Philippines, and became a history professor at U.P. Interestingly, she graduated from Columbia the same year John Paul II was born. There must have been something in their milieu that caused both to write about the dignity of women.

In 1919, Encarnacion wrote an article arguing for a woman’s right to vote. At this time, the Philippines was still a U.S. territory with a young democracy. The first local elections were held three years earlier, but only men were permitted to vote, as part of the U.S. government’s policy to gradually educate Filipinos into a functioning democracy. In her article, Encarnacion pointed out that women also need civic education, “they being what we proudly term the first teachers of men.” She explained that if women are permitted to vote, men’s respect for them would likely increase because “a person enjoying full political rights deserves greater respect and esteem than a disenfranchised one.” These ideas show that like John Paul II, she believed that society and history needed the contribution and participation of both men and women. (Read more.)