Remembering Joseph-Louis Guérin

Portrait of the "little Zouave," Joseph-Louis Guérin, circa 1860

“Blood is necessary to appease the anger of God; I will give mine” *

In memory of Joseph-Louis Guérin (b. 5 April, 1838 — d. 30 October 1860), Papal Zouave who died defending the Papacy from the Piedmontese at the Battle of Castelfidardo in le Marche, we pray for the happy repose of his soul.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

* Quoted from Papal Zouave History

Also see:

• The Papal Zouave Saint? The Story of Joseph-Louis Guérin

Ponderable Quote from ‘Building a Wholesome Family in a Broken World: Habsburg Lessons from the Centuries’

I believe that the Church today will be renewed by praying families. We are suffering today from crises of faith, of vocations, of leadership. The surest way to heal and repair our Church—perhaps the only way—is through family prayer. Our pastors are tired, overworked, and overwhelmed. Sometimes they seem hopeless. It will be faithful families who will bring real, lived, devout faith back to parishes, dioceses, and Mother Church. The small, routine, everyday manifestations of faith—attending the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, going regularly to Confession, praying the Rosary—will reignite the fire of faith in a generation of strong, hopeful, believing Catholics who will one day grow up to be the light of the world.

Reprinted from Building a Wholesome Family in a Broken World: Habsburg Lessons from the Centuries by Eduard Habsburg, Archduke of Austria, Sophia Institute Press, 2024, p. 92

Photo of the Week: Guerriero con Fanciullo (Achille e Troilo), Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli

Photo by New York Scugnizzo

Novena Prayers in Honor of Saint Hubert

Sant'Uberto di Liegi, ora pro nobis

Pray Novena to Saint Hubert, Patron Saint of Hunters, for nine consecutive days, October 25th to November 2nd, in preparation for the feast on November 3rd. Evviva Sant’Uberto!

Prayer to be an honorable hunter

By the grace of God may I always honor, thank and adore the Lord God who created the animals and saw that each species was good. Let me love the God who made humans in His own image and likeness and set them over the whole world, to have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth (Gen 1:26). By my honorable conduct as a hunter let me give a good example and teach new hunters principles of honor, so that each new generation can show respect for God, other hunters and the animals, and enjoy the dignity of the hunt.

Prayer for honest hunt

Lord, may I make an honest count of game, respecting the legal limits of game in order to preserve the balance of life and death among the animals. May I so love the truth that I always give an honest recounting of the hunting stories while keeping them interesting to my friends. May I also listen to my friends’ stories with enjoyment and without envy.

Prayer against selfishness

Lord, I do not need to take every animal in the forest, nor must I take the best or nothing. Guide me to seek the best and to accept what I get. May I never take more than my limit and let me always help maintain the balance of nature in relationship to the environment and the numbers of animals there. Keep me aware of the needs and desires of other hunters while I always try to hunt at my own best skill.

Prayer for conservation of natural resources

Lord God, You have put all things under man’s dominion. Guide us to take the animals that need to be culled for the preservation of their species and the rest of the ecosystem. Let me always respect the animals I have hunted. Never let me torment them, mock them, or made them objects of ridicule. When I take an animal’s life let me always maintain respect for the wonder of its existence and the importance of its meat to those who need it for sustenance.

Prayer for safety

Pray for the good sense to care for my weapon and to carry it and fire it responsibly. Pray for the animals, that the shots are clean and do not cause unnecessary suffering to the animal.

Prayer for successful hunt

Lord, I pray that I may take down the game in as painless a way as possible. May I recognize my limits and take the shots I know I can make, not taking a shot that risks maiming or wounding an animal unnecessarily.

Prayer of thanksgiving for the hunt

Lord, I thank You for the opportunity to go out on the hunt. I thank You for the time alone to think and reflect on life. I thank You for the time with hunting friends, enjoying good fellowship, good stories, meals and drinks. Thank You for the beauty seen during the hunt and for the game taken and shared. I thank You especially for a safe hunt for myself and for all the hunters who share the field.

Prayer to share the fruit of the hunt

Lord, I am so blessed to be able to hunt and I appreciate the blessings You have bestowed upon me. Yet I know that so many others are in great need. Give me the grace to share the food of the hunt not only with my family and friends but also with those who have greater need: the hungry and the poor. May my sharing with them be one small part of my continuing care for your poor. As they ask You, Father, for their daily bread, use me as one small instrument to help provide it to them.

Prayer to hunt for souls, like St. Hubert

Lord, you spoke to St. Hubert and converted him to You during a stag hunt. You changed him into a hunter of souls, yet you continued to use his skills as a hunter to open minds to your Gospel. I ask that you make me into a hunter of souls above all other hunting activities. May I look for the opportunities to speak of You and Your salvation. Let the hunting camp itself be a place that uplifts the soul. May my time alone be an opportunity to pray and listen to You. May all the actions of the rest of my life be a constant hunt for You, for the opportunities you give me to evangelize, and to target the souls most in need of Your love.

