The Angelic Salutation And The Black Death

The Annunciation ~ Frederic James Shields

From Aleteia:

This second part (“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death”) is believed by many to have been added during the plague to ask for the Blessed Mother’s protection from the fatal disease. Venerable Fulton J. Sheen explains this origin in his book The World’s First Love.

Since it seizes upon the two decisive moments of life: “now” and “at the hour of our death,” it suggests the spontaneous outcry of people in a great calamity. The Black Death, which ravaged all Europe and wiped out one-third of its population, prompted the faithful to cry out to the Mother of Our Lord to protect them at a time when the present moment and death were almost one.

An expert in Marian devotion, Fr. Donald H. Calloway, confirms this conclusion in his book Champions of the Rosary and explains how, “After the Black Death, the second half of the Hail Mary began to appear in the breviaries of religious communities, especially those of the Mercedarians, Camaldolese, and Franciscans … the people of the 14th century greatly needed the ‘hope-filled’ dimension of the second half of the Hail Mary prayer.” (Read more.)

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Foreign Policy and the Oil Clock

 From AND Magazine:

Gulf exports excluding Iran were back at the pre-war average in September, about 16.5 million barrels a day, Kpler tracking cited by Just the News. Iranian loadings have been near zero since the July blockade. Bessent said about 15 million barrels remain on the water, nearly all for China, and that Tehran runs out of oil to trade in about two weeks. That is his clock, not a confirmed cutoff. Just the News

Brent settled Friday at $102.25, down 6 cents. WTI finished at $91.11, down $1.76. For the week, Brent was up 0.11 percent, and WTI was down 1.6 percent. Saturday quotes were still about $102 for Brent and $91 for WTI, roughly 42 percent above the February baseline near $72. The Brent–WTI gap, about $11, is the Hormuz signature: waterborne crude is repriced, U.S. inland crude less so. Business Recorder, citing Reuters and Hormuz Monitor

The Friday dip was the diesel story, not a peace story. French President Macron chaired a G7 call. EU countries agreed to a French proposal to release part of their diesel stocks over about 20 days. It was not clear the G7 had agreed on volumes. A stock release can loosen diesel for a few weeks. It does not replace barrels that are not loading in Iran, and it does not reopen the strait. Capital Economics said another release could tip the market into a slight surplus only if the recent pickup in non-Iranian Gulf flows holds. Business Recorder (Read more.)

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Elites Keep Saying It's Not True

 From David Strom at Hot Air:

Most religions have some version of an evangelical streak, and rightly so. If you believe that you are following the one true path, it is your duty (in most religions) to spread the word. There are exceptions, like Judaism, but the principle mostly holds. 

What makes Islam particularly aggressive is that it is not just a religious tradition or set of beliefs; it is a totalitarian ideology that doesn't allow for a separation of politics and religion, and that is based on the belief that civil law and religious duty are the same thing, and that its mission is to spread Islam to the entire world through all necessary means. Islam has always spread through conquest and, ironically, colonialism. In many ways, it is the opposite of Judaism in that regard, despite the fact that Jews are accused of being the ultimate colonialists. Jews are almost uniquely particularist, with no impulse to spread the word and little interest in territorial expansion beyond their historical borders. (Read more.)

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Queen Anna (Stuart Queens Trilogy Book 1)

 

 From Amazon:

A crown won in the eye of a storm. A queen who refuses to be broken...

Princess Anna of Denmark sails for Scotland to marry King James VI, but storms ravage her fleet, igniting a deadly obsession with witchcraft in her new home. Arriving in a strange and paranoid court, Anna finds her new husband’s bed is a treacherous place.

Surrounded by whispering courtiers and shifting alliances, Anna refuses to remain a passive pawn. When the court takes her children to raise them away from her, the young queen draws her line in the sand. From the windswept castles of Scotland to the glittering, dangerous English court, Anna is restored to her rightful place in history.

 Once again, historical novelist Tony Riches proves that true events make the best stories, especially when based upon solid research, as well as loyalty to the original personalities of the actual characters. Anna of Denmark has been largely overlooked by novelists as dull and dutiful, a quiet presence in the background of the rollicking Jacobean court. Tony paints a vibrant portrait of a great Queen who left an indelible imprint on the art and culture of the era, in addition to mothering the Stuart dynasty. While not caving to anachronisms of the feminist interpretations of history, Tony's depiction of the Danish princess, who became the bride of the son of Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley, respects the framework in which Anna found herself as a very young girl. She had no concept of the type of man she had married nor of the demons which tormented him. Nevertheless, she was expected to provide heirs along with the veneer of an amicable family life, all while her husband chased handsome young men, growing more obsessed with each passing lover. Realizing, after much disappointment, that she had to cultivate a life for herself, Anna remodeled the palace she renamed "Denmark House" as a refuge of order and beauty.

As an author of Stuart-themed novels myself, I would recommend Tony's Queen Anna as an introduction to seventeenth-century England for those who wish to explore it in either novels or biographies. The seeds for the calamitous Wars of the Three Kingdoms are sown in the reign of James I who, on one hand, was a scripture scholar and theologian, deeply conscious of his duties as the Lord's Anointed. On the other hand he could be highly intemperate, whether in his love of drink, in his overzealous hunting of witches or in his passion for his own sex. Anna brought dignity, glamor, and continental sophistication to the court, be it in Scotland or in England, as well as bearing the first royal princes and princesses seen in England since the days of Henry VIII. She could not save either her family or her kingdoms from James, though, and the repercussions of his behavior upon their youngest son Charles. All this and much more is shown, not told, in the novel, as the reader is invited to draw their own conclusions from such a lively yet heartbreaking rendition of the past.

This painting by Paul van Somer has an interesting role in the novel

 

Queen Anna by Tony Riches is available HERE.

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The Ancient Parable

 From James Howard Kunstler:

Translation: Chuck Schumer knows that the Democrats have already been thwarted from rigging the election, from flooding the polls with illegal immigrant voters, with dead voters, with voters who moved out of state but still got mail-in ballots sent to their old addresses, with voters registered as living in Walmart parking lots, and so on. Chuck Schumer knows that the Civil Rights Division of DOJ is sending hundreds of lawyers to observe the action in swing state polling places. ICE might even be on hand to see who turns up.

So, Chuck Schumer is pretending that the Republicans will try to do what the Democrats actually did in several previous elections (including the last midterm, 2022, viz., AZ, GA, NV), and would have liked to do in this midterm, but can’t. The Democrats will holler like crazy about it before the election to plant this idea in credulous minds. They will jump up and down going woo-woo-woo on Election Day itself to water the idea. And after the election they will blitz every critical precinct with lawsuits to prevent the vote from being certified, using select “activist” judges to issue TROs and writs to delay election results and de-legitimize the vote.

