The Duel

Geri Walton discusses the famous duel between the Comte d'Artois and the Duc de Bourbon, which I also discuss in my book Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars.To quote:

Madame Carrillac had been mistress to the Duke of Bourbon, but she left the Duke for the Count of Artois. In addition, the Duke’s wife, the Duchess of Bourbon had feelings for the Count of Artois. One night at a masked ball the Count offered his arm to Madame Carrillac, and the Duchess of Bourbon, who was upset about Madame Carrillac, recognized the Count and Madame Carrillac. She then began following the pair spewing sarcastic remarks at Madame Carrillac.

When confronted, Madame Carrillac was annoyed and attempted to escape through the crowd. She was facilitated in her escape by the Count of Artois, and, it was at this point that Duchess of Bourbon tried to rip off the Count of Artois’s mask, snapping the mask’s strings. The Count of Artois, in defending himself, fought back, and, forgetting his position, he rudely crushed the Duchess’s mask on her face and then fled the ballroom.

The incident would  have been forgotten if not for a grand supper that the Duchess gave two days later. At the supper she mentioned the masked ball and the insult she received from the Count of Artois. In addition, she accused the Count of being nothing more than a ruffian, which in turn whipped up all the women the Count of Artois had ever offended. They supported the Duchess and denounced the Count’s actions, and, despite his rank, the women encouraged the Duchess to receive satisfaction, which then fell to her husband to call out Count of Artois for his supposed offense. (Read more.)

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The Perils of Pagan Society

From Tumblar House:

The root meaning of the word religio is to bind. Where the religion is not supernatural, the state may indeed live, but only temporarily, like an animal endowed with a natural soul. This was the general rule in all the great empires which rose and fell before the advent of Christianity, and it remains the rule in a few areas of the globe. To refer to the godless as pagans, or the pagans as godless, as if the words were interchangeable, betrays a myopic ignorance of what only the past can teach. The pagan was anything but godless. What he suffered from was in fact a super-abundance of gods. He worshiped almost anything. Deeply aware of his own dual material-spiritual nature and the intimate communication between these two elements in creation, he was religious in the real sense of the word. He peopled the heavens, the world and the underworld with crowded hierarchies of beings ranging all the way from a Supreme Being through lesser Olympian gods and goddesses, daemones, stars and deified heroes on down to woodland deities and the lowly lares and penates residing in every household, each exercising his specialty like the patron saints of the Catholic Communion.

In the Roman Empire the tribal gods of conquered nations were more than welcome to assume a position in the official pantheon, for the government literally ran on civic piety. As a matter of fact, any nation prepared to jettison its old gods on accepting Roman rule was by that very fact regarded as untrustworthy. Porphyry and Julian distrusted the early Christian for this very reason, branding him with impiety and atheism for allegedly apostasizing from the judaic traditions of his fathers to coin a religion without links to any particular nation or people. Today we forget, if we ever knew, that prominent Romans like Cicero and Pliny, along with Greeks like Plutarch, who was a priest of Delphi, were members of a state priesthood whose duty it was to offer communal sacrifices. The functions of the Augurs in defining public policy is well known. Diviners were called in to layout the reconstruction of the Capitol, which was begun in the presence of the Vestal Virgins. (Read more.)

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Understanding Detachment

From The Catholic Thing:

Detachment has been a central theme in Christianity from the start. Recall the story of the rich young man, found in all three Synoptic Gospels. He asks Jesus what he must do in order to be better. Jesus answers, “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor. . .and come, follow me.” The young man goes away sad because, the evangelist tells us, “he had great possessions.” (Mt 19. 21-22) He wasn’t detached – he needed to practice detachment about something big, and couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Not just for rich young men, but for all of us who would like to imitate Christ and live by his teaching, detachment is of crucial importance. But what is it? And why is it so important not just for people who have “great possessions,” but also for those whose possessions are quite modest? Let me offer a definition that may lead to an answer.