Bourbon Exhibit in Dallas

The Legacy of Vesuvius: Bourbon Discoveries on the Bay of Naples, September 15, 2024 - January 5, 2025

Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, Dallas

During the reigns of the Bourbon kings Charles III of Spain (who ruled as Charles VII of Naples from 1734 until 1759) and his son Ferdinand IV (1759 until 1799), the Mediterranean city of Naples established itself as a major European capital and key destination on the Grand Tour, even as Mount Vesuvius continued to smolder, threatening its environs. Throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century, these two monarchs funded archaeological excavations on the Bay of Naples that unearthed ancient treasures and fed into the craze for classical art that infused the Bourbon court.

The Legacy of Vesuvius: Bourbon Discoveries on the Bay of Naples will reveal the slippage between the ancient and modern during the reigns of these royal tastemakers. Through an eighteenth-century lens, Vesuvius’s volatility read as romantic; in its shadows the Bourbons financed excavations at the Roman sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the fruits of which both fueled and supplied demand for all things antique. Royal collections incorporated many of these artifacts, which were sometimes creatively manipulated to better suit eighteenth-century taste.

New objects inspired by recently unearthed ancient art were also produced, contributing to the widespread popularity of neoclassicism. The Bay of Naples, itself a protagonist in this story, became a vital hub for artistic production, scientific exploration, and tourism during the eighteenth century.

The Legacy of Vesuvius offers a unique experience by bringing to Dallas ancient artifacts discovered in the course of the Bourbon excavations and exhibiting them alongside eighteenth-century examples of fine and decorative arts that demonstrate how the mystique of Vesuvius shaped elite and popular taste. Featuring loans from the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Wellcome Collection, audiences will gain new insights into the role of the Bourbon court in shaping European art and culture.

Complementing the exhibition will be a special installation—on view beginning September 26—in the downstairs galleries of paintings and drawings from the Meadows’s permanent collection by Spanish artists working in Italy. For centuries, Spanish artists have found cities like Rome, Venice, Naples, and their surroundings, to be a significant source of creativity and a crucial destination for artistic development.

Drawn by the allure of Italy’s history, artists have embarked on artistic pilgrimages to study classical works and immerse themselves in the country’s vibrant cultural milieu. Highlights of the installation include rarely seen works on paper such as drawings from The Stewart Album, a series of watercolors by Pedro Cano, and the museum’s latest acquisition: Inventario (2023), by Ignasi Aballí.

This exhibition has been organized by the Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas, and the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas, and is funded by a generous gift from The Meadows Foundation, with additional support provided by the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History. Promotional support provided by the Dallas Tourism Public Improvement District and the Consulate General of Italy in Houston.

In celebration of our collaboration with UT Dallas on the exhibition The Legacy of Vesuvius, free admission is granted to all university students through the run of the show (January 5, 2025). Online purchasers should select the “Non-SMU Student” ticket type at the link above and must present their student IDs upon check-in at the Box Office.

For more information: meadowsmuseumdallas.org/cal/the-legacy-of-vesuvius-bourbon-discoveries-on-the-bay-of-naples.

Biber’s Requiem à: 15. in Concerto

Join Musica Transalpina as we present Heinrich Biber’s rarely-heard Requiem in A Major for All Souls’ Day: Saturday, November 2, 2024 at 11 AM and Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 7 PM.

Free liturgical performance
Saturday, November 2, 2024 at 11 AM
The parish church of Ss. Peter & Paul
515 West Opp Street
Wilmington, CA 90477.

Concert performance
Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 7 PM
The church of the Blessed Sacrament
6657 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028.

Brief Excerpts from “Selected Writings: François-René de Chateaubriand"

Gothic Churches 

One could not enter a Gothic church without experiencing a sort of shiver and a vague sense of the Divine. Suddenly, one would be transported back to those times when cenobites, after meditating in the woods of their monasteries, would come to prostrate themselves at the altar and sing the praises of the Lord in the calm and silence of the night. Ancient France seemed to come alive again: one could imagine those peculiar costumes, that people so different from what it is today; one would recall both the revolutions of this people, and their labours and arts. The more distant those times were from us, the more magical they seemed, the more they filled us with those thoughts that always culminate in a reflection on the futility of man and the fleetingness of life.

The Gothic order, amid its barbaric proportions, possesses a beauty all its own.

