Tea at Trianon: Clandestine Devotion

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, April 12, 2019

Clandestine Devotion

From Aleteia:

A mere 500 years ago, Catholics were hiding their faith on both sides of the planet. Persecution was rampant in Japan and in England. A little further west than that, the Americas were a safe haven. This was the time when the missionaries and conquistadors went forth into regions of the world unknown to Europeans and multiplied their congregations. Those Spanish and Portuguese who headed west to the Americas reaped extraordinary rewards in terms of human souls, as well as enough silver to throw European economies into chaos.

Those who headed east towards Asia faced different obstacles. Instead of taking over the spiritual life from California to Cape Horn, they ended up in little pockets of big nations that were often hostile to alien religious practices. Life for Catholic artists was as tough in 16th and 17th century England as it was in Japan at the same time.

At both sides of the world, believers resorted to hidden expressions of faith. Despite the harrowing scenes in the 2016 Martin Scorsese movie Silence, Japan had more to offer than rugged, hand-whittled pendant crucifixes. The clandestine paintings that survive are a fascinating fusion of East and West. Usually in the form of portable shrines, they are triptychs in which the central panel is a classic Western devotional scene. The rest of the icon is typically Japanese lacquerwork, giving no exterior indication of what was contained within. Although they were once commonplace, very few of these items have survived; those that have were usually taken back home by Westerners. Hidden though they were in Japan, many icons were destroyed by the authorities. The next hazard was being in Nagasaki, the Catholic center of Japan. (Read more.)