Tea at Trianon: Rennes-le-Château

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

Saturday, May 22, 2021

Rennes-le-Château

From Atlas Obscura:

Plantard used the chance to popularize the Priory of Sion, which was allegedly a 1000-year-old secret society, founded in Jerusalem during the first Crusade. With the intent of restoring a Merovingian order across Europe and fulfilling prophecies of Nostradamus, the Priory became one of the most discussed orders in the world during the 1960s when Plantard proposed the idea.

Unfortunately, the Priory of Sion was not real. It was never real, and was in fact an elaborate hoax. He created a number of false documents and led the world to believe a secret society existed. These claims were later picked up in bestselling books, and most notably, in the “Da Vinci Code.” Despite the excitement generated by Plantard’s claims, the order was completely debunked.

However, while the myth was destroyed, the small commune of Rennes-le-Château was changed forever. Thousands of tourists poured into the town, whose native population had hardly reached 100. Excavations were performed looking for treasure and clues to the world’s biggest conspiracy theory. Today, even after all conspiracies have been proven false, hundreds search Sainte Marie-Madeleine Church and other buildings in the village for clues proving the sleepy town is in fact more interesting than it really is. (Read more.)