Tea at Trianon: In Jesus’ Time

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, April 22, 2018

In Jesus’ Time

From Aleteia:

In order for people to survive and flourish in the desert, they need water. Until the invention of the aqueduct, perfected by the Romans, but first used Minoans in ancient Crete as early as the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C., people had to live in near rivers and streams or in small groups close to wells and spring. An aqueduct uses the earth’s gravity to move water along a channel from its source to distant people, allowing for the growth of cities and the cultivation of agricultural lands.

It was no mean technological feat for the Assyrians in 691 B.C. to bring water to Nineveh – two millions blocks of stone were used to build a 30-foot high and 900-foot long channel. In 2015, archaeologists discovered a 2,000-year-old 13-mile long aqueduct in Jerusalem. It was built by kings in the Hasmonean dynasty, who ruled Judea and its surrounding regions from about 140 B.C. to 37 B.C., and was still in use until only 100 years ago. The Roman Empire wouldn’t have been possible without the technological advances in water management it invented. Throughout the city of Rome, and running from Germany to Africa, elaborate, highly sophisticated Roman aqueducts that involved underground plumbing supplied water to millions of people. (Read more.)