Jean Hélion, Grande Journalerie
Oil on canvas, 51″ x 76″
Robert Miller Gallery, New York

Various sites have put up photos from this year’s annual traditionalist Pentecost pilgrimage to Chartres, and I thought, as I did last year, I would gather a few of them and present them to you. (more…)

It was on this evening in 1886 that two souls experienced a profound conversion. Thérèse Martin, or Thérèse of Lisieux as she is now known, wrote of it in her spiritual biography, recounting: “On that luminous night, Our Lord accomplished in an instant the work I had not been able to do during years.”

At the same time, almost the same hour, a young man in his twenties, Paul Claudel stood in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris and began his return to the church. He was later to become a diplomat, poet, writer, and exegist.

Well I could go on further about both, but Philip Zaleski describes the conversion of Thérèse in his recent article ‘The Love of Saint Thérèse’ in First Things whereas Paul Claudel’s conversion is described by Eric Ormsby on the first page of the Arts section in today’s New York Sun. So do some research yourself. There’s a vast kingdom out there waiting to be learnt.

A very happy and blessed Christmas to you all!

For the architectaphiles in the audience, the designs for the complete do-over of les Halles (one of Paris’s urban eyesores) are out.

Le Figaro‘s take on it.
Images of the accepted design and rejected proposals from le Figaro.
The New York Times writes on it as well. (Registration might be required).

Today we bring you the story of a man known as both Brother Louis of the Trinity, OCD, and Admiral Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu.

D’Argenlieu graduated from the Ecole Navale in Brest and was awarded the Legion d’Honneur for his actions in the Great War. After the war, he became a Carmelite friar, taking the name of Louis de la Trinité. As the Second World War commenced, he once again put on the uniform and partook in the defence of France from the pagan Nazis. Once France was vanquished, he escaped to London where he allied himself with General de Gaulle and the Free French Forces, eventually becoming the commander of the Free French Naval Forces. At the Liberation of the Paris, he strode down the Champs Elysée with de Gaulle and Leclerc and attended the Te Deum at Notre-Dame.

Incidentally, he was also the one who suggested the adoption of the Croix de Lorraine as the symbol to differentiate the Free French Forces from those of Vichy France.

In 1947 however, while Governor-General of Indochina, his request to leave the Armed Forces was granted, and he returned to life as a Carmelite, dying at the Priory of Avon in 1964.

More about Admiral d’Argenlieu/Father Louis here, here, and here.

Bon Voyage has to be one of the best films I’ve seen ever. A true classic. Cinema at its most magnificent and magnetic. Bon Voyage is entertaining, thrilling, amusing, beautiful, and full of intrigue. Hollywood hasn’t made a film that could even approach its quality in years.

Alright, alright, I’ll admit its a film that appeals especially to me. It is, after all, French, and depicts a period of French history of which I am particularly interested in: the advent of the Vichy regime. But this is no history film. It is certainly not a “romantic comedy” as described on the back of the DVD box. It was a pleasure in every way. Certainly not the usual claptrap you get from Los Angeles designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. This is a film where all the contributing factors (beautiful women, gunfire, and intrigue) are in proportion.

Well I could go on for ages. Just see it! Rent it, buy it, confiscate it, see it!

The official Bon Voyage website from Sony Pictures Classic.

Today we should remember the victims of the French Revolution: the 4,000 prisoners drowned in the Loire by the Republic; the 2,000 Vendéens shot at Angers, half of them women; the 1,500 on the Ile de Noirmoutier; the 1,500 killed in the forest of Vezins; the 800 in the quarries of Gigant; and of course the King, his Queen, and their young son.

The thirteenth of July is also the day that the brave heroine of France, Charlotte Corday, killed the murderous revolutionary swine Jean-Paul Marat. Marat received his M.D. from St Andrews, and his villainy is remembered in the annual Kate Kennedy Procession, in which he is rightfully described as a “paranoid demagogue.”

The assasination inspired David to paint his famous depiction of the event. It is one of my favourite paintings, and a brilliant piece of propaganda portraying a bloodthirsty hatemonger as an angelic martyr.

Remembrance via the great Irish Elk.

It’s a tune we all know and love. And who can deny getting a bit sentimental during the scene in Casablanca when they sing it? But as all good traditionalists know, the lyrics to le Marseillaise are downright vulgar, republican, and revolutionary. So here we have reproduced the thoroughly-acceptable lyrics used in the die-hard Catholic region of la Vendée, and supposedly still sung today:

Perhaps this could be a marching tune for the annual Paris-Chartres pilgrimage?

An interesting story for all my fellow traditionalists.

PARIS – France laid to rest one of its most intriguing mysteries on Tuesday when it installed the tiny heart of Louis XVII – the son of beheaded king Louis XVI and queen Marie-Antoinette – in a royal crypt outside Paris.

European aristocrats were among the 2,500 people who packed into the Saint-Denis Basilica north of Paris to watch the 209-year-old heart in its crystal vase given a final burial after spending a long period as a much-traded curiosity in the wake of the French Revolution.

A 12-year-old descendant of France’s former royal family, Amaury de Bourbon-Parme, handed over the heart in a formal Mass broadcast to another 1,000 people watching outside. The presiding priest, Archbishop Jean Honore, paid homage to the “lost child who knew nothing of what he was and of what he is”.

Louis-Charles, the so-called “lost dauphin” who would have reigned as Louis XVII, died of tuberculosis at the age of 10 on June 8 1795 in a windowless cell in the French capital’s Temple Prison, where he had been incarcerated with his parents before they were guillotined.

“This is a way to give this child-martyr, who passed away in tragic circumstances and around whom mystery swirled for more than 200 years, a proper death,” said Charles-Emmanuel de Bourbon-Parme, one of Louis XVII’s relatives.

(Agence France Presse)

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