A Hundred Marriages at Notre-Dame de Paris

At the birth of her first child in 1778, Marie-Antoinette personally provided for the dowries of a hundred poor girls, enabling them to marry. Encouraging marriage led to a decline of illegitimacy and abandoned children. From Rodama:

Marie-Antoinette refused the celebrations offered to her by the municipality of Paris and asked instead that the money be employed to provide dowries for a hundred deserving poor girls, who would be married en masse on the day of the Royal thanksgiving service in Notre-Dame.  Additional allowances were be paid when a first child was born, with a higher rate available for mothers who breastfed.  As a further celebration of family life,  an elderly couple would be chosen to renew their marriage vows in front of their "children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren".

It is hard to gauge what the municipal corporation might have thought about  this charitable effusion of Rousseauist sentiment.   No doubt the requirements were both expensive and troublesome to arrange.  The brunt of the organisation fell on the church. A 1923 article  in the Revue des études historiques, by Gabriel Vauthier, publishes a copy of the rather terse circular, dated 14th January 1779, from Archbishop Christophe de Beaumont to each of the curés of  Paris's forty-three parishes:

Monsieur,
It is the Queen's intention to endow with a dowry, one hundred girls to be chosen from the different parishes of Paris.  Each one will be furnished with the sum of five-hundred livres, as well as outfits and robes, to be delivered to her on the occasion of her marriage.  In addition,  Her Majesty wishes to pay ten livres per month for a year during the time that the baby is being nursed.  If the mother feeds her own baby, she will be payed fifteen livres a month and given a layette.

You should, Monsieur,  without delay, find the means to fulfill the charitable wishes of the Queen and bring about their speedy execution.  You must choose from among your parishioners,  individuals who are poor and of good moral character, worthy to be recipients of Her Majesty's kindness.  You must make your choice within eight to ten days.  The marriages will follow the ordinary order of precedence for the parishes of Paris.  Kindly come to the Archbishop's palace next Monday at five in the evening. You can inform me of the results of your research so far, and, if there are any difficulties, we will resolve them.

(Read more.)

Marie-Antoinette Giving Alms

 

 

 

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Washington Senate Passes Bill to Make Clergy Mandatory Reporters of Child Abuse

 From February in The Washington State Standard:

The state Senate passed a bill Friday afternoon to make religious leaders mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect. Supporters say the move is crucial to protecting children from harm, especially sexual abuse, while opponents argue the bill could end up doing more harm.

Senate Bill 5375 would make “members of the clergy” mandatory reporters like doctors, teachers and other people who work with kids. Under the law, religious leaders would be required to tell law enforcement or the Department of Children, Youth and Families if they suspect any harm has been done to a child. They must do so even if they learned that information during a confession or other penitential communication.

This is the third time in recent years that making clergy mandatory reporters has been attempted, with exemptions for reporting information learned in confession being a sticking point in the past.

Prime sponsor Sen. Noel Frame, D-Seattle, said religious leaders should have a responsibility to report abuse so the state can step in and take action.

“Children need trusted adults,” the senator said. “They need to know that if they tell somebody they’re being abused, like I told my teacher in the fifth grade that I was being abused, that they can trust that that person will make it stop.”

While the bill compels clergy to report child neglect information learned in confession, Frame said their privilege to not be compelled to testify in a criminal proceeding remains intact.

According to Frame, Washington is only one of five states where clergy aren’t mandatory reporters. She believes that has to change in light of reports of churches covering up harm done to children.

“The state does not have to be complicit when religious communities who engage in the practice of covering up abuse and neglect choose to do so,” she said.

Republicans said they supported previous efforts to make clergy members mandatory reporters, but took issue this time as there was no exemption for information learned in confession.

They believe those committing harm may do more harm if they cannot freely confide in religious leaders.

“People who want to ask for forgiveness for their past sins, they will not come and ask for help,” said state Sen. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake. (Read more.)

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Elizabeth de Burgh, the Captive Queen of Scots

From Sharon Bennett Connolly:

Elizabeth de Burgh was born around 1289. The daughter of Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster and Connaught, and his wife, Margaret, she was a god-daughter of England’s king, Edward I. At the age of 13 Elizabeth was married to Robert the Bruce, Earl of Carrick, in 1302; probably at his manor of Writtle, near Chelmsford in Essex. It is possible the marriage was arranged by Edward; he certainly encouraged it, as a way of keeping his young Scottish noble loyal to his cause.

However, events in Scotland would soon push the Bruce away from his English alliances; his murder of his greatest rival for the throne, John Comyn, in the Chapel of the Greyfriars in Dumfries. Aware that he would be excommunicated for his actions, Bruce raced to Scone to be crowned before a papal bull could be issued. 6 weeks later, on March 25th 1306, the Bruce was crowned King Robert I of Scotland, with Elizabeth by his side, by the Bishop of St Andrews, William Lamberton. They were crowned in a second ceremony the next day by Isabella MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, who had arrived too late to play her part in the ceremony on the 25th. As daughter of the Earl of Fife, Isabella claimed the hereditary right of the Clan MacDuff, to crown the King of Scots. Unfortunately the coronation was not the end of trouble for the Bruces. If anything, things were about to get much worse.

An ailing Edward I sent his loyal lieutenant, Aymer de Valence, north and he met and defeated Robert’s army at Methven in June of the same year. Robert sent his brother Neil and the Earl of Atholl to escort his wife to safety. They took the Queen, Princess Marjorie (Robert the Bruce’s daughter by his first marriage), sisters Mary and Christian and the countess of Buchan, north towards Orkney.

