Tea at Trianon: The Excommunication of Elizabeth I

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, February 25, 2018

The Excommunication of Elizabeth I

The "Mary" referred to is Mary I of England, Elizabeth's sister, not her cousin Mary Stuart, the Queen of Scots. From the bull of Pope St. Pius V, “Regnans in Excelsis, via Nobility:

He Who reigns on high, to whom is given all poser in heaven and on earth, has entrusted his holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside which there is no salvation, to one person alone on earth namely to Peter the prince of the Apostles, and to Peter’s successor, the Roman Pontiff, to be governed by him with plenitude of power. Him alone he appointed prince over all nations and kingdoms, to root up, pull down, waste, destroy, plant and build, so that he might preserve his faithful people linked together by the bond of mutual charity in the unity of the Spirit, and might present them, saved and blameless, to their Savior.

In the fulfillment of this office, we, called by the goodness of God to the government of the aforesaid Church, spare no labor, striving with all zeal to preserve intact that unity and Catholic religion which its author has allowed to be disturbed with such great tribulations for the proving of his people’s faith and for our correction. But the number of the ungodly has grown so strong in power, that no place is left in the world which they have not tried to corrupt with their abominable doctrines; among others assisting in this work is the servant of vice, Elizabeth, pretended Queen of England, with whom, as in a place of sanctuary, the most nefarious wretches have found refuge. This same woman, having acquiring the Kingdom and outrageously usurped for herself the place of supreme head of the Church in all England and its chief authority and jurisdiction, has again plunged that same kingdom back into a wretchedly unhappy condition, after it had so recently been reclaimed for the Catholic Faith and prosperity. (Read more.)