Tea at Trianon

Easter Eggs

2026-04-08T02:00:00.008-04:00

Meat, as well as dairy products and eggs, were at one time renounced by all Christians during the Lenten fast. Among Eastern rite Christians, the discipline is still observed. Decorating and exchanging eggs at Easter have long been a sign of rejoicing. According to Wikipedia:

The egg is widely used as a symbol of new life just as a chick might hatch from the egg. The Easter egg tradition may have celebrated the end of the privations of Lent in the West, though this is speculation. Eggs were forbidden during Lent as well as other traditional fast days; since chickens would not stop producing eggs during this time, a larger than usual store tended to be available at the end of the fast, which had to be eaten quickly to prevent spoiling. Likewise, in Eastern Christianity, both meat and dairy are prohibited during the fast, and eggs are seen as "dairy" (a foodstuff that could be taken from an animal without shedding its blood). It was also traditional to use up all of the household's eggs before Lent began, which established the tradition of Pancake Day.

Among the most famous of Easter eggs are those made by Fabergé for the Russian Imperial Family. More HERE.

The Abolition of the Hereditary Lords

2026-04-08T01:00:00.001-04:00

From The Imaginative Conservative:

Hereditary lords are those House of Lords members who inherit the right to sit in the upper house based on past services their families rendered to the realm. Many storied families have retained this right in their lineage for generations. Over the centuries, they have passed on their experience to their successors.

The House of Lords originated in the eleventh century, as a council of religious and temporal leaders which the king convoked to fulfill the difficult duty of rendering “counsel and aid” to their sovereign. It later developed into a more formal government institution in the thirteenth century.

In the nineteen fifties, Parliament created “life peers,” who are appointed by prime ministers to serve for life. Many have criticized these appointments as party cronies who receive the office as a political favor or because of donations to the party. They do not need to form a legacy that projects into the future.

The House of Lords has no legislative power but exercises an advisory role, correcting legislation from the House of Commons based on its members’ experience. The upper parliamentary chamber can slow down populist passions by delaying passage, proposing amendments or taking other deliberative measures. (Read more.)

The Greatest Byzantine Greek Scholars of the Renaissance

2026-04-08T00:00:00.001-04:00

From The Greek Reporter:

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

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

Easter Bonnets

2026-04-07T02:00:00.001-04:00

Miss Janice explains the etiquette of wearing hats, gloves and corsages.

Hats are a beautiful accessory and certainly popular to wear on Easter Sunday. You may keep your hat on while indoors, but should remove it at dusk. Gentlemen should remove their hats when entering a building. Hat pins are lovely adornments to a hat and should be pinned on the right side of a lady's hat and on the left side of a gentleman's hat. Make it Southern...A lot of Southern gentlemen still tip their hat to a lady (some men were just raised right)!...All y'all know by now that you may start wearing your white shoes and carrying your white pocketbooks on Easter Sunday...Here's Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy with Young John Fitzgerald, Jr. on Easter Sunday 1963...

There is also etiquette to be followed when wearing gloves and corsages. Proper etiquette dictates that gloves are removed when entering a building, whether it is a tearoom or a church. It is not considered proper to shake hands while wearing gloves (only the Queen of England can get away with this) or to eat or drink while wearing gloves. Remove your gloves in a lady like fashion, one finger at a time. Always hold your pocketbook and gloves in your left hand so that you will be ready to shake hands at any time.Remember, only the Queen of England may wear gloves while shaking hands! Corsages are a tradition in the South and may be worn on Easter Sunday. Corsages are pinned to the clothing on the left shoulder. (Read more.)

(Artwork courtesy of Hermes)

Mamdani’s Red Guards Take Shape

2026-04-07T01:00:00.001-04:00

From AND Magazine:

We reported some time ago on New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to create a “Department of Community Safety.” This is the initiative that gets characterized misleadingly as simply a plan to replace cops with social workers. It is much more than that. It is much more frightening than that. It is the ultimate fulfillment of the leftist vision of abolishing the police and substituting for them a cadre of individuals who will be empowered to forge the new society Mamdani and his Marxist supporters envision.
The first step in this effort has been the creation of something called the Office of Community Safety. It has an initial budget of a quarter of a billion dollars. Mamdani established the office in a March 19 executive order. The Office of Community Safety is intended as a precursor to a larger Department of Community Safety, which would have a total yearly budget of $1.1 billion, with more than $600 million coming from undefined “transfers of existing programs.” (Read more.)