However, the English caught up with them at Kildrummy Castle and laid siege to it. The garrison was betrayed from within, the barns set alight and the Bruce women had barely time to escape with the Earl of Atholl before the castle was taken. Sir Neil Bruce and the entire garrison were executed; Neil was hung, drawn and quartered at Berwick in September 1306.

Queen Elizabeth and her companions made for Tain, in Easter Ross, possibly in the hope of finding a boat to take them onwards. However, they were captured by the Earl of Ross (a former adherent of the deposed King John Balliol), who took them from sanctuary at St Duthac and handed them over to the English. They were sent south, To Edward I at Lanercost Priory.

Elizabeth’s capture would have been a hard blow for Robert the Bruce. The new King of Scotland still lacked a male heir, and had no chance of getting one while his wife was in English hands. This made his hold on the throne even more precarious than it already was.

Edward I’s admirer, Sir Maurice Powicke said Edward treated his captives with a ‘peculiar ferocity’. He ordered that 24-year-old Mary Bruce and Isabella, the Countess of Buchan who performed Robert the Bruce’s coronation, should be imprisoned in specially constructed iron cages and suspended from the outside walls of castles; Mary at Roxburgh and Isabella at Berwick. Although it is more likely that the cages were in rooms within the castles, rather than exposed to the elements, they would be held in that way for 4 years, until Edward I’s successor, Edward II, ordered their removal to convents in 1310. (Read more.)

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The Holy Week Breviary Used by Marie-Antoinette in Prison

Even as people continue to scrutinize old letters under a microscope, searching for the least word or phrase that would indicate a love affair between Marie-Antoinette and Count von Fersen, evidence of the Queen's fervent Catholic faith continues to surface. Recently auctioned in Paris was the Office de la Semaine Sainte en Latin et en François à l'usage de Rome et de Paris. Dédié à la Reine pour l'usage de sa Maison. Paris, Veuve Mazières et J. B. Garnier, 1728. In English, it is translated as follows: Office of Holy Week in Latin and French According to the Usage of Rome and Paris. Dedicated to the Queen for Use in Her Household. La Reine mentioned in the title was Marie Leszczynska, the grandmother of Louis XVI and Madame Elisabeth; the volume bears her coat-of-arms. The book was bequeathed to Madame Elisabeth, whose cause for beatification has been introduced, when the old Queen died. The princess brought it with her to the Tuileries when the Royal Family were taken to Paris by force in October of 1789. Madame Elisabeth left it behind when fleeing from the palace in August of 1792 but later sent a secret communication to her lady-in-waiting, Madame de Sérent, to smuggle books to her in the Temple prison, including the Holy Week Office. The Royal Family made use of the book not only during Holy Week but throughout the year, reading aloud the words of the Mass every day. According to Beauchesne's biography of Madame Elisabeth, the Queen and Madame Elisabeth were sewing and listening to the fifteen-year-old Madame Royale read to them from the Office of Holy Week, when the guards came to take away the eight year-old Louis XVII. Later, when the Queen was taken to the Conciergerie for her final ordeals, the prayer book went with her. To this day the book opens easily to certain pages, including p. 310, which has the passage:

Scarcely is he [Jesus] raised to the sight of all these people, that he is insulted, and charged on all sides with curses and reproaches. In the end, he makes one last effort to raise his eyes to Heaven: My Father, he exclaims, forgive them, I pray you, because they know not what they do.

A guard at the Temple gained possession of the book after the Queen's death, and it later came to the great nephew of Louis XVI, Henri d'Artois, the Comte de Chambord. Read more, HERE.


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Of Canada and Greenland

 From Amuse on X:

To say that Canada is militarily helpless is not to indulge in hyperbole, but to confront a reality long obscured by diplomatic euphemism. The Canadian Armed Forces are not merely under-resourced; they are structurally incapacitated. The nation lacks the manpower, equipment, logistical depth, and political seriousness to defend its own vast territory, much less contribute meaningfully to the defense of NATO allies or embattled democracies like Ukraine. The Canadian military is, to borrow Hobbes, nasty, brutish, and short—in staffing, in supplies, and in strategic thinking.

Begin with manpower. The Canadian Armed Forces are authorized to field around 101,500 personnel. As of 2025, they are short by at least 16,000. This is not a minor discrepancy; it is a hemorrhage. Nearly 15% of the force exists only on paper. And even among those still wearing the uniform, a distressing number are functionally undeployable: overweight, undertrained, or shackled by bureaucratic delays that make a military posting resemble a Kafkaesque waiting room.

In some vital specialties—aviation technicians, naval crews, combat medics—the effective manning levels have dropped to less than half of what operational requirements demand. Training pipelines are slowed to a crawl. The few who do enlist find themselves waiting upwards of a year and a half for security clearances and medical screenings. And when they finally report for duty, the story turns tragicomic: in one recent deployment to Europe, Canadian troops reportedly had to borrow basic equipment—including helmets—from their American counterparts. Others bought their own kit from civilian retailers.

This is not merely inconvenient. It is existential. A military without the ability to equip and train its soldiers is not a military but a costume party at the edge of a battlefield. (Read more.)

 

From Tierney's Real News:

 Understand what JD Vance is saying. Notice how key Greenland is (geographically and strategically) to America for all the major arctic shipping routes for the world. It is also a strategic location for air and submarine surveillance in the northern hemisphere. If the US lets Russia & China control that - America is doomed. We will lose control of imports and exports, to our enemies, and also give them a military advantage - TO INVADE US - off our shores.

