Tea at Trianon: Activist Mystics

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

Sunday, October 1, 2017

Activist Mystics

From The Plough:

Along with other thirteenth-century Beguines and former Beguines, such as Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch of Antwerp,4 and Beatrice of Nazareth, Porete wrote in a variety of literary genres. These women developed a theological aesthetics grounded in love. Their mystical writings, like the Song of Songs, depict a spirituality of the bridal chamber. Theirs is a spirituality of complete abandonment: love serves as both their way of knowing and their way of acting. This love appears in the world as care for the poor. They understand God by forsaking understanding. They transcend the idea of ascent to God by degrees, instead uniting themselves to him directly through love. They take Augustine’s “Love God and do what you will” seriously – which is what alarmed the ecclesiastical authorities of their times. As Hans Urs von Balthasar observes, “Lovers are the ones who know most about God; the theologian must listen to them.”5 Unfortunately, the theologians of the medieval period did not tend to be big listeners, especially with regard to women. (Read more.)