The definition is mine and carries no authority. Accept or ignore it:

To be detached, to practice detachment, is to establish and maintain
a relation to everything and everybody in one’s life according to
which all things are valued by how much they help or hinder us in
our relationship with God, the imitation of Christ, and the service of
other people.

A mouthful, I admit. What follows may help explain what it means.

By the late Middle Ages, the best thinking on detachment took the form of what is usually called contemptus mundi – contempt for the world. You find this in a pure form in The Imitation of Christ, a spiritual classic (1419) usually attributed to Thomas à Kempis, although others may have had a hand in it. It preaches the message of contemptus mundi throughout, starting with Book One, Chapter One:

   This is the highest wisdom: to despise the world and to aspire to the
kingdom of Heaven. It is vanity, therefore, to seek riches which must perish, and to trust in them. It is vanity also to be ambitious of honors, and to raise oneself up to a high station. It is vanity to follow the desires of the flesh, and to desire that for which you must afterward be grievously punished. It is vanity to wish for a long life, and to take little care of leading a good life. It is vanity also to attend only to this present life, and not to look forward to those things which are to come.

And so on. (Read more.)

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The Long Room at Clifton

From Chartreuse and Company:

Due to the forgotten nature of this room, when I was a little girl, we children spent a great deal of our time in here.  This is where we had our Parcheesi and Hearts tournaments. (Parcheesi is a board game touted as the game of Royal India, and Hearts is our favorite card game.) But the one activity that consistently brought the entire household into this room was when my sisters, my cousin, and I would put on our theatrics.  They were always staged on the first landing of the front stairs, a perfectly sized stage for four young thespians.

These were sophisticated affairs which included original scripts (written and directed by us), costumes (items found in closets), and elaborate props (the piano stool as a dining table, a jump rope as a microphone).   Popular songs of the day were usually included, a cappello.  Our audience was always appreciative, and left us feeling remarkably talented.

And just a note on this room, that I realize only as I write this:  this was a room filled with finer things, items my grandmother held in esteem.  And yet we were never made to feel that we could not be in there.  We sought out the room for our games and fun.  To this day, when we set the ‘young people’s table’ for our big get-togethers, that table is set in The Long Room, on its deep, wool oriental rug.  That’s just how it was.  So consider Grandmother Thomas’ example when you get the impulse to say that a certain room is off-limits to children.  Consider what you may be denying them, and yourself. (Read more.)

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American Horror Story

From Paul Craig Roberts:

Bernie Sanders won the presidential nomination, but he was cheated out of it by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which is the operating body for the Democratic Party. The DNC helped Hillary win the nomination by the combination of vote miscounts with appointment of super delegates, who no one elected, to vote for Hillary. So, she won this nomination illegitimately. All of Bernie Sanders’ supporters know that. They have turned against Hillary, and it is unlikely that many of them will vote for Clinton.

When the email scandal hit, the Democratic National Committee, hoping to shift the blame elsewhere, asked: “Who do Americans dislike more than Hillary” and answered “the Russians.” Washington has been demonizing the Russians for last 3-4 years. So, the Americans are told to dislike the Russians. That’s why the DNC and the presstitute media blame Putin for the WikiLeaks release of the emails that showed that Democrats were cheating Sanders out of the presidential nomination. Putin was made the issue instead of Hillary.

Hillary is a crook in many ways. But she has escaped from prosecution, because she is too useful to the oligarchs. So they shift all that blame to Putin, saying that this is a Russian plan to get Donald Trump elected. But I don’t think it will fool many people. Only the stupid ones. It will play in the media, because the media is not honest, not independent. The American media is like the old Soviet Media – it has to answer to the Master and can’t say much independently. It’s not going to fool the American people that all this e-mail scandal is the work of Putin. (Read more.)