And if none of that avails — which it won’t — they’ll call out their ground troops, Antifa, BLM, Free Palestine, LGBTQ2S+, the furious transsexuals, the hysterical cat ladies, and suchlike to make a giant ruckus so as to provoke the president to invoke emergency powers to quell the mayhem. And then they’ll point at Mr. Trump shrieking, “See! Tyrant!” (Read more.)

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The Need for ‘Sprezzatura’

 From The Habsburg Way:

At the turn of the 16th century, there were few places more esteemed than the Italian city of Urbino. Thanks to the inspired rule of the Montefeltro Dukes of Urbino, the city hosted one of the most illustrious courts in all of Europe, with a cultural output that rivalled Florence and Rome at their Renaissance heights. Castiglione had fond memories of his own time there, and indeed wrote Il Cortegiano as a debate taking place at the court of Urbino. The topic of the debate was simple: what makes the ideal courtier?

Initially, the courtiers ask whether noble birth is an essential prerequisite. While agreeing that it gives a powerful stage to a man, they also largely agree that it merely projects the reality of who that man is, enhancing his vices as much as his virtues. Very quickly, the courtiers observe that there is something far deeper at play than status alone:

“Besides his noble birth, then, I would have the Courtier… endowed by nature not only with talent and beauty of person and feature, but with a certain grace and (as we say) air that shall make him at first sight pleasing and agreeable to all who see him; and I would have this an ornament that should dispose and unite all his actions, and in his outward aspect give promise of whatever is worthy the society and favour of every great lord.”

Baldassarre Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, I.14

Grace is a word that appears again and again in the texts of Renaissance Italy. It was used to describe honorable conduct, and to describe the works of Raphael, arguably the greatest painter of the Renaissance, whose hometown also happened to be Urbino. One of the courtiers present, Cesare Gonzaga, underlines this apparent importance of Grace by agreeing that it is “universal seasoning, without which all other properties and good qualities are of little worth”. But what actually is it?

To answer the question, Castiglione coins a new word, Sprezzatura. There is no direct English translation of Sprezzatura, but Castiglione helpfully defines it for us:

“To practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought”

Baldassarre Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier I.26

In other words, no matter the context it is applied to, a graceful man is one who is able to make the difficult appear natural. Appear, however, is the crucial word. It may well have taken arduous study and years of practice to reach this level of confidence, but the secret to charisma lies in downplaying the preparation. (Read more.)

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The "Hail Mary" Over the Centuries

From English Historical Fiction Authors:

From Christianity’s earliest days, the Virgin Mary was an advocate for the faithful, an intercessor who would plead their case to God. Devotional images of her go back to the second century, and more Christians started to name their daughters Mary toward the end of the fourth century.

A novelist studying early medieval times can easily see her importance. Charlemagne dedicated a newly built basilica at Aachen to her. On a smaller scale, a scribe wrote, “The book was given to God and His Mother by Dido [of Laon]. Anyone who harms it will incur God’s wrath and offend His Mother.”

No surprise, then, that Christians wanted a prayer just for her. When I first wrote The Cross and the Dragon, I assumed the Ave Maria always had its current form. I just needed the Latin translation for my characters.

Imagine my surprise when my editor informed me that Ave Maria was a lot shorter in the eighth century. “Hail, Mary, full of grace,” or words to that effect go back to the sixth century, so I could have my characters praying “Ave Maria, gratia plena.”

But it apparently took a few more centuries for the prayer to get longer. Two Anglo-Saxon manuscripts from around 1030 include “benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui” (“blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb”). In the 12th century, churchmen accept the greeting to Mary as a form of devotion, as familiar as the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.

And so the salutation persisted, accompanied by a gesture of homage such as genuflecting, kneeling, or bowing the head. Some saints said the Ave Maria 50 to 150 times a day. (Read more.)

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Tariffs Work For America

 From Tierney's Real News:

Today, President Trump announced a major expansion of the Korea Strategic Trade and Investment Deal, unlocking $200 billion in new Korean investments in the United States as part of the broader $350 billion partnership reached last year.

Tariffs served as the primary leverage that secured this deal. For those who still question how tariffs help Make America Great Again, this is a clear example.

In 2025, the Trump administration imposed or threatened reciprocal tariffs on South Korean goods at around 25 percent. To avoid or reduce those rates, South Korea committed $350 billion in U.S. investments—$150 billion for shipbuilding and $200 billion for strategic projects in energy—in exchange for lowering tariffs on most Korean goods to 15 percent.

This investment pledge was the explicit quid pro quo for tariff relief. Trump has directly linked the funding to the negotiations, noting that South Korea “paid to get tariffs reduced and part of that money is going to this project,” and that investments of this scale might not otherwise have been available. Throughout 2026, the threat of higher tariffs continued to ensure progress on delivering the commitments.

As a result, these commitments are now being converted into concrete, large-scale energy and infrastructure projects that will yield tens of thousands of American jobs, expand reliable power capacity, strengthen national energy security, and support the trillions of dollars already flowing into advanced manufacturing and semiconductors. (Read more.)

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Education and the Moral Life

 From Mater et Magistra:

Practical Steps for Forming a Sound Conscience

1. Seek Wisdom, Not Just Knowledge – The study of theology, philosophy, and the lives of the saints provides a framework for understanding moral truth. Reading Scripture and the Catechism with a heart open to God’s love helps ground our moral reasoning in faith, not fear.

2. Cultivate a Relationship with God – Moral decisions should flow from love, not dread. Regular prayer, particularly the Rosary and mental prayer, fosters a deeper trust in God's mercy and guidance.

3. Practice the Virtue of Prudence – Not every decision is a moral crisis. Learning to distinguish between mortal and venial sin, and recognizing when a choice is simply a matter of prudential judgment, brings clarity and peace.

4. Confess Regularly, But Not Excessively – Frequent Confession is a gift, but for those struggling with scrupulosity, it can become a source of unnecessary distress. A regular confessor who understands this struggle can provide reassurance and help in forming a balanced conscience.

5. Trust in Divine Mercy – St. Thérèse of Lisieux reminds us that God’s mercy is greater than our weaknesses. Trusting in His love frees us from the crippling burden of perfectionism and allows us to live joyfully in His grace.

6. Avoid Unnecessary Doubt – If a person has made an honest effort to discern a moral decision and still experiences doubt, they should trust that God does not demand absolute certainty but a sincere heart. Seeking spiritual direction can also provide clarity.

7. Remember: God Calls Us to Peace – Christ repeatedly tells us, “Be not afraid.” A moral life lived in love brings peace, not endless anxiety. The more we grow in virtue, the more we can rest in the knowledge that God is guiding us.

(Read more.)

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The Rosary in Art

From the marvelous Paternosters blog, a series on how to recognize a rosary in old paintings. To quote:

I've been looking at some portraits of women with beads around the neck that I'm pretty sure are decorative necklaces and not rosaries. But then I ran across the painting below. It's called "The Magdalen Weeping," and was painted about 1525 in the Workshop of the "Master of the Magdalen Legend." It's now in the National Gallery, London....

