Pre-Vatican II Hats in the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Hungarian ladies wearing wreaths to Mass, at the 1866 coronation of Franz Josef I as King of Hungary. These were fashionable in the 1860’s all over Europe. You’ll see similar ones in pictures of Queen Victoria standing under Prince Albert’s Christmas tree with the kids.

(Modern pictures of Hungarian ladies wearing traditional embroidered headbands and crown-like hats.)

Here’s a rare picture of Austro-Hungarian ladies wearing veils, from the coronation of Franz Josef I as Holy Roman Emperor. These are the same kind of fashionable veils worn by Queen Victoria in the late 1840’s.

Blessed Alexander of Lugo, Dominican Martyr

Giacomo Baldrati was born in Lugo, Italy, on September 26, 1595. His parents (Cesare Baldrati and Lucia de Bianchi) supported his boyhood piety, and he joined the local Dominicans on January 15, 1612, taking the name “Alessandro”, or Alexander.

The Order sent him to study in Faenza and Naples. The friar was then ordained a priest and sent to the University of Bologna as a teacher, where people said he devoted half his time to God and half to his neighbor, leaving no time for himself. He collapsed into sickness from overwork and was sent to Venice to recover.

The interesting bit is that he may have ended up with some kind of mental illness too, which is very unusual in a saint. Some saints are very eccentric, but they tend to be saner than most. Alessandro had been known to be a particularly cheerful person all his life, but now he became depressed and prone to wild anger. He also began to fear his fellow friars (some of whom apparently teased him at this point) as persecutors. His biographer from the 1700’s from Chios, Leone Allacci, says that he went to Venice without permission from his superiors, and that he definitely was on the run when he took ship from Venice to Constantinople, and from there to Pera. He reported in at the Dominican friary at Pera. They decided to send him to Smyrna, because the archbishop of Edessa and co-adjutor of Smyrna was a particularly wise and holy Dominican, Venerable Giacinto Subiani di Arezzo. Friar Alexander was filled with fear again, but the monks of Constantinople assured him that Smyrna was “not a place where they beat up foreigners.”

Things must have gone well in Smyrna, because Archbishop Giacinto decided to send him to the small monastery of St. Sebastian on the Greek island of Chios — which was then part of the Ottoman Empire, and ruled by Muslims. With no other duties, Friar Alexander decided to spend all day preaching in the little Christian towns. Archbishop Giacinto later testified that he harvested “abundant fruit of souls” among his fellow Christians.

Then his Italian brothers sent a letter inviting him to come back. Friar Alessandro had a relapse into his fears, and was sure the letters were a trap. At times he seemed to go catatonic. At other times, he ran around town, crying out his sadness and fear. Strangely, he kept saying that people were going to burn him at the stake.

Politics and human drama ensued. Since a couple of prominent churchmen (including Archbishop Giacinto) arrived at Chios at about the same time to change ships, some local Muslims spread rumors that the Christians were planning to take back the island. Taking advantage of the hostile atmosphere, a guy named Aga Cuzaim, a Chios Muslim who had once been Christian and who disliked Friar Alexander (nobody knows why) decided to report him to the local Ottoman authorities as an apostate Muslim.

And of course we all know that the sharia law penalty for forsaking Islam is death.

Under the Ottoman Empire, sharia law ruled in most matters. Alexander was hauled into court by the Muslim governor. Here’s the strange thing. Now that he was really being persecuted and was really in danger of his life, Friar Alexander became himself again, fearless and articulate as a Dominican preacher should be. He protested again and again that he was Christian, had never been anything but Christian, and never intended to be anything but Christian. (One source seems to think that he may have apostatized during his screaming fits, some of which happened near Cuzaim’s house; but Allatios doesn’t seem to believe it.)

The Dominicans and the visiting churchmen were threatened for having concealed an apostate Muslim. They fired back that Friar Alexander was a Christian and never had been anything else. Eventually they were let go, and sent messages to Alexander to stand firm. Archbishop Giacinto ordered all his churches to keep a 24-hour prayer vigil for their fragile brother.

