Tea at Trianon: In Defense of Constantine

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

Saturday, August 4, 2018

In Defense of Constantine

From First Things:

In the years before Constantine took the throne, Christianity was rapidly winning the hearts and minds of millions of Roman citizens, including the most gifted thinkers. The effort of Constantine’s immediate predecessors in the purple, most notably Diocletian, to impede the growth of Christianity through empire-wide persecution had failed miserably. At the beginning of the fourth century the Church was too large, its way of life and institutions too well established, its leaders too resourceful, for Christianity to be halted with the sword. The refusal of Christians to venerate the traditional gods, and hence to show honor to the emperor and fealty to the institutions of society, created a dilemma for the emperors. By forcing a choice between Rome and Christianity, the emperors badly misjudged the strength and resiliency of Christianity.

Constantine realized the shortsightedness of trying to purge the society of Christians and sought a way to make room for Christianity under the umbrella of a genial monotheism (which Christians confessed and philosophers taught). His policy, writes Drake, sought to “reconcile the imperial need for religious justification with the refusal of Christians to pay divine honors to any other deity.” In granting the Church legitimacy Constantine not only diffused a tense situation, he harnessed Christian energy in service to the state. (Read more.)