Headpiece Renaissance

  

From Country Life:

Headdresses have been making, well, headline news, thanks in part to one of the UK’s most famous wearers of headpieces, Isabella Blow, whose biopic The Queen of Fashion is due out this year.

Issy, as she was known, saw them as not merely a fashion statement, but as an extension of her identity, famously saying: ‘I don’t use a hat as a prop. I use it as part of me.’

Their renaissance has also been fuelled by Instagram and a flurry of lavish country-house celebrations. At a party at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, home of the Howden family, headpieces were as central to the spectacle as the setting itself.

For the Narnia-themed event, the insurance magnate David Howden wore a spectacular Aslan-inspired lion headdress commissioned from the Canadian costume designer Maryam of Eastern Wind Studio by his wife, Fiona, who has long been a passionate hat collector and wearer of headpieces.

She sees them as ‘an opportunity to dress up as a character and add glamour, fun and theatre to events’. Her hat collection, sourced from street stalls in Venice, Italy, together with commissioned pieces, ‘makes great dressing-up material for my girlfriends and daughters’ — and for Royal Ascot, which David's company sponsors. Both David and Fiona were in the Royal Procession last year.

Hats and headpieces have long been regarded as little pieces of theatre, as well as signifiers of status in country-house circles. They acted as a kind of visual shorthand, announcing style, self-assurance and, occasionally, the scale of one’s estate. (Read more.)

 

Hat etiquette (a snob's guide), HERE.

Share

Breeders.

 From Elizabeth Stone:

We all have seen, heard, and know that there is tremendous push to normalize every sexual desire, all of it is dressed in the belief that “people just need to be who they are”, that is until sexuality is ordered towards what it was actually designed to be. What you must understand is that these people are not actually against people making choices with their bodies, they are against people making choices that produce duty, because that would go against point number two, which is serving autonomy and self above all else. They are not scandalized by sex being openly discussed they are scandalized by sex being connected to what it always has traditionally been connected to. It is amazing that nowadays the shock factor isn’t more degeneracy, we are all so desensitized to it, I remember when Eminem used to get in serious trouble for the things he said and did. People acted like civilization itself was hanging by the thread of a Slim Shady lyric, now we see worse things on regular cable on a Tuesday afternoon. That is how desensitized we are. We are so porn-brained that traditionalism looks like the real obscenity. Show people a mother, a father, and a bunch of children, and suddenly they all start screeching like vampires caught in direct sunlight.

This “breeding kink'“ accusation reveals so much, it takes something that is normal, good, foundational, and forces it into pornographic language. This is the state of the modern mind, we cannot understand anything as sacred without dragging it into the sewer. The body is no longer seen as a gift given by God, it is seen primarily through the lens of desire, pleasure, self-expression, and therefore anything we do with our bodies must have a sexual connotation of some sort, this is the logical conclusion.

Children are the opposite of sexual libertinism, they are not self-expression, they are self-denial, they are not the endless pursuit of self and of personal autonomy, they are the daily death of autonomy in the service of love.

The very same people who demand endless compassion and understanding for every ridiculous, deranged, degenerate sexual preference, suddenly become total puritans the second anyone says babies are good, and this right here is what gives them all away, they are not offended by sex, they are offended by sex having meaning. (Read more.)

Share

How Religious Toleration for the Irish Helped America Win Independence

 From Providence:

In July Fourth 1779, Congress went to Mass. One newspaper reported that on “the day which gave freedom to the vast republic of America, the Congress, the president and councils of state, with other civil and military officers” attended “Roman chapel” at the invitation of “His Most Christian Majesty” Louis XVI’s emissary. “A Te Deum was performed,” giving “great satisfaction to all present.” Protestant American rebels worshipping with Catholic French monarchists elicited cross-confessional interest in another country: Ireland. 

The above report comes from the Presbyterian Londonderry Journal in the north of Ireland. Writing for the Anglican Freeman’s Journal in Dublin, Catholic polemicist Father Arthur O’Leary wondered how “banishment and proscription, on account of religious systems” still prevailed in Ireland when “Presbyterians and Catholics chant the Te Deum in the same chapel in America?” Irish interest in Franco-American worship suggests that the American Revolution was a war with not only global implications but religious ones too. Irishmen and Irish-Americans—Anglican, Presbyterian, Catholic—provided essential manpower for both rebels and royalists alike. How Crown and Congress respectively managed religious tensions in mobilizing Irish troops helped decide the war’s outcome. The Continental Army overcame sectarian tensions to become a multiconfessional force. In contrast, King George’s army saw religious animosities hamper recruitment, strain soldier-officer relations, and polarize the war in Ireland.      

Nearly half a million Irish immigrated to British North America in the eighteenth century. Outside New England, one in six white Americans were of Irish descent. Two-thirds were “Scotch-Irish” Presbyterians, the rest mostly Catholics. The American colonies appealed to Irishmen because they lacked the religious hierarchy that restricted liberty and opportunity in Ireland. Sectarian and dynastic wars in seventeenth-century Ireland produced a “Protestant Ascendancy” that prescribed privileges for Anglicans but led to dispossession for Catholics and discrimination against Presbyterians. While Catholics owned two-thirds of Irish land in 1640, they retained only a tenth of it sixty years later. “Penal laws” deprived Catholics of civil rights. Largely of Scottish descent, Presbyterians provided invaluable settlers and soldiers to the Ascendancy, yet remained second-class subjects. The Sacramental Test Act excluded most Presbyterians from politics. The linen industry, lifeblood of Presbyterian Ulster, suffered trade fluctuations exacerbated by British commercial rules. Presbyterians resented Anglican attempts in the 1710s to nullify their marriages and collect tithes. New Light minister John Abernathy’s call for “every man” to “enjoy the freedom of following the Light of his Conscience” resonated with Presbyterians. Unavailable in Ireland, economic and religious liberty proved plentiful in America.  

