Tea at Trianon: Where Otto the Great Died

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, October 30, 2023

Where Otto the Great Died

From Arkeonews:

Archaeologists believe they have found the site where Emperor Otto I (936-973), known as the Great, founder of the Holy Roman Empire, died. Otto the Great is regarded by historians as the first Holy Roman Emperor. He earned a reputation as a defender of Christendom as a result of his victory over pagan Hungarian invaders in 955 C.E. He used his self-proclaimed divine right as a ruler and his dealings with bishops to tighten his control over his kingdom and to begin his aggressive expansion into Italy. His son Otto II would succeed him after his death in 973 C.E.
Archaeologists from the Saxony-Anhalt State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology have been excavating the former imperial palace and the rich Benedictine monastery in Memleben, Germany, since 2017. This year’s investigations yielded new findings of extraordinary importance. For the first time, reliable archaeological evidence of the Palatinate of Memleben, the as-yet unlocated place of death of Emperor Otto the Great and his father Heinrich I, was identified in the form of a stone predecessor of Otto II’s monastery church. A mysterious foundation in the cloister of the monumental monastery church can possibly be linked to the mention of a subsequent burial of Otto the Great’s intestines. Recent research focused on three areas directly adjacent to the monumental church of Otto II: the area around the northeast side apse, which is partly used as a cemetery, the cloister area at the northern aisle and the connection between the side aisle and the cloister on the western transept. (Read more.)