Tea at Trianon: Book of the Deer

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

Friday, November 24, 2023

Book of the Deer

From the BBC:

The small book is believed to originate from the Monastery of Deer in the Mintlaw area. It had the celebrated manuscript in its care by 1,000AD, before the building fell out of use. The monks then moved to Deer Abbey after abandoning the monastery. The book is normally held in the collections of Cambridge University but it went on public display at Aberdeen Art Gallery last year. Archaeologists and volunteers had painstakingly uncovered artefacts and features which they hoped would lead to the discovery of the site of the monastery finally being identified. Lead archaeologist Ali Cameron, from Cameron Archaeology Ltd, explained: "A lot of the rest of the field had been disturbed but we opened such large trenches in 2022 so that we had the best chance of finding early medieval features.

"We spent weeks excavating later material including stone and other demolition material until we got down to the earliest layers and features two weeks before the end of the dig.

"I then led a team of students and volunteers and we systematically cut sections though all the features, collected finds and samples which are important as they are where the charcoal for dating will be." The samples were carefully processed in the University of Aberdeen, under the supervision of Dr Gordon Noble. (Read more.)