Tea at Trianon: The “Mezquita”

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

Friday, May 18, 2018

The “Mezquita”

From Aleteia:

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, a Catholic cathedral in Córdoba, a city of 320,000 people in Spain’s Andalusia region, is the largest Catholic church in the country and one of the most fascinating places of worship in the world. Featuring a blend of Visigoth, Roman, Byzantine and Moorish architecture, this 5.9 acre church stands as a testament to the diverse history of this part of the Iberian peninsula. It is believed that the first building to be erected on its site was a Roman temple dedicated to the god Janus, which was later turned into a rectangular church by the Visigoths—a Germanic tribe who converted to Christianity after seizing Rome—when they invaded Cordoba in 572. In 748–750, the Umayyads, a Muslim dynasty that ruled the Umayyad Caliphate, was overthrown by a rival family, the Abbasids. The last Umayyad ruler, Prince Abd al-Rahman I, fled to Southern Spain and gained control of much of the Iberian peninsula, setting up the kingdom of “Al-Andalus” that would eventually include Portugal, Southern France and the Balearic Islands. (Read more.)