Fact and Fancy

I read the paragraph below on a blog:

"Over 300 years ago, King Louis XIV of France asked Pascal, the great philosopher of his day, to give him proof of the existence of
miracles. Without hesitation, Pascal answered, "Why, the Jews, your Majesty. The Jews." History does not tell us the king's reaction to this proof, but we do know exactly what Pascal meant by his answer, because he explained it clearly in his masterwork, Pensees. He states that the fact that the Jewish people had survived even to his day was proof enough for him that miracles occur."

I wondered if there was truth to this story: it seemed a bit too tidy. I posted my question to a Yahoo group on Louis XIV, and the wonderful Gary McCollim, a Sun Court historian, posted this reply:

I do not know whether the king and Pascal ever had such a conversation. However, I can add a few facts to help us decide whether the two men ever met. Andre Le Gall's biography of Pascal mentions no such meeting.

Pascal died in August 1662 when Louis XIV was about to turn 24 years old.

Pascal converted to Jansenism in 1647. Jansenism was condemned by the papacy on several occasions starting in 1653.

There was a lot of debate over whether what the Pope condemned was actually in the ideas of Jansenius or among the beliefs of the Jansenists. Louis XIV hated the Jansenists because he saw them as schismatics and promoters of disorder. He says in his memoires that Cardinal Mazarin told him to crush the Jansenists. Louis saw them as part of the Fronde rebellion because they supported Cardinal de Retz against the crown.

Pascal would publish 18 Provincial Letters under a pseudonym between 1656 and 1658, These letters were condemned by the Church and the crown in 1658. The letters were a defense of Jansenism against the so-called attacks of the Church.

Pascal became convinced that miracles do indeed take place in 1657 when his niece was cured of a painful eye infection after touching what was believed to be a thorn from Christ's crown of thorns.

In order to resolve the situation in 1661, the clergy of France with the help of the faculty of the University of Paris came up with a formluary that asked the signatories to sign supporting the Pope's condemnation of five suspected tenets of Jansenism. Pascal at first opposed signing such a document because it would make the signers appear to agree that these states were in fact part of the Jansenist doctrine, but he later relented.

Did Louis XIV ever meet Pascal? It does not appear to be likely, bur it is difficult to prove a negative.

Gary McCollim

I am, as always, impressed by Gary's scholarship. He is a fastidious and careful historian; his factual record helps separate fact from fancy.

Do I think Louis XIV met Pascal? Unlikely, yes, and even more unlikely that they would have had the conversation cited, in my view.

Wonders and Marvels: Bone Magic

Historian Holly Tucker writes a wonderful blog on the 17th century: Wonders and Marvels. Today I'm the guest, and I wrote about Bone Magic, a 17th century ritual used to tame unruly horses:
Wonders and Marvels: Bone Magic

Nicolas Bonnart

I've been having a wonderful time exploring images on Google. These late-17th century paintings by Nicolas Bonnart are a treasure.



(Left) The Perfumer's Costume. (Middle) Cleante Dressedsed as a Cavalier. (Right) Lady of Quality Playing the Guitar.



(Left) Gentleman Playing the Angelica. (Middle) Lady Taking Coffee. (Right) The Innkeeper (an allegorical costume design).




(Left) The Summer Sword Dress, 1675. (Middle) The Midwife. (Right) A Woman Seated on the Grass.



(Left) A Nursemaid with Child. (Middle) The Summer City Dress, 1678. (Right) Polichinelle (an Italian comedy figure).




(Left) The Banker, 1678. (Middle) The Dancing Master. (Right) Allegory of Spring.

Jeff Koons at Versailles

The current uproar over the Jeff Koons pop-art exhibition at Versailles has been topped this week by an official letter to French President Sarkozy from Charles-Emmanuel de Bourbon-Parme, a direct descendent of Louis XIV.

There are, according to Wikipedia, 121 in the line of succession to the throne, and Charles-Emmanuel ranks 65 on the list of official descendents. The current pretender to the throne is Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou.

(Thanks to Carolyne Lee's blog post on the exhibition at Versailles.)

I am reading, right now, a book on theatrical history, and am reminded of the furor over the first performance Molière's comedy "Tartuffe" in 1664 at Versailles. In spite of Louis XIV's personal delight in the play, the King was forced to have it banned due to pressure from the religious right. There would continue to be, at Versailles, a number of "uproars" over the centuries, but few having to do with art.

History of the sun motif

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Blog reader Tana Bero wrote that she would like to know more about the sun motif.

In 1653, young Louis XIV, then 15, danced in "Ballet of the Night," costumed as Apollo the Sun god, wearing shoes with huge gilded sun buckles. It was an allegorical dance which portrayed the young King as the rising sun, dispelling darkness.

Almost ten years later (January 19, 1662), the King danced the same part, dressed as the sun, in an impromptu ballet performed chez Madame, his sister-in-law. A few weeks later of the same year (February 7, 1662), the Court gathered at the Tuileries palace to see “Hercules Amoureux." The King danced in most scenes, several times appearing as the sun in a golden wig — the symbolism of the sun serving to represent the return of order.

That summer, June 5-6, 1662. A tournament was held in front of the Tuileries. Again, Louis appears as the sun, but this time, for the first time, he used the emblem of the blazing sun on his coat-of-arms (instead of the fleur-de-lis), which won him the name le roi soleil. (His brother Philippe rode into the lists bearing a shield showing the moon eblazed with the motto, Uno sole minor — "second only to the sun.")

