Tea at Trianon: A Secret Crypt Beneath a Polish Chapel

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

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

A Secret Crypt Beneath a Polish Chapel

From ArtNet:

Now, archaeologists are investigating one of the chapels the order built in western Poland upon its return from the Holy Land. The small village of Chwarszczany, in the region of West Pomeranian, is home to the chapel of St. Stanislaus, constructed from red bricks by the Templars as both a place of worship and a defensive fortification in 1232.
According to recent investigations, the chapel also serves as the final resting place of several Knights Templar, and appears to conceal a hidden passageway leading to an underground chamber.
“Our GPR [ground-penetrating radar] has detected gothic crypts with the remnants of Templar knights beneath the chapel,” local archaeologist Przemysław Kołosowski told CNN. “According to legends and medieval documents, there was a well in the vicinity of the chapel. Rumor has it that the well served as an entrance to a secret tunnel. This still requires an exhaustive archeological investigation.” (Read more.)