VP VANCE: "Our message is very simple. Yes, the people of Greenland are going to have self-determination. We hope that they choose to partner with the United States because we're the only nation on earth that will respect their sovereignty and respect their security - because their security is very much our security."

"We can't just bury our head in the sand — or, in Greenland, bury our head in the snow — and pretend that the Chinese are not interested in this very large landmass. We know that they are."

“Our message to Denmark (which currently rules over Greenland) is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have under invested in the people of Greenland and you have under invested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful landmass."

"We want to have good relationships with everybody... but part of having good relations is showing your strength when you have to. And unfortunately, the story of Greenland over the past 20 years when it comes to security is that we've underinvested... that has to change." (Read more.)

 

From Sharyl's Substack:

1. U.S. Aspirations to Buy Greenland Date Back Nearly 160 Years

   President Andrew Johnson sought to purchase Greenland in 1867. Johnson’s Secretary of State William Seward explored buying Greenland alongside Alaska, per the U.S. State Department’s historical records. Only the Alaska deal went through.

2. Truman Tried to Buy Greenland
   In 1946, President Harry Truman proposed buying Greenland for $100 million in gold. The idea stemmed from Cold War fears about Soviet influence. Denmark rejected the offer.

3. Trump Talked About Greenland Takeover in First Term, Too
   During his first term, Donald Trump also floated the idea of the U.S. buying Greenland, sparking global headlines in August 2019. He called it a “large real estate deal” for national security. Denmark quickly dismissed the notion, with Greenland’s leaders asserting their autonomy.

4. A Cold Connection Dates Back to WWII
   The U.S. military first set foot in Greenland during World War II to prevent Nazi Germany from gaining a foothold.

5. Norway Used to Own Greenland

   Denmark owns Greenland as a constituent country within the Kingdom of Denmark. In 1814, after the Napoleonic Wars, Norway was forced to relinquish several territories when its alliance with Napoleonic France crumbled, according to the Norwegian Historical Association. Denmark, aligned with the victorious powers, gained Greenland and other territories. (Norway was transferred from Danish to Swedish control.) This wasn’t a voluntary handover but a consequence of wartime negotiations and territorial realignment dictated by the treaty’s terms. (Read more.)

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Some Liturgical Privileges of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

 From The Missive:

From A.D. 1816 to A.D. 1861, the island of Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula comprised the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.  The origin of this uniquely and confusingly named kingdom, as it contained only one Sicily, goes back to A.D. 1130 when the Norman Roger II was recognized as the King of the Kingdom of Sicily, which included the island and the southern part of the peninsula.  Through the twists and turns of history, the Kingdom of Sicily was divided into two, with both parts still being called the Kingdom of Sicily.  So, there were, at this point, two Kingdoms of Sicily, one of which contained Sicily (with its capital at Palermo) and the other which was comprised of the peninsular lands (with its capital at Naples and which did not contain any Sicily).  When the two Kingdoms of Sicily were reunited in A.D. 1816, instead of the united kingdom simply being called the Kingdom of Sicily, it was dubbed the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.  In any case, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had, like other kingdoms, certain liturgical privileges granted to it.¹ (Read more.)

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St James’s Palace: The Two Chapels

Ceiling of Chapel Royal at St. James

 

The Queen's Chapel at St. James

One of the chapels was historically for the Catholic Stuart queens, beginning with Queen Henrietta Maria. From Living London History:

St James’s Palace was constructed on the orders of King Henry VIII from 1531-1536, on the site of what had once been a leper hospital, dedicated to St James the Less. The leper hospital was later converted into a convent and then dissolved by Henry as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. 

A significant proportion of Henry VIII’s original palace survives including the gatehouse, the chapel, turrets and various state rooms. Henry had the palace built as an escape from Whitehall, where he could spend time with his new bride Anne Boleyn. She never saw it completed however, as she was executed two years before it was finished. 

After much of Whitehall Palace burnt down in 1698, St James’s Palace became the official residence of the monarch. It remained so until 1837, when Queen Victoria moved into Buckingham Palace. St James’s Palace is, however, officially still the most senior royal palace. It is where the Accession Council meets to proclaim a new monarch and ambassadors/high commissioners in the UK are accredited to the Court of St James’s. (Read more.)

 

From Architectural Musings:

Under the protection of England’s three Catholic Queens, Catholics were able to practice their rites “collectively, publicly and theatrically” (Frances E. Dolan, “Gender and the ‘Lost’ Spaces of Catholicism”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. XXXII No. 4, Spring 2002, pp. 641-665). The Catholic Chapels Royal held what Simon Thurley has described as “a central position in the choreography of the Court” (Simon Thurley, “The Stuart Kings, Oliver Cromwell and the Chapel Royal 1618-1685” Architectural History, Vol. 45, 2002, pp. 238-274). To Catholics, such devotional spaces were saturated with meaning and their establishment at the centre of the Royal Court imbued them with a sense of hope that the political and social position of English Catholics could be restored. To the Protestant observer, however, the mere presence of Catholics at Court offered the threat that they might seek to displace the political status quo. The Catholic Chapels Royal were thus politically charged spaces. As a result, they became a primary nexus for Protestant hostility which was to spill over into the wider malaise felt towards Stuart rule and in the end they proved to be at the centre of what became an aesthetic undoing of the Stuart dynasty itself.  Of the three Catholic Chapels Royal constructed after 1620 at St James’s Palace, Somerset House and Whitehall, only the Queen’s Chapel at St James’s has survived largely intact.