A very good clue that something is a rosary is the presence of gauds (marker beads) at regular intervals on a single string of beads, with smaller beads between. The painter may or may not reproduce exactly how many beads are in each interval, but my sense is that the presence of larger, contrasting colored beads like this is probably intended as a signal that this element of the painting represents a rosary. So far, I have not seen anything that couldn't be a rosary that has this feature. (Read entire post.)

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Endorse Democrats

From Tierney's Real News:

After the President of Iran told the United Nations last week that Iran was blameless and that Americans are the real terrorists, there were suddenly two terrorist plots against the West - one at a base in the UK and another on a plane from UAE to Israel that many world leaders said were both likely orchestrated by Iran.

Then, this week, Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) did something unusual: they wrote a long letter to American voters encouraging them to rise up against Trump and the Republicans and basically vote Democrat in mid-terms for regime change. I’m not kidding. Their open letter, running 25 pages or so, tells Americans to "wake up” and take control. It never names a party, but the target is clear. Now you know whose side the Democrat party of today is on and it’s not America’s!

The letter landed days after Secretary of State Rubio ordered Iran's UN delegation out of New York for overstaying their welcome. Whether these events are connected is something investigators have yet to establish but you and I both know the truth.

What the letter shows is that the Shia Twelver Doomsday cult and criminals running Iran are now desperate enough to speak directly to the American electorate and tell us to overthrow the Trump administration so the Democrats (Communists) can surrender to Iran. (Read more.)

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St. Hildegard’s Encounter With Angels & Their Music

 From Catholic Exchange:

St. Hildegard of Bingen, a Doctor of the Church, was not just a Benedictine superior, mystic, diplomat, woman of letters, naturopath, and linguist but also a composer. She left us with seventy-seven liturgical chants, hymns, and sequences and a liturgical drama: The Order of the Virtues. Fr. Pierre Dumoulin wrote that these works make up one of the richest repertoires of medieval music. Yet they are not the fruit of a composition work, strictly speaking, but the transcription of celestial harmonies that the saint perceived through her visions.

Hildegard actually contemplated the heavenly myriads. “Some radiated like fire. Others were completely clear. Still others glit­tered like stars. It was a concert of voices that was like the sound of the sea.” She thought that the angel was man’s model. The angel reminded St. Hildegard that praise was her vocation: “Man, God’s creature, must praise Him because his soul is made to live in praise, like the angels.”

The Fall contributed to disturbing the original harmony whose memory lives in us and which we must rediscover: “The canticle of praise is rooted in the Church according to celestial harmony through the Holy Spirit.” St. Gregory said it before her: music is the most elevated of all hu­man activities. Hildegard believed that “when man’s spirit is well directed, he hears the song of the angels.” “The soul is itself a symphony, and it harmonizes everything.” She wrote that “the cohort of the angels yearns for God. It recognizes Him throughout the symphony of its praises and celebrates its past and present eternal mysteries.” (Read more.)

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Henrietta Maria’s Broken Dream

From The Catholic Herald:

Throughout the 1630s, Queen Henrietta Maria’s mission to re-establish the Catholic faith in England looked increasingly successful. The decade saw numerous high-profile conversions, growing crowds around the new centres of legal Catholic worship in London, and a relaxing of penalties against Catholics.

But none of this activity went unnoticed by Puritan detractors. By the end of the decade, parliamentarian unrest increasingly targeted the queen’s influence on the king.

To help Charles I prepare for the possibility of war, Henrietta Maria sailed to the Continent to raise funds and gather an army. Her letters to Charles during this period confirm parliamentary suspicions: the queen was her husband’s most hardline counsellor. She repeatedly urged him to defend his Crown, his family and his people against the rebels, threatening that if he did not take stronger action she would retreat to a nunnery. Such strong terms were necessary. Charles’s military decisions during the first years of the 1640s were halting and uncertain, and he sometimes appeared ready to submit to his opponents’ demands.

In early 1643 Henrietta Maria returned to England, landing in the small port of Bridlington, midway between the parliamentary strongholds of Hull and Scarborough. She had with her an army of 1,000 men and 300 officers, 1,000 saddles, £80,000 in cash and suits of armour for 20,000 men. Royalist hopes surged with her arrival and a series of victories against the rebels followed. The queen herself came under fire shortly after her return. Waking in the night to the sound of shot circling the house where she slept, she ran outside and hid in a ditch until morning.

While she was dodging cannonballs in the north, her houses in London were being ransacked. One of the Capuchin friars attending Henrietta Maria reported that John Clotworthy MP entered the chapel at Somerset House, where he climbed on top of the altar table and looked at Rubens’s The Crucifixion in its gilt frame. “Calling for a halberd, he struck Christ’s face in contempt with such offensive words it would be shocking to repeat them. His second blow was at the Virgin’s face, with more hateful blasphemies, and then, thrusting the hook of his halbert under the feet of the Crucified Christ, he ripped the painting to pieces.”

Clotworthy and his men then smashed sculptures of the Virgin and Child, cut up the remaining paintings, set the books alight and took off with the vestments. The Capuchins were arrested and deported. All this was done because Parliament “was greatly incensed against [the queen] … without [whose] encouragement and aid the king would never have put himself in a position to resist”.

After a slow and perilous journey south to Oxford, the queen was reunited with Charles in 1643 and was soon pregnant with their ninth and final child. Shortly after the baby girl was born, the ailing and disconsolate queen returned to France to gather more money and soldiers. But by the middle of the decade, Cromwell’s New Model Army was frustrating Cavalier military endeavours and the royalists suffered a series of defeats.

When the king was finally captured his letters from the queen were seized and published widely. Here, finally, the rebels could claim proof of their suspicions that the queen had seduced the king “under the royal curtains … to advance the plots of the Catholics”. Under her influence, the king had begun to “pray unto the Lady Mary and be ruled by his little Queen Mary”, who had convinced him that to do so was not “idolatry, but the way to increase his Royal Off-spring”.

Too ill to return to England, Henrietta Maria instead worked for the royalist cause from France; but in 1649 Charles was executed. The queen never recovered from the loss. Aged 39, she retreated with her youngest child to the Carmelite convent of her youth. A number of sources attest that, were it not for her children, she would have remained in enclosed prayer for the rest of her life. (Read more.)

 

From the great Leanda de Lisle at Historia:

Puritans came to see the deep love of the royal couple as a threat. They disliked the ceremonial style of Protestantism that Charles preferred over their stripped-down Calvinism, and they blamed the influence of the Queen. Yet this was quite untrue; for Charles, the Protestant Church of England was “the best in the world”.

When Charles’s religious reforms triggered rebellion in Presbyterian Scotland, the Scots’ allies in England used Henrietta Maria’s Catholic faith as a means of attacking the King. She was trolled from the pulpits as a “Popish brat of France” and, as hatred against Catholics fanned to new heights, so mobs were sent to attack her house.

