Tea at Trianon: Can Chivalry Return?

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 24, 2020

Can Chivalry Return?

From Charles Coulombe:

The Church needs men and women of courage and Godliness today more than at any time in her history. So does this extraordinary country we call home in this world; a nation that still has an immense reservoir of virtue, decency and people of good will. This is why the Catholic ideal of knighthood, with its demands of radical discipleship, is still alive and still needed. The essence of Christian knighthood remains the same: sacrificial service rooted in a living Catholic faith.

A new “spirit of knighthood” is what we need now — unselfish, tireless, devoted disciples willing to face derision and persecution for Jesus Christ. We serve our nation best by serving God first, and by proving our faith with the example of our lives. Nor is that understanding restricted to His Grace of Philadelphia; Chicago’s Cardinal George famously opined that “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.” It is perhaps no coincidence that His Eminence is associated with the local jurisdictions of the Orders of Malta, the Holy Sepulchre, and St. Lazarus.

It seems that a greater awareness is arising among Catholics, clerical and lay, of the need for the eternal spirit of chivalry. One cannot know if the Knightly organisations of today, ancient or modern, will weather the storm. But certainly their proliferation is a good sign that the yearning for the virtue of honour, loyalty, prowess, courtesy, and all the rest — married to a strong and practical Catholicity — is once again stalking the ruins of Christendom, here and abroad. We shall all need it if the evils of our time are to be resisted. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: There are pockets of it here and there, but with the 'Sexual Revolution' of the '60's much of it went up in smoke. I always told my daughters that women are the civilizing force in the world and when women do not hold men responsible for their behavior than they have only themselves to blame when men do not behave gentlemanly.; April 24, 2020 at 4:56:00 PM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: My mama told me the same thing.....; April 24, 2020 at 7:12:00 PM EDT