Tea at Trianon: The Church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois in Paris

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, August 7, 2023

The Church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois in Paris

The parish church of the Louvre, where Madame Royale, the daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, received her first Holy Communion. From New Liturgical Movement:

A church dedicated to St Germanus sits directly in front of the Louvre in Paris, and is currently being used as the cathedral pro tempore while Notre Dame is undergoing restoration after the fire of April 2019. In French it is called “Saint Germain l’Auxerrois” to distinguish it from “Saint Germain des Prés”, which is dedicated to a 6th-century bishop of Paris. It was originally founded in the 6th or 7th-century, but has been rebuilt several times, and contains a number of real artistic treasures from different periods. Here are some pictures of it which I took when I visited Paris in the summer of 2019. A retable made in Flanders in the early 16th century, which depicts the events of Our Lord’s life, focusing on the Passion; donated to the church by the Comte de Montalivet, Minister of the Interior, in 1839. See this article on French Wikipedia for closer views and explanations of the individual scenes.(Read more.)