“The Irish in America, with a few exceptions, were attached to independence,” observed a South Carolina patriot.. Irish Presbyterians constituted a fifth of Pennsylvanians and a quarter of South Carolinians and Georgians.. Frontier fights against the French and their Native American allies reinforced Presbyterian attachment to ideals of liberty and property. Many Irish Presbyterians had preferred to emigrate than to pay tithes supporting an exclusionary Ascendancy.  Their descendants preferred to fight than to pay taxes imposed by a remote Parliament. If the first shot at Concord was likely discharged by a New England Puritan, many future volleys fired in freedom’s name came from Irish Presbyterians. (Read more.)

Share

Lady Hamilton: The 18th-Century Beauty Who Revived Ancient Greek Fashion

 

From The Greek Reporter:

Lady Hamilton, a woman who became famous in Europe for her astonishing beauty as well as her political influence, also spread ancient Greek-inspired fashion across the continent for the first time. Born into poverty and working as a scullery maid in her teenage years, she was scorned by her first two lovers who took advantage of her youthful beauty and then left her. Her third lover, however, was Sir William Hamilton, the English ambassador to Naples, who, against all social norms, then made her his wife. Lady Hamilton soon became a fashion icon and started trends, such as draping herself in simple garments that were inspired by classical times and ancient Greece, in particular. She called this Greek-inspired theme “Attitudes” and was known to have used her many shawls during her public performances based on ancient Greek symposia.

Goethe famously wrote of Lady Hamilton: “She wears a Greek garb, becoming to her to perfection. She then merely loosens her locks, takes a pair of shawls, and effects changes of postures, moods, gestures, mien, and appearance that make one really feel as if one were in some dream….”

“Successively standing, kneeling, seated, reclining, grave, sad, sportive, teasing, abandoned, penitent, alluring, threatening, agonized…one follows the other, and grows out of it. She knows how to choose and shift the simple folds of her single kerchief for every expression, and to adjust it into a hundred kinds of headgear,” he wrote. (Read more.)

 

More on Lady Hamilton, HERE.

Share

The Ruin of England

 From Steyn Online:

Manchester's Soldier of Allah lived his entire life on the other side of that unacknowledged division. So too did his family, and large numbers of their social circle (as we'll explore later this week). And so too will thousands and thousands of those arriving at Dover and Gatwick and Manchester today, and tomorrow, and the day after.

Britain is "divided", perhaps fatally. It's not so much the comparatively small numbers of suicide bombers, or even the support group of family and friends - the dad who works at the mosque pending his return to the battlefield, the sister who congratulates him on entering Paradise, the sister's schoolmates who drop out to be become brides of Isis, the bomb-maker who lives down the street, the other friends and family who turn a blind eye to it all. Beyond all that is the larger comfort zone of "British" Muslims who support the ultimate goal of Salman Abedi - an Islamic state where once was England - and for the most part live their daily lives as if it's already here. "Britain" has no purchase on them, and its "values" command no allegiance - even though, lest they give offense, non-divisive officials are careful never to spell out precisely what those "values" are". Easier to chant the approved abstractions, and warn against the non-approved ones: Diversity good, division bad.

But in Britain and Europe they sowed diversity and reaped division. Tthe ever widening division was sown by Mrs May and M Juncker and Frau Merkel and all the others who insist on importing more Abedis and more of those who turn a blind eye to the Abedis, day by day, year on year. Only when that ends can there be even the possibility of healing the division. (Read more.)

Share

14 Common Etiquette Mistakes

 From Good Housekeeping:

We've all had our share of cringeworthy social interactions. While it's common to make a social misstep, it's not a great feeling. We tapped Diane Gottsman, a national etiquette expert, author and speaker to fill us in on the most common etiquette mistakes. She shared that some things you might think are polite, like addressing someone as "ma'am" or putting your pinky up while you're drinking tea, can actually come across as impolite.

Avoiding these etiquette mistakes will help you relax and have a better time next time you're a wedding guest, houseguest, or attending a party.

Using Sir and Ma’am

Many people were raised to respectfully address others as sir and ma’am. Although this was polite to do as children addressing adults, it’s not the best etiquette once we leave childhood, because it can carry connotations of submissiveness or older age.

"As we age, it's much more appropriate to use someone's name," Gottsman explains. If a first-name basis feels too informal, you can address people with their title and last name to show respect.

Clinking Glasses

This is a surprising one! After a toast, you shouldn’t clink glasses. This is because your dinner host may be serving you in their best glassware. You don’t want to spill your drink on their nice linens from thrusting your cup around, and you certainly don’t want to chip or shatter your host’s fine glasses.

If somebody tries to clink with you, you should of course graciously oblige rather than correct or ignore them. But the preferred response to a toast is raising your glass and nodding to your fellow guests, no clinking required. (Read more.)

Share

A Day in the Laborious Life of a Medieval Scribe

  

From The Collector:

Before we wrote things down on paper, we passed them down through oral tradition. Ancestral lineages, mythologies, folk tales, and songs were the sort of thing you might expect to hear recited around the hearth each night. Eventually, trade records were inscribed on stone or papyrus: the very first receipts. As cultures began to create more symbols representing phonetic sounds, more things were recorded. By the 14th century, a wealth of information was available in the form of a book. But who wrote them? Let’s learn about medieval scribes. 

So, what is a scribe? “Scribe,” a contemporary word derivative of the medieval scrībere, or “to write,” was a person whose entire life’s work consisted of copying texts. The beauty of the scribe is in its diversity: a monk or nun could be one as an act of devotion, a literate tradesperson could be one for commission, even a creative courtesan could become a scribe if they had the means.

Where you were writing and who the work was commissioned for largely dictated the content of the work. For example, a monastery would likely be commissioned to write a large religious text, whereas a private scribe could be commissioned to copy secular works, such as Roman de la Rose, one of the most popular stories of the period. In some unique cases, the scribe had complete creative liberty over the content as well as the style of the manuscript. (Read more.)

