Tea at Trianon: The Medieval Progressives

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, August 17, 2020

The Medieval Progressives

Castle of Montségur

The article is anti-catholic but interesting and reminds me of my travels in the south of France and the research I did for my novel The Night's Dark Shade. From The Great Courses:

In most history books, if the Cathars are mentioned at all, the fall of Montségur is portrayed as their last stand as an organized movement. But that’s not really true. Heresies are hard things to kill. According to legend, prior to the surrender, three or four perfects escaped Montségur by a secret passage. The escapees were said to have taken with them some kind of Cathar treasure. Some thought it was the Cathars’ holy books, or gold and silver, or the Holy Grail. Or maybe it was a person: the Cathars’ secret leader.
Eleven years later, another royal host attacked the nearby castle of Queribus, where more Cathars and their perfects were holed-up. But the attackers found the place deserted. The heretics had all slipped away; where to, no one knew. Cathar bishops—the highest rank of the perfecti—were still active in the Pyrenees a half century later. (Read more.)