Tea at Trianon: The Necropolis of Almazán

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, November 2, 2020

The Necropolis of Almazán

From EL PAÍS:

The study, written by the archaeologists and biologists Manuel Retuerce Velasco, Luis Alejandro García García, Jesús Herrerín López and Ainara Acebo Pérez, attempts to shed light on the odd location of the graves. Researchers point out that in the 12th century, the church of Santa María de Calatañazor was built near the eastern wall, and that the remains could belong to the church’s cemetery, as the church itself was replaced in the 16th century by the one currently occupying the site.

The authors of the study believe there are three possible explanations for the treatment of the bodies, which have been challenging to reach. “The excavation turned out to be quite difficult due to the state in which they [the corpses] were found – very fragile, fragmented and not very consistent,” says Manuel Retuerce, who teaches archeology at Madrid’s Complutense University. The remains that they managed to remove were transported to a laboratory, while those located directly under the wall and whose tombs extended into the inside of the walled perimeter were left where they were.

The researchers believe that before these graves were covered by the wall, they were in all likelihood visible on the surface, though this appears to have posed no obstacle to the building plans. And while the most logical hypothesis, according to Retuerce, is that the tombs belonged to Christians, the fact they are staggered and covered with wood does not completely rule out that the dead were Jewish or Muslim. Wood was a common material in medieval times for all three religions. In Christian and Hebrew cemeteries, the coffin lids were made of wood and, with regard to Muslim burials, a grave dug out in the earth could also be covered with wooden planks known as alwah.

Although archaeologists are more inclined to believe these were Christian tombs, Retuerce points out that if it were a Jewish necropolis, it would more easily explain why the city wall was built over it, as any opposition from this religious minority “could be more easily disregarded than if the necropolis had been Christian.”
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