Share

Maryland Board Of Elections Announces Significant Mail-In Ballot Error For June 2026 Primary

 From Jan Greenhawk at The Easton Gazette:

It shouldn't be this difficult to get elections right in Maryland. After all, Maryland is a relatively small state with approximately 4,312,855 registered voters (18th out of 50) compared to states like California with over twenty-three million. Neighboring states Virginia (12th out of 50) and Pennsylvania (5th out of 50). Of course, those states have their own problems with voting.

Many of these problems center around mail in ballots. That is no surprise.

Maryland election officials have confirmed this past week that there has been a significant mail‑in ballot error affecting the June 2026 primary, prompting the statewide reissuance of all previously mailed ballots. The problem stems from a vendor mistake that caused some voters to receive the wrong party’s ballot for the gubernatorial primary, with Democrats receiving Republican ballots and vice versa.

This error occurred with an estimated 500,000 mail in ballots sent to voters after May 14th, 2026. The error does not affect anyone who was mailed a ballot before May 14, 2026, or those who received/requested their mail-in ballot by web delivery (Print at Home ballot).Since the state cannot determine who got a faulty ballot, all the voters who received mail in ballots after that date will get replacements.

The vendor was blamed as making the mistake and not the local boards. It has not been determined if the vendor will be held financially responsible for the mistake or if taxpayers will bear the expense which some estimate could be seven figures.

One of the biggest concerns is how the state will keep those who received both faulty and replacement ballot from mailing in TWO ballots. (Read more.)

Share

Odysseus’ Sanctuary on Ithaca

 From ZME Science:

The rocky hills of Ithaca, home to olive groves and old Greek legends, have now yielded their most evocative secret: the possible sanctuary of Odysseus. At a site known for over two centuries as the “School of Homer,” archaeologists have unearthed compelling evidence of a hero cult that persisted for more than a thousand years — dedicated to the mythological king of Ithaca himself and protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey.

The discovery was announced by the Greek Ministry of Culture in early June, 2025, but it is the culmination of decades of archaeological labor. The project, based at the Agios Athanasios site in northern Ithaca, is led by Professor Emeritus Giannos G. Lolos and includes work by Dr. Christina Marambea of the University of Ioannina.

While historians agree that Odysseus was a fictional character, these findings reveal just how real his memory was to the ancient Greeks, who worshipped him, invoked him, and etched his name into stone for generations.

This is the strongest indication yet that the legends of Homer’s Odyssey were not just preserved in verse — but etched into the lives, rituals, and civic identity of the people who lived where the story begins. (Read more.)

Share

Cathédrale Sainte-Cécile d’Albi

 

 

Interior views via East of the Sun, West of the Moon. The cathedral is featured in my novel The Night's Dark Shade.

Share

Strangest Caucus in Washington: Massie and the House Democrats

 From Amuse on X:

Consider the way the legislative machinery actually works. The Speaker has a narrow majority. He needs a rule from the Rules Committee to bring a bill to the floor under structured terms. If the right flank denies him that rule, he has two remaining options. He can pull the bill, which is failure, or he can go to the minority party for the votes he lacks, which is concession. There is no third door labeled “purer Republican bill.” That door does not exist. It has never existed. The math of a four-seat majority does not produce it, and no amount of principled posturing on cable television conjures it into being. Once the rule fails on a party-line basis, the negotiation is no longer between conservative Republicans and moderate Republicans. It is between the Speaker and Hakeem Jeffries. And Jeffries, being a competent minority leader, charges a price.

This is the Massie Doctrine in practice, and it is worth walking through the receipts.

Begin with the foreign aid package of April 2024. Speaker Mike Johnson brought forward a $95 billion bill containing aid for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific. The Rules Committee at the time had a nine-member Republican majority. Three of those Republicans, Thomas Massie, Chip Roy, and Ralph Norman, voted no on the rule. With only six Republican yes votes on Rules, the rule could not pass on a Republican basis. The four Democrats on the committee then crossed over and supplied the votes to advance it, 9 to 3. On the floor itself, the rule passed 316 to 94, with 165 Democrats voting yes and only 151 Republicans. That is not a Republican rule. That is a Democratic rule passed under a Republican Speaker, and it set a modern precedent for majority dysfunction.

Now ask the question a Massie or Roy defender must answer. What did Democrats charge for that rescue? They charged $9.1 billion in Palestinian humanitarian aid attached to the Israel bill, a provision many House conservatives found indefensible. They charged the elimination of any border security pairing, which Johnson had previously promised the Freedom Caucus would be attached to Ukraine funding. They defeated Massie’s own amendment to bar Ukraine funds from buying cluster munitions on a 10 to 2 vote in Rules. Rep. Grace Meng said the quiet part out loud, observing that Hakeem Jeffries was, in effect, functioning as the real Speaker because Republicans could not get their own bills out of a committee they nominally controlled. That admission did not come from a Heritage Foundation memo. It came from a sitting Democratic congresswoman taking a victory lap, and she was not wrong about who was driving. (Read more.)

Share

The Discovery at Oxyrhynchus

 From The Sunday Times:

The Egyptian archaeological site of Oxyrhynchus, 120 miles south of Cairo, might not have the glamour and renown of the hallowed Valley of the Kings. But a team from the University of Barcelona working at the site has made one of the most significant discoveries in decades.

A mummy from the late Roman period, about 1,600 years old, was discovered buried with a verse of Homer’s The Iliad, the original of which dates back 2,800 years. The text was found in clay with an embalmer’s seal on the outside of the mummy’s wrapping. It is the first time a Greek literary text has been found directly incorporated into the Egyptian mummification process. The discovery, at the ancient city of El-Bahnasa, started as a relatively unexceptional find, said Ignasi-Xavier Adiego, a professor at the University of Barcelona who directs the Oxyrhynchus project. (Read more.)

 

From The Conversation:

Archaeologists have found something unexpected inside a 1,600-year-old Roman-era Egyptian mummy: a fragment of Homer’s Iliad. It wasn’t placed beside the body, but inside the mummy’s abdomen. But the real surprise isn’t just where the fragment was found. It’s how it got there. To understand, we must go back – to the Iliad itself, and to what it became in the Roman world.