The following October, a Catholic rebellion broke out in Ireland. News of massacres of Protestant settlers were used by Charles’s enemies to recruit to their cause, and the finger of blame was pointed at the innocent Queen. In February 1642, on the eve of the English Civil War, Henrietta Maria left for Holland. This was not to save her own skin, however, but to act as Charles’s chief diplomat and party leader in Europe, as well as his arms buyer.

She returned to England in February 1643 with men, money and arms. After a dangerous landing in Yorkshire, she spent months raising royalist morale in the north, eating in sight of the soldiers and recruiting men.

The royalists had gained superiority in Yorkshire by late June, when Charles called for her to join him in his wartime capital at Oxford. Parliament sent cavalry to intercept the Queen and her men, but she escaped again and, still en route to meet her husband, the “generalissima” (as she called herself) captured Burton-on-Trent in a “bloody” and “desperate” battle. (Read more.)

My novels about Queen Henrietta Maria available HERE and HERE.

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President Trump Announces the END of America’s 23-Year “QUAGMIRE” in Iraq

 From Overton News:

23 years later, the United States is completely withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. The news broke early this morning from the War Department, signaling the formal end of the U.S. mission in Iraq, closing one of the longest and most disastrous chapters of America’s post-9/11 foreign policy. The war began in 2003 under President George W. Bush, but more than two decades later, President Donald Trump is the one overseeing the final withdrawal of the last remaining American forces from the country. He’s bringing them all home. It was finally happening. Nearly 4,500 U.S. service members lost their lives during the Iraq War. (Read more.)

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The 4 Sins that Cry Out to Heaven for Vengeance

 From Trad West:

There are sins Scripture describes as ‘crying out to Heaven’. The Church preserves that warning in the Catechism, paragraph 1867.

Traditionally, they are grouped into four: deliberate murder [the shedding of innocent blood], the sin of Sodom, oppression of the poor, and defrauding workers of their wages.

The sin of Murder:
Start with Abel. Cain killed his brother, but burying the victim did nothing to conceal the crime from God. His brother’s blood cried out from the ground.

The Sin of Sodom:
Then we have Sodom, whose sins brought it under the judgment of God. What was their sin? Scripture gives two descriptions:
>Arrogance, greed, neglect of the poor (Ezek 16,49-50)
>Sexual immorality and perversion (Jude 1,7)

The fire that fell on Sodom was a warning for all generations. Our generation is more wicked than Sodom, some exorcists say we’re more wicked than the generation of the flood. Food for thought. (Read more.)

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Marie-Antoinette Receives Final Absolution

In the Conciergerie, a priest gives Marie-Antoinette absolution as he passes her cell before her execution. (From Vive la Reine.) Share

Secrets: Will Bob Woodward’s New Memoir Be a Coverup?

 From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

Will Woodward have the guts in Secrets to criticize the press? To “walk down the painful road of introspection” about his own profession? It’s possible. The phrase “walk down the painful road of introspection” is one Woodward himself used to criticize his colleagues at the Washington Post. It appeared in “The Press vs the President,” a long series of articles by Jeff Gerth that were published in January 2023 in the Columbia Journalism Review. The intelligence community set up President Trump for failure in 2016 by falsely claiming he was a tool of the Kremlin. The media peddled garbage, ignored contradictory evidence, and flat-out lied. “The Press vs the President,” which is a comprehensive and damning indictment of the media. (Seriously, go read it.)

    One of the people interviewed in Gerth’s series is Bob Woodward. In January 2017, Woodward went on Fox News and criticized the Steele dossier, the anti-Trump file which was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele. Woodward called the dossier a “garbage document.” The Steele dossier claimed Trump was hanging out with prostitutes in Moscow. 

    Jeff Gerth describes what happened next: “After his remarks on Fox, Woodward said he ‘reached out to people who covered this’ at the paper, identifying them only generically as ‘reporters,’ to explain why he was so critical. Asked how they reacted, Woodward said: ‘To be honest, there was a lack of curiosity on the part of the people at the WashingtonPost about what I had said, why I said this, and I accepted that and I didn’t force it on anyone.’” Woodward also told Gerth that the Mueller report was a ‘fizzle’ but reporters were ‘never going to declare it was going to end up dry.’” (Read more.)

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Evelyn Waugh’s Last Masterpiece

 From The New Criterion:

One novel that arose from the disastrous impact of the Second World War that will endure, I believe, is Evelyn Waugh’s last masterpiece, the trilogy Sword of Honour, which appeared between 1952 and 1961. He initially planned a single volume but found the story so compelling he produced three distinct novels built around the character Guy Crouchback, a figure not unlike himself in some ways.

The novels originated from what Waugh saw as a crisis of faith in Western values. He saw the enemy clearly—the war was nothing less than “the Modern Age in arms,” totalitarianism and secularism at their worst. The crisis of the times, the war and its aftermath, was also a personal one for Waugh. He believed he was witnessing the decline of the Catholic Church he had joined as a convert, a theme that dominated his writing after the war, and especially after Vatican II, which he distrusted.

The great success of Brideshead Revisited (1945), which was written towards the end of the war, had solidified Waugh’s reputation as not just the author of biting satires, but also the most significant writer of serious English prose. Yet he had written little of importance after Brideshead save for his savagely funny indictment of Hollywood and American values, The Loved One (1948), which was on par with his comic masterpieces of the 1930s as well as being a financial success. Interestingly, he offered the profits from The Loved One to the Catholic Church in England, only to have the offer declined on the grounds that the novel’s content was too scandalous to be associated with the Church. (Read more.)

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Michaelmas

It is Michaelmas Day. According to Lives of the Saints:

St. Michael, who ranks among the seven archangels, is also one of the three angels mentioned by name in the Scriptures, the others being St. Raphael and St. Gabriel. St. Michael is spoken of twice in the Old Testament, and twice in the New. The first reference occurs in the Book of Daniel (chapter x), where Michael comes to comfort Daniel after he has had a vision, and promises to be his helper in all things. In Daniel xii, Michael is called "the great prince who standeth for the children of Thy people." In these references Michael is represented as Israel's great support during the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity. Daniel, wise and holy leader that he was, wanted his people to understand that God had not forgotten them, and that, even though enslaved, they had a royal champion. In the New Testament (Jude ix), we are told that Michael disputed with the devil over the body of Moses; this episode is not mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.

In the Apocalypse (chapter xii) we find the most dramatic reference to St. Michael. Here John recounts the great battle in Heaven, when the wicked angels under Lucifer revolt against God, and how Michael, leading the faithful angels, defeats the hosts of evil and drives them out. In this role he has been painted by many artists, and the poet Milton, in book vi of , recounts the famous struggle. Because of this victory, St. Michael is revered in Catholic tradition and liturgy as the protector of the Church, as once he was regarded as the protector of the Israelites. In the Eastern Church, as well as among many theologians in the West, St Michael is placed over all the angels, as prince of the Seraphim. He is the special patron of sick people, mariners, and grocers; in Asia Minor many curative springs were dedicated to him. His cult has also been popular in Egypt, Rome, France, and Germany. His emblems are a banner, a sword, a dragon, and scales. The name Michael is a variation of Micah, meaning in Hebrew, "Who is like God?"