Forests were the first temples of the Divine, and men took from the forests their first idea of architecture. This art thus had to vary according to the climate. The Greeks fashioned the elegant Corinthian column with its leaf-covered capital after the model of the palm tree. The enormous pillars of the ancient Egyptian style represent the sycamore, the oriental fig tree, the banana tree, and most of the giant trees of Africa and Asia.

The forests of Gaul, in their turn, passed into the temples of our ancestors, and our oak woods thus retained their sacred origin. These vaults chiselled in foliage, these jambs that support the walls and abruptly end like broken trunks, the coolness of the vaults, the darkness of the sanctuary, the obscure wings, the secret passages, the lowered doors—all recall the labyrinths of the woods in the Gothic church, all make one feel the religious awe, the mysteries of the Divine. The two lofty towers planted at the entrance of the edifice rise above the elms and yews of the cemetery, creating a picturesque effect against the azure sky. At times, the rising sun illuminates their twin tops; at other times, they appear crowned with a cap of clouds or enlarged in a misty atmosphere. Even the birds seem deceived by them and adopt them as the trees of their forests: crows flutter around their summits and perch on their galleries. But suddenly, confused murmurs escape from the tops of these towers and scare away the frightened birds. The Christian architect, not content with building forests, wanted, so to speak, to imitate their murmurs, and by means of the organ and suspended bronze, he attached to the Gothic temple even the sounds of winds and thunder, which roll through the depths of the woods. The centuries, evoked by these sacred sounds, draw forth their ancient voice from within the bosom of the stones and sigh within the vast basilica: the sanctuary roars like the cave of the ancient Sibyl, and while the bronze bell swings with a crash above your head, the vaulted subterrains of death remain deeply silent beneath your feet.

* Reprinted from Selected Writings: François-René de Chateaubriand, Imperium Press, 2024, pp. 31-33

Photo of the Week: Bacchus and Vesuvius Fresco from the Lararium in the House of the Centenary at Pompeii

Photo by New York Scugnizzo

Movie Review: Vaincre ou Mourir

François Athanase Charette de La Contrie

"In my family, we have paid the blood tax for centuries. It is a duty and an honor. We must fulfill it with panache. I want to be that man. I want to be the man of panache." ~ Charette, Vaincre ou Mourir

Thanks to Michael Matt and Remnant TV I finally got to watch Vaincre ou Mourir (Vanquish or Die, 2023), a must-see for anyone interested in the true story of the counter-revolutionary uprising in the Vendée from 1793 to 1796. As far as I’m aware, this is the only platform up to now that has made the “controversial” film available to an American audience.

A breath of fresh air, directors Paul Mignot and Vincent Mottez’s film is a graphic depiction of the violent and corrupt excesses of the French Revolution and a sympathetic portrayal of the people who resisted the illegitimate and murderous regime. This is what I wanted the disappointing Netflix miniseries Briganti to be like.

Accused of promoting “far-right” views, most criticisms aimed at the movie are clearly politically motivated, and rightfully so. Seeing as the origins of left and right wings first appeared during the French Revolution, anyone supporting the Ancien Régime over the Republican Revolutionaries is in fact right wing. Therefore, it should come as no surprise, that today’s intolerant heirs of the Reign of Terror gnash their teeth and howl with vitriol whenever a scathing light is shined on the bloodthirsty and genocidal crimes of their leftist political forebears.

Notoriously critical, the one legitimate complaint about the film, if I’m being honest, is that it is too dark. The beautifully rich colors of the picturesque French countryside and traditional folk costumes and uniforms are unnecessarily muted. In this case, the grim storyline was not enhanced by the modern cinematographic trend for darker imagery.

Otherwise, I enjoyed this movie a lot. Replete with great dialogue, the performances were excellent, especially Hugo Becker as the heroic leader of the Vendéean revolt, François Athanase Charette de La Contrie (1763-1796). I liked the costumes and sets and thought the pacing was good. Far from the “Monarchist propaganda” flic it was accused of being, I was still all fired up after watching it (we are so starved for objective films these days) and wanted to rush outside and fan the flames of Bourbon Restoration myself. Watch this film. Vive le Roi!

Bronze Low Relief Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci by Domenico Mazzone

With permission, I'm sharing a photo I recently took of the bronze low relief portrait of Leonardo da Vinci by sculptor Domenico Mazzone while viewing my friend's private collection.

Vaincre ou Mourir (Vanquish or Die), the True Story of the Vendee Uprising, is Now Available on Remnant TV

Watch Movie

Congratulations to Stephen S. LaRocca, This Year's Society of the Citizens of Pozzallo Person of Distinction

Il Regno warmly congratulates our dear friend Stephen S. LaRocca, President of the St. Rocco Society of Potenza, on being honored with the prestigious Person of Distinction Award by the Society of the Citizens of Pozzallo this weekend at their 105th Anniversary Gala in Brooklyn. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. Evviva San Rocco!