In The Iliad, a poem shaped in the 8th century BC and attributed to Homer, the Trojan war does not end in triumph or renewal. It ends in devastation. The poem closes at the edge of collapse, with Troy reduced to a landscape of heroic ruin. And yet, this is not where the story ends.

According to later Roman tradition, one Trojan escaped. Aeneas – son of Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite – fled the burning city carrying his father on his shoulders and the household gods in his hands. He moved west, across the Mediterranean, towards Italy, where he became the ancestor of Rome.

This continuation did not come from the Iliad itself. It was shaped centuries later, most famously in Virgil’s Aeneid. But it changed the meaning of the Trojan war entirely. The past, in other words, was actively reorganised – through stories that could be reworked, extended and connected across time and space. (Read more.)

Share

5 Historical Figures Who May Have Inspired King Arthur

Notice the dragon pennant. It went back to the Romano-British legions and was like a small Chinese dragon. It whistled when the wind blew through it. It became the symbol of the Pendragons.

I would happily do nothing all day but study Arthurian legend. One thing to keep in mind is that many of the names are not proper names but titles. "Riothamus," for instance, in the ancient British language means "high king." From The Collector:

Another warlord from Dark Age Britain, who is one of the prime historical candidates for the real King Arthur, is Riothamus. He is known from two Roman sources, one from the 5th century and one from the 6th century. The more important of these two is the account by the 6th-century historian Jordanes.

He described how Riothamus, the king of the Britons, assisted the Romans in a battle against Euric of the Visigoths in the year 470. This idea of a king of the Britons travelling from Britain to Gaul to fight a battle in association with the Romans is fascinating for its similarities to the Arthurian legends. In the account of Arthur’s life by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Arthur is said to have travelled to Gaul with a large army to fight against the Romans.

In addition to this overall similarity, Riothamus is said by Jordanes to have fled to the territory of the Burgundians. It is argued that, given the location of the battle in the territory of the Bituriges, his route while fleeing would have brought him near a town called Avallon. This is then connected to the tradition of Arthur being taken to the Isle of Avalon after being betrayed by his nephew, Mordred. (Read more.)

Share

What Beijing Intends

 From AND Magazine:

In light of Xi Jinping’s demand that we stand aside while China “reunites” with Taiwan, it seems appropriate to republish this interview with one of the heroes of Tibetan resistance to Communist invasion. The Chinese told the same lie about Tibet when they marched in and began the systematic erasure of Tibetan culture. (Read more.)

 

From Townhall:

 President Trump boarded Air Force One early this morning, departing China after a three-day visit with President Xi. During the visit, the two leaders discussed several issues, including ending the flow of fentanyl precursors into the U.S., Chinese investment in the U.S. economy — including the purchase of agricultural goods and U.S. oil — and cooperation on issues concerning Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. China also hosted a State Dinner for President Trump and his delegation, which also included 16 American CEOs like Elon Musk and Tim Cook. They traveled to China to talk about expanding American businesses into the Chinese markets. During the dinner, President Trump said the two countries have a "deep sense of mutual respect," and added that the U.S. relationship with China is one of the most "consequential relationships in world history." (Read more.)

Share

Salvador Dalí, the Nuclear Mystic

 From Word on Fire:

Salvador Dalí was born on May 11, 1904, in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, and baptized in the Church of Sant Pere (St. Peter). His older brother, also named Salvador, died nine months prior and haunted Dalí throughout his life. He created many paintings and drawings inspired by his brother, writing, “[My brother] was probably the first version of myself but conceived too much in the absolute.” Dalí’s father was a staunch atheist and his mother an ardent Catholic. His father’s nonbelief and his mother’s sincere faith formed the foundation for Dalí’s lifelong, complex connection to God and Catholicism. When Dalí was sixteen years old, his mother died of uterine cancer, which he described as “the greatest blow he had experienced in his life.” 

A year later, he moved to Madrid and began studying at San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where he met future surrealist director Luis Buñuel and modernist poet Federico García Lorca. Dalí began studying the old masters, particularly Velazquez, and experimenting with cubism. He also became acquainted with contemporary avant-garde movements like Dada and futurism, which, along with the cutting-edge psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, were to have a profound influence on the young Dalí. In 1926, he met Pablo Picasso and later quipped about their similarities and differences, “Picasso is a painter, so am I; Picasso is Spanish, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.” 

From 1927, Dalí became increasingly “surrealist” in his work. The poet Apollinaire coined the term in 1917. The word was adopted by André Breton, who penned The Surrealist Manifesto (1924), defining surrealism as “psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.” (Read more.)

Share

Bellister Castle

 

From Country Life:

There is nothing more romantic than the idea of living in a castle.

But if you talk to someone who actually does live in a castle — as we did when we spoke to Cosmo Linzee Gordon a while ago — you'll find that as well as being dramatic and wonderful, it's can also be cold, damp, ruinously expensive, and a constant stream of problems to solve. Not for nothing did we headline that particular Country Life Podcast as 'Epic beauty, sweeping grandeur and water pouring through the ceiling.'

Just occasionally, though, a castle comes up for sale which shows that it doesn't always have to be this way. Bellister Castle, set beside a sweep of the River Tyne on the edge of the Northumberland village of Haltwhistle, is just such a castle — and it's for sale through Knight Frank at £2.5 million. From afar, Bellister is the very image of the medieval castle: a towering, castellated and imposing presence that looks over this green and rolling landscape, almost exactly half-way along Hadrian's Wall. And more than that, Hadrian's Wall is actually a part of the castle in a very literal way: the early portions are believed to have been built using stone that was, er, 'borrowed' from the wall itself. (Read more.)

Share

America’s Silent Socialist Shift

 From Sharyl's Substack:

The United States was founded as a democratic republic with a Constitution that explicitly limits federal power, protects individual liberties, and restrains government from overreaching into private life and the economy.

The framers emphasized enumerated powers, separation of powers, federalism, and checks and balances to prevent the concentration of authority that could lead to tyranny.

