Tea at Trianon: Spring in the Middle Ages

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

Saturday, April 5, 2025

Spring in the Middle Ages

From Medievalists:

Nowadays, in the Northern hemisphere, Spring starts on March 21, which corresponds to an equinox, when daylight and nighttime are equal in length. Medieval authors too associated the beginning of Spring with March. In his seventh-century encyclopedia known as the Etymologies, Isidore of Seville wrote that March is “also called the month of new things, because the month of March is the beginning of the year. It is also called the “new Spring” from its signs of germination…” But why did Isidore qualify March as “the beginning of the year”, you might wonder? In several regions of medieval Europe, civil calendars followed the Annunciation model, with a change of year on the feast day.
In Annunciation-style calendars, therefore, March 24 was the last day of the year, and March 25 marked the beginning of the new year. The Annunciation is a Christian holiday falling on March 25, which celebrates the archangel Gabriel’s visit to the Virgin Mary, when he told her she would be the mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The new calendar year therefore began with Spring, a season linked to new life. This powerful association between Spring and rebirth was both religious (the Annunciation) and empirical, that is, based on observation (with Spring come new leaves, grass and the return of migratory species).

How did medieval people perceive the arrival of Spring? How was Spring depicted in medieval calendars and literary texts? And, was Spring the “mating season” for humans, as it is for many animal species? (Read more.)