Tea at Trianon: Origins of the Peace Sign

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, August 14, 2022

Origins of the Peace Sign

From Women of Grace:

Another less than peaceful use of the symbol was by those wishing to display support for communism. The confirmed atheist, Bertrand Russell, author of the 1927 essay, Why I am Not a Christian, affixed not only a pro-communism meaning to the symbol, but also believed it could be used to express peace without God. This could explain why the Bolsheviks painted an upside down cross on the doors of the churches they closed during their bloody revolution.
But the history of the upside down cross goes back even further, and it is from these earlier times that its most sinister meaning is derived. As we know, St. Peter was crucified on an upside down cross by the Roman emperor Nero (37-68 AD), after which time a drawing of an upside-down cross - called "Nero's Cross" - became known as a symbol of the "broken Christian" or "broken Jew." Three years after Peter's death, when the Roman legions marched into Jerusalem, they sported Nero's Cross as their insignia. The Saracens used the symbol as early as 7ll A.D. on their shields to symbolize the breaking of the Christian cross. (Read more.)