Tea at Trianon: Justice: A Forgotten Virtue

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 29, 2018

Justice: A Forgotten Virtue

In the life of St. Catherine of Siena. From Nobility:

Catherine could scarcely perform any public exercise of piety, without exciting a calumny, and drawing upon herself the persecutions of those same individuals who ought to have defended and encouraged her; and let us not be astonished: Religious who have not perfectly overcome their self-love, allow their jealousy to carry them farther than persons in the world. As the Sisters of Penance saw Catharine, yet so young, surpassing all the others by the austerity of her life, the severity of morals, and the fervor of her prayer and a sublime contemplation, some among them were seduced by Satan, and began through envy to censure her conduct, and denounce her to some religious of the Order. If some extolled her virtue, and proved it by things evident to all, others, maintained that she was instigated by an evil spirit. Those females, genuine descendants of Eve, acted so adroitly that they seduced Adam himself, that is to say, the Superiors of the Convent of St Dominic, who would not receive her, refused her Holy Communion, and even went so far as to deprive her of her Confessor. She supported the whole with patience and without murmuring, as though she were not the injured one, and no one ever heard her utter the smallest complaint. (Read more.)