The Archangel St. Michael is one of the patrons of France, partly because of his various manifestations in that country, most notably to St. Jeanne d'Arc. In the middle ages the Order of St. Michael was the highest among the orders of chivalry. Share

Media Ignores Democrats’ Massive ActBlue Scandal

 From AMAC:

Back in April, The New York Times reported that lawyers for ActBlue, the leading Democrat fundraising platform, “may have misled Congress on vetting foreign donations.”

Now the scandal has gotten even deeper, with House Republicans alleging even more serious fraud and wrongdoing. But with Election Day right around the corner, the liberal media has suddenly gone mute on this bombshell story implicating scores of Democrat politicians and campaigns.

ActBlue is the dominant platform used for Democrat small-dollar fundraising – the liberal counterpart to WinRed. It has processed some $19 billion in contributions since 2004, with candidates and groups raising nearly $1.8 billion from 52 million individual contributions through ActBlue in 2025 alone.

In this campaign cycle, high-profile Democrats including Jon Ossoff, Abdul El-Sayed, James Talarico, Roy Cooper, Mary Peltola, and Josh Turek have all used ActBlue. Democrat House and Senate leaders, as well as countless congressional candidates, also use the platform.

Foreign nationals are prohibited from making contributions in connection with federal, state, or local U.S. elections, and campaigns may not knowingly accept such contributions. Americans living abroad, including military personnel, diplomats, and students, can donate. There are also comprehensive campaign finance laws requiring platforms like ActBlue to take steps to identify and prevent fraud, such as foreign entities or individuals making donations in the name of U.S. citizens.

According to a new joint report from the House Judiciary, Administration, and Oversight committees, however, ActBlue did not investigate warning signs seriously enough to distinguish lawful American donors from prohibited foreign contributors. (Read more.)

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A Journey to Antarctica

 From Lit Hub:

I do not remember my father Eddie, Shackleton’s youngest child, ever sitting me down and telling me about his father. Indeed, he hardly knew him, being only 10 years old when Ernest died of a heart attack on January 5, 1922, during the Shackleton-Rowett Quest expedition.

I learned the story by asking about the Hurley photographs on the walls. They were sometimes confusing for a child: “Why was it dark when it was not night?” and “Why did all the men have beards?” I was particularly intrigued by one photograph showing Endurance in the ice, reduced to a skeleton, and the sled dogs sitting around her. I would ask, “What happened to the dogs?” The grownups would never give me a straight answer, and it was not until years later that I was deemed old enough to know the truth, that as on most expeditions of the era, the men killed and ate the dogs when food ran short.

It was not only children who were sometimes confused by a Hurley image. I remember one visitor spending ages contemplating a view of rocky, snow-covered peaks, brooding over a magnificent glacier tumbling into a large fjord, full of huge blocks of floating ice. Eventually, our visitor announced triumphantly, “I know where that is! It is Lulworth Cove!” Hereafter, it was known as Lulworth Cove in the family. In fact, it was South Georgia.

Hurley’s cine film South, originally released in 1919 as In the Grip of the Polar Pack-Ice, was also of significance for me, since it was the first time I saw my grandfather moving and smiling. The film shows astonishing images of the death of the Endurance. Hurley set cameras around her and showed her masts crashing down. (Read more.)

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The Pope in France

Pope Leo at Notre Dame with the statue of Our Lady of Charles X

 From Vatican News:

Light inundated Notre-Dame as Pope Leo XIV celebrated vespers in Paris' beloved Cathedral. It felt like a fitting celebration for the restored and renewed basilica, a place of worship and iconic symbol of the “Ville Lumière“, badly damaged by fire on 15 April 2019.

On that day, dramatic images and videos of the cathedral engulfed in flames, and of people praying in the streets as the fire consumed the building, spread around the world through social media and news outlets.

Today, the French Church has come together again. This time to rejoice, as the Pope visited the Cathedral and celebrated Vespers, almost two years after its reopening in December 2024, following a long and meticulous restoration process.

As the sun shone through the stained-glass windows, colorful patterns moved slowly across the walls. Meanwhile, an organ played and the choir sang while the bishops, priests, consecrated men and women, seminarians, and other members of the French Church solemnly prayed together with the Successor of Peter.

Before the Vespers, Pope Leo venerated a relic of the crown of thorns, which was placed on Christ’s head during his Passion. A symbol of his suffering and sacrifice before his Resurrection.

“We are gathered for Evening Prayer in this place which, more than any other, has invited the people of Paris for centuries to lift their eyes towards heaven,” Pope Leo said in his homily. (Read more.)

Mass at the Place de la Concorde, where thousands were guillotined (Via Daily Mail)

I wish instead of Robespierre the article had mentioned Madame Elisabeth. From Rome Reports:

The Place de la Concorde in Paris is a site marked by some of the darkest moments in French history.

During the Revolution, the guillotine stood here, and more than a thousand people were executed. Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Robespierre were among them.

Two centuries later, Pope Leo XIV celebrates the Eucharist here before nearly 600,000 people. A turnout that marks a new chapter in the Church in France.

The pope is using this celebration to call for a secular society.

LEO XIV

Seeing you gathered here, brothers and sisters, heirs to a long and beautiful history of holiness in France, I say to you: in turn, drink deeply from this spring that is the pierced Heart of Jesus. Yes, you thirst for God, for life, for truth, for unity, for peace, for communion, for happiness. You long to rediscover a radiant horizon, to build a renewed nation rooted in a faith that nourishes its very foundations.

But the pope does not stop with France’s religious identity. He goes straight to the individual and a much more universal question: what does a Catholic drink from when he or she thirsts for life?

LEO XIV

Brothers and sisters, we must acknowledge that here on earth, nothing can fully satisfy us. Just when we think our search is finally over and our efforts have been rewarded, that inner emptiness often resurfaces, even more profound than before.

Are we content with material possessions, immediate gratification, and the countless little idols that promise the world but leave our hearts empty?

And while, in 2008, Benedict XVI came to France asking how faith could survive in a secularized society, today, Pope Leo XIV is not talking about survival.

He is talking about renewing the country from its roots: building a renewed nation through a faith that can once again nourish society.

This is not about rebuilding a blood-soaked square, but renewing a society that, according to the pope, thirsts for truth, peace and happiness. (Read more.)

Pope Leo in Lourdes

From EWTN:

Leo met Sept. 27 with staff and sick guests of the Accueil Notre-Dame (Notre Dame Home), a residential accommodation classified as a healthcare facility, which hosts sick, disabled, and frail pilgrims to Lourdes.

The Catholic shrine is one of the most visited in the world, drawing more than 3 million people every year, many in search of miraculous physical healing.

