Tea at Trianon: The Reliquary of St. Dorothy

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, August 14, 2021

The Reliquary of St. Dorothy

From Liturgical Arts Journal:

The relics themselves were almost certainly obtained in Jerusalem during a diplomatic visit by a wealthy apothecary Henman Offenburg. The trip took place in 1437. The lovely capsule for the thecas was made after the relics arrived in Basel – that is, around 1450. The stem, node, and the octafoil foot predate the capsule by at least fifty years and we don’t have any documentation explaining their purpose prior to their being used to create the reliquary. The finial and the crockets were added at a later date, possibly around 1459. It is possible that the foot and the stem were in the Cathedral safekeeping – dormant, and the arrival of the relics was an opportunity to at last put them to use. (Read more.)