Yet over time, particularly since the Progressive Era and accelerating through the New Deal, Great Society, and subsequent expansions, American society has adopted numerous features of socialism and communism.

These include centralized government control over key sectors, heavy redistribution of resources from producers to non-producers, expansive regulatory bureaucracies, and a cultural shift toward viewing the state as the primary solver of social and economic problems.

While the U.S. retains capitalist markets and democratic elections, these developments represent a gradual drift toward collectivist principles—state ownership or heavy direction of production, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”—that contrast with the founders’ vision of limited government. (Read more.)

Share

Joseph de Maistre as a Neoplatonist

 From Philip Diaz-Lewis at Rationis Fines:

Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) looms as a dark figure over European philosophy. Writing during the Wars of the French Revolution, and in opposition to everything which that Revolution stood for, the Savoyard count is seen as the father of reactionary thought. Isaiah Berlin rather infamously characterises him as an obscurantist, authoritarian, and a precursor to Fascism.2 Maistre is the thinker who, after all, praises the executioner as the man who holds society together with just violence3, and who writes in the St Petersburg Dialogues that, “The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be sacrificed without end, without restraint, without respite until the consummation of the world, the extinction of evil, the death of death”.4

I’ve lately been reading two scholarly works that challenge this picture, both from this century. The first is Cara Camcastle’s The More Moderate Side of Joseph de Maistre (2005), and Joseph de Maistre and the Legacy of Enlightenment (2011). The latter especially interests me, because it makes a sustained case that Maistre should be read as a Christian Platonist.

First, a quibble with the sources to frame the context. Douglas Hedley says that, “The Romantic period was the age of a revival of Neoplatonism”, in order to characterise Maistre as part of this Romantic revival.5 This is true, but incomplete.

To see the continuity between Maistre and earlier Platonism, it’s important to understand the profound grip that Neoplatonism had on conservative thinking in 18th century France. Yes, this was the era of the philosophes, Voltaire and Diderot, who challenged religious and spiritual notions with an empiricist worldview. However, this was also the era in which Augustinianism was prominent in French Catholicism. (Read more.)

Share

Helen of Troy

Abduction of Helen by G. Hamilton

 

 

 

 

 

 

The face that launched a thousand ships

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium. 

 —From The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Marlowe

 From Ancient History Encyclopedia:

Helen of Troy (sometimes called Helen of Sparta) is a figure from Greek mythology whose elopement with (or abduction by) the Trojan prince Paris sparked off the Trojan War. Helen, considered the most beautiful woman in the world, was the wife of Menelaus, the king of Sparta, and he persuaded his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, to form a great army to besiege the mighty city of Troy in order to recapture Helen. Following the Greek victory in the war, Helen returned home with Menelaus but she became a despised figure in the ancient world, a symbol of moral failure and the perils of placing lust above reason. Despite the poor standing of the literary Helen, she also had a divine form and was the centre of cults at several Greek sites, notably Rhodes, Sparta, and Therapne. 

In Greek mythology, Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, the queen of Sparta and the wife of Tyndareus. Zeus disguised himself as a swan to seduce Leda, and Helen was the result of their amorous engagement. In another version of the myth, Helen's mother is the goddess Nemesis, the personification of retribution. Whoever is the mother, in both versions, Helen is born from an egg in Sparta. Helen's siblings included the hero twins Castor and Pollux (aka Polydeuces) and Clytemnestra, the future wife of King Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae. One day, Tyndareus offered sacrifices to all the gods but forgot Aphrodite and the goddess, angered at the slight, then promised that all of the king's daughters would become infamous for their adultery. (Read more.)

 

From The New Republic:

Ruby Blondell’s insightful study of ancient Greek representations of Helen of Troy notes the close connections between her subject and the Pandora myth. Both, she argues, spring from cultural anxieties about female beauty and female sexuality, centered on the figure of the parthenos—the girl at marriageable age, a liminal figure who must cross from the world of childhood in her father’s house to the house of her husband. “She must be sufficiently reluctant to suggest that she will not stray once she is married, but she must also actively desire her new husband”—a balance that constantly threatens to tip over. Helen, the most famous adulterous wife in the Western tradition, is figured as a woman who is constantly in this liminal state, and who repeatedly crosses over from one household to another: “many-manned Helen,” as Aeschylus calls her. She was (and is) the locus for exploring the questions of whether beautiful women are always necessarily bad, and whether female sexual desire is always a force of destruction. She is also—unlike modern versions of the promiscuous or adulterous woman—always presented as at least semi-divine, the ever-young, ever-beautiful daughter of Zeus, worshiped at cult centers all over Greece, especially in her native Sparta. Modern versions of misogyny usually do not account for the possibility that “bad” women might also be goddesses.

The best-seller about Helen of Troy by the television presenter Bettany Hughes, from 2007, bizarrely claimed to tell, and to celebrate, “Helen as a real character from history,” while acknowledging that her existence is only “a possibility”—as if the biography of a mythical character from three thousand years ago could possibly be reconstructed. Blondell has almost none of this naïveté: she notes explicitly that her subject is a set of cultural tropes, not a historical person. Helen was a construction of the Greek male imagination, and the myths and literary treatments of Helen can teach us nothing about the lives even of women in classical Greece, let alone women in Sparta in the Bronze Age: she is “a concept, not a person.” But these myths can teach us a great deal about the complex attitudes of ancient Greek men, mostly ancient Athenian men, toward women, female beauty, and male desire.

The story goes that Zeus wanted to reduce the human population, so he arranged for the birth of the two characters who would make the Trojan War inevitable: Achilles and Helen, representing “seductive female beauty and destructive male strength.” They have in common an extraordinary self-awareness and concern for their future reputations in myth and legend. Both were half-human, half-divine, Achilles being the son of the mortal Peleus by the sea-goddess Thetis, and Helen the daughter of Zeus in the form of a swan and of the Spartan queen Leda. Owing to this parentage, she hatched from an egg—the first mark of her unusual, not-quite-human status. Helen is the only female child of Zeus by a mortal woman, an exceptional woman in this as in every other respect. Other versions of the myth suggest that she was the daughter of Nemesis, or “Destruction.”