The origins of the Chapel lie in that most farcical of abortive political alliances: the Spanish Match.  Upon his accession to the English Crown, James I was keen to bring an end to the Anglo-Spanish war which had doggedly persisted during the latter reign of Elizabeth I.  In addition to ending the financial drain of the war, James I was keen to characterise himself as a bringer of peace and prosperity to his newly united Kingdoms and, as heir to Mary Queen of Scots whose execution had provided the propagandised cause of the conflict, he was perfectly placed to offer terms.  Peace was secured under the terms of the Treaty of London signed at Somerset House in 1604.  Popular reaction to the peace can be fathomed by an examination of The Somerset House Conference, a painted record of the signing of the Treaty. (Read more.)

Queen Henrietta Maria

 

Many more pictures available from Unofficial  Royalty.

 

More on the Palace of St. James, HERE and HERE. A novel on Queen Henrietta Maria, HERE.

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Elon, DOGE & Fox

 From Tierney's Real News:

Elon & the DOGE team gave a great summary on Fox of what they are doing for us. It’s a must-see interview for all Americans - regardless of party. You’ll be shocked at what they have uncovered about our Government systems and you’ll be amazed at how savvy and determined they are.

Also, around the end of the video at the 36-minute mark, listen to Elon’s response to Bret Baier about the war. Look at his face and see his pain as he talks about all the senseless death. It’s very raw and comes from a deep place. I believe Elon is grieving the loss of his own son to what he calls the “woke mind virus.” That’s why I believe he is now so committed to MAGA and making sure it never happens again.

MUSK: "We should have empathy for the thousands of people dying everyday in the trenches. For no movement in the lines. For the past two years thousands of people have died every week for nothing."

"I take great offense at those who put the appearance of goodness over the reality of it. Those who virtue signal and say we can't give into Russia, but have no solution to stopping thousands of kids dying every day."

"I have contempt for such people and I want to make that clear. Because they're virtue signaling and their lack of a solution means that kids don't have a father. It means parents lost a son. For what? Nothing." (Read more.)

 

From Amuse on X:

 The dissolution of USAID—an institution long considered the crown jewel of American humanitarianism—has caused no small stir among the bureaucratic class, the global NGO ecosystem, and those for whom inertia passes as moral virtue. Yet such reforms, though disruptive, are not only justified—they are necessary. Under the leadership of Secretary Rubio and President Trump, with operational execution led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the United States has finally begun the long-overdue task of reconciling its foreign aid with its foreign policy.

That sentence may surprise some. Isn’t foreign aid a tool of foreign policy? Ideally, yes. But in practice, the two have long existed in a state of awkward cohabitation. USAID, created by executive order under President Kennedy in 1961, was intended to be nimble, responsive, and aligned with executive authority. Instead, over the past six decades, it became precisely the sort of permanent, self-perpetuating bureaucracy the Framers would have abhorred: expensive, redundant, and structurally unaccountable. Its agents abroad frequently contradicted presidential policy; its programs multiplied beyond oversight; and its purpose drifted into abstraction.

To be clear: the issue is not whether the United States should offer life-saving aid. It should, and it will. The issue is whether that aid should be aligned with coherent national interests, subjected to fiscal restraint, and delivered by a government apparatus capable of speaking with one voice. The answer, now decisively, is yes.

Consider, for a moment, what USAID had become. A foreign aid agency should be a tool of diplomacy, one that strengthens alliances, alleviates suffering, and advances national interests. Instead, USAID became an ideological export factory—shipping out cultural fashions under the pretense of humanitarianism, with a price tag courtesy of the American taxpayer. (Read more.)

From The Daily Wire:

In a Friday statement, USAID Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Lewin said the agency has strayed from its original mission to help stem the world’s “gravest crises and support allies in need.” 

“But the independent establishment of USAID has grown inefficient and unwieldy, too often contradicting rather than reinforcing the foreign policy of the President and nation,” he said.

“By bringing USAID’s core life-saving and strategic aid programs under the umbrella of the State Department, this Administration will significantly enhance the efficiency, accountability, uniformity, and strategic impact of foreign assistance programs – and ensure that our nation and President speaks with one voice in foreign affairs,” Lewin added. (Read more.)

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Medieval Female Scribes

A scholarly view. From Nature:

There are several studies into monastic scriptoria for women (Bischoff, 1966, Parkes, 1983, Robinson, 1997, Hamburger, 2016) starting with Bernhard Bischoff’s famous study of Chelles in France (Bischoff, 1966). The contributions of the Birgittine nuns of Vadstena alongside the brothers is explored in scholarly literature (Hedström, 2009, Dverstorp, 2010). Others cast a wider net to cover regions in selected centuries, from the eighth century to 1500 (McKitterick, 1992, Brown, 2001, Beach, 2004, Cyrus, 2009, Lifshitz, 2014). These studies together with a few, isolated pieces of evidence such as a contemporary illustration (Fig. 1) and archaeological finds (Radini, Trom et al. 2019) show that manuscript production in female religious institutions or female participation in lay workshops occurred in different periods and in different geographical areas. Women’s contributions as scribes are explored and attested in scholarly literature (Blanton et al. 2013; 2015; 2018; Saunders and Watts, 2023) as well as more popular essays and initiatives (e.g. Davis, 2018, Hudson, 2021). However, there is a knowledge gap: Despite the emerging field of quantitative codicology (Chandna et al. 2016), to date no study has tried to quantify the female scribe contribution. The role of female scribes in the Latin West during the Middle Ages has been defined within specific geographical or chronological delimitations only. This allows for in-depth analysis of the available source material, but not broad-scale conclusions. The aim of this paper is to address the research question: What was the quantitative contribution of female scribes based on available sources? How large was the fraction of the manuscripts copied by women? To provide a tentative answer to this question we conduct the to our knowledge first bibliometric analysis of the contribution of female scribes. We perform the study using colophons. (Read more.)

