Tea at Trianon: Rebuilding Notre Dame

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 15, 2020

Rebuilding Notre Dame

From National Geographic:

At the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, it was already a Good Friday unlike any in modern memory: The spring-day sun poured down into the roofless nave as celebrants wore hard hats to shield themselves from falling debris and disposable coveralls to protect against lead contamination. Nonetheless, the Good Friday veneration of the Crown of Thorns—the prized relic brought to Notre Dame from the Holy Land by Louis IX in the 13th century—continued as it had for hundreds of years.

It was just the second service to be held in the fragile remains of the cathedral since the fire that destroyed its iconic spire and much of the roof of the cathedral nearly a year ago. But unlike the mass attended last June by dozens of people to mark the two-month anniversary of the conflagration, this time there was only a handful of socially-distanced celebrants in Notre Dame. In addition to the protective hard hats, several of the celebrants also wore surgical masks to stem transmission of a virus that had to date infected more than 100,000 French citizens and killed at least 12,000. (Read more.)