Tea at Trianon: The Green Man

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

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

The Green Man

From El Antiguo:

Both The Stations of the Sun and The Stripping of the Altars demonstrate conclusively that the strange rituals, beliefs, and material cultures of the Middle Ages were anything but remnants of forgotten paganism. The Green Man, the Christmas tree, Hallowe’en… these had emerged in medieval Europe, not in defiance of Christianity, but as a result of Christendom’s full flowering. I was floored. I dug into a hundred other examples. Yule logs and bonfires, maypoles and flower crowns, folk dances and herbal lore. Christian, Christian, Christian. Of course the pagan people had lit fires and danced, sung and decorated. Some things had lasted for centuries, but it didn’t mean that these rituals were hidden bits of Ye Olde Religion snuck in under the noses of the imperious Inquisition and meddling bishops. These ancient things were either baptized and gracefully incorporated into the Faith, or they had come from the Faith itself. And the people participating in these strange rites were unapologetically, unmistakably Christian.
What could this mean?
Even while I was teaching a class on paganism and magic, my personal conviction about its superiority to Christianity was wearing thin. The more widely I read, the more the history of this incarnated version of Christianity became clear. And my research was rewarded. I began, finally, to understand the inescapable conclusion. This earthy, living Christianity was indeed suppressed. But not by the medieval Church. It was suppressed by State Protestantism.
The Church in full flower had problems, of course, but I quickly recognized those problems as stemming not from the Faith itself, but rather from human failure to live up to Christ. The various cruel sins of medieval Catholics were not a “problem” for me; sinful humans exist at all times. The structure, the aim of their society was remarkably beautiful. It was a mystical, mysterious, living structure.
And it was this structure that was eroded by the Reformation, especially the English Reformation. Henry VIII’s greed for monastic land. Puritans who believed the apocalypse was just around the corner. Merchants and bureaucrats who saw their chance for wealth. Princes who wished to break from Rome—for purely political purposes.
It is impossible not to note that most of the Reformers had good intentions—but more often than not, their followers were motivated not by conscience, but by greed and frustration. And the things that they were frustrated by were not the sacraments or the hierarchy or Marian dogmas, but corruption and apocalyptic dread. Corruption and fear can be fixed more easily than a broken worldview. They had made a mistake.
I came to a two-fold conclusion: One, that the Reformation was not progress, but a rupture in society that crippled the Christian worldview. And Two, that the Reformation led directly to modernity. This was confirmed again and again, in study after study. Even the Protestant historians agreed, though they put a positive spin on it. This wasn’t my instinct. This was factual history. While the leaders of the Reformation were genuine, the change from old Europe to new Europe had to be enforced on the common people. I was surprised at the brutality of it, the obviousness of it.
I wasn’t just reading the history of Early Modernity. I was reading about the systematic dismantling of a world that I loved and understood, a world that fit every instinct that I had. And worse, this dismantling was often not motivated by genuine religious fervor, but rather money and power. This was explicitly confirmed by Protestant historians: Franklin Baumer, Jacques Barzun, Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, Steven Ozment, Jaroslav Pelikan, Peter Gay… the list could be extended ad infinitum. (Read more.)