Tea at Trianon: Made in Constantinople

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

Monday, July 8, 2019

Made in Constantinople

From Vintage News:

One of the only two Byzantine crowns to survive, the first being the Holy Crown of Hungary, is the Monomachus Crown. It is made of seven golden plates which are engraved with pictures of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX Monomachus; his wife and his sister, Zoe and Theodora; two female dancers; and two allegorical figures. The crown was discovered by a farmer in 1860 in Ivanka pri Nitre in Slovakia while he was plowing and it was given to a local landowner who sold it to the Hungarian National Museum in 1861.

The crown was probably made in Constantinople in 1402 and it is believed that it was a female crown, a gift to Queen Anastasia of Kiev from the Hungarian King Andrew I. According to legend, it was some version of the Holy Crown of Hungary, but there are elements on the crown which are not that old. It is said that King Andrew I was crowned in February 1047 when he traveled from Hungary to Constantinople and brought the crown with him back to Hungary. (Read more.)