Tea at Trianon: Who Was Mary Ward?

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, July 15, 2024

Who Was Mary Ward?

Mary Ward plays a part in my upcoming novel about the English Civil War. From Mary Ward: Dangerous Visionary:

While 17th century theologians were still wondering whether women had souls capable of apprehending God, scores of young women were risking everything to join Mary Ward’s Institute, drawn by her charismatic personality and deep faith.

Three centuries later, one of her followers, Mother Teresa of Calcutta said she was “God’s gift to the Church and society”, while Pope Pius XII described her as “that incomparable woman, whom England, in her darkest and most sanguinary hour, gave to the Church” and Pope John Paul II praised her in his encyclical on women, Mulieris Dignitatem.

She was one of the great female travellers of the 17th century, journeying on foot over the Alps a number of times amid the Thirty Years War to meet Pope Gregory XV and Urban VIII in Rome and answer the Church’s criticisms of her Institute.

As one of her followers, Sr MM Littlehales, CJ, wrote in her book, ‘Mary Ward: Pilgrim and Mystic’:

In the Elizabethan era – that age of outstanding personalities – she was exceptional. She was among the great 17th century travellers. Indefatigable, she went on foot from Liege to Rome, thence to Naples and Perugia more than once, twice from Rome to Munich and back, to Vienna and to Bohemia – the very borders of Islam. Besides other journeys, she crossed the sea ten times between England and Flanders. Her last and most remarkable journey, from Rome to England, ended in Yorkshire. All these travels were undertaken with the scantiest resources and in poor health – 6 times over the Alps in the depth of winter, through the occupying armies of the Thirty Years War and usually on foot except on two occasions when she was carried in a litter, apparently dying.”

Mary Ward and her companions, who came to be known as ‘the English Ladies’, founded religious communities and schools throughout Europe from St Omer and Liège in Flanders, via Cologne, Trier, Munich, Bratislava and Vienna to Perugia, Rome and Naples.

She strove to educate in and for society, not apart from it, and to educate young women in the Christian virtues and liberal arts so that they would be able to undertake more fruitfully their vocations in life. In her view, education was an advantage not a danger. (Read more.)