Tea at Trianon: Medieval Misrule and Mayhem

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

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Medieval Misrule and Mayhem

From English Heritage:

By the 15th century ‘boy bishops’ had become the principal form of status inversion associated with the rituals of the Church. On mid-winter feast days especially associated with children (St Nicholas on 6 December and Holy Innocents on 28 December), a choirboy was elected by his peers to assume the duties of the bishop or abbot. Clad in a miniature episcopal mitre, boy bishops led processions and even preached sermons. They are documented at cathedrals and numerous abbeys.
The great Benedictine monastery at Bury St Edmunds was especially associated with boy bishops. Small lead tokens resembling late medieval coins have been found within the precincts of the abbey and elsewhere, especially in East Anglia. Some are inscribed with the opening verse of a hymn sung to welcome Henry VI to the abbey at Christmas 1433. The exact purpose of these tokens is open to question but it’s been suggested boy bishops distributed them to children and the poor who then exchanged them for treats at the abbey’s almonry.(Read more.)