Tea at Trianon: How Western Civilization Survived ‘By the Skin of Its Teeth’

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

Thursday, April 4, 2024

How Western Civilization Survived ‘By the Skin of Its Teeth’

From Intellectual Takeout:

In the traditional Protestant view (by no means shared by all Protestants today), Christianity was in its purest form in its beginning stages, and over the centuries experienced a gradual distortion until its “Reformation” in the 16th century.
Because of the influence of this Protestant view of history on Western schools, most students typically do not hear much about the period of the 800-year history following the Fall of the Roman Empire known as the Middle Ages.

And because they are kept in ignorance of the Middle Ages—while nevertheless having the gall to classify it as a period of “ignorance”—they typically think of the Renaissance as limited to something that happened in Italy beginning in the 14th century.

But according to many modern scholars, that wasn’t the first Renaissance in the history of the West. Rather, the first revival of learning and culture took place in the 8th and 9th centuries and, according to historian Kenneth Clark, helped Western Civilization survive “by the skin of its teeth.”

The first Renaissance was spearheaded by the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (742-814) and his successors, and is thus known as the “Carolingian Renaissance”. Its main contributions included improving the knowledge of Latin throughout Western Europe and the copying and preservation of many classical texts.

Latin was the language of the Western version of the Bible (the Vulgate), the Church Fathers (the early theologians of Christianity), and classical Roman literature. Thus, becoming a literate person at that time required a knowledge of Latin.

However, after centuries of barbarian rule, knowledge of proper Latin was in a deplorable state in the late 8th century. Most of the clergy—those most likely to receive formal education—were barely literate. Famously, St. Boniface had written to Pope Zachary about witnessing a baptism performed by a priest who used the formula “Baptizo te in nomine Patria, et Filia, et Spiritu Sancta,” which he considered invalid. (The correct Latin rendering is “Baptizo te in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”)

Charlemagne responded by first drawing the greatest scholars of the time to his Palace School in Aachen, and then issuing a series of ordinances, or “capitularies”, stipulating that all bishoprics and monasteries have schools at which they taught the rudiments of proper Latin grammar (along with basic arithmetic, singing, and musical notation). It was the job of Charlemagne’s traveling representatives—the missi dominici—to ensure that the mandated curriculum was being satisfactorily carried out. (Read more.)