Tea at Trianon: Mad Monks and Alchemists

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, March 3, 2025

Mad Monks and Alchemists

From The Abbey of Misrule:

What has happened here is what happened across England during the Reformation: an old Catholic building was repurposed as an Anglican church. In the process, anything associated with the idolatries and superstitions of ‘Popery’ - statues, rood screens, paintings, frescoes, crucifixes, holy wells and the like - were either smashed, removed or painted over. Walk into an English parish church today and the building will typically be whitewashed and full of dark wooden pews. It will be simple and clean-lined. Before the Reformation, however, these buildings would have looked more like an Orthodox church in Eastern Europe today: painted in many colours, filled with icons and statues, dotted with reliquaries, rood lofts and even the cells of anchorites - of which we will discover more in coming weeks, as we continue to wander across England.
Binham has a famous example of such Reformation-era remodelling. Below is what was previously the rood screen (‘rood’ is an Anglo-Saxon word for ‘cross’; it gives its name to a famous Old English poem) separating the nave from the chancel and sanctuary. In medieval times, it was painted with icons of saints. After the Reformation, it was whitewashed and covered instead with Bible verses. (Read more.)