Tea at Trianon: St Govan’s Chapel

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, May 19, 2025

St Govan’s Chapel

From The Abbey of Misrule:

Like St Govan himself, a mystery surrounds the chapel. It seems to have been built in the 13th or 14th century; and yet Govan is said to have lived in the 5th or 6th. The chapel was restored in the 1980s and today it receives a steady stream of tourists with cameras, like me. What it rarely seems to receive now is genuine pilgrims, or people in search of healing. This is 21st century Britain, after all. We don’t do that sort of thing any more. But long ago, we very much did: St Govan’s chapel was a place of pilgrimage - and, it is said, a place of miracles - for many centuries.
Inside, the chapel is damp, vaulted and spare. There is a small stone altar - just visible in the picture below.
[...]
None of this, though, answers the primal question that St Govan’s Chapel tantalisingly poses: just who was St Govan? Sometimes we find, especially as far back as the 5th or 6th centuries, that the sources are silent. On this occasion, they are almost too noisy. They tell us a lot, but none of it is conclusive.
For a start, we have the saint’s name. This is variously said to be Govan, Gowan, Goven, Gofan, Gobin, Gobhan, Gwalchmai - a mythic Welsh hero - or even Giovanni, the Italianised version of John. Some believe he was a local disciple of St Eilfyw, who baptised Wales’s patron saint David. Others identify him with an Irish monk, Gobhan, who is mentioned in medieval manuscript as a companion of another Irish saint, Ailbe. (Read more.)