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Places of the Revolution

From Geri Walton:

Located between the Palais des Tuileries and the Champs Élysées was the Place Louis XV (later called the Place de la Concorde). The square, which was originally a spot where market-gardeners grew cabbage and lettuce, was established and named in honor of King Louis XV. Ange-Jacques Gabriel designed the square and laid it out in 1755. The center piece was a statue commissioned by the city of Paris in 1748, sculpted by Edmé Bouchardon, and completed by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle after Bouchardon’s death. It was an equestrian statue of King Louis XV: “The king, crowned with laurels and arrayed in Roman costume, sat a top a prancing charger of bronze.”

After its creation, Place Louis XV was the site of many events, but in May of 1770, a haunting event occurred when the Dauphin (the future Louis XVI) married 14-year-old Marie Antoinette. In celebration of their marriage a fireworks celebration was erected in the square, and because of a variety of issues, there was only one way out thereby making the event dangerous for the spectators who thronged the square. During the celebration one of the firework displays tipped and set fire to other nearby displays. Because the spectators were so densely packed into the area and because there was only one way out, the celebratory event quickly became horrific: Many people were maimed, injured, or killed because they could not escape. (Read more.)

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Friends of Marie-Antoinette, Part 2

Madame de Polignac

A further discussion on Tea at Trianon Radio about the close friends of Marie-Antoinette, in particular Madame de Polignac and Madame de Lamballe.

Princesse de Lamballe

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The First Anti-Porn Pledge

From Life Site:

Donald Trump has become the first presidential candidate to sign an anti-pornography pledge, promising to crack down on obscenity after an eight-year-long hiatus at the federal level. Although he signed the pledge on July 16, the release is just making the news today, after the Republican and Democratic National Conventions dominated the news cycle for two weeks.

“Mr. Trump’s leadership and commitment to uphold the rule of law is demonstrated by his signing of the Children’s Internet Safety Presidential Pledge,” said Donna Rice Hughes, the president of the anti-porn group Enough is Enough, which drew the vow up. “Making the internet safer for children and families is a critical step in making America safe again.”

The heart of the promise requires the president to prosecute existing obscenity laws by “appointing an Attorney General who will make the prosecution of such laws a top priority in my administration.” (Read more.)

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Eleanor and Uncle Raymond

From Elizabeth Chadwick:

A Hospitaler knight called Gerard Jebarre was sent to England to fetch Raymond to his new calling.  The journey from England to Antioch was difficult because the politics of the Mediterranean and the Middle East  meant that there were those who had no wish  to see Raymond take up the reins.  The young man had to travel in secrecy, disguising himself as a pilgrim and as a merchant’s servant, but he was fortunate and managed to slip through the blockade, arriving in Antioch in April 1136.

His arrival could not be hidden from the Princess Alice, Constance’s mother who was still a young and fertile woman, and expected to become  Raymond’s bride.  However, the politics of the moment were geared toward uniting her daughter with Raymond. Young Constance had the blood of Count Bohemond in her veins and Alice did not. Also Constance was a lot more malleable than her mother. While Alice waited expectantly in her palace to receive her future new husband,nine year old Constance was kidnapped and married to Raymond in haste by the patriarch of Antioch.  Thwarted, unable to fight for her position and rights, Alice retired to fulminate on her dower estates in Lattakieh.

Raymond took up governing his new principality. He is described by contemporaries as handsome, tall and elegant. He possessed immense physical strength – he was supposed to be able to bend an iron bar with his bare hands and was nicknamed ‘Hercules’. He was skilled in the use of arms and militarily experienced.  Although not literate himself, he fostered those who were and enjoyed culture.  He liked gambling and was known to be impetuous and hot-tempered,  but he also had a high reputation for gallantry and purity of conduct (words in  bold for a reason). He attended church regularly and from what can be gathered, was  a faithful husband to Constance who in the fullness of time bore him a son Bohemond, and daughters Maria and Philippa. (Read more.)

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