The Sacrament of Easter

2026-04-07T00:00:00.001-04:00

Making all Sundays holy to the Lord. From Seton Magazine:

If Christians in the midst of the world are to keep alive a Christian culture and the spirit of Easter throughout the year, it is essential to truly live Sunday as “the Day of the Lord.” Man is an image of God, and God is a community of persons (the Blessed Trinity). By gathering as a parish family to celebrate and receive the Holy Eucharist each Sunday and then “resting in the Lord” as a family for the remainder of the day, we become practically what we are in truth, an image of the triune God Who is love.

Certainly there are obstacles in our contemporary culture to living Sunday as a day of worship and rest. Saint John Paul II noted in 1998 that, “Until quite recently, it was easier in Christian countries to keep Sunday holy because it was an almost universal practice and because, even in the organization of civil society, Sunday rest was considered a fixed part of the work schedule…"

Unfortunately, when Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes merely part of a ‘weekend,’ it can happen that people stay locked within a horizon so limited that they can no longer see ‘the heavens.’ Hence, though ready to celebrate, they are really incapable of doing so. The disciples of Christ, however, are asked to avoid any confusion between the celebration of Sunday, which should truly be a way of keeping the Lord’s Day holy, and the ‘weekend,’ understood as a time of simple rest and relaxation” (DD, 4). (Read more.)

Lilacs

2026-04-06T02:00:00.001-04:00

Lilacs by Pierre-Joseph Redouté

Lilacs by Mary Cassatt

Our lilacs are blooming in Maryland. Here is an article on the history of lilacs. Lilacs were much loved by Marie-Antoinette. And here is an excerpt from the poem "Lilacs" by Amy Lowell:

Lilacs in dooryards

Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;

Lilacs watching a deserted house

Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;

Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom

Above a cellar dug into a hill.

You are everywhere.

You were everywhere.

You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,

And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.

You stood by the pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,

You persuaded the housewife that her dishpan was of silver.

And her husband an image of pure gold.

You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms

Through the wide doors of Custom Houses—

You, and sandal-wood, and tea,

Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks
When a ship was in from China.

(Read more.)

More lilacs at East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

Lilacs by Dora Koch-Stetter

The Case for the Most Obvious Promotion in Washington

2026-04-06T01:00:00.001-04:00

From Amuse on X:

Pam Bondi is out. Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, steps into the interim role while Washington cycles through its familiar ritual of speculation, audition, and delay. The question of who should permanently lead the Department of Justice is already being asked in conservative circles, and the right answer requires very little searching. She is already confirmed by the Senate, already winning in court, and already doing things as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights that MAGA America has been demanding from the federal government for years. Her name is Harmeet Dhillon, and the case for elevating her to Attorney General is, once you examine her record, almost embarrassingly obvious.
Start with the story that crystallized for millions of conservatives exactly who Dhillon is and how she operates.
On January 18 of this year, a mob stormed Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The congregation was mid-service. Protesters flooded the building, disrupted the worship, and targeted the church because one of its pastors reportedly worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Former CNN anchor Don Lemon was there. Not as a passive observer, but as someone who had attended an organizer briefing beforehand, kept the church location secret until his live coverage began, and was, according to the federal indictment, blocking a door and preventing congregants from exiting. Within 48 hours, Dhillon went on television and made a statement that electrified conservative America. “Come next Sunday,” she said, “nobody should think in the United States that they’re going to be able to get away with this.” She was not posturing. She meant it. (Read more.)

Sacred Art and the Coming of Islam

2026-04-06T00:00:00.001-04:00

From Hilary White at the Sacred Images Project:

And yet, despite the chaos, the sacred arts flourished. In Constantinople, the domes of Hagia Sophia shimmered with gold and glass mosaics that captured the uncreated light of heaven. In Ravenna, Christ gazed out from apse and arch with the serene confidence of divine kingship. Processions of saints in jewel-toned robes crossed the walls of sanctuaries like heavenly courtiers. The image of God made visible, incarnate, and triumphant had become the cornerstone of Christian art.
To the west, Britain and Ireland, far from the imperial centres, were stirring with new creative energy. Missionaries and monks were carving a fresh Christian identity into the raw material of a post-Roman world. The Book of Durrow, the Lindisfarne Gospels, and the carved stone crosses of Iona emerged from this wild frontier of the faith, filled with patterns and symbols that spoke of eternity in knots and spirals.
But across the deserts of Arabia, something was stirring, something that would soon cast a long and complex shadow over the entire Christian world.
Within a single lifetime, Islam would rise from obscurity and sweep across the old heartlands of Eastern Christianity. Antioch, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, centres of theology, pilgrimage, monasticism, and sacred art, would fall under a new religious power. The sea that had been a Christian sea, ringed by basilicas and monastic foundations, would become the heart of an Islamic empire.
The world had changed, and Christian culture would never be the same. (Read more.)