 

More HERE.

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A Converted Medieval Monastery in Somerset

 From Country Life:

Beyond its 16th-century oak front door — with the Abbot of Glastonbury’s coat of arms carved into the stone above — the beautiful Grade II*-listed manor house has seven bedrooms, plus a connected three-bedroom cottage, which needs 'some modernisation', according to the agents. So, 'quite a lot of modernisation', then. None of those rough edges or — ahem — 'bold' colour choices is to detract from the essential charm, however. Indeed, it probably adds to it — and buyers can come in knowing that this is a place ripe for them to put their own stamp on. (Read more.)

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Why DOGE and MAGA Aren’t Matter and Antimatter

 From Postliberal Order:

Vance pointed to two reasons why there is no real division between the two “tribes.” First, the on-shoring of manufacturing will reverse the baleful effects of deindustrialization—not only bringing a benefit for the working class who will gain better jobs, but improving the prospects for innovation. He pointed to the benefits of “network effects” when people in related industries can share best practices and improve productivity as a result.

Second, Vance spoke of the importation of cheap labor as a “crutch” that ended up stifling innovation even as it depressed the wages of ordinary workers. Essentially, cheap imported labor allowed companies to experience a brief sugar rush of increased profits due to decreased labor costs, short-circuiting the harder work of innovating their industries to increase productivity and infuse their businesses with greater creativity (or, inspire dissatisfied workers to do so, whether within their existing business or creating a new one).

Several times in the speech Vance speaks of a basic faith that innovation—especially in the area of AI—will not prove catastrophic for workers. This is, of course, a leap of faith, and he acknowledges that there are likely to be disruptions. But he speaks of confidence not merely as a matter of blind faith, but in light of the long-standing American experience in which innovation leads to improved material circumstances and more satisfying work over the long term. We will watch closely whether this confidence bears fruit, but what is most remarkable in these early days of the administration is to encounter such depth of thoughtful reflection about the future from a political figure, after decades of politicians who too often simply recite bromides and avoid confronting the most challenging dilemmas of our age. —PJD (Read more.)

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Astronomers Detect Oxygen in Distant Galaxy

 From Fox19:

Astronomers have made a surprising discovery about oxygen and elements in the most distant known galaxy. The galaxy is called Jades GSZ 14 0. It’s more than 13 billion lightyears away, and experts say it formed in the early days of the universe. The galaxy was first detected in January 2024 using the James Webb Space Telescope. The instrument observes the universe in infrared light invisible to the human eye.

When astronomers followed up on Webb’s initial observations with the ALMA Observatory in Chile, they were stunned to find the presence of oxygen and heavy metals. Their presence suggests galaxies formed more quickly than expected. The results were published Thursday in two separate studies, the Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics. (Read more.)

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Louis XVII: The Child Prisoner

Louis-Charles of France was born on March 27, 1785, Easter Sunday. Here is the account of the moderate revolutionary J.B. Harmand of his visit to the child incarcerated in the Temple Prison early in 1795. The little boy refused to speak. He died six months later on June 8, 1795.

The Prince was sitting near a small square table, on which were scattered a number of playing cards, some turned up into the shapes of trunks and boxes, and others raised into houses. He was occupied with these cards when we entered, and did not leave off his play. He had on a sailor's dress, new, and made of slate-coloured cloth; his head was uncovered; and the room was clean and well lighted. The bed was a small wooden one, without curtains, and the bedding linen seemed to us to be good and of a fine quality. The bed was behind the door, on the left hand on going in; and farther, on the same side, was another bedstead, without bedding, placed at the foot of the first. Between them was a door, which was shut, leading into another apartment which we did not see. The commissaries told us that the second bed had been that of the shoemaker Simon.

After having become acquainted with these preliminary details, I approached the Prince; but our motions did not appear to make any impression upon him. I told him that the government — informed too late of the bad state of his health, and of his refusal to take exercise, or to answer the questions put to him upon that subject, as well as his rejecting the proposals made to him to take some remedies, and to receive the visit of a physician — had sent us to him to ascertain these facts, and, in its name, to renew all those proposals; that we hoped they would be agreeable to him, but that we should take upon ourselves to offer him advice, and even to add reproaches, if he should persist in remaining silent, and in not taking exercise; that we were authorised to offer him such objects of diversion or recreation as he might desire; and that I requested he would tell me whether that pleased him.

Whilst I was thus addressing him, he looked at me steadfastly, without any change of position, and he listened to me apparently with the greatest attention; but not one word in reply.

[....]

I have stated that the motive to which the commissaries attributed the obstinate silence of the Prince was his having been forced by Simon to give evidence against his mother and his aunt. I inquired of them, in the ante-room, whether that silence really began on the day upon which that atrocious violence had compelled him to sign the odious and absurd deposition against the Queen. They repeated their assertions on that point, and protested that the Prince had not spoken since the evening of that day!

