“Of all the people in the world the English are the most inclined to give battle.” — Philippe de Commynes
“A hundred jewels on throats; a hundred jewels between teeth.” — Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor
It started with my best imitation of Alain de Botton at Heathrow.
My intent is one long running post of complete gibberish until some theme congeals. Expect random and seemingly unrelated quotes and links. My book assignment during the sabbatical is Fatal Colours by George Goodwin.
(1) Phenomena of St. Thérèse of Lisieux – Fr. Mark Goring, CC (via YouTube)
(2) Vanishing in Plain Sight (The Catholic Thing)
(3) Religion in the Time of Covid (City Journal)
“The docility of religious leaders to the cessation of public worship is stunning. It suggests that they more than half believe that secular proposition.”
(4) Quotes from Fatal Colours by George Goodwin:
“York may have been dead, but the Lancastrian revenge was not yet complete. York and Rutland were decapitated. Their heads, together with those of Salisbury and his younger son Sir Thomas Neville, together with those of the more significant knights killed at Wakefield, were sent to the city of York, where they were mounted on poles on the top of Micklegate Bar. The Duke was given the added indignity of a paper crown.”
“But the sixty-year old, physically unimpressive ‘little Fauconberg’ [William Neville] was a seasoned soldier of vast experience and he knew how to read the weather.”
“Display was at the heart of medieval kingship. Ceremonial went beyond mere celebration of regality, it was a key element of it. The greatest ceremony Henry VI would undertake, as for every English monarch from William the Conqueror on Christmas Day 1066 to the present, was his coronation. This was held in Westminster Abbey, scene of the most expensive ongoing building project of the Middle Ages. Impressive enough today, in young Henry’s VI’s time its interior was enriched throughout with colourful wall paintings, and its central focus, the tomb of St Edward the Confessor, glittered with gold plate and precious jewels. It was the burial place of Kings Edward I and III, Henry III, young Henry’s father Henry V and, of course, Richard II.”
“Power was fortified and sustained through ceremony, through its symbolism and display, but it was also created by it.”
(4a) Tudor Rose – Symbolic Needlework (Inspirations)
Update
Finished Fatal Colours. I have an idea to draft some posts about forgotten, obscure and little-known historical characters and Margaret of Anjou would definitely qualify (particularly at the end of her life). She was entombed in Angers Cathedral and when I was there for a football match took pictures of the cathedral. Her final resting place was desecrated by French revolutionaries.
(5) The Story of Our Lady of a Happy Death: Notre Dame du Bien Mourir (Clear Creek Abbey)