Tea at Trianon: Hispanidad

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

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Hispanidad

Our Lady of Covadonga

Santiago

From One Peter 5:

The Hispanic Catholic civilisation of Hispanidad, as they say, is the only Catholic people who have conquered all the Church’s enemies – the Muhammadans, the Protestant Heretics, and, in the 20th century, the Marxists. Thus despite a Marxist regime currently keeping the Spanish Church in captivity in Spain, we have hope of restoration of the Spanish Church in Spain as well as in the traditional centers of Hispanic Catholicism throughout the world. This brings that Spanish militant Christian spirit to the traditional movement worldwide, just as the Chartres Pilgrimage draws upon the great tradition of the French crusading spirit, but more on that below.
As you may know, the Reconquista was a crusade of the west. The eastern crusade sought to retake Jerusalem from the Muhammadans, but the Reconquista was the first crusade against the Saracens, beginning at Covadonga. As Flanders writes in his book City of God vs. City of Man:

The Christian Spaniard Juan of Ceuta betrayed Spain to the Muhammadan Moors, who invaded [in 711] seeking money and “a large number of ravishingly beautiful Greek maidens.” They swept over Spain as far as the northern kingdom of Asturias, where King Pelayo alone refused to submit. The Moors brought an army of 187,000 and sent Bishop Oppas to find Pelayo, who was hidden in the mountain at Covadonga. Pious legend relates how the bishop tried to convince Pelayo to surrender:

If when the entire army of the Goths [Spaniards] was assembled it was unable to sustain the attack of the Ishmaelites, how much better will you be able to defend yourself on this mountain top?…heed my warnings and recall your soul from this decision, so that you may take advantage of many good things and enjoy the partnership of the Chaldeans.

To this Pelayo responded: “Have you not read in the divine scriptures that the Church of God is compared to a mustard seed and that it will be raised up again through divine mercy?”

The bishop responded, “It is indeed written thus.”

Pelayo said, “Christ is our hope that through this little mountain, which you see, the well-being of Spain and of the army of the Gothic people will be restored[.]…As for the battle with which you threaten us, we have for ourselves an advocate in the presence of the Father, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is capable of liberating us from these few.”

Henceforth this story would animate the struggle of the mustard seed of the Kingdom of God against the earthly city of Muhammad. Pelayo led his men against the Moors and triumphed miraculously, crediting the victory to the intercession of Our Lady of Covadonga, who began to unite the Spanish and the French against the Moors in Spain. This was the beginning of the Reconquista.

The Reconquista would go down in history as ultimately the only crusade which was permanently successful, retaking the final city of Granada from the Saracens in 1492, before conquering the Americas and the world for Christ. Spain, and her Iberian sister kingdom of Portugal, remain the only Christian nations forged by crusade. Thus Our Lady of Covadonga is very much a “patroness of lost causes” in the struggle for restoration that the Traditional movement faces. (Read more.)