Easter Cakes

2026-04-05T02:00:00.001-04:00

From Country Living:

Easter is a time for dressing up, attending church services, decorating eggs and making Easter crafts. But it's also for planning tasty menus for Easter dinner or Easter brunch. And it isn't an Easter celebration without an over-the-top, fancy spring Easter cake! We've rounded up some of our favorites, from easy recipes that'll feed a crowd to simpler ideas for smaller gatherings. From light and refreshing spring flavors like blueberry, citrus, and coconut to down right decadent and rich chocolate cakes, there's something for everyone. This list has simple cakes, festive cakes, and elegant cakes that make gorgeous Easter centerpieces! (Read more.)

Irish Easter

2026-04-05T01:00:00.001-04:00

The old Irish celebrated Easter on a different date from the continental Church for two centuries or more during what is known as the Dark Ages. This has fascinated me ever since I did a book report on the Synod of Whitby (664) in college. It was at Whitby that the conflict between the different customs of Celtic and Roman Christians in the British isles came to a head. Most of the north of Britain had been converted by the zealous Irish monks, led by Saint Colum Cille. The Irish monks wore a tonsure different from the Roman monks; the Irish had their foreheads shaved from ear to ear, with long hair trailing down their back, while the Roman custom was to shave the crown of the head. The Irish claimed that their tonsure came from Saint John the Evangelist whereas the Romans claimed to have inherited their tonsure from Saint Peter. The tonsure, however, did not cause nearly as much problems as the date of Easter. Members of the same family, depending on whether they followed the Celtic or Roman practice, would keep Lent and Easter at different times. This caused no end of inconvenience for those who had to cook the meals.

According to Edmund Curtis in A History of Ireland (1936):

Under the papal authority the Paschal date had been fixed for the Church by Victorius in 457, but the Celtic churches adhered to the Paschal term as fixed by Anatolius in the third century. As a practical result the Irish were found keeping Easter from the fourteenth to the twentieth of the lunar month and the Continental church between the sixteenth and the twenty-second. On this matter of controversy many letters had passed between the Irish leaders and Rome. Popes Honorius and John IV had urged the Irish to conform and had been answered by Cummian and by Columbanus. The latter, writing to Saint Gregory the Great, boldly maintained the Irish position over Easter, but conceded to the Holy See a primacy of honor and a measure of supreme authority, adding, 'it is known to all that our Savior gave Saint Peter the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and that Rome is the principal seat of the orthodox faith.'

By the middle of the seventh century southern Ireland had accepted the [Roman] Easter and only northern Ireland and Iona, strong in the name and memory of Columba, stood out. (pp.15-16)

Iona finally gave in around 716 and northern Ireland followed suit. After the Synod at Whitby had brought most of northern Britain into the Roman calculation of Easter, the Celtic monks in Scotland and northern England had withdrawn to Iona. What intrigues me about this controversy is that there were great saints who vehemently disagreed with each other on ecclesiastical matters.

How Some Puritans Saw Easter

2026-04-05T00:00:00.001-04:00

From The Earl of Manchester's Foote:

Much like their more famous ‘war on Christmas’, some hardline Puritans of the early 17th Century also had Easter in their sights.

It has been said that the transformation of Easter into a secular festival second only to Christmas has accelerated in recent years. With the long weekend affording many families the chance to come together, commerce has not been slow in sensing an opportunity to capitalise and the profusion of Easter-related paraphernalia – gifts, cards, and confections – only seems to grow. “Easter”, one commentator wryly noted, “is the new Christmas”.

This would have been no surprise in late medieval England, where Easter outranked Christmas as the key festival of the Christian year and was surrounded by a schedule of feast days, public events, and rituals.

But the English Reformation saw much of the Roman Catholic ceremony associated with Easter striped away, in favour of the more austere – and, to the Puritan mind, more fitting – fasting, contemplation, and prayer.

Historian Ronald Hutton traces the downgrading of Easter to the lead-up to the English Reformation led by its chief architect, Archbishop Sir Thomas Cranmer, who energetically pursued a policy of destruction of many of the medieval rituals associated with the festival, such as the dressing of special ‘Easter sepulchres’ – an arched recess generally in a church’s chancel which, from Good Friday to Easter day, would have had a crucifix and sacred elements placed within it – a long standing English tradition that was effectively snuffed out as early as 1548. (Read more.)

