Tea at Trianon: Ghost of the Papal States

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, June 15, 2022

Ghost of the Papal States

From Crux:

In the 1850s, a young Italian noble named Giovanni Pietro Campana succeeded his father as head of the Monte di Pietà, which, at the time, effectively served as the pawnbroker of the Papal States, making small loans to commoners with their meagre property as security. The young Campana was also an avid art collector, and repeatedly arranged for loans to himself to finance the purchase of additional items for his collection.

Doing so technically violated the law of the Papal States, but Campana made the loans to himself with the full knowledge and support of Angelo Galli, at the time the finance minister of the Papal States, and other potentates at the papal court. Over a three-year period, Campana “borrowed” roughly $200,000 from the papal institution, a figure that easily would reach into the tens of millions today, which would have been impossible had anyone in power objected, and which he seemingly had no real intention of ever paying back. (Read more.)