The 136-acre property includes the Grotto of Massabielle, where a young St. Bernadette Soubirous saw 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary starting on Feb. 11, 1858. Today, pilgrims to the sanctuary bathe themselves in the freshwater spring Mary revealed to Bernadette.

Visitors have reported 7,000 healings since the apparitions; after lengthy investigations, the Church has declared that 72 of the recoveries were miraculous, meaning unexplainable by science. (Read more.)

 

 From CWR:

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is among the most popular Catholic shrines in the world, built on the site of Mary’s apparitions to St. Bernadette in 1858. It is particularly visited by the sick, who come to bathe in or drink its healing spring water.

In his homily, Pope Leo noted that a “call to conversion, both tender and urgent,” was a central part of the message the Virgin Mary entrusted to Bernadette, and that “it is today, not tomorrow, that we must repent.”

He said Jesus is quite direct about the call to repentance: “As St. Luke tells us, ‘Unless you repent, you will all perish.’ But he also extends our horizon beyond this earthly life to the horizon of eternal life.”

“Did not the Virgin Mary say to St. Bernadette, ‘I do not promise to make you happy in this world but in the next’?” Leo said.

The pope noted that we can often forget this in an age and society focused on progress and material wellbeing.

Eternal life is already won for us by Jesus’ sacrifice, he continued, but “the obstacle to grace and eternal life — the only obstacle to this love — is sin.” (Read more.)

 From OSV:

Holding a large candle in his right hand and a rosary in his left, Pope Leo processed slowly behind an illuminated statue of the Virgin Mary through the crowd of pilgrims holding candles, as the five decades of the glorious mysteries of rosary were prayed in multiple languages.

As the “Ave Maria” Lourdes hymn was sung between mysteries, all of the pilgrims in the square in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary lifted their candles high in the air, creating a sea of lights.

“The light that guides us and draws us onward is the light of hope, which never abandons us even as we journey through this life — a life often marked by trials, yet already filled with the joy of knowing ourselves to be children of God, loved and saved by Jesus,” the pope said.

“Those who are sick are privileged witnesses to this transfiguration of our lives through faith and love of God and neighbor.” (Read more.)

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Putting Social Justice Ideology Ahead of Child Safety

 From AMAC:

Teachers' unions should want the best interests of children. So why is the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) suing to keep drivers who can't read English behind the wheel of school buses?

Leftist groups are fighting to keep dangerous alien commercial drivers on the road. The AFT, one of the nation's largest teachers' unions, just joined a lawsuit aimed at blocking the Trump administration's efforts to remove them.

The Transportation Department's (DOT) rules require that "non-citizens will not be eligible for a non-domiciled CDL unless they meet a much stricter set of rules, including an employment-based visa and undergoing a mandatory federal immigration status check using the SAVE system."

The Trump administration is cracking down on non-compliant training centers that provide instruction for commercial driver's licenses (CDL). In February, the DOT discovered more than 500 sham CDL training schools including one that specialized in teaching school bus drivers.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, "If you can't be properly trained, read our road signs, or communicate with law enforcement, you have no business driving a bus."

Teachers' unions nevertheless want to put these drivers behind the wheel of school buses carrying American children. (Read more.)

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The Gaze That Tells Us Who We Are

 From Dominique Seraphin:

“God does not love us because we are valuable. We are valuable because God loves us.”

I have read those words many times. Each time, they seem to reach a little deeper.

It is easy to admire Fulton Sheen for what he accomplished. He was a brilliant scholar, a gifted preacher, a bishop, an author, and a pioneer who used radio and television to bring the Gospel into people’s homes. He knew how to speak about eternal things in a way that made people stop and listen.

But the part of his life that moves me most happened away from the cameras.

At his priestly ordination, Sheen promised to spend a Holy Hour each day before the Blessed Sacrament. He kept that promise for the rest of his life. Before he spoke publicly about Christ, he went to be with Christ. Before he asked others to listen, he listened. He brought his work, his questions, his gifts, and his need before Jesus in the Eucharist.

I wonder how many of his most powerful words began in that silence.

There is something beautiful about a man whose voice reached millions choosing, day after day, to be quiet before the Lord. The world knew Sheen for what he could say and do. In the chapel, he could simply be a beloved son in the presence of his Father.

Maybe that is why his words about our value carry such weight.

We hear “Jesus loves you” so often that we can forget how astonishing it is. We may readily believe that God loves humanity, the Church, our families, and the people we pray for. Yet when His love becomes personal—when we have to say, Jesus loves me, knowing everything about me—we sometimes hesitate.

We know the parts of ourselves we would rather hide. We remember the harsh words we said yesterday, the resentment we keep revisiting, the prayer we promised to make time for and didn’t. We know how quickly we compare ourselves with someone who seems more patient, more generous, more joyful, or more holy. (Read more.)

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Royal Orders

Which orders were worn by Louis XVI? A fascinating blog Once I Was a Clever Boy explores the question. To quote:

In the portraits the King can clearly be seen wearing the sky blue moiree riband of the Order and the breast star with its motif of the Dove. The riband was the first to be prescribed in the statutes of an order, and is the origin of the term 'cordon bleu' as asign of honour. The Order specifically commemorated King Henri's accession to the thrones of Poland on Whitsunday 1573, and to that of France on Whitsunday 1574, and hence the use of the Dove as a symbol. It also served to recall the account of the Holy Dove bringing the Sainte-Ampoulle at the baptism of Clovis in 496, and the source of the Holy Oil used at the Sacre of the King at Rheims. The design of the breast star and badge of the Order was to be copied and adapted by many other orders in Spain, Sicily, Sweden and Great Britain with the badge of the Military Division of the Order of the Bath, with lions and unicorns replacing the fleur-de-lys.

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New White House ‘Restricted-view’ Press Section

 The Daily B.S:

The White House restored access to CNN, MS NOW and Politico on Thursday, complying with a federal judge’s order by creating a new press section inside the White House with full access to the building and no discernible view of the president.

The three outlets were issued restored hard passes and assigned seats in the newly designated Brady Briefing Room Restricted-View Annex, located directly behind the briefing-room wall.

“The court ordered access to the White House, and they have access to the White House,” a senior administration official said. “They’re in it right now.”

The annex contains three folding chairs, a water cooler and a narrow opening in the wall through which credentialed reporters can hear approximately 70 percent of each briefing.

Officials said the opening was already there. CNN asked whether it could be enlarged. The request was denied.

Under the new arrangement, reporters wishing to ask a question may write it on an index card and slide it through the opening.

Questions deemed appropriate will be read aloud by a White House staffer. Follow-ups require a second index card.

Politico asked whether reporters would be permitted to enter the actual briefing room. “The judge ordered us to restore their White House access,” an official said. “Nobody said anything about a good seat.”

MS NOW objected that reporters could not see the podium from the annex. The White House responded Thursday afternoon by installing a mirror. (Read more.)