My colleagues and I agreed, that, for the honour of the nation, which was ignorant of these unhappy circumstances — for that of the Convention, which, indeed, knew them not, but which ought to have known them — and for that even of the criminal Municipality of Paris, which knew all, and which caused all these evils, we should confine ourselves to the ordering some steps of temporary alleviation (which were immediately carried into effect); and that we should not make a report in public, but in a secret committee;2 and it was so done.

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Signal

 From Tierney's Real News:

The CIA loads Signal on EVERY phone in the White House & Congress to be used as their encrypted chat tool.

Why? Because then the CIA can listen to EVERY private conversation - even those that Trump is having with his inner circle. In other words, the CIA is automatically on EVERY CALL.

RATCLIFFE: “Signal was loaded onto my computer at the CIA as it is for most CIA officers.”

Signal has been preinstalled on White House, Senate, CIA and FBI phones since 2020 - under Obama-Biden.

Goldberg of the Atlantic is CIA - that's how he got on the call. The CIA IS PRELOADED ON SIGNAL. Forget all the other noise.

 Only this time - I believe that Goldberg thought he had something he could use against Team Trump at the upcoming hearings so he leaked it right away. He pretended that Team Trump was talking top-secret war plans on Signal when nothing mentioned was classified. His plan was to turn this into Signal-Gate - just like Watergate or Russia-Russia. (Read more.)

 

More HERE.

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Top 20 MAHA Accounts You Need to Follow Right Now

 From The Vigilant Fox:

RFK Jr. once said, “American kids did not suddenly get gluttonous and lazy. Something is poisoning them.”

Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma have turned every American into an ATM machine.

Your pain is their profit. But you don’t have to be their victim...

Break the cycle. Follow these 20 𝕏 accounts to uncover what they never wanted you to know about your health.

1.) Dr. Pierre Kory (@PierreKory)

Dr. Pierre Kory was one of the most fearless voices during the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing ivermectin into the spotlight and challenging the safety of the shots.

Today, he’s a leading pioneer in treating vaccine injuries—and he’s speaking out about other “forbidden” therapeutics that Big Pharma hopes you never hear about.

2.) A Midwestern Doctor (@MidwesternDoc)

Speaking of forbidden therapies, @MidwesternDoc is the go-to source for uncovering powerful treatments that were buried when Big Pharma turned medicine into a profit machine. This anonymous writer is one of the most well-researched doctors out there, with insights and references so thorough that it’ll blow your mind. (Read more.)

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The Poor Mother

 From Ally's Substack:

When women have a child everything changes—Medieval or Modern. But it seems to change more for modern women. When modern women have children, the same biological and God-given desire to protect ignites in us as it did in women of the past— but we don’t have near the same dangers. And on top of that, we have an added expectation of fulfilling all our child’s desires. In a novocaine-free world, such a quest would seem like something out of Fairyland. All this underscores just how to ruin parenthood (and childhood): attempt to protect and keep our child happy for 18 years. That is life-destabilizing.

Jordan Peterson speaks often and boldly against the over-protective nature of modern parents, making kids weak and parents miserable. He advises that we teach our children to “face the challenge of life forthrightly,” adding, “You can’t protect your children, you can only make them strong, and then they can protect themselves.”

The Pendulum Swings

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to go back to the Dark Ages. No one appreciates Novocaine more than I do. I don’t think it was good to send 15-year-olds off to war and I doubt most Dark Age mothers were model parents. But the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Rather than raising hardened toothache-ready children, we are raising children unequipped for the intrinsic difficulties of life. Evidence suggests that incoming college students today experience greater levels of stress and psychopathology than at any time in the nation’s history (check out the work of Jonathan Haidt for more on the increasing fragility of young people).

Young people today might not have to fight in the Crusades but they do need to succeed in life, develop relationships, and confront threatening ideas and people. Our children encounter trials that our ancestors never faced—such as attempting to maintain their virtue in the face of Twitter and Internet pornography.

Since the introduction of birth control, we are having fewer children and those later in life—and that increases their value and our ability to hover. Too often they are allowed to become our sovereigns. In the past, there was no rearranging life for kids; they had to contribute and join the larger family project. Today it is the parents who must conform.

If motherhood feels like a burden, it is often a burden of our own making. The other day I was at my son’s soccer game. One of the boys was put in as goalie and his mother spent the next 30 minutes on the edge of her seat screaming instructions at her son, “Get the ball out of there! Stand in the middle of the goal!” It was truly exhausting to watch. She was completely frantic. It’s great to support our children but there is a fine line between support and control, and control is exhausting. (Read more.)

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Judgepocalypse Now

 From James Howard Kunstler:

Impeachment would be too mild for the claque of Woke-activist federal judges attempting to nullify the executive branch with hectoring writs against any and all sorts of executive actions. If simply bounced off their benches, they could just take up new careers as NPR legal commentators or transsexual pole-dancers. Rather, what you’ve got here is an obvious seditious conspiracy, plain for all to see, orchestrated by the same legal Nosferatus as RussiaGate, the 2020 election, and the J-6 witch hunt.

The catch is, this time it is discoverable and subject to prosecution because the party running this legal insurrection no longer has its hands on the levers of power in the DOJ and the FBI as it did when they ran the aforementioned ops. And so, the mighty silence emanating from those two agencies just now should tell you something: namely, that cases are being carefully constructed to finally bring these despicable caitiffs to real and chastening law.

