Tea at Trianon: Touch in the Middle Ages

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

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Touch in the Middle Ages

Swearing fealty in the Middle Ages

From Medievalists:

There are many, many other examples of touching in the feudal relationship. The great French historian Marc Bloch discusses in his Feudal Society (first published in French as La Société Féodale, 1939) how part of the ceremony of fealty was placing one’s hands between one’s lord’s, and how the knightly accolade could be an embrace – “welcome to the family.” Bloch’s book The Royal Touch (Rois et Thaumaturges, 1924) discusses how the touch of the kings of England and France was supposed to cure skin diseases and was seen as a sign of divine appointment. Less gently, Bloch also discusses in Feudal Society how children were slapped at memorable events to fix them in their memories. (Read more.)

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