Tea at Trianon: Two Ravennas: Arian and Catholic

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

Sunday, July 13, 2025

Two Ravennas: Arian and Catholic

From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

Arianism and its many offshoots and sub-genres of heresy plagued the Church with mini-schisms, factions, disagreements and controversy for more than three centuries, long after the Council of Nicaea had formally condemned it in 325.
The Germanic tribes were Arians, not Christians in the proper sense of the word. Arianism had taken root among the Goths in the 4th century through the missionary, Arian bishop and philologist, Ulfilas (c. 311 – 383). He was a Cappadocian Greek who translated the Bible into Gothic - creating the Gothic alphabet for the purpose - and passed on a theology that had already been condemned by the Church.
When Odoacer, deposed the last western emperor, he did so as an Arian. Though he claimed to govern Italy in the name of the Eastern Emperor in Constantinople, Zeno, his religious position put him at odds with the Catholic majority in the West and the East. This marked the beginning of a new and uneasy phase in which Italy was ruled by a non-Roman warlord who held a heretical version of the faith, while the majority of those he ruled, including clergy and most of the old Roman elite, professed the Nicene Creed. Though not an Ostrogoth himself (he was likely of Scirian origin) his successor continued this problem, though handling it with a certain diplomatic grace.
When Theodoric the Great, (r. 493–526), an Ostrogoth and also an Arian, took power, this religious tension between state and church continued. Theodoric was a savvy and deliberate ruler who sought stability by maintaining Roman institutions and promoted religious tolerance. He allowed the Catholic population to keep their bishops and churches, while commissioning Arian churches for his court and followers. (Read more.)