Tea at Trianon: Ireland’s Oldest Book Shrine

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, June 28, 2025

Ireland’s Oldest Book Shrine

From ArtNet News:

In 1986, divers fished a series of ancient fragments out of a lake in a Longford County village in Ireland. The pieces were well-preserved, thanks to sediments in the lake—but they were no humble find. When researchers eventually fitted the wood, metal, and decorative components together, what emerged was nothing less than Ireland’s largest and oldest book shrine.
Nearly four decades after its discovery, the Lough Kinale Book Shrine, so named for its find site, is now on view at the National Museum of Ireland (NMI), where it was conserved.
And it’s quite a sight: the 9th-century book shrine, an elaborate container for a manuscript associated with a saint, is an oak box overlaid with bronze plates, measuring more than 13 by 11 inches, with a thickness of almost five inches. On its face is florid metalwork with four circular medallions and a large cross, encircled by ornately embellished openwork panels. Its hinges are in the shape of snake heads, built to hold a thick leather strap for transportation of the book shrine to ecclesiastical ceremonies.

Otherwise, Paul Mullarkey, a conservator at the museum, told the Irish Times: “The box was permanently sealed, with no direct access to the contents.” (Read more.)