Tea at Trianon: Holy Women of York

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, April 15, 2024

Holy Women of York

From The National Catholic Reporter:

Beautiful and of prominent lineage, Mary Ward was destined for marriage but refused it, ultimately persuading her parents to allow her to clandestinely travel to Belgium where she could enter the convent as a lay sister of the Poor Clares. She was miserable until the benediction of a religious superior finally released her from her vows. Mary Ward’s vision was to found a new community in which women religious would be free of enclosure, free to establish schools for poor girls, free of monastic restrictions and free from jurisdiction of local ecclesial authority. In the 17th century, this vision was preposterous. Nonetheless, Mary Ward, age 24, persisted. She surreptitiously returned to England to recruit followers to her Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and with them traveled to the continent where she established a number of schools. She developed a rule modeled on the newly established Jesuit order and then began petitioning the papacy for recognition, one time even walking 1,500 miles from Brussels to Rome to do so.
Ultimately thwarted in her efforts, she wrote of her “long loneliness” as she endured suspicion, rejection, betrayal, condemnation and imprisonment, not by secular powers but by the church she served. Secular clergy condemned her as the leader of Jesuitical ladies. The Jesuits withdrew their initial support. Jealousy within the institute resulted in betrayal, and years of petitioning the papacy for recognition came to nothing. In fact, in 1631 Urban VIII suppressed the “pernicious” institute, imprisoned Mary Ward, and condemned her as “heretic, schismatic and rebel against holy church.”
Finally released, she returned to England where she had the support of the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria. But Cromwell’s army soon gained control of England, engulfing the country in war and besieging York, where Mary Ward had taken refuge. She died in 1645, a seeming failure.
Vindication of her life and work was slow in coming. In 1703, suppression of the institute finally was removed, and in 1909 she was acclaimed its founder. Belatedly, in 1951, Pius XII acknowledged Mary Ward as “that incomparable woman given to the church by England in its most somber and bloodstained years.”
The shards of Mary Ward’s prophetic life are scattered throughout the city of York. A stone in the Anglican church in nearby Osbaldwick indicates she is buried there in an unmarked grave. The Bar Convent at Mickelgate, home of the Mary Ward nuns, the oldest active convent in England, offers visitors hospitality for body and soul, and the convent’s museum chronicles the history of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the splendid irony of Mary Ward’s life. (Read more.)