If you want to know one paramount reason for institutional failure in our country, look to the evil enterprise that calls itself “Lawfare.” It originated as a blog launched on September 1, 2010, founded by three key figures: Benjamin Wittes, Jack Goldsmith, and Robert Chesney. Over time it evolved into an activist operation, The Lawfare Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to (cough cough) “Hard National Security Choices,” and run under the shady umbrella of the Brookings Institution.

The point of Lawfare is self-evident in its name: it is an instrument of warfare against a perceived enemy which, for the past decade, has been the political faction led by Mr. Trump, the once-and-current chief executive of the federal government. Mr. Trump is a danger to the bureaucratic arm of the federal government because he has defined it as a racketeering operation and moved decisively to end its depredations. Lawfare is the praetorian guard of the permanent DC bureaucracy, including especially its rogue intel actors, who function as enforcers for the Democratic party that largely staffs the bureaucracy. (Read more.)

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First Pagan Greek Temple in 1,700 Years

 From The Greek Reporter:

After 1,700 years the first ancient Greek temple opened in Arcadia, Peloponnese over the weekend. Hundreds of people attended the inauguration ceremony of the temple which was built for liturgical purposes and not as a museum.

The construction of the temple is an initiative of the doctor Manolis Heliotis, who allocated a privately owned area near the village of Kalliani for its construction. Its architecture is based on the golden ratio and includes features of ancient Greek temple architecture, such as friezes and pediments, while marble from various regions of Greece has been used.

Evangelos Bexis, the site manager and organizer of the event, told newsbomb.gr, “After 1,700 years, such a building is being built, with marble cladding on the walls and ceiling. There are tens of thousands of people in Greece and abroad who believe in their ancestral gods and do not have a place to worship. An injustice of centuries is being corrected.” (Read more.)

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“O Jewel Resplendent”

O jewel resplendent

and bright, clear beauty of the sun

that’s flooded into you—

the fountain leaping from the Father’s heart, which is his single

Word, by which he did create the primal matter of the world, which Eve disturbed.

This Word the Father made for you

into a man, and this is why you are that shining

matter, through which that Word has breathed forth all

the virtues, just as he brought forth all creation in primal matter.

– St. Hildegard of Bingen

From MDPI:

 The image of sunlight refracting through and reflecting off a gemstone becomes a lens through which Hildegard glimpses the entire sway of salvation history, stretching from the prima materia, the primordial material at the beginning of creation, through the disturbance of that matter in the Fall, and finally to the Virgin’s integral role in renewing that material as she bore the Son of God. Scripturally, the image aligns the Virgin with the twelve precious stones that adorn the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation 21, identifying her with the end of salvation history, the new heaven and new earth. In the context of Scivias, meanwhile, the gemstone takes us back to the beginning of the human journey and the anthropological vision of Scivias 1.4 (Figure 1), where the unfallen human body is described as a bejeweled tabernacle. This vision tells the story of a representative “human form,” the soul of an “Everyperson,” whose voice declares the ups and downs of its struggle against the temptations of the material world. It begins with the Everyperson’s conception, as their soul is quickened in the womb of their mother by the flow of divine energy, a “splendor like the dawn” from a golden quadrilateral allegorically identified as scientia Dei, “the Knowledge of God” (Scivias 1.4.9, p. 116). The iconography of this image in the Rupertsberg manuscript draws from common tropes for illustrating the nativity of Christ, with the recumbent mother in the same pose commonly used for the Virgin Mary in childbirth (Saurma-Jeltsch 1998, p. 66). The use of gold to illustrate the divine ensoulment adds further dimensions to the image, for the manuscript intentionally used gold to mark irruptions of divine activity into creation—we will see this gold return below in Scivias 2.1, aligned as here with the light of the dawn.8

 [...]

St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) comes down to us as one of the most dynamic intellectual figures of the twelfth century. As a leader of religious women in the Rhineland, she authored extensive volumes of visionary theology; designed visual images for at least one of those; composed the largest corpus of liturgical music ascribed to a single author of the Middle Ages; wrote works in natural science and medicine; preached to religious communities throughout her region; and engaged in an extensive correspondence with people from all ranks of society, from popes and kings down to local monks and nuns. This extraordinary, interconnected body of work offers us a unique entry point into medieval intellectual life, at once rooted in tradition and recasting that tradition in startlingly innovative ways. Hildegard’s Mariology exemplifies this creative range.

 

The best overview of Hildegard’s “theology of the feminine” remains the foundational work of Newman (1997). She demonstrated that for Hildegard, the feminine can be understood at a cosmic level as the matrix for the manifestation of divinity into time. The Virgin Mary is the most concentrated focal point of a dynamic that stretches from the figure of eternal Wisdom ordering creation, through the fertile but fallen mother Eve, and then on to the Virgin Mother Church. Essential elements in this Mariology include the predestination of the Virgin (i.e., that God preordained from eternity that the Virgin would bear his Son); Mary’s restoration of Eve’s fallenness through the power of virginity; and the Virgin’s exemplarity for Ecclesia, the Church, who is a Mother to the faithful in baptism and bears for them the Body of Christ in the Eucharist.1

Most studies of Hildegard’s Mariology find their richest sources in her lyrics. She composed more liturgical music for the Virgin Mary than she did for any other single subject: sixteen pieces that survive with musical notation (including antiphons, responsories, a sequence, a song, an Alleluia verse, and a hymn), as well as several others that survive only in a textual miscellany (Hildegard of Bingen 1998). There is good reason for this: Hildegard’s thought reaches its densest and most sublime in her liturgical poetry, which summarizes her larger theological project. Hildegard’s music thus provides an entry point for exploring the deeper roots of her Mariology, not only through manifest images of the Virgin but also through what Denk (2021) has called “Mariological allusion.” Essentially, we can learn even more about Hildegard’s views on the Virgin Mary by tracing allusions, analogues, and motifs that make the Virgin present even in the absence of explicit invocations. Denk (2021) has done this principally through musicological allusions to the wider chant repertoire, a valuable line of inquiry pioneered in recent years by Bain (2021).