Anastasis and Transfiguration

2026-04-04T02:00:00.001-04:00

From Hilary White:

The Anastasis, literally “a rising up” or “standing up again in Greek. It is the icon that shows us what happened beyond the view of living men after the Crucifixion. Christ has descended not as a lifeless corpse but as a radiant figure, full of divine power, bursting with the Uncreated Light, reaching down into death itself to rescue Adam, Eve and all the righteous held captive since the beginning of time. In this image, Holy Saturday is not a pause. It is an explosion.
The Anastasis is one of the most commonly repeated of all iconographic prototypes in the Eastern tradition. It is not merely a depiction of an event but a visual proclamation of victory, a theological image so central that it appears again and again in apses, narthexes, chapels and manuscripts across centuries and empires. (Read more.)

The Pirates Of The Red Sea

2026-04-04T01:00:00.001-04:00

From AND Magazine:

The Houthis are Yemeni rebels and allies of the Iranian regime. They recently entered the war with the United States and Israel and began to fire missiles at Israel. To date, however, they have refrained from shooting at shipping in the Red Sea. Right now, tankers filling up with oil at Yanbu, the Saudi port on the Red Sea, are in many ways the world’s lifeline. Thirty tankers at a time are docked there, taking on oil brought across Saudi Arabia in a pipeline. This allows oil to flow out of Saudi Arabia and bypass the Iranian stranglehold on the Straits of Hormuz.
Why? Why have these Iranian allies not closed the Red Sea to shipping? The answer tells you a great deal about how the Middle East works and what the word “ally” really means in the region.
In 2023, Saudi Arabia and Yemen entered into a Road Map deal to end fighting between the Houthis and Riyadh. Saudi Arabia now sends tens of millions of dollars to Yemen every few months. Ostensibly, this is support for the Yemeni government, but a big chunk of this money goes to the Houthis directly. The Saudis pay the salaries of the Houthi fighters.
We call this protection money.
The Houthis don’t make any serious effort to disguise it as anything else. Earlier this year, the Saudis were behind on their payments to the Houthis. Houthi fighters were not being paid. There were reports of famine in some Houthi-controlled areas. Acting de facto Prime Minister Mohammed Ahmed Muftaf, speaking in place of Houthi de facto President Mahdi Al Mashat, then delivered a strongly worded warning to Saudi Arabia. He urged Riyadh to release funds to pay Houthi salaries as a “basic right” and said that “time is running out and patience has limits.” (Read more.)

Tragic Abundance: Spring Cleaning as Mortification

2026-04-04T00:00:00.003-04:00

From Matriarch Goals:

It is true that I love interior design and making things look nice, but my husband and I are terrible at home organization and at keeping things nice. We are both descended from legit hoarders, which does make us susceptible to imbalance when it comes to material possessions. But more than our genetic misfortunes, we both suffer from a similar type of impatience and a hatred of maintenance that really just amounts to a wholesale failure to keep up appearances.
My husband suffers from a true Spartan hatred of material possessions, which you’d think would deliver us unto minimalism but it doesn’t work that way. I suffer from an overabundance problem, too many hobbies, too many interests that lend themselves to collections and displays. My brother-in-law calls my particular brand of garden and home design tragic abundance, and nothing could be more true. I love old stoves and chimneys and decaying structures that lie out in people’s yards, curing, covered with roses or lilac bushes. That’s the dominant art form around the California Gold Country: natural, botanical abundance growing over the old steel and wood skeletons of a previous civilization. In some ways all of California is late-stage Republic in its artistic presentation, but this looks better in the northern part of the state because we have the granite boulders and hollowed out industry to give it a more romantic setting than the “this is basically Mexico” deserts of Southern California. (Read more.)

Good Friday

2026-04-03T02:00:00.001-04:00

From Daniel Mitsui.

The Reproaches (Improperia)

I.
1 and 2: My people, what have I done to you
How have I offended you? Answer me!
1: I led you out of Egypt,
from slavery to freedom,
but you led your Savior to the cross.
2: My people, what have I done to you?
How have I offended you? Answer me!

1: Holy is God!
2: Holy and strong!
1: Holy immortal One, have mercy on us!
1 and 2: For forty years I led you
safely through the desert.
I fed you with manna from heaven,
and brought you to a land of plenty; but you led your Savior to the cross.
Repeat "Holy is God..."
1 and 2: What more could I have done for you.
I planted you as my fairest vine,
but you yielded only bitterness:
when I was thirsty you gave me vinegar to drink,
and you pierced your Savior with a lance.
Repeat "Holy is God..."

