Tea at Trianon: The Greatest Byzantine Greek Scholars of the Renaissance

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, April 8, 2026

The Greatest Byzantine Greek Scholars of the Renaissance

From The Greek Reporter:

Between the 14th and 15th centuries, a wave of Greek scholars left their beleaguered homeland in the Byzantine Empire for the Italian Peninsula, where their work would play an important role in the flowering of the Renaissance. The Renaissance, which literally means “rebirth”, was a period usually identified as lasting between the 14th and 17th centuries. It was characterized by an increased interest in the Greek and Roman past, with the scholars of the time looking back to Classical civilization for inspiration in the arts and sciences.

When the Byzantine Greek scholars arrived in Italy, they brought centuries of knowledge from Greco-Roman civilization with them. Medieval Italian scholars had already taken an interest in Classical Roman civilization, but this new wave of Byzantine intellectuals were well versed in ancient Greek sources and greatly widened the scope of the academic and artistic endeavors that were then possible. (Read more.)