Tea at Trianon: Erasing Christianity in France

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, May 16, 2024

Erasing Christianity in France

From Charlotte Allen:

In early March, the organizing committee for the upcoming Paris Olympics released its official promotional poster, featuring familiar Parisian landmarks—the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Dôme des Invalides—dropped into a brightly colored and surrealistic landscape of stadiums, Olympic rings, and cheering crowds. Something was conspicuously missing, though. The poster depicts the Dôme des Invalides, commissioned by Louis XIV and repository of Napoleon's tomb, without the gilded Christian cross that has adorned its pinnacle since its construction in the late seventeenth century. Instead of a cross, the poster shows a simple spike, like the one on top of the Chrysler Building.

French conservative lawmakers were outraged. Nicolas Meizonnet of Marine Le Pen's National Rally complained that the omission of the cross represented “wokeism” at its fawning worst. Other politicians on the right accused the organizers of erasing France's distinctive history and national identity.

The Dôme des Invalides, considered a masterpiece of baroque architecture, was originally a royal chapel commissioned by Louis XIV as part of the Hôtel des Invalides, a hospital for wounded soldiers that is now a French army museum. In 1861 Napoleon’s remains were transferred to the Dôme. Napoleon was an enemy of the Catholic Church, or at least of the papacy and the Papal States, which he regarded as challengers to his goal of French-dominated European republicanism. Still, Napoleon received the Catholic last sacraments before his death in exile on Saint Helena in 1821. Although Les Invalides is no longer a religious edifice, a Catholic Mass is still celebrated in the Dôme on May 5, the anniversary of Napoleon's death. (Read more.)