II.
1: For your sake I scourged your captors
and their firstborn sons,
but you brought your scourges down on me.
(Repeated throughout by Choir 2)
2: My people, what have I done to you?
How have I offended you? Answer me!
1: I led you from slavery to freedom
and drowned your captors in the sea,
but you handed me over to your high priests.
2: "My people...."
1: I opened the sea before you,
but you opened my side with a spear.
2: "My people...."
1: I led you on your way in a pillar of cloud,
but you led me to Pilate's court.
2: "My people...."
1: I bore you up with manna in the desert,
but you struck me down and scourged me.
2: "My people...."
1: I gave you saving water from the rock,
but you gave me gall and vinegar to drink.
2: "My people...."
1: For you I struck down the kings of Canaan.
but you struck my head with a reed.
2: "My people...."
1: I gave you a royal scepter,
but you gave me a crown of thorns.
2: "My people...."
1: I raised you to the height of majesty,
but you have raised me high on a cross.
2: "My people...."

Germany’s Protestant Church and the Seeds of a Religious Backlash

2026-04-03T01:00:00.001-04:00

From The European Conservative:

Germany is not like America. There is no mass evangelical movement blending Christianity with culture war activism, no figure comparable to Charlie Kirk. But this doesn’t mean the country is immune to change. Beneath the surface, a new, quieter religious backlash is stirring—and Germany’s notoriously progressivist Protestant Church may, paradoxically, be helping to fuel it.
The official church is in crisis. The scale of that crisis was thrown into sharp relief once again during this year’s Lenten season, when statistics published in March confirmed the continuing downward trend in membership. In 2025, a further 1.1 million people left the two major churches, with Protestants leading the exodus: their numbers fell by around 580,000 to approximately 17.4 million. Where in 1992, some 36% of Germans were Protestant, that figure has now fallen to 21%.

No one was surprised. The reasons are surely complex in a largely secular society. What is striking, however, is not the decline itself but the leadership’s response to it—a posture of resignation bordering on indifference. When the already-falling figures were presented in 2024, Kirsten Fehrs, chair of the German Protestant Church Council and the institution’s most senior representative, could offer nothing more than, “We will become a smaller and poorer church.”

Rather than campaign to win members, the leadership appears to have made peace with its growing irrelevance. In recent years, anything associated with the church’s former core mission—spreading the faith and engaging non-believers—has been quietly abandoned, even treated with embarrassment. The very word ‘mission’ has become contested. In a recent opinion piece, the editor of the church newspaper evangelisch.de argued that the term rests on a false distinction between “us” and “them,” and that mission should mean only “walking alongside others”—explicitly not “about recruiting members or church growth.” The instruction in John 20:21—”As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you”—is evidently no longer something the leadership feels obliged to follow. (Read more.)

Queen Mary Prays over the Sick on Good Friday

2026-04-03T00:00:00.001-04:00

From Nobility. It is always bittersweet for me to read about how much potential for being a great ruler Mary Tudor had. To quote from a contemporary report:

On [Good] Friday morning the offertory was performed according to custom in the Church of the Franciscan Friars, which is contiguous to the palace. After the Passion, the Queen came down from her oratory for the adoration of the Cross, accompanied by my lord the right reverend Legate, and kneeling at a short distance from the Cross moved towards It on her knees, praying before It thrice, and then she drew nigh and kissed It, performing this act with such devotion as greatly to edify all those who were present.

Her Majesty next gave her benediction to the rings, the mode of doing so being as follows: An inclosure (un riparo) was formed for her Majesty to the right of the high altar by means of four benches placed so as to form a square, into the center of which she again came down from her oratory, and placing herself on her knees within this inclosure, two large covered basins were brought to her, filled with rings of gold and silver, one of these basins containing rings of her own, whilst the other held those of private individuals (particolari), labelled with their owners’ names. On their being uncovered she commenced reciting a certain prayer and psalms, and then taking them in her two hands (pigliandoli a mano per mano), she passed them again and again from one hand to the other, saying another prayer, which commenced thus:—

“Sanctifica, Domine, annulos istos.”

This being terminated, her Majesty went to bless the scrofulous, but she chose to perform this act privately in a gallery, where there were not above 20 persons; and an altar being raised there she knelt and recited the confession, on the conclusion of which her Majesty turned towards my Right Reverend Lord the Legate, who gave her absolution; whereupon a priest read from the Gospel according to St. Mark, and on his coming to the words— “Super ægros manus imponet et bene habebunt,” she caused one of those infirm women to be brought to her, and kneeling the whole time she commenced pressing, with her hands in the form of a cross, on the spot where the sore was, with such compassion and devotion as to be a marvel, and whilst she continued doing this to a man and to three women, the priest kept ever repeating these words:

“Super ægros manus imponet et bene habebunt.”
Then on terminating the Gospel, after the words—

“In principio erat verbum,”
and on coming to the following, namely,—

“Erat lux vera quæ illuminat omnem hominem in hunc mundum,”
then the Queen made the sick people again approach her, and taking a golden coin called an angel, she touched the place where the evil showed itself, and signed it with this coin in the form of the cross; and having done this, she passed a ribbon through a hole which had been pierced in the coin, and placed one of these round the neck of each of the patients, making them promise never to part with that coin, which was hallowed, save in case of extreme need; and then, having washed her hands, the towel being presented to her by my Lord the Right Reverend the Legate, she returned to her oratory. (Read entire article.)

Franz Joseph Washing the Feet of the Poor

2026-04-02T02:00:00.001-04:00

In accord with the ancient custom.

In 1850, Franz Joseph participated for the first time as emperor in the second of the traditional Habsburg expressions of dynastic piety: the Holy Thursday foot-washing ceremony, part of the four-day court observance of Easter. The master of the staff and the court prelates chose twelve poor elderly men, transported them to the Hofburg, and positioned them in the ceremonial hall on a raised dais. There, before an invited audience observing the scene from tribunes, the emperor served the men a symbolic meal and archdukes cleared the dishes. As a priest read aloud in Latin the words of the New Testament (John 3:15), “And he began to wash the feet of the disciples,” Franz Joseph knelt and, without rising from his knees, washed the feet of the twelve old men in imitation of Christ. Finally, the emperor placed a bag of twenty silver coins around the necks of each before the men were led away and returned to their homes in imperial coaches.(Read more.)

Vance Anti-Fraud Effort Adds Major Enforcer

2026-04-02T01:00:00.001-04:00

From AMAC:

The Senate confirmed an experienced federal prosecutor, Colin McDonald, Tuesday afternoon to act as the Justice Department’s anti-fraud division lead. In a party-line vote, McDonald was confirmed 52-47 to be the first assistant attorney general for national fraud enforcement at the DOJ. McDonald will work with Vice President JD Vance, whom President Donald Trump named the White House “fraud czar” to lead a new task force to eliminate fraud. Trump created the new DOJ division to “catch and stop FRAUDSTERS that have been STEALING from the American People,” he wrote on Truth Social.
“Colin is an experienced, skilled, and tough prosecutor who will continue doing incredible work to root out fraud across America,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote, congratulating McDonald on his confirmation. “President Trump made an outstanding choice.” McDonald has served as a top aide to the second in command at the DOJ for the past year. Prior to coming to Washington, he served as a federal prosecutor. (Read more.)

Blessed Karl, Clericalism and Lay Church Governance

2026-04-02T00:00:00.001-04:00

From Charles Coulombe at One Peter 5:

In many ways, Austro-Hungarian Emperor-King Franz Joseph epitomised the traditional relationship between the lay and clerical powers of the Church. As with the other Crowned Heads of Europe, he had inherited a particular style of Catholic devotion peculiar to his own dynasty – the Pietas Austriaca. Bound up with a veneration of the True Cross and the Passion, the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Heart, the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph (the family patron), this religiosity had led to the tremendous collection of relics at the Hofburg, the Imperial Palace in Vienna. The Maundy Thursday Footwashing and the Corpus Christi procession were highlights of court life in Vienna, and in 1898 Franz Joseph led the Imperial Family in observing the Consecration of All Mankind to the Sacred Heart, led by Leo XIII in Rome. In the canon of the Mass, the Good Friday Collects, and the Holy Saturday Exsultet, the Emperor was prayed for by name.
Franz Joseph was crowned and anointed King of Hungary in 1867. As Emperor-King he appointed the Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops, subject to Papal approval. Exempt from this were Salzburg and Olomouc, their metropolitans being elected by the cathedral chapters, and the former ‘Salzburg dioceses’ of Seckau, Lavant, and Gurk. The Archbishop of Salzburg had the right of appointment for Seckau and Lavant, the occupation of Gurk was regulated in a mixed manner, that is, the Emperor proposed two candidates, the subsequent nomination was made by the Archbishop of Salzburg. The Nuncio had to be consulted to make sure that the choice was not obnoxious to the Pope – either disapproval would derail the process; the separate Austrian and Hungarian ministries of Worship and Education would do the research, but it was Franz Joseph who had to approve the choices, both for Latin and Eastern Rite Catholic Bishops. Moreover, he had to bear in mind that some of his appointees would sit in one or more legislatures within the Monarchy.
There were three national parliaments. In the Upper House – House of Lords (Herrenhaus) of the Austrian Parliament could be found the prince-archbishops of Vienna, Prague, Salzburg, Görz, and Olmütz, the archbishops of Lemberg and Zara, the Byzantine Catholic archbishop of Lemberg, the Armenian Catholic archbishop of Lemberg, and the Greek Orthodox archbishop of Czernowitz, as well as the prince-bishops of Brixen, Breslau (although located in what was then Germany, for the diocesan territory in Austrian Silesia), Krakau, Seckau, Trient, Laibach, Lavant, and Gurk. In the Hungarian Upper House, the Főrendiház or “House of Magnates,” had an even higher proportion of ecclesiastical members – although it was also more interfaith than Austria’s: forty-two dignitaries of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, including the Primate, Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, and various other high officials, and thirteen representatives of the Protestant confessions. The annexation of Bosnia in 1908 presented a challenge in creating representative institutions for a region that had never known them. But while Bosnian diet (Sabor) would only one have one house, it would also have religious representatives appointed by the Monarch. These were, in deference to the Muslim majority, the Reis, who was the principal of Muslims’ granted lands, and the Muslims’ regional leader from Mostar; four Metropolitans and the president of the Orthodox community; the Catholic archbishop and two province members of Franciscan order of Bosnia and Herzegovina; and the Sephardic rabbi of the higher order. The various provincial diets in the Austrian half of the Monarchy also numbered the local Catholic bishops in their number.
Another religious duty that Franz Joseph took very seriously was that of funding missions – even though Austria-Hungary had no colonies. The Catholic Church in Scandinavia, Albania, and Bulgaria (Latin and Byzantine in that case) was heavily funded by the Emperor, as was the Church in the Holy Land and Egypt (the Coptic Catholic Church was funded from its beginning thereby, and Franz Joseph paid for the building of the Latin Catholic Cathedral of St. Catherine in Alexandria, where, ironically, the remains of his wartime enemy King Victor Emmanuel III would rest until their recent repatriation to Italy). But since 1826, very largely out of funds given by both Franz Joseph and his two immediate predecessors, a large amount of this largesse went to the Church in the United States. Through an organisation called the Leopoldinenstiftung – the “Leopoldine Foundation” – the Habsburgs and many of their subjects poured millions of dollars into the American Church, founding 400 parishes, subsidising wholly or partly 300 missionaries (such as St. John Neumann and Ven. Bishop Baraga), and sending an endless flow of vestments, statues, stained glass, liturgical implements, and the like. A great deal of dynastic money went to Eastern Rite churches in the United States as well. Unfortunately, the outbreak of war in 1914 ended the flow of generosity – which, of course, would be repaid by Woodrow Wilson’s insistence of the deposition of Franz Jospeh’s successor, his exile, and the partition of his domains. (Read more.)

The Palais-Royal Court and the Outbreak of the French Revolution

2026-04-01T02:00:00.001-04:00

From Open Edition:

In London in February 1793, Isaac Cruikshank (1756–1811) published an engraving entitled The Martyr of Equality, Behold the Progress of Our System. It shows Louis-Philippe-Joseph, duc d’Orléans (1747–93), formerly first prince of the blood, holding the severed head of the former king Louis XVI. This polemical engraving suggests that this prince from the Bourbon dynasty, then known as Philippe Égalité, was responsible for the death of his cousin Louis. Indeed, as is well known, the duc d’Orléans voted, in January 1793, for the death of ‘Citoyen Louis Capet’, as the deposed king was called, and this decision deeply shocked many contemporaries. Those who considered the condemnation of the former king to be a crime saw in the voting behaviour of his cousin a criminal betrayal of the dynasty, the monarchy and the fatherland.
This caricature was just one of many polemical attacks on Philippe Égalité, who was accused of being heavily responsible for the revolutionary upheavals and violence. The strong resentment towards the duc d’Orléans also left deep traces in historiography, especially in popular narratives. After he voted for the death of his cousin Louis XVI, Louis-Philippe-Joseph d’Orléans was accused of having been the puppet master of the revolutionaries. In 1796, the journalist Galart de Montjoie (1746–1816) published his Histoire de la conjuration de Louis-Philippe-Joseph d’Orléans, in which he accused him, among other things, of having hired assassins and fomented the Revolution to seize power.1 In the twentieth century, right-wing authors referred to the duc d’Orléans as the ‘“Grand Maître” de la Révolution’, an allusion to his position as grand master of French Freemasonry. Following Montjoie, they accused the duc d’Orléans of having instigated a putsch against the King.2 Such a scenario was indeed conceivable in the eighteenth century, as the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 had been precisely such an intra-dynastic coup d’état. It certainly gained further plausibility through the experience of the July Revolution of 1830, which resulted in the son of Louis-Philippe-Joseph actually ascending the throne. (Read more.)

Criminal Gangs

2026-04-01T01:00:00.001-04:00

From Welcome to Absurdistan:

The left can no longer win on the merits of their ideas, much less their actions. They have created one catastrophe after another. The only way they can win elections is steal them. And they have developed three hundred separate, specific, methodologies to do it. In my opinion, and that of others closer to the coal face.
Dominion Voting Systems is Canuckistan’s contribution to the great eliding of truth that is Marc Elias and the Democrat party’s massive election ‘improving’ enterprise. They are acutely aware of any attack. Dominion has sued everyone not nailed down, to some success, mostly via Soros’s corruption of the judiciary. And Canada’s left is a vicious monster, its leader nationally in power for almost a decade, and they hunt for enemies, no matter how small, as assiduous as our cat in the summer field.
I spent last evening watching the voter rolls fill up with applications from people without ID in real time. HAVV is the U.S. Social Security website, specifically the Help America Vote Verification System. It keeps track of those trying to register to vote. HAVV shows the number of people who have with a verified social security number. And those applications which did not turn up a real person.
All the swing states are under assault from “new voters”. In Pennsylvania alone, in one week, one-third of applicants could not be verified. Pennsylvania was stolen so hard in 2020 I imagine it to be still reeling. The site showed that in just one week in Ohio, 1068 out of 1333 new applicants did not match to any records. A lot of deceased people in Texas, Alabama and Missouri were applying for voter id in the weeks I studied. Here’s the site: look at each week for your state. I’m not saying the government website is corrupt, but many of the people applying for voter id in the swing states, are, most certainly, being paid by the financial system that was set up under the auspices of Arabella Associates, the Clinton foundation, the Open Society Foundation, Tides and the Chinese Progressive Association. (Read more.)

Roman Fort Found North of Hadrian’s Wall

2026-04-01T00:00:00.001-04:00

From The Jerusalem Post:

Ruins of a Roman “fortlet” built along the Antonine Wall may have been used as part of the empire’s defense against the unconquered Scottish lands to the north, according to a March statement from GUARD Archaeology. While the fortlet was originally discovered in the back gardens of three homes in Bearsden, Scotland during 2017 excavations ahead of various property development projects, the complete findings were recently published in Archaeology Reports Online.
The Antonine Wall, constructed on the orders of Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius in the second century CE, was a defensive border built to separate the conquered southern Scotland from the unconquered lands to the north. However, about 20 years after its construction, the wall and its fortifications were abandoned by the Romans during their retreat south to Hadrian’s Wall. (Read more.)

Baptism of St. Olga

2026-03-31T02:00:00.001-04:00

From World History Connected:

It is a strange historical twist that the first "Russian" woman to be canonized in the Orthodox Church was a Viking warrior princess who spent much of her life as a pagan. Olga earned her sainthood by becoming the first member of the house of Riurik, the dynasty that ruled European Russia and parts of Ukraine and Belorus for more than seven centuries (860s – 1598), to convert to Christianity. But the role of this battle maid in the spread of Christendom to the eastern Slavs is only part of her remarkable contribution to the history of Eastern Europe.

Olga is the only woman for whom we possess significant biographical details in the written sources for the Kievan Rus period of Russian history (860s – 1240). In contrast with Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire, medieval Russian women did not participate in literary culture aside from the occasional inscription or letter of the type found on birch bark in the excavations of medieval Novgorod. The laws of the period reveal that women enjoyed few legal protections compared with their male peers. Women could inherit property from their parents or husbands, but only in the absence of brothers and sons. If the sons were young, the widow managed the family's estate until the sons reached their majority.

Olga is in this way typical of the free elite women of Kiev.¹ For nearly two decades (945 to 962) Olga ruled the rapidly expanding kingdom of Kievan Rus,² which received its name from its capital Kiev on the middle Dniepr River, as regent for her young son Sviatoslav. And she did so in stunning fashion despite significant obstacles. Olga assumed power at a time when the realm was shaken by tribal violence and administrative disorder. She bloodily pacified rebellious tribes and replaced tribute taking with a regular system of taxation. Olga's decision to convert to eastern Christianity instead of Catholicism was also a fundamental step in the spiritual and political alliance of Kievan Rus with the Byzantine Orthodox world rather than with Latin Christendom. In short, it took the will and perspicacity of a barbarian widow to begin the transformation of the Rus lands from a loosely knit pagan chieftaincy into a more stable and centralized Christian kingdom. (Read entire post.)