Remembering Marie Antoinette, Queen of France

Viva 'a Reggina!

After Mass, Wednesday evening, members and friends of the Fratelli della Santa Fede (Brothers of the Holy Faith) met up for fellowship and meatless dinner in memory of Marie Antoinette (2 Nov. 1755–16 Oct. 1793), Queen of France and Navarre. Her Majesty was murdered 231 years ago during the French Revolution. Viva 'a Reggina!

Eternal rest grant unto Her Majesty, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Her Majesty's portrait by the San Rocco di Montpellier shrine

Olive assortiti

Gamberi al forno

Milinciani fritti

Trofie al pesto Trapanese

Pesce spada alla Siciliana

A Look at the "Paris Through the Eyes of Saint-Aubin" Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC

The Marriage of Mérope and Polyhonte, ca. 1750, black chalk with stumping, red and white chalks, on beige paper, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (French, 1724-1780)

Friday afternoon we returned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the ongoing Paris Through the Eyes of Saint-Aubin exhibit currently on view in Gallery 690. Marking the 300th anniversary of the artist's birth, the exhibition, running through February 4, 2025, features a wide array of drawings and prints demonstrating the prolific draftsman's many interests. Pictured are a select few on view.  

Lot and His Daughters, ca. 1750-55, pen and black ink, brush and gray wash, over black and red chalk, heightened with watercolor and gouache, on blue paper, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (French, 1724-1780)

Laban Searching for His Household Gods, ca. 1753, etching,
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (French, 1724-1780)

The Hôtel-Dieu in Flames, 1772, pen and black ink over black chalk, with watercolor, pastel, and gouache, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (French, 1724-1780)

The Fortune Teller, ca. 1725-28, pen and black ink, brush and gray wash,
watercolor and gouache, over black chalk underdrawing,
François Boucher (French, 1703-28)

The Chestnut Seller (La marchande de chataignes), 1762, etching,
Chevalier de Parlington (active late 18th century)

(L) Self-Portrait in a Medallion, ca. 1764, black chalk with stumping, graphite, pen and gray ink, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (French, 1724-1780). The Child and the Bulldog, 1778, etching, Marguerite Gérard (French, 1761-1837)

The Venetian Festivals (Les fêtes vénitiennes), after 1759, watercolor and gouache over pen and brown ink, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (French, 1724-1780)

The Village Festival, ca. 1735-40, etching,
Jean Baptiste Marie Pierre (French, 1714-1789)

The Triumph of Pompey, 1765, watercolor and gouache, pen and black ink, graphite, over black chalk, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (French, 1724-1780)

(L) Allegory of Louis XV as Patron of the Arts with Paintings and Sculpture from the Salon of 1769, ca. 1769, oil paint over black chalk underdrawing, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin. (R) Dorimel bidding farewell to his wife and her parents before his execution, an illustration for the play Le Déserteur, by Louis Sébastien Mercier, 1770, Black chalk and oil on paper laid down on panel, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin

County Fair, 1762, etching, Pierre Charles Lévesque (French, 1736-1812)

After viewing the Saint-Aubin exhibit, we strolled through the European painting and sculpture galleries to see some of our old favorites.

Inferno, 1908, oil on canvas, Franz von Stuck (German, 1863-1928)

The Afternoon Meal (La Merienda), ca. 1772, oil on canvas,
Luis Melendez (Spanish, Naples 1716-1780 Madrid)

Still Life with Dead Hares, ca. 1808-12, oil on canvas,
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746-1828)

A City on a Rock, 19th century, oil on canvas, style of Goya, Spanish

(L) Louis XV (1710-1774), 1757, marble, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (French,
1704-1778). (R) Orpheus and Eurydice, modeled ca. 1887, carved
1893, marble, Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917)

(L-R) Saltash with the Water Ferry, Cornwall, 1811, oil on canvas; Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute, ca. 1835, oil on canvas; and Whalers, ca. 1845, oil on canvas, Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, 1775-1851)

The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches, 1796,
oil on canvas, Henry Fuseli (Swiss, 1741-1825)

By the time we publish this, the Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 exhibit will have already opened. Expect our exploration in the near future. 

Advertisement for upcoming exhibit outside the museum

Photo of the Week: Bronze Bust of Dionysus, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli

Photo by New York Scugnizzo

Meme Dump (Part Deux)

Last year's Columbus Day "Meme Dump" went over well, so we decided to do it again this year. Considering the heated contention surrounding the great explorer and his holiday, we feel this is the perfect opportunity to share some of our favorite memes expounding controversial ideas and unpopular opinions. Happy belated Italian American Heritage Month and Happy Columbus Day!