Helen’s beauty is not subjective. A key premise of the myth is that she is beautiful in some absolute and total way that defies description, and hence can be represented only by entirely conventional means. Helen, like any other beautiful woman in the Greek literary tradition, has lovely cheeks, neat ankles, and pretty accessories. She is equally irresistible to any and every man. As Blondell neatly puts it, “a beauty that is in the eye of the beholder may launch a ship or two, but only a beauty upon which all beholders agree can bind a generation of heroic males under oath and generate an enterprise as cataclysmic as the Trojan War.” 

From a young age, Helen was prone to getting abducted. When she was still a young girl the Athenian hero Theseus swiped her, but she was retrieved by her magical brothers, the twins Castor and Pollux. A little later, suitors from all over Greece began to court her, and took an oath that they would all fight together for her eventual husband. Menelaus of Mycenae, whose main claim to fame was his wealth, won Helen as his wife. But some time afterward, a Trojan prince named Paris was appointed to judge between three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. He chose Aphrodite, goddess of love, because she promised him Helen as a reward—the only problem being that Helen was married already. The abduction of Helen caused the Trojan War. (Read more.)

The Hatching of Helen

More HERE.

Helen with King Priam watching Menelaus fight Paris

Share

The New York Times: A Century of Failure

 From Insurrection Barbie:

There is a temptation to treat what the New York Times has done since October 7, 2023, as a modern phenomenon, a product of social media pressure, activist newsrooms, and the politics of a particular cultural moment. That framing is too charitable. It lets the institution off the hook for something that is much more sinister.

The New York Times has a documented, academically established record of editorial decisions that consistently minimized, buried, distorted, or suppressed the truth about atrocities committed against Jewish people, in the 1930s and 1940s when six million were being murdered, and again in the years since October 7, 2023, when the world’s oldest hatred has taken on new institutional garb in the form of human rights NGOs, UN mechanisms, and international courts. Why should you care?  (Read more.)

Share

A Generation Praised for Toughness

 From Indian Defence Review:

A generation praised for toughness may have been shaped by something far less comforting: the everyday absence adults rarely admit mattered. They were the kids who walked to school alone, settled their own playground disputes, and heard “be back by dinner” as the only rule. That kind of childhood has largely vanished, replaced by a world where parents can track their children’s location down to the driveway. Now a comprehensive meta-analysis published in Development and Psychopathology has put hard numbers behind what many have suspected: when parents hover too closely, their children’s mental health may pay a price. The study, led by Qi Zhang at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wongeun Ji at Handong Global University, examined 52 separate research articles spanning tens of thousands of participants. The researchers found small but statistically significant links between overparenting and depression, anxiety, and broader internalizing symptoms. The average age of participants was roughly 20 years old, meaning the findings largely reflect the mental health of teens and young adults. (Read more.)

Share

Highest of All Kings

 From A Clerk of Oxford:

The idea that gods dwell in the heights, in the sky and on the mountains, is one of the most ancient religious impulses. It's hardly difficult to see a connection between that and Christ's Ascension, and going on about 'rockets, haha!' feels like a deliberate attempt not to see it. Those silly people of the olden days found poetry in the feast rather more easily than their clever modern descendants do: in Ascension Day folklore there was 'a strong connection between the day and all things pertaining to the sky, such as clouds, rain, and birds' (Roud). Rain which fell on Ascension Day was said to be blessed - 'neither eaves' drip nor tree-drip, but straight from the sky'. The day was connected with holy water in other ways, including the custom of well-dressing and visiting sacred springs. This expresses a sense that the heavens and the earth are interconnected at the most essential level - as of course they are, whether you think of that power as physical or spiritual or both. The kind of preacher who apologises for Ascension Day is likely to call that faith superstitious, but it's infinitely grander, really, than a worldview which finds no wonder in the heavens. We are earthbound, tied to this sublunary world and its many sorrows - but this is one day when the imagination can soar to the sky. (Read more.)

More HERE. 

(Image source.) 

Share

Retired Pastor, 78, Convicted for Preaching

 From Fox News:

A 78-year-old retired pastor has been convicted and fined for preaching a gospel sermon near a hospital in Northern Ireland.

"Naturally, I was deeply saddened by the verdict," Clive Johnston told Fox News Digital. "At 78 years old, I never imagined I would leave a courtroom with a criminal conviction for preaching the Christian gospel. But beyond the personal impact, my overriding concern is what this says about the state of fundamental freedoms in our nation."

On May 7, District Judge Peter King at Coleraine Magistrates' Court convicted Johnston of breaching a "safe access zone" outside Causeway Hospital in Coleraine on July 7, 2024. (Read more.)

Share

Is God Using Communism to Punish Us?

 From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

 In his 1948 book Communism and the Conscience of the West, Bishop Fulton Sheen argues that Christianity and communism have similar world views. Christianity contains the truth about our lives, teaching us that love of God and neighbor, respecting the natural law, and the anticipation that we will have to battle real evil in this world. It is bluntly realistic. Communism is a distortion of Christianity. It makes the individual, in Sheen’s phrase, “a robot,” a slave to unstoppable historical and economic forces, which will result in utopia - if only after a lot of violence.

     Yet both Christianity and Communism see the world as the spiritual battleground that it is. Sheen respects Communism more than he does liberalism, which seeks comfort and virtue without any real battle.“Thought utopian and violent,” Sheen wrote, “Marxism reveals a better insight into the historical process than liberalism, which saw peace coming without a struggle and which denied that even a relative Easter of economic order would come without the Good Friday of self-sacrifice and effort.”

 Sheen goes on to argue that “the Gospel for the last Sunday of Pentecost and the Gospel for the first Sunday of Advent are gospels of catastrophe, they proclaim that the final era of peace will not be ushered in until the final conflict between good and evil, when God shall come to judge the living and the dead and the new city of Peace will be descending from the heavens.”

