Tea at Trianon: Calvinists and Jesuits

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

Sunday, June 5, 2022

Calvinists and Jesuits

Interesting. I hardly ever disagree with Dr. Zmirak. In this case it must be emphasized that Calvinists persecuted Catholics all over the British Isles, and even in France in places where they had the upper hand, destroying churches and monasteries. Lots of magnificent religious art is forever lost because of Calvinists. Wherever Calvinists gained power they became worse tyrants than any monarch. I speak of Cromwell whose men mutilated Irish women and of New England where the witch hunts were totally out of control. While Calvinists and Jesuits may both have stood up to rulers who overstepped their bounds, their goals were totally different. Jesuits wanted the liberty of the Church whereas Calvinists wanted a Calvinist theocracy. And anyone who has read Jordan and Walsh's White Cargo will know that Calvinist Puritans help build the white (Irish/Scottish) and black (African) slave trades in America and the Caribbean. So much for the champions of freedom and democracy. From The Stream:

The plight of English Catholics after Elizabeth I took the throne avowing Catholicism, then returned to her mother’s Protestant faith, provoked similar reflections. The militant Society of Jesus provided most of the exiled missionaries willing to enter England and risk a slow death by disembowelment for “treason.” (That was the crime for which Elizabeth executed Catholics, rather than heresy.)
The Jesuits were an international order directly under the control of the pope, not local bishops. Their missions extended from Japan and China to the new French settlements in North America, and Spanish conquests in the south. Thus Jesuits were more prone than other clergy to question the actions of royal officials and the prerogatives of kings. Especially where these interfered with the freedom of the Church. (Indeed, this tendency toward internationalism and loyalty to the Church would lead Enlightenment monarchs to strong arm the Vatican into suppressing the Jesuits by the late 18^th century.) (Read more.)