 [...] 

Previous studies of the Virgin Mary’s place in Scivias have focused on the contrast with Eve (Garber 1998) and the place of the Annunciation as a model for authorizing female inspiration (Wain 2017). Wain (2017) offers a valuable critique of the ways in which many discussions of medieval Mariology rely too simplistically on the “Eva/Ave” trope to set up an oppositional parallel between Eve and Mary. She suggests that Hildegard instead sees the Virgin Mary as a model for her own intellectual fertility, positing the opening illustration of the Rupertsberg Scivias (which accompanies Hildegard’s preliminary Protestificatio) as an adapted Annunciation scene, with Hildegard gestating and giving birth to the work. Garber (1998), meanwhile, draws together the architectural metaphors found in several of Hildegard’s Marian lyrics with the imagery of the edifice of salvation in Part 3 of Scivias to suggest that Hildegard and her nuns shared with the Virgin a role as builders, not only of the physical monastery that they renewed at the Rupertsberg, but also of the life of monastic virtue. She contrasts the symbolic abstraction of Eve and Mary in much of Scivias with the more physically concrete personifications of the Virtues, who thus offer more relatable role models for Hildegard’s nuns.

The salient historiographical issue is the extent to which the Virgin Mary could serve as a viable role model for medieval women. It is sometimes suggested that she could displace the gross misogyny that often resulted from the identification of women as “daughters of Eve.” But how realistic would that displacement be if we recognize that the Virgin Mary was in many ways “an inaccessible paragon” (Wain 2017, p. 164)? In Hildegard’s hands especially, the Virgin takes on cosmic proportions. We do not find Hildegard meditating on the humanly relatable aspects of the Virgin’s life, such as her compassion or sorrow for her Son, that would become powerful models in later medieval spirituality. Instead, as we will see in this study, Mary appears as “majestic and impersonal” (Newman 1997, p. 166), a radiant light shining distantly, blinding in its brilliance like the sun. But this study will also show that Hildegard mediated the Virgin’s light through analogues of traditional Marian imagery. Building on the insights of Garber (1998) and Fassler (2022), it will reveal how the Virgin exemplifies the life of the virtues and through them could indeed serve as a model for Hildegard and the virgin nuns under her care. Again, in contrast to later medieval spiritual practices that encouraged interior meditation on details of the Virgin’s life—even when those details, such as her reading at the Annunciation,6 could authorize women’s learning and intellectual life—Hildegard’s focus for her nuns was on actively developing virtues that for her imitate the Virgin’s key role in salvation history. When her nuns would join their voices in the music of the liturgy, in particular, they would be transformed into resplendent gems, “living stones” to build up the heavenly Jerusalem and take their place as the perfected work of the Church. (Read more.)

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Denying Hell

 Monsignor Pope and Christine Niles.

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A ‘Vast Underground City’

 From Gateway Pundit:

Archaeologists believe they have uncovered evidence of a massive underground city lying beneath Egypt’s famous Giza pyramids. Researchers from Italy and Scotland used advanced radar technology to produce detailed images from deep below the surface, revealing possible hidden structures 10 times the size of the pyramids themselves. The report highlights eight distinct vertical, cylinder-shaped formations stretching over 2,100 feet beneath the pyramids, along with a series of additional unidentified structures located another 4,000 feet further down. However, some experts remain skeptical of the claim, insisting that such a feat would be structurally impossible. (Read more.)

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"Londonderry Air"

 

Blasket Islands

On the way to Killarney Cathedral

Never went to Derry, but I saw many other beautiful places in Ireland. And "Danny Boy" has always been a favorite in my family. From Debra Esolen at Word and Song:

Do you recall the first time you ever heard the “Londonderry Air” (or as it is more frequently called, “Danny Boy?” I can’t recall a time when I did not know that song. But if I had to guess, I’d bet that my first experience of it came from watching old TV reruns of “Make Room for Daddy” as a kid. The star of that show, Danny Thomas, was a beloved entertainer, singer, actor, and later television producer. And for obvious reasons, his producers adapted (and jazzed up!) “Danny Boy” to become his theme song. In 1953, when Thomas premiered his show, there couldn’t have been a person in the world who was not familiar with that song. But (other than from Ireland!), just where did it come from?

Well, I wasn’t just spinning my wheels when I began this post talking about collectors. I’ve covered many folk songs over the past few years at Word & Song. But in the case of the “Londonderry Air,” the song might easily have fallen into oblivion but for a few dedicated collectors of songs, and particularly of folk songs, back in the 19th century. Some people guess that the tune is linked to a couple of other folk songs even older than that. But we know that the tune itself first appeared in print, unnamed, in "The Ancient Music of Ireland” ( published by The Society for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland, 1855). The editor of that book, George Petrie, had been about the business of literally collecting old Irish folk tunes which had never been notated, much less published. The unnamed air — along with a good number of other genuine old Irish tunes — had been notated and sent to Mr. Petrie by yet another song collector, Miss Jane Ross of Limavady in County Derry, in Northern Ireland. (Read more.)

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