Tea at Trianon: By What Authority?

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, July 9, 2022

By What Authority?

I love Monsignor Benson's novels on the English Reformation. I try to follow in his footsteps when writing my own novels, and am now glad to be writing about English Catholics. The King's Achievement and Come Rack, Come Rope are great, too. And here Joseph Pearce speaks of By What Authority?, which is in a new edition. From Crisis:

As for the novel itself, it brings the period of the Tudor Terror to life in a way that is hardly possible in a non-fictional historical narrative. We get to know the characters as they come to terms with the tyrannous time in which they’re living. There is the suffering of the recusant Catholics, the courage and sanctity of some and the apostasy of others, and the heroism of Protestant converts to the Faith. We are taken into the very presence of Bloody Bess herself, the cold queen, as Chesterton dubbed her, whose narcissism and cruelty is chillingly depicted. Last and indubitably least are those traitors and turncoats, whose teachery betrayed Catholics to their deaths.

The most perceptive observation of By What Authority? was made by Benson’s biographer, C.C. Martindale, who observed that “Benson really teaches that, as in the Aeneid it is Rome, not Aeneas, who is ‘hero’ and gives the piece its unity.” Father Martindale’s point is that Christ, in His Mystical Body, the Church, is the real hero of the novel. Just as Virgil’s purpose was to eulogize Rome, not Aeneas, so Benson’s purpose was to eulogize Rome, not any of the individual characters of the novel, even those who exhibit the most heroism in the service of Rome.

The beauty of By What Authority? is nothing less than the beauty of the Church made manifest in its pages. “[T]he supreme factor is a City,” Father Martindale writes; “or, if you will, that the two cities which Augustine saw, eternally opposed, God’s and the world’s, were here and now incarnated in Rome and England.” If one were to beg to differ with this sagacious reading of the novel, it would only be to insist that the English Martyrs were as English as Elizabeth I. It is they and not she who are the jewel in England’s crown. (Read more.)

From The Catholic Thing:

Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914) is most famous these days for his 1908 book, Lord of the World, hailed by many of different dispositions as one of literature’s first dystopian novels. But between 1904 and 1907, Benson published his Reformation Trilogy: The King’s Achievement and By What Authority? (both 1905); and The Queen’s Tragedy (1907). Together they’re a perfect antidote to the revisionism of numerous recent works of history and fiction that portray the “greatness” of England’s King Henry VIII. Benson wrote By What Authority? first, but by order of subject, it’s second in the trilogy, given that it’s about Elizabeth I (The King’s Achievement deals with her father). The Queen’s Tragedy tells Mary Tudor’s story.

Msgr. Benson’s own life story is almost the stuff of fiction. As a son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the younger Benson was a kind of prince within the Church of England. Benson’s father ordained him to Anglican holy orders in 1895, but in 1903 Robert entered the Catholic Church and a year later was ordained to her priesthood. His decision to cross the Tiber caused a sensation in England as great or even greater than John Henry Newman’s had. (Read more.)