When Alexander was brought to court again, the judge told him that he would be executed for apostasy unless he embraced Islam again. He told them once again that he was a Christian who had never been anything else. He also told them for good measure, “Your Prophet is a prophet of lies; your law comes from the Father of Lies.” He was almost lynched then and there. But he was not afraid; he was calm and happy to die for Jesus’ Name, and professorial in his defense of Christian doctrine.

After all his fears, and possibly because they were known, he was indeed condemned to be burned at the stake for his “blasphemy.” He wasn’t even shaken, now that it was real. So they threw in some torture over the next few days. Prisoners and guards agreed that Friar Alexander fasted the whole time, prayed prostrate in his cell as was one of the Dominican customs, never complained, and was constantly penitent over his sins but in control of himself. When they came to execute him, he was serene and calm. He was led through the streets as a frightening example; but the streets were lined with Christians eager to honor their martyr, Catholics and Orthodox alike.

After he had been led out and bound to the stake with chains, the governor tempted him one last time. “Lift one finger to show that you believe in the God of Mohammed, the one true God, and your life will be spared.”

Alexander lifted three fingers. “The One God is the Holy Trinity!” Then he blessed the crowd with those fingers, “In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!”

They lighted the fire — but the flames refused to touch him. They added wood, and the wood rolled away from him.

The Muslim crowd shot him, hacked him to pieces, then blew up his body with gunpowder. It was February 10, 1645.

Relics were saved from the mess and were sent around the world by the Dominicans, including to his hometown of Lugo.

February 10 is his memorial. His symbol is a martyr’s palm and a chain.

Blessed Alexander of Lugo, pray for us!

Here’s his biography:

Vita e morte del p.f. Alessandro Baldrati da Lugo, fatto morire nella citta di Scio da’ Turchi per la fede cattolica li 10. di febraro 1645. by Leone Allacci, Rome: Francisco Moneta, 1657. And here it is on Google Books.

The author is also known as Leo Allatius or Leo Allatios (1586-1669), and he was indeed a Greek born on Chios. He was also one of the Vatican Library’s head librarians, from 1661-1669, and was responsible for a lot of its Greek and Syriac acquisitions. On the side, he was a trained physician. He fought hard to heal the schism between Catholics and Orthodox, and wrote several important works about it. He translated St. Methodius of Olympus’ Banquet of the Ten Virgins into Latin, and refuted the urban legend of Pope Joan by consulting Greek records. He is a major source for opera history, since he listed all the operas put on in a city in his book Drammaturgia. He also wrote about Greek folklore in his De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus. Most of his 150 volumes of manuscripts have never been published… but he published and edited hundreds of books during his lifetime. So yeah, Leo was an interesting guy.

CIA Director John Brennan Admits Communist Past

And we wonder why the CIA can’t catch moles.

Yes, the CIA Director used to be a Commie, voting Communist during the Cold War. And he revealed this. And they still hired his pathetic butt.

And what’s worse — he passes it off as a funny story.

And no, he doesn’t have some kind of dramatic Whitaker Chambers-style conversion story, or even a realization that he was being a juvenile tool. Nope, it’s a funny story. Laugh, proles, laugh.

Our news media is ridiculous.

A Great Book You’ve Never Heard of

When I was growing up, my dad had a huge tome with a mysterious title stuck among the “big kids” children’s books that were just barely too old for us. Eventually I did tackle the big book, and found a whole new world opening before me.

Our edition was called Dickon of the Lenni Lenape.

(The original 1938 edition was called Dickon among the Indians. It’s now available on Kindle and in paperback, and being called The Indians of New Jersey: Dickon among the Lenape, by Professor Mark Harrington. It’s a little pricey, but the gorgeous drawings are there, and the book is otherwise unobtainium.)

Basically, it’s a fictional version of a capture narrative. It was very common for people who survived being captured by Indians to write down the story of their experience, and to include a lot of anthropological information as part of the story. Professor M.R. Harrington, an anthropology guy, just decided to present his Lenape collection of legend and lore with the capture narrative as a frame.