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When the Mind Is Not Free

 From Sensus Fidelium:

These questions are not foreign to me. I knew someone who took an SSRI, developed suicidal thoughts that frightened him, and flushed the pills down the toilet. Years ago, while driving for Uber, I met a veteran who told me that he took a pill, blacked out, and awoke in handcuffs. He later learned that he had wrecked his car and fought with police, but he remembered none of it. Those stories cannot establish what caused the reactions; I do not know the complete medical histories, diagnoses, dosages, or other substances involved. They are anecdotes, not clinical trials. Yet they explain why I cannot dismiss reports of sudden, frightening behavioral change as imaginary simply because they are unusual.

To explore these issues, I recently interviewed Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring, a board-certified psychiatrist and former medical officer in the FDA’s Division of Psychiatry who now works extensively with psychiatric-drug adverse effects and withdrawal. His perspective deserves a hearing, but it also needs to be placed within proper limits. He did not examine Lindsay Clancy, he was not her treating physician, and an interview cannot decide a criminal case. His value here is that he helps identify medical possibilities that toxicology numbers and outward appearances do not necessarily settle.

The prosecution in the Clancy case emphasized apparently organized behavior: she arranged for her husband to leave the house, acted while he was away, and took steps that can be described as planned. For many observers, planning seems to end the insanity question. A person capable of organizing means, they reason, must also understand the end toward which those means are directed.

Dr. Witt-Doerring challenged that assumption. A person experiencing psychosis may still speak coherently, perform household tasks, conceal disturbing thoughts, and appear outwardly composed. As he put it during our interview, a person can look “really put together” while being driven by “bizarre, delusional thoughts in the background.” The crucial distinction is between the ability to reason instrumentally and the ability to judge reality correctly. Someone may connect steps A, B, and C with terrible efficiency while beginning from a premise that is entirely false. (Read more.)

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French Country Decor Ideas

  

From Léonce:

Over the past few months, I’ve saved countless home décor images on Pinterest (and if you enjoy French and Parisian inspiration, feel free to follow me there for more). Not that I’m currently renovating my apartment here in Amsterdam (although, truth be told, that would be one of my dreams) but I recently realized that many of the images I had saved seemed to gravitate toward the same aesthetic: French country style, sometimes also called French cottage style.

And without quite realizing it at first, this is also the direction my own Amsterdam home has slowly been evolving toward over the past few months. An aesthetic that feels rustic yet chic. Simple and unpretentious. Filled with natural materials: wood, linen, glass, ceramics, copper, and brass. A touch of vintage, but never kitsch. The kind of interior that creates a warm and welcoming atmosphere and that, to me, often evokes the charm of grandmother’s houses, countryside homes where everything feels convivial and where one immediately feels at ease.

Amsterdam, and the Netherlands more broadly, have influenced this shift more than I expected. Kitchens here often feel more rustic than Parisian ones, and because winters can be long and sometimes harsh, homes and apartments tend to have a naturally cozy and comforting quality that I’ve come to appreciate more and more.

This article is therefore a blend of different European influences which I hope will inspire you and perhaps give you a few ideas for bringing the charm of a French country home into your own space, wherever you may live. My inspirations draw from several places: the interior of Claude Monet’s house in Giverny, the Parisian atelier of Astier de Villatte in the 5th arrondissement near Place Maubert, the architecture and interiors typical of Amsterdam houses, as well as the timeless charm of traditional British cottages. (Read more.)

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Will the GOP Hold the House and Senate?

 From Tierney's Real News:

What will happen in the midterms? Here’s my best thinking right now.

Republicans currently hold both the House and Senate by narrow margins.

Left-leaning pollsters project Democrats will flip the House in 2026 by 9–15 seats while Republicans cling to the Senate by a single vote.

A few weeks ago, right-leaning pollsters expected Democrats to take the House by one seat and Republicans to expand their Senate edge to 2–3 seats.

In the past week, however, many of those same voices on the right have flipped: they now predict the GOP will hold both chambers—again by narrow margins.

All bets are off.

Here’s a sample of what some conservatives are saying on X right now:

• David Marcus: GOP hold in both houses.

• Ted Cruz: If we show up and unify, the GOP can grow our majorities in both the House and Senate. It’s all about turnout.

• Bill Mitchell: Democrats are going to lose in November in the most humiliating fashion possible.

• RNC Chair Joe Gruters: I expect Republicans to hold both chambers—220 House seats and 53 Senate seats.

• Seth Levy: 53-47 GOP in the Senate and 218-217 Republican in the House. Republicans hold both.

• House Speaker Mike Johnson: Republicans will hold and grow the House majority.

• Unseen1: With all the propaganda and fake polls, there’s no way of predicting. 50/50 chance the GOP keeps the House; I think they hold the Senate.

(Read more.)

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Jesus by Another Name

 From The Logres Institute:

Unlike many other authors, we have explicit writings from Lewis explaining what he was trying to portray. In the remainder of this article, I presume that Rice is writing from a position of ignorance. To cure his lack of knowledge, I invite him to acquire a copy of Lewis’s Letters to Children before he writes about Narnia in the future. Lewis was transparent in his explanations, and his actual letters to the children who wrote to him explain why Christians are justly upset by this casting decision. You mess with Jesus, and you mess with the literal foundations of the Christian faith. Aslan is Jesus, in another world.

To truly understand Lewis, one must read Lewis; and more of his writings than just Narnia. Any claims on what he thought as he wrote the Narnia tales need to be backed by primary source material to be valid, not by opinion that fits one’s own personal narrative. Lewis’s replies to his youngest readers provide helpful insight.

In a letter written by Lewis from Magdalen College Oxford, 22nd. January 1952, Lewis writes to a child named Carol about how to pronounce Aslan and who He is:

Dear Carol,

It is a pleasure to answer your question. I found the name in the notes to Lane’s Arabian Nights: it is the Turkish for Lion. I pronounce it Ass-lan myself. And of course I meant the Lion of Judah. I am so glad you liked The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I hope you will like the sequel (Prince Caspian) which came out in November.

Yours sincerely,

C.S. Lewis

(Read more.)

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She Almost Won

 Henrietta Maria came very close to helping her husband and Prince Rupert win the English Civil Wars. From Atlas Obscura:

Around midday on July 4, 1643, in the countryside just north of Birmingham, Queen Henrietta Maria was in her battle tent. Outside, shells exploded. Musket balls* zoomed past. Anxiously, the Queen of England waited. Taking Burton-Upon-Trent, a strategic town with a river crossing connecting northern and southern England, was her army’s first real challenge. Defeat was not an option. But the fighting had already raged for five hours—how much longer would it take to deliver a victory? Three hours later, the queen got her answer. Her royalist army had finally broken through the town’s defenses. Victory was secured.

Eighteen years earlier, the queen had arrived on English shores as a 15-year-old French bride. And now, at 34, she was a warrior queen. The queen would jokingly call herself “she-majesty generalissima.” Lines from a contemporary poem, its author unknown, portrayed her as not just defeating but unmanning Parliament’s forces, literally: “Tis here a woman leads; but one would swear, the armies did consist of women there.” Her skill garnered wide respect from diplomatic elites; the Venetian ambassador observed, “Without [the queen’s] encouragement and aid the king would never have put himself into a position to resist.” During the English Civil War, Queen Henrietta Maria was, it seems, all that stood between King Charles’s sure defeat at the hands of Parliament. (Read more.)