    Sheen also points out that the Russians learned Marxism from German intellectuals:

As many a parent who educated his child in an extremely progressive school, where the child equated freedom with doing what he pleased, is now the parent who wants to know what to do with his recalcitrant, alcoholic, neurotic son, so the Western world that taught Russia some bad ideas may soon want to know how it can be saved from a country which learned is lesson all too well. A Freudian psychoanalyst cannot help the son, so neither politics nor economics can help the Western world, for the fault is deeper; the world is under the judgment of God and needs repentance.    

    Sheen writes that “though Babylon fell because it was very wicked, it was nonetheless God’s instrument for disciplining the people of Judah. Assyria was bestial, but to was the ‘rod and staff’ of God’s anger against the people of Israel.” In the West, “communism may be the instrument for the liquidation of a bourgeois civilization that has forgotten God.” (Read more.)

Share

Raphael and the Pursuit of Sublime and Heavenly Beauty

 

From Word on Fire:

Raphael’s drawings clearly show that the young artist learned quickly and adapted to the rapid artistic developments occurring during the Renaissance. Leonardo and Michelangelo’s influence becomes apparent in the motion, arrangement, and anatomical accuracy that began to characterize the figures in Raphael’s sketches, which he referenced for his paintings. The progression of his technique reveals that Raphael was a man who strove for perfection—and many would argue that he achieved it to the greatest extent possible within the realm of human capabilities.

Raphael’s continual refinement of his skills in the chase after excellence didn’t stop there. He went to Rome in 1508, becoming the court artist for Pope Julius II (r. 1503–1513) and Pope Leo X (r. 1513–1521). He made drawings of the ancient monuments in the city to learn the ins and outs of classical architecture. This knowledge proved useful for the School of Athens, a fresco that Raphael made for a four-part series in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Apostolic Palace.

We’ll never know how much further Raphael could have gone in his endeavors. Raphael did not enjoy the longer lives of his contemporaries, whose artwork had such a noteworthy impact on him; Michelangelo and Leonardo died at 88 and 67 years of age, respectively. Raphael left this world at 37, making the progression of his artistic career even more remarkable than theirs, at least in regard to time. In 1520, he completed what became his last masterpiece: The Transfiguration, a stunning example of his masterly orchestration of light, color, and human bodies to create a dramatic scene. (Read more.)

Share

JFK’s Revenge

 From The New Criterion:

Thanks mostly to President Trump, the Communist regime in Cuba is on the brink of collapse, with oil supplies cut off and much of the country without electricity or power. Cubans are dealing with food and medicine shortages and with the breakdown of public services. Prices are high and rising rapidly; inflation approached 40 percent last year. The Trump administration recently imposed new sanctions on Cuban leaders and on economic and political organizations that continue to support the regime. Pressures from Washington are certain to continue, notwithstanding complaints from progressives who hope to keep the Cuban government intact.    

It is little wonder that protestors are in the streets of Cuba shouting “Down with Communism.” The spirit of the Cuban revolution, completed in 1958 by Fidel Castro amid promises of reform, prosperity, and freedom from U.S. imperialism, turned to ashes decades ago, long before El Comandante died in 2016. The regime is now collapsing for real. Those who can are getting out, just as they did decades ago. 

The Cuban economy was never self-sufficient. It was propped up for decades by subsidies from the Soviet Union, in return for pledges to spread Castro’s revolution throughout Latin America.  The collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991 provoked a severe economic crisis across Cuba as that aid dried up. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Cuban leaders entertained hopes that the United States might bail out the revolution with new subsidies and favorable trade policies.  Donald Trump put an end to that fantasy after he was elected in 2016.

More recently, Venezuela, under Maduro’s left-wing government, stepped in to supply Cuba with low-priced oil, in exchange for Cuban military and medical support. That arrangement ended when President Trump toppled Maduro’s regime at the beginning of this year. Cuba now has nowhere else to turn. The regime has run out of other people’s money. (Read more.)

Share

The Absolute Rudest Things You Can Do at a Wedding

 One reason I am fascinated with etiquette is that I am aware that my own manners are not always what they should be. I am certainly guilty of the second faux pas. From Elle Decor:

1. You arrive too early.

Yes, being punctual is polite, but arriving to the ceremony more than 30 minutes early can get in the way of final touches and ultimately cause more stress for the couple. "It's better to wait in your car than go into the venue and risk stressing out the bride by seeing her before the ceremony," says the founder of Perfectly Posh Events, Holly Patton Olsen.

2. Or you arrive too late.

The general rule of thumb for arriving to the ceremony is that you should be in your seat 10 minutes before it is supposed to start. "Walking in as the bride (or groom) is walking down the aisle is incredibly rude and ruins video and photos that are being taken," shares Brand Hamerstone, owner of All Events Planned. (Read more.)

Share

The Sale of Charles I’s Collection

Rubens' Crucifixion, similar to the one in Henrietta Maria's Chapel at Somerset House

 

From Kings, Collectors, and Paintings in the Seventeenth Century:

 The first “authorized moves” (Haskell) may have been carried out at the end of October, 1642. Nine months after the King left London, parliamentary troops seized Windsor Castle and removed the magnificent silver plate made by Christian van Vianen for the ceremonies of the Order of the Garter lost, presumably melted down. From early 1643 onwards, more systematic confiscation and destruction followed and an inventory was made of Queen’s “hangings and household stuff.” A Rubens’s altarpiece may have been thrown in the Thames and it may have had some connection with James I’s Catholic Secretary of State, Sir George Calvert.[1] This Crucifixion by Rubens definitely hung in the Queen’s Chapel, and it seems to have been a victim of Puritan anger. It is known that instructions were given to deface “superstitious” paintings in the chapel of St James’s Palace, but it is not known which, although it looks like Rubens’s altarpiece was destroyed by an enraged Parliamentary commissioner in March 1643 on site rather than being thrown in the river.[2] Despite this vandalism, the King’s pictures survived the war “relatively unscathed.” The King’s collection became a target for the Puritans in whom it aroused anger because of the large sums spent on it, at a time when Charles was engaged in levying taxes without summoning Parliament. (Read more.)

 

My Stuart novels, HERE.
Share

The Art of the Tariff

 From Tierney's Real News:

Trump is not going to Beijing empty-handed. He is bringing a delegation that includes leaders like Tim Cook from Apple, Elon Musk from Tesla, Larry Fink of BlackRock, and executives from Blackstone, Boeing, Cargill, Citigroup, Coherent, GE Aerospace, Goldman Sachs, Illumina, Mastercard, Meta, Micron Technology, Qualcomm and Visa. That is deliberate. Scott Bessent will be by his side. That is strategic.

The stick consists of using legally durable Section 301 tariffs targeting China’s core industrial strategy.

The carrot offers an immediate economic upside through purchase agreements, market access, and regulatory stability.

For China, the message is simple. If they cooperate, they stabilize their export machine. If they resist, they face tariffs that are far harder to challenge or delay. (Read more.)

Share

When the Royal Family Visits

From Country Life:

Any self-respecting country house numbers among its bedrooms one distinguished from all others. Details may differ — the size of the bed, the fanciness of the tassels, the richness of the silks (which may well now be in shreds) — but it matters not. What counts is that a royal personage once slept there. Even if it happened 700 years ago and your house has been rebuilt three times since, a room in which royalty once reposed is enshrined ever after.

This doesn’t mean that the visit was at all pleasurable for either host or guest. The presence of a royal bedchamber celebrates less the awe of majesty than the family’s ability to survive the often appalling jeopardy of welcoming a royal, which could all too easily result in financial ruin, social disgrace and even death. Unlike modern royals, who might show up with a maid or valet and the odd bodyguard, royal visits once meant vast retinues landing on your doorstep, including high-ranking courtiers and domestic staff, who all had to be accommodated according to their station. Edward I would even bring along a keeper of the royal cows, to ensure a supply of fresh milk.

 Hosts effectively handed over their house to their royal guests, who were attended by their own staff and would often eat in a separate room with food prepared by their own cooks. Medieval manners lingered; at their coronation banquet in 1685, James II and his wife, Mary of Modena, sat alone at a table of about 170 dishes, including 24 cold puffins and four fawns, ‘two larded’. Lord Burghley had to double the size of Theobald’s, his house in Hertfordshire, all too conveniently situated a day’s ride north out of London, to accommodate Elizabeth I and her vast entourage on her annual summer progresses. Luckily for him, he was compensated by a high and lucrative office that allowed him to pay for it all. (Read more.)

Share

Madame Elisabeth on the Way to Execution

Madame Élisabeth of France and her companions leave the Conciergerie for the final journey to the guillotine on May 10, 1794. Madame Élisabeth was the last to die, which means she had to watch all the others decapitated before her. They each begged for her blessing before approaching the scaffold. From This is Versailles:

Once the condemned were removed, Madame Élisabeth once again exerted herself to the comfort of her fellow-condemned. She had always been a fervently religious woman and now she encouraged those who were to die with her. She chose to rejoice in the fact that the Tribunal had not asked them to renounce their faith "only their miserable lives".

There appears to be some conjecture about when Madame Élisabeth was definitely informed of the death of Marie Antoinette. Later, Marie Thérèse would recall that they had heard her mother's sentence being cried out from the people walking beneath their windows but that they had refused to believe it. One account claims that Élisabeth had asked to see her sister-in-law after her sentencing only to be told that she had suffered the same fate. Another claims that it was only at the foot of the guillotine that she overheard a callous remark. Once it was noticed that the condemned bowed to her before their deaths, a spectator allegedly remarked that that they could "make their salaams to her all they wanted, she will share the fate of the Austrian". (Read more.)

 

From European Royal History:

She reportedly successfully comforted and strengthened the morale of her fellow prisoners before their impending execution with religious arguments, and by her own example of calmness.

Élisabeth was executed along with the 23 men and women who had been tried and condemned at the same time as she, and reportedly conversed with Mme de Senozan and Mme de Crussol on the way. In the cart taking them to their execution, and while waiting her turn, she helped several of them through the ordeal, encouraging them and reciting the De profundis until her time came. Near the Pont Neuf, the white kerchief which covered her head was blown off, and thus being the only person with bare head, she attracted special attention by the spectators, and witnesses attested that she was calm during the whole process.

 At the foot of the guillotine, there was a bench for the condemned who were to depart the cart and wait on the bench before their execution. Élisabeth departed the cart first, refusing the help of the executioner, but was to be the last to be called upon, which resulted in her witnessing the death of all the others.

Reportedly, she considerably strengthened the morale of her fellow prisoners, who all behaved with courage. When the last person before her, a man, gave her his bow, she said, “courage, and faith in the mercy of God!” and then rose to be ready for her own turn. While she was being strapped to the board, her fichu (a sort of shawl) fell off, exposing her shoulders, and she cried to the executioner “Au nom de votre mère, monsieur, couvrez-moi. (In the name of your mother, sir, cover me)”

Reportedly, her execution caused some emotion by the bystanders, who did not cry “Vive la Republique” at this occasion, which was otherwise common. The respect Élisabeth had enjoyed among the public caused concern with Robespierre, who had never wished to have her executed and who “dreaded the effect” of her death.

Her body was buried in a common grave at the Errancis Cemetery in Paris. At the time of the Restoration, her brother, Louis-Stanislas, Comte de Provence, now King Louis XVIII of France and Navarre, searched for her remains, only to discover that the bodies interred there had decomposed to a state where they could no longer be identified. Élisabeth’s remains, with that of other victims of the guillotine (including Robespierre, also buried at the Errancis Cemetery) were later placed in the Catacombs of Paris. A medallion represents her at the Basilica of Saint Denis.

Beatification

The Cause of Beatification of Élisabeth was introduced in 1924, but has not yet been completed. In 1953, she was declared a Servant of God, and in 2016, her Cause was re-opened. (Read more.)

Share