In this case, Dickon is a kid who gets shipwrecked in New Jersey’s wild wilderness. The Lenape (often called Delaware) capture him, mistreat him for a bit, and then decide that they should let a childless old woman adopt him, in order to provide her with a servant. But since Dickon is a kid who is brave and quick to learn, most of the tribe gradually starts treating him like a Lenape. (Which is not unrealistic, depending on the tribe.) He makes friends, gets sent on a spirit journey, and learns the skills of a Lenape man. (And since this is being written by an anthropologist, of course Dickon finds out quite a bit about the women’s way of life too, courtesy of working for his old lady “mother.”) There’s even a little touch of teenage romance.

There is a lot of survival knowledge presented in this book, too. (Albeit there may be better ways to do some of these things; but what’s presented is is the Lenape way of the period.)

Kids love this book. Some teachers in New Jersey used to read it to their fourth graders, apparently. But it’s good for adults too. You will learn a lot, and it’s great for knowing how Algonkian/Woodland tribes lived. If you read about other Woodland tribes or about the Lenape in other places and times, this will give you a wonderful foundation, so you’ll know what the heck people are talking about.

Now, here’s the amazing part. There’s a sequel! I never knew there was a sequel!

The Iroquois Trail: Dickon among the Onondagas and Seneca by Professor M. R. Harrington brings Dickon back, on a quest to find his Lenape brother, Little Bear, who has been captured and carried off by a raiding party. Yup, it’s those darned Iroquois Confederacy guys. (The seven tribes of the Confederacy basically tried to take over all the European fur trade, on the provider side, by killing or driving out all the tribes that lived in the Northeast, from the coast to Ohio and Kentucky. They tended to do a lot of long-term torture and had other unlovely attitudes toward outsiders, so you can see where they don’t have a good rep with other tribes. Having a great system of government doesn’t really show in the day to day experience of people with them.) They spoke languages that weren’t related much to Algonkian; their closest “relatives” were the Dakota/Sioux out west. They also had totally different lifeways and beliefs, but incorporated a lot of the “Mississippian” stuff that had come north from Mexico, and which was also seen in ancient Cahokia, and down south among the Creeks and other tribes.

I haven’t read this book, but I expect that it is also amazing. The Confederacy was not all bad, after all, and they were a great inspiration to early American writers. Iroquois people have done some great stuff since they accepted Christianity and gave up all the torture magic. But I suspect that just as the characters will now be older teenagers or adults, the age for reading this book will have to be older too.

Lenape, Onondaga, and Seneca stores online sell these books with pride. So it’s not just me recommending them!

Royal Catholic Bridesmaids Wearing Hats

To avoid making people scroll down for the hat portion of my post on the imprisoned Queen of England, morganatic marriages, and the PITA in-laws you got if you married into the Austro-Hungarian imperial family, I’m going to repost the hat portion here.

Here’s a picture of the marriage of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to Countess Sophie Chotek, a Hungarian noblewoman of high birth. Because of their unequal (though high) rank, their marriage was severely opposed by Emperor Franz Josef. After most of the crowned heads of Europe and the Pope interceded for the couple, the Emperor finally acceded, but only under the condition that it be a morganatic marriage where Sophie would never become empress and the children could not succeed to any titles.

The Emperor refused to attend or let most of the relations attend, so the Nuptial Mass was celebrated in the tiny Reichstadt Castle chapel. But the celebrants were the parish priest with two friars as deacon and subdeacon. So they got a Nuptial Mass said for them (a sign that there was no scandal in God’s eyes), the Mass itself was in full splendor, and everything showed that the Church regarded it as a true marriage of equals with nothing morganatic about it.

The picture comes from an illustrated journal of the day, The Sphere. (Note that the Catholic archduchesses all wore hats to Mass.)

Caption: “THE WEDDING OF THE ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND AND AND THE COUNTESS SOPHIE CHOTEK AT REICHSTADT.”