Henrietta Maria and her household hiding in a ditch during the bombardments at Bridlington in 1643

Henrietta Maria hiding from Parliamentarians during her escape to France in 1644

 

The novel Generalissima is available HERE.

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Independent Report Demolishes Transgender Suicide Claim

From AMAC:

A groundbreaking report has demolished a favorite rhetorical tactic used by transgender activists to argue in favor of harmful procedures for gender-confused minors.

For years, the left has emotionally blackmailed the parents of gender-confused kids, insisting that families must sign off on dangerous, irreversible drug regimens or even surgeries, or else their child will surely commit suicide. But independent researchers recently confirmed there is no proof that restricting minors from this so-called “gender-affirming care” leads to more suicides.

A favorite line of transgender activists and their allies in the medical establishment is this: “Would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter?”

Medical professionals and social workers will frighten parents with some form of this bad-faith argument, claiming that “treatments” like cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, or surgeries that leave kids permanently disfigured are “life-saving.” A compliant liberal media has willfully repeated this lie in their own biased coverage of debates about transgender drugs and surgeries.

But a comprehensive study from Do No Harm looked at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data across 23 states that have banned transgender drugs and surgeries for minors. Their conclusion? There is “no evidence that these bans have increased suicide rates.”

Do No Harm is an advocacy group which “represents physicians, nurses, medical students, patients, and policymakers focused on keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice.” It was founded in 2022 and opposes transgender drugs and surgeries for minors.

“The alarmist prediction that restricting medicalization of gender-distressed minors would produce a spike in youth suicides is not supported by the data,” Do No Harm scholars Jay Greene and Ian Kingsbury write in their new report. (Read more.)

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Arthurian Legend for a Disenchanted Age

 From Express:

In a time of tech-bro billionaires, a meaning crisis among an anxious youth and questions surrounding national identity, where better to go than back to the old stories to have one’s heart reenchanted? That’s something poet, scholar and priest Malcolm Guite has become renowned for on his popular self-titled YouTube channel, which has 220,000 subscribers and counting. The real-life waistcoat-wearing hobbit, with wizard-like long silver hair and beard, has charmed millions around the world with his videos from the perspective of a visitor to his cosy, book-lined study. For each typical upload, Guite will settle into his wing armchair, light one of his many pipes, and usually read aloud from a chapter of JRR Tolkien or CS Lewis.

The 68-year-old author of several books, including five collections of poetry, realised that it’s been about a century since there was a proper re-telling of Britain’s great myth, the Arthurian legend. In what could well be his magnum opus, Guite has set about writing Merlin’s Isle: An Arthuriad, a four-volume epic ballad of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Beautifully illustrated by Stephen Crotts, the first volume, Galahad and the Grail, is set in the 5th century, after the Romans have departed, leaving Britain in a chaotic mess of savage warlords before the Anglo-Saxon invasion. King Arthur seeks to unite the realm by establishing a kingdom of peace and stability, one led by his chivalric knights who are fierce in battle against the “might is right” pagans, while being gentle and kind to the weak and vulnerable they are sworn to protect. (Read more.)

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The Mystery of the ‘Real’ Milady de Winter

  

Yet another descendant of Mary Boleyn. From History Extra:

In the preface to The Three Musketeers, Dumas claims that he was researching Louis XIV in the Bibliothéque nationale de France when he happened upon the first volume of The Memoirs of M. d’Artagnan. This is not entirely true: he found the book in the public library in Marseilles, borrowed it and never returned it.

The Memoirs of M. d’Artagnan is a first-person pseudo memoir written by a former soldier, Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras, and first published in 1700. It tells the story of d’Artagnan, a young man setting out on his journey to become a musketeer. As well as d’Artagnan, Dumas discovered Athos, Porthos and Aramis, who would eventually become major characters in The Three Musketeers. He also found Milady de Winter. Courtilz never gives Milady’s name. Instead, she is referred to simply as ‘Milady’ followed by a dash or asterisks where her name should be. She is introduced as a maid of honour to Henrietta Maria, queen to the executed Charles I of England, whose exile in France Milady shares.

The daughter of an English peer, Milady has as much wit as beauty, and d’Artagnan thinks her the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. He promptly falls in love with her. There then follows a complicated sexual intrigue, one of several for Courtilz’s d’Artagnan. Once it is over, Milady is never heard from again. This is the episode that Dumas adapted for The Three Musketeers. The affair of the queen’s diamonds is absent from Courtilz, but at least part of the story as Dumas told it is supported by several contemporary memoirs. Those of Françoise Bertaut de Motteville, Pierre de La Porte and Henri-Auguste de Loménie, Comte de Brienne – all of whom served at the royal court of France – each provide an account of the Duke of Buckingham’s visit to France in 1625. Buckingham had been sent to escort Henrietta Maria, then Charles I’s new queen, to England. While in France, he ostentatiously courted the queen, Anne of Austria.

None of these memoirs, however, mention the diamonds that Anne was said to have given to the duke. For this part of the story, it is necessary to consult the memoirs of Henri-Auguste's son, an obscure publication known as Recueil A, and the memoirs of François de La Rochefoucauld. Louis-Henri de Loménie, Comte de Brienne served Louis XIV as secretary of state, a position he inherited from his father. He left a memoir, which was published in the early 19th century. Certain editions, particularly that edited by Jean François Barrière, include an account of the queen’s diamonds.

It does not form part of Brienne’s original narrative – he was not even born at the time of the alleged diamond affair. Instead, it is mentioned in an introductory essay, written by the editor, explaining the manners and customs of 17th-century France. It is then related in full in an appendix, Éclaircissements historiques, or ‘historical clarifications’. In this version, the diamond thief is named as Lady Clarik. However, the story was lifted word-for-word from Recueil A, and inserted into the memoir. Recueil A is the first volume of a large collection published in the 18th century. It comprises an assortment of documents, including extracts of memoirs, concerning the history of France. The author of the account of the diamond affair is enigmatically identified as ‘M. le M. de T’. Behind these initials, according to the anonymous editor of the Recueil, is René de Froulay, Comte de Tessé.

The Comte de Tessé was a real person. Born in 1651, he was a military man, diplomat and courtier. He did indeed leave a memoir, but the diamond affair does not appear in it. The story as found in Recueil A and later inserted into the memoir by Brienne is, therefore, unreliable. What then of La Rochefoucauld? In his memoir, the lady who stole the diamonds was not Lady Clarik but the countess of Carlisle. In fact, Lady Clarik did not exist – but Lady Carlisle certainly did. (Read more.)

 

Read about the Countess of Carlisle in my Henrietta Maria novels, HERE and HERE.

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