It was an apt symbol for Louis XIV, and from this point on, the sun emblem began to be used everywhere: on furniture, floors, carpets, wrought into gates and grilles, carved into marble vases and into door panels.

Moonlight

When I crossed our courtyard to my office stairwell early this morning, the full moon was still high in the sky. Its light on the stone columns was ghostly and amazingly bright. I thought, then, of a book I've been reading off and on for a year: At Day’s Close; Night in Times Past, by A. Roger Ekirch. Night — without electricity — was an entirely different experience than it is today. Social excursions could be made if the moon was full and bright; otherwise one bolted the window shutters and doors and prayed to see the dawn. Night was dangerous, and to be feared.

It is difficult to imagine viewing a beautiful sunset and responding with dread. Likewise, it is difficult for us to understand how the need for security — especially for a woman — changed how one acted, restricted ones actions. (This can especially hamper a novelist: how do you manage to get private scenes when a woman is always accompanied?) Women travelling alone sometimes dressed as men: they had reason to be fearful.

Holly Tucker, 17th century historian and author of Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early Modern France, recently sent me this stirring passage from Andrew Hussey's Paris: The Secret History (p. 160):

"The real danger for women in the city were kidnap, rape and forced marriage. It was common for a gentilhomme without a fortune to abduct a widow or young girl from a wealthy family and, in a solitary spot outside the city, marry her under the ordrs of a bought priest. The prelude to this act was often rape, which destroyed the last shred of respectability for the unfortunate woman. The practice was widely accepted among the aristocracy. The fathers of these abducted brides usually coughed up some sort of dowry and, although principally devised as a money-making racket, many marriages strangely flourished from these unlikely beginnings."

One of the lessons of history is that things have changed.

Spanish Fly

The Bastille Archives are a treasure trove of information. This morning I discovered, for example, in a report by Reynie, the police chief, that the "love powders" being delivered by Voisin to Montespan — for use on the King (or perhaps by Montespan herself?) — contained "des cantharides," more commonly known as "Spanish Fly."

Ah. Love powders indeed.

Cantharidin powder was used in aphrodisiac sweets called pilles galantes, or pastilles de Richelieu, because the Duc de Richelieu offered them to his mistresses. In the 18th century, Madame du Barry, King XV's mistress, was said to have called them pastilles de sérail (pastilles of the seraglio), taking them herself or giving them to young women to prepare them for amorous duty with the ageing King. In 19th century France, it was commonly available as philtre amoureux or love philtre. Sometimes the powder was dissolved in alcohol, producing a tincture.

"Before, she was common talk; now, none dare say, cantharides can stir her." — 1611, Beaumont

"Spanish Fly" is in fact neither Spanish nor a fly, but a "blister beetle" which has a chemical in its body that's an irritant. When rubbed on the body it produces blisters (hence its name). When the dried, crushed body of the beetle is eaten, it causes inflammation of all the organs of the genital tract, including the genital organs. This gave rise to the believe that it was an aphrodisiac and could be used to treat impotence.

However, the swelling induced could be extremely painful, and the dose required to produce swelling was close to fatal. (A dose of only 10 milligrams can kill.) In women the powder could cause painful contractions of the uterus, and for this reason it was used to induce abortions.

It also caused number of medical problems. It could cause permanent renal damage, for example (which casts suspicion, in my mind, on the King's renal fistual later in his life). Over time, the kidneys would be damaged. The user (or, rather, abuser) would experience a dull, heavy pain in the loins, and have a constant desire to urinate (but passing only a small amount of blood-stained urine). After some time, convulsions occur followed by death within twenty-four hours.

The history of its use is long. The Roman empress Livia (58 B.C.-A.D. 29) slipped it into the food of members of the imperial family to cause them to commit sexual indiscretions that could later be used against them. In 1772, the Marquis de Sade gave sweet aniseed balls laced with Spanish Fly to prostitutes, who began to have uncontrollable vomiting, and died in agony a week later. In 1953, a fisherman accidently killed himself by pricking his thumb with a fish hook that had been dipped in a tincture containing the powder (which he believed would attract fish). The following year a man was convicted of killing two women by giving them coconut candies with cantharidin in them.

"you whoreson cantharides!" — 1601, Ben Johnson

It had medical uses, as well. Cantharidin powder was believed to cure gout, carbuncles, rheumatism as well as a number of other medical disorders. Today it is used in the treatment of warts and in veterinary medicine in breeding farm animals.

Blister beetles would have been easy to acquire. They often swarm within alfalfa fields, and most often in fields next to weedy areas that are likely to contain an abundance of grasshopper eggs, on which they feed. They also can be found clustered on an evergreen shrub used for hedges, or olive, ash or elder trees. By tradition, the beetles were gathered before sunrise while unable to fly. The collectors veiled their faces and hands before shaking them down onto cloths laid out on the ground. The beetles were then dried, and heated until they disintegrated into a fine powder, which has a bight green metallic lustre.

When swallowed, a person would experience a burning sensation in the throat and stomach, have difficulty swallowing, experience nausea and abdominal pain, vomit blood-stained material, feel an intense thirst, and have diarrhoea with traces of blood and mucus. Sometimes blisters form on the mouth and parts of the intestine.

All in all: not very romantic!