“The Archduke Franz Ferdinand duly wedded the Countess Sophie Chotek, the choice of his heart, at the Imperial castle of Reichstadt in Bohemia last Sunday week. The service was conducted by the parish priest, assisted by two Capuchin friars The little wedding procession, consisting of thirty-one persons, proceeded from the Archduchess Maria Theresa’s drawing room through the billiard room, where the Emperor Franz Josef and the Czar Alexander II met in conference in 1876, to the little chapel, to which no one else was admitted. First in the procession walked the bridegroom with his stepmother the Archduchess Maria Theresa, and his two half-sisters, the Archduchesses Maria Immaculata and Elizabeth, and his two sisters; and after then the bride, accompanied by her uncle, Prince Löwenstein, and Count Charles Chotek, head of the family. The Countess wore a white silk dress trimmed with myrtle blossoms, and on her forehead a diamond coronet, a wedding gift from the Archduke. Behind her came her brother, her sisters, and their husbands, and two or three court dignitaries. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s brothers were not present. From Reichstadt the bride and bridegroom proceeded to Konopischt Castle in Bohemia, a favourite estate of the Archduke’s, where they are passing their honeymoon. Our picture is by the one artist present (a Viennese).”

Project 2996: Dora Marie Menchaca

Dora Marie Menchaca died on Flight 77, the airplane that hit the Pentagon.

She was 45 years old, and she worked for Amgen, Inc. in Thousand Oaks, California, developing and testing better drugs to fight cancer and pneumonia. In fact, she was their associate director of research. Her home was in Santa Monica.

She was one of six siblings. Her heritage was Hispanic. She came from a poor background but worked hard and was smart. She attended Providence High School, a Catholic school in San Antonio, but she had to go to Central Catholic for calculus. She went to Notre Dame for her bachelor’s and master’s, and was the first in her family to attend college.

I found some info that she had a first husband but later divorced, but that might not be trustworthy or it might be about another Dora Menchaca. (There seem to be a few out there!)

She met her husband, Earl Dorsey, in grad school at UCLA, while working on her doctorate in epidemiology. They fell in love and got married, and lived happily ever after.

Her job and field made her urge her husband to get a prostate cancer test. He finally gave in and got one, and was shocked to find out that he had it. Early treatment made the difference for him. Unfortunately she wasn’t able to save her dad from the same disease; he joined her after a month after her death.

She once helped a man she occasionally played soccer with, giving him grocery certificates to help the family and a beautiful note. Her husband never knew until after her death; she kept her small charities and kindnesses secret.

She had been in DC for hearings with the FDA on a new prostate cancer drug. Her meetings ended a day sooner than expected, so she changed her tickets to standby to fly home to California quicker, to her husband and their two kids, Imani and Jaryd. Her oncologist colleague, Dr. Scott Fields, also changed his tickets, but he flew United. He asked her to come along, but her frequent flyer miles were on American, and it made no financial sense. He says he will always wonder if he should have argued harder, and if he could have changed her mind. (But of course, it was just chance that the terrorists didn’t fly his United flight, too.)

When she made it onto the plane, she left her husband a voicemail. It had been prearranged that she should do that, in order not to wake up their toddler son who slept with his dad when Mom was away from home.

In her last minutes alive, she wrote her husband a note. It miraculously survived the crash and the burning of the Pentagon.

Here’s a video of her brother John Menchaca, remembering her. Another video of John Menchaca at a memorial service for her in San Gabriel.

A high school friend from San Antonio, Texas remembers her.

Amgen honored her memory with a reflection garden at their headquarters (featuring her favorite roses) and a patient care center wing at UCLA’s hospital.

A list of Notre Dame alumni who died on September 11.

Dora Marie Menchaca: wife and mother, scientist and businesswoman. She saved lives. May she rest in peace.

Never forget.

Project 2996: Fifteen Years After

May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace. May we pray with them for solace for all those who mourn, and for all survivors.

May God’s justice and mercy prevail on earth, as it does in heaven. May God give the grieving comfort and peace.

Memorials from previous years for The 2996 Project:

Myrna Yaskulka.

James P. O’Brien.

MORI Sanae, aka Sanae Mori.

AOYAMA Seima David, aka David Seima Aoyama.

Brian E. Martineau.

Ss. Nunilo and Alodia, pray for us.
St. Lawrence of Brindisi, pray for us.
Martyrs of Otranto, pray for us.
St. James, pray for us.

Martyrs of San Bernardino, pray for us.
Fr. Hamel, pray for us.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.
All you holy men and women, pray for us.