Antonio Zucchi, 1726-1795

Antonio Zucchi, 1726-1795

Dido and Aeneas (?) ca.1773, oil on canvas, 101x86 cm

National Trust, Nostell Priory,  Inv. 960077.6

“Katherine and her mother ‘shared an intensity and rock-like obstinacy that some people, to their later chagrin, failed to spot behind an apparently sweet and calm façade.’”

— Giles Tremlett, Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen. (via queenkatherineofaragon)

Geneviève Bujold as Anne Boleyn (Anne of the Thousand Days, 1969)

Everyone 'knows' that once upon a time the world was pious— that in olden days most people exhibited levels of religious practice and concern that today linger only in isolated social subcultures. But, like so many once-upon-a-time tales, this conception of a pious past is mere nostalgia; most prominent historians of medieval religion now agree that there never was an 'Age of Faith' (Morris 1993; Duffy 1992; Sommerville 1992; Bossy 1985; Obelkevich 1979; Murray 1972; Thomas 1971; Coulton 1938). Writing in the eleventh century, the English monk William of Malmesbury complained that the aristocracy rarely attended church and even the more pious among them 'attended' mass at home, in bed: 'They didn't go to church in the mornings in a Christian fashion; but in their bedchambers, lying in the arms of their wives, they did but taste with their ears the solemnities of the morning mass rushed through by a priest in a hurry (in Fletcher 1997: 476).

Secularization, R.I.P.  Rodney Stark (1999)      

Friedrich von Amerling, Girl in Profile with Blank Mantilla, date unknown

manipulate, mansplain, malewife

gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss