The Temple Door

The Royal Family enters the door of the Temple prison. (From Vive la Reine.) At the end of the ordeal, only one of them would be alive. Share

Contraception and the Cross

This is one of the best posts on contraception that I have yet read. Yes, it is really, really hard sometimes to be a Catholic. I am not a Catholic because it makes me feel good but because the truth of the Catholic faith is so evident to me that to deny it would be living a lie. And there is a joy which goes with being a practicing Catholic that is beyond the daily mood swings. My friend Cathy says:

Regarding contraception and Church teaching, I need to say this. It is a HARD teaching. I was pregnant eight times. I had one miscarriage and gave birth to seven children, including one who died as a baby. I loved and wanted each of my children. And every single time I found out I was pregnant, I felt completely and utterly frightened and freaked out.

I know what it is like to see a positive pregnancy test and think that my life is over. I know what it is like to cry tears of relief and guilt when a late period finally arrives. I know what is like to believe that there is absolutely no way that it is a good idea to have a baby right now.

I also know that NFP is annoying sometimes. It's not always rainbows and butterflies and "Wow, isn't this great for our marriage?". Did I mention it is a HARD TEACHING?

Some Catholic women have been writing lately about how joyful and wonderful the Church teachings are, and how they are a gift to embrace. In fact, I've been one of those women. But it would be a lie to say that I haven't struggled with this. And it would be wrong not to acknowledge that many, many women suffer because of it....

But hey, there is hope.

There's Jesus. He's the only reason I even try to follow this teaching or any other. He is the only one who gives me the strength to try. I believe with all my heart that He loves me and wants the best for me. I really do in fact actually believe that the Catholic Church is a gift from Him, and that He wants me to be obedient. I trust Jesus, with my will, not my feelings. I give everything to him, including my fertility and my pride and my selfishness....What we are called to live as wives and mothers can be a heavy cross. (Read entire post.)

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Madame de Noailles

People often forget that in spite of France being an absolute monarchy there were many things over which the sovereign had no control. For instance, when choosing members of the nobility for various court offices, the King or Queen traditionally could not choose whoever they wanted but had to make the appointment according to heredity and prestige. When fourteen year old Marie-Antoinette arrived in France the lady singled out to be her guide was not a warm, motherly person but the one who was next in line for such an exalted office. It was Anne Claude Louise d'Arpajon, Vicomtesse de Noailles, who had been the first lady-in-waiting to the late Queen Marie Lesczynska and was therefore a stickler for etiquette. The Polish Queen had been strict about etiquette since she was the daughter of a dethroned king and later a neglected wife so she needed the rules to maintain respect. Madame de Noailles tried to maintain the same standards in the household of the young Dauphine but to no avail.

As Madame Campan shrewdly describes in her memoirs:

While doing justice to the virtues of the Comtesse de Noailles, those sincerely attached to the Queen have always considered it as one of her earliest misfortunes not to have found, in the person of her adviser, a woman indulgent, enlightened, and administering good advice with that amiability which disposes young persons to follow it. The Comtesse de Noailles had nothing agreeable in her appearance; her demeanour was stiff and her mien severe. She was perfect mistress of etiquette; but she wearied the young Princess with it, without making her sensible of its importance. It would have been sufficient to represent to the Dauphiness that in France her dignity depended much upon customs not necessary at Vienna to secure the respect and love of the good and submissive Austrians for the imperial family; but the Dauphiness was perpetually tormented by the remonstrances of the Comtesse de Noailles, and at the same time was led by the Abbe de Vermond to ridicule both the lessons upon etiquette and her who gave them. She preferred raillery to argument, and nicknamed the Comtesse de Noailles Madame l’Etiquette.

Marie-Antoinette rebelled against the stringency of the etiquette, which she did not think was necessary, and as Queen she changed some of the rules. She also chose people for offices not from the usual noble families but based upon her liking of them and whether she thought them capable. It would amaze us how much resentment she caused among the nobles, resentment which her enemies put to work against her. Nevertheless, Madame de Noailles and her husband were loyal monarchists and died on the guillotine during the revolution. Share

The Plight of Christians in the Middle East

I am overwhelmed by sadness whenever I think of what our brethren are suffering. (Via Gareth.)

The trauma of those priests is now commonplace among Middle Eastern Christians. Their share of the region's population has plunged from 20% a century ago to less than 5% today and falling. In Egypt, 200,000 Coptic Christians fled their homes last year after beatings and massacres by Muslim extremist mobs. Since 2003, 70 Iraqi churches have been burned and nearly a thousand Christians killed in Baghdad alone, causing more than half of this million-member community to flee. Conversion to Christianity is a capital offense in Iran, where last month Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani was sentenced to death. Saudi Arabia outlaws private Christian prayer. As 800,000 Jews were once expelled from Arab countries, so are Christians being forced from lands they've inhabited for centuries.

The only place in the Middle East where Christians aren't endangered but flourishing is Israel. Since Israel's founding in 1948, its Christian communities (including Russian and Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Armenians and Protestants) have expanded more than 1,000%. (Read entire post.)

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Marie-Antoinette's French Grandmother

Marie-Antoinette technically had more French blood than anyone in her husband's family.

Marie Antoinette’s French grandmother, Élisabeth Charlotte d’Orléans was born to Monsieur and Liselotte on the 13th September 1676 at the Château de Saint-Cloud, which had been perfected by her father over the years and had a commanding view from its terrace towards Paris. Later, this beautiful summer château would cause controversy when it became the personal possession of Marie Antoinette, but at the time of Élisabeth’s birth it was still, along with the Palais Royal in Paris, the primary seat of the Orléans family.

As niece of Louis XIV, the little girl was one of the first ladies in France and was given the courtesy title of Mademoiselle de Chartres, which she would use until the marriages of her elder half sisters, the daughters of Henrietta of England were married and she was given the title of Madame Royale to signify that she was now the premier unmarried princess in the country. (Read entire post.)

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Ernest Dowson

He is by far one of my favorite English poets.

*From the third stanza of "Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae":

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. (Read entire post.)

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St. Joan's Military Genius

It was of divine origin. (From Nobility)

“At the age of eighteen Joan possessed the same military genius as Condé when he was twenty,” writes one of her biographers.

Those who were her nearest friends have expressed themselves in a similar way.

The Duke of Alençon says that Joan was very experienced in all things military, whether it was a matter of handling a lance, assembling the army, or of the use of the new weapon of the times—the artillery. Dunois says the same more than once….

It has been shown that in any case she never held a command. When she acted it was always on impulse or by divine guidance, and at such times she placed herself above all human calculations, estimates and agreements….

All this is so astounding, so irrational, that it is only because we possess definite documentary evidence that we can believe it at all. True, Dunois always chivalrously recognizes her genius and especially her own importance, but when at the age of fifty-one he was questioned about her contribution to Orleans, where he himself held the supreme command, these were his words:

“Asked if he thought it probable that Joan was sent by God to intervene in military matters rather than she was impelled by human motives, he replied that he thought she was sent by God and that her military contribution depended on divine rather than on human inspiration.”

It could not have been put better. (Read entire post.)

(The above quote is taken from Sven Stolpe's biography of St. Joan which is the best biography about her that I have ever read.) Share

Blessed Germain Gardiner

Bishop Gardiner's nephew.

...Blessed Germain Gardiner was left as the scapegoat to suffer for the plot, while Henry VIII, still valuing Bishop Stephen Gardiner's efforts in supporting both Henry's "Great Matter" and his more "conservative" reformation of the Church, spared his uncle.

Along with Gardiner, Blessed John Larke, friend of St. Thomas More and former rector of Chelsea (More's parish) and Blessed John Ireland, also connected with St. Thomas More and Chelsea, were executed for denying Henry VIII's Supremacy. Robert Singleton, a parish priest, was also executed under a charge of treason, but he has not been beatified. John Heywood, the playwright and grandfather of John Donne was also on the scaffold at Tyburn sentenced to death, but he recanted and was spared. He also had connections to St. Thomas More and survived the ups and downs of the Tudor succession until Elizabeth I's reign. Then he went into exile in Mechelen, Belgium where he died around 1580. (Read entire post.)

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Lauzun

Armand Louis de Gontaut, Duc de Lauzun, later Duc de Biron (13 April 1747 – 31 December 1793) was a military hero and author of a memoir as well as being a courtier at Versailles during the reign of Louis XVI. He could easily have been the model for Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons in that no woman was free from his advances, not even the Queen of France. Sarah Tytler's biography has the best summary of his interaction with Marie-Antoinette:

Armand Louis de Gontant Biron, Duc de Lauzun, was born in 1747, and thus was eight years older than the Queen. He had been reared in the boudoir of Madame de Pompadour, and on account of a difficulty in choosing a tutor for him, a lackey of his late mother's taught him to read. At twelve years of age, he too entered the regiment of the Swiss Guards, knowing that he would succeed to an immense fortune. At nineteen, he married a charming young girl, grand-daughter and heiress of the Maréchal de Luxembourg. Her graces and- virtues won all hearts except her husband's. He came to Versailles when he was twenty-eight years of age, and found the Queen on intimate terms with his friend the Princesse de Guéménée, who procured him the introduction which he coveted, and he received some kindness from Marie Antoinette. A race, in which his horse was ridden by a child, made him fashionable; and at the Queen's request, other races were arranged.

Lauzun was a French Lovelace, an avowed womankiller, with all the immoderate vanity and odious heartlessness of such a character. He ran after those women who were much in the public eye—grandes dames, famous beauties, celebrated actresses. To throw on queens themselves bold looks—to make the proudest hearts beat, were it only with indignation —to cause the most glorious eyes to shine, if but with anger—to excite the jealousy of the salon, the envy of the men, the ecstacy of the women, was his chief ambition. And this very fine gentleman had the weaknesses of a fine lady, and carried them off admirably. He could weep ostentatiously, without looking ridiculous; he changed colour like the Comtesse Diane, who had an inconvenient habit of blushing like a school-girl; he even fainted when it was desirable to produce a sensation.

Marie Antoinette had no great liking for Lauzun, yet she regarded his vices with a certain foolish interest and curiosity—feelings which such mauvais sujets, as she knew him to be, are apt to excite in women like her. Mercy wrote of him as one of the dangerous young fools to whom the Queen gave too free access; but the Comte added no hint that could support the outrageous fatuousness of the Duc de Lauzun's assertion of the Queen's favour. Lauzun, on his part, had no special regard for Marie Antoinette; but the role of admirer of the first woman in France pleased his coxcombry, and, as he fancied, mortified les grandes dames.

Suddenly a lively sensation was excited at Court by the incident of "the heron's plume," told in two very different ways. One day Lauzun appeared at Madame de Guemenee's in uniform, with a snowwhite heron's plume in his casque. Some evenings afterwards, the Queen showed herself with the same unique plume in her head-dress. Lauzun's vapouring statement was, that the Queen had said to Madame de Guéménée that she, Marie Antoinette, was dying to have the heron's feathers, which he sent to her accordingly through his obliging ally. The Queen, he added, not only wore the plume, but appealed to him as to what he thought of it in her head-dress, and declared she had never found herself adorned so much to her mind. The Duc de Lauzun then wrote down a cock-and-bull version of an interview he had with the Queen, when she insinuated her attachment to him, and, but for the restraint he put upon himself, .would have expressed her regard openly.

Madame Campan's explanation has the merit of being credible. The Queen had rashly admired the rare plume, when the Duc de Lauzun at once offered it to her through Madame de Guéménée. The offer embarrassed Marie Antoinette, who did not see how she could refuse it, or accept it without presenting Lauzun with an equivalent—a course to which there were many objections. On the whole, it seemed the best plan to take the feathers as a matter of course, let their former owner see her wear them once, and then suffer the subject to drop. But her imprudent condescension to such a man bore its natural fruits. The Duc de Lauzun solicited an audience, and Madame Campan, who was in the next room in the performance of her duty, again heard the Queen's voice raised in anger. "Go, sir," were the words she said this time, and when her dismissal was obeyed, she protested to her bed-chamber woman," That man shall never again come within my doors." As an established fact, the Queen from that date testified her displeasure and dissatisfaction with the nobleman. When the Maréchal de Biron died, the Duc de Lauzun, the heir of his name, desired the post of colonel of the French Guards, but the Queen prevented his nomination, procuring the commission for the Duc de Chatelet. For that matter, Lauzun had been unmasked to her by Mercy and the Abbé as early as 1777. Lauzun was overwhelmed with debt, in consequence of his reckless life and prodigal extravagance; though he had started with a hundred thousand crowns rent, he owed two millions. Madame de Guéménée importuned Marie Antoinette in vain for lettres d'etat, to save the spendthrift from his creditors. It is equally well known that the disappointment of his unwarrantable expectations threw the Duc de Lauzun into the faction of the Duc d'Orleans, and converted the Queen's pretended admirer into a bitter enemy both of her and the King.

....It is saying little to note that [Marie-Antoinette] had many enemies. She had managed to pique and alienate some of the representatives of the greatest houses in the kingdom—such as "the Montmorencies, the Clermont-Tonnerres, the Rochefoucaulds "—by the constant injudicious display of her preference for her private friends; above all, for Madame de Polignac and her set—a line of conduct against which Mercy had warned the Queen to no purpose. For some time, as her old friend and adviser had not failed to point out, her weekly balls, when the Court was at Versailles, had been ominously ill-attended. The great families did not care to come from Paris and find the Queen so engrossed by a bevy of favourites and her own amusement as hardly to take the trouble, in spite of her naturally gracious manners, to "hold a circle," and take due notice of her guests. Besides, these offended magnates were by no means without skeletons in their own cupboards, and felt further insulted by some painfully honest speeches of the young Queen's, such as, "I do not care to receive wives who are separated from their husbands."

There is no question that the first calumnies against the Queen arose in the salons, and tempted every unworthy fine gentleman, who listened to the sneers and doubles entendres, and believed in them, to profess insolently to appropriate Marie Antoinette's frank smiles and ready kindness.

The Duc de Lauzun fought well in La Vendée against the defenders of the altar and the throne; but his comrades could not forget or forgive his birth and assumption of superiority. He was guillotined on the 1st of January, 1794. It is said that on the scaffold he declared, "I have been false to my God, to my order, and to my King." The Duc de Lauzun, like the Baron de Besenval, left behind him memoirs, the authenticity of which, though at first questioned with indignation by his greatest friend, Talleyrand, is now universally admitted. The only testimony against the good name of Marie Antoinette which could be for a moment entertained by any reasonable person, is contained in the malicious inferences and vindictively-garbled statements of these two noble braggarts, who proclaimed to the world what, if true, it would have been the height of treachery in them to reveal, but which, as it is, bears its foolish falsehood on its brazen face. (Marie-Antoinette, the Woman and the Queen by Sarah Tytler, pp. 95-98)

More on Lauzun from Madame Guillotine and Lauren.

The Duc de Lauzun, a soldier of the Revolution

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