Tea at Trianon: Medieval Homes

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

Monday, January 23, 2023

Medieval Homes

I love the Christ Child's walker!

From Medievalists:

The medieval homes depicted in these manuscript illustrations offer historians a lot of interesting evidence. They are often rectangular in design, and the key feature would have been the fireplace and chimney. McKinnon also notes that most of these images also show homes that are well-constructed and have several furnishings. She adds:
This observation suggests another conclusion: that a measure of material well-being and economic prosperity had been attained by at least some members of peasant society in the fifteenth century. The architecture depicted in these illuminations indicates that they had achieved a standard of living above subsistence level.
The article, “The Peasant House: The Evidence of Manuscript Illuminations,” by Sarah M. McKinnon, appeared in Pathways to Medieval Peasants, edited by J. Ambrose Raftis, which was published by the Pontifical Insitute of Mediaeval Studies in 1981. This collection of essays also features a piece on festivals that took place in an English medieval village. (Read more.)