Tea at Trianon: Chivalry as a Way of Life

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 14, 2020

Chivalry as a Way of Life

From Crisis:

Chivalry, as we said, wasn’t only a martial code. It was a way of life. It was, as one scholar put it, the “framework for lay society” in the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages, meanwhile, were nothing more or less than the application of Christianity to the whole of society. The so-called Dark Ages nearly severed the former Roman Empire from its pagan roots. Every aspect of religious, political, economic, military, and cultural life was reorganized by the Church along Christian grounds; that was their only point of reference.

The Church was unfettered from control by emperors and dictators. Slavery was abolished. Every aspect of public and private life was ordered to the salvation of souls through the Faith.

I have written here before that the West is on its way to another Dark Age. Ours is no longer a Christian society, but a pagan one. Our liberal democracies are now succumbing to the same twin errors—decadence and gnosticism—that destroyed the Roman Empire. Within a few centuries, nothing of the old order will remain. We Christians will have to rebuild civilization from its ruins. It’s only natural, then, that we should look to the Middle Ages for guidance.

Rod Dreher has been thinking along these lines for years. His book The Benedict Option urged us to look to the example of another great Medieval saint, Benedict of Norcia, for inspiration on how to build strong “intentional communities”: bastions of Christendom, safe-havens for the faithful, which can withstand the terror that will inevitably follow when our own Empire collapses. I agree with him wholeheartedly.

Yet it won’t be enough to build intentional Christian communities. We must also build intentional Christian men. Those men must be capable of building those communities and, when the time comes, defending them against the barbarian hordes—winning new souls for God all the while. To this end, I propose that we also follow the example of Saint Francis of Assisi. Call it the Francis Option. (Read more.)