Reign Catherine Quotes

The abiding western dominology can with religion sanction identify anything dark, profound, or fluid with a revolting chaos, an evil to be mastered, a nothing to be ignored. 'God had made us master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savages and senile peoples.' From the vantage point of the colonizing episteme, the evil is always disorder rather than unjust order; anarchy rather than control, darkness rather than pallor. To plead otherwise is to write 'carte blanche for chaos.' Yet those who wear the mark of chaos, the skins of darkness, the genders of unspeakable openings -- those Others of Order keep finding voice. But they continue to be muted by the bellowing of the dominant discourse.

It may happen that in a matrilineal system she has a very high position: but—beware—the presence of a woman chief or a queen at the head of a tribe absolutely does not mean that women are sovereign: the reign of Catherine the Great changed nothing in the fate of Russian peasant women; and they lived no less frequently in a state of abjection.

Catherine had to treat the church hierarchy carefully. She had always exercised a rational flexibility in matters of religious dogma and policy. Brought up in an atmosphere of strict Lutheranism, she had as a child expressed enough skepticism about religion to worry her deeply conventional father. As a fourteen-year-old in Russia, she had been required to change her religion to Orthodoxy. In public, she scrupulously observed all forms of this faith, attending church services, observing religious holidays, and making pilgrimages. Throughout her reign, she never underestimated the importance of religion. She knew that the name of the autocrat and the power of the throne were embodied in the daily prayers of the faithful, and that the views of the clergy and the piety of the masses were a power to be reckoned with. She understood that the sovereign, whatever his or her private views of religion, must find a way to make this work. When Voltaire was asked how he, who denied God, could take Holy Communion, he replied that he “breakfasted according to the custom of the country.” Having observed the disastrous effect of her husband’s contemptuous public rejection of the Orthodox Church, Catherine chose to emulate Voltaire.

Ukraine, in contrast, had deep ethnic, cultural, and economic ties to Russia—and to Putin. It was the historical root of Russia itself: Kievan Rus, the medieval fief whose leader, Vladimir the Great, adopted Christianity in 988, and the frontier of the tsarist empires that followed—its name translated literally as the Ukraine, or “the border.” Its borders had shifted over time: Parts of its western territory had belonged to Poland or the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Stalin seized some of it with his secret pact with Hitler in 1939 and the rest after the end of the Great Patriotic War. Ukraine’s modern shape took form, but it seemed ephemeral, subject to the larger forces of geopolitics, as most borderlands have been throughout history. In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev decreed that Crimea, conquered by Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century and heroically defended against the Nazis, would be governed by the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic from Kiev, not from Moscow. No

The silence of a convent at night is the silence of the grave. Too far removed from the busy world without for external sounds to penetrate the thick walls, whilst within no slamming door, nor wandering foot, nor sacrilegious voice breaks in upon the stillness, the slightest noise strikes upon the ear with a fearful distinctness. ("The Monk's Story")

She was intelligent, well read, and a shrewd judge of character. During the coup, she had shown determination and courage; once on the throne, she displayed an open mind, willingness to forgive, and a political morality founded on rationality and practical efficiency. She softened imperial presence with a sense of humor and a quick tongue; indeed, with Catherine more than any other monarch of her day, there was always a wide latitude for humor. There was also a line not be crossed, even by close friends. She had come to the throne with the support of the army, the church, most of the nobility, and the people of St. Petersburg, all of whom assisted her because her personality and character offered stark contrasts to the domineering ineptitude of her husband. The coup itself created few enemies, and in the first weeks of her reign, she faced no opposition.

It was not difficult to find. One floor down, pandemonium reigned. Somebody (and Harry had a very shrewd idea who) had set off what seemed to be an enormous crate of enchanted fireworks. Dragons comprised entirely of green and gold sparks were soaring up and down the corridors, emitting loud fiery blasts and bangs as they went; shocking-pink Catherine wheels five feet in diameter were whizzing lethally through the air like so many flying saucers; rockets with long tails of brilliant silver stars were ricocheting off the walls; sparklers were writing swear words in midair of their own accord; firecrackers were exploding like mines everywhere Harry looked, and instead of burning themselves out, fading from sight or fizzling to a halt, these pyrotechnical miracles seemed to be gaining in energy and momentum the longer he watched. Filch and Umbridge were standing, apparently transfixed in horror, halfway down the stairs. As Harry watched, one of the larger Catherine wheels seemed to decide that what it needed was more room to manoeuvre; it whirled towards Umbridge and Filch with a sinister ‘wheeeeeeeeee’. They both yelled with fright and ducked, and it soared straight out of the window behind them and off across the grounds. Meanwhile, several of the dragons and a large purple bat that was smoking ominously took advantage of the open door at the end of the corridor to escape towards the second floor. ‘Hurry, Filch, hurry!’ shrieked Umbridge, ‘they’ll be all over the school unless we do something – Stupefy!’ A jet of red light shot out of the end of her wand and hit one of the rockets. Instead of freezing in midair, it exploded with such force that it blasted a hole in a painting of a soppy-looking witch in the middle of a meadow; she ran for it just in time, reappearing seconds

[I]n the years that followed the persecutions, Christianity came to see itself, with great pride, as a persecuted Church. Its greatest heroes were not those who did good deeds but those who died in the most painful way. If you were willing to die an excruciating end in the arena then, whatever your previous holiness or lack thereof, you went straight to heaven: martyrdom wiped out all sins on the point of death. As well as getting there faster, martyrs enjoyed preferential terms in paradise, getting to wear the much-desired martyr’s crown. Tempting celestial terms were offered: it was said that the scripture promised ‘multiplication, even to a hundred times, of brothers, children, parents, land and homes’. Precisely how this celestial sum had been calculated is not clear but the general principle was: those who died early, publicly and painfully would be best rewarded. In many of the martyr tales the driving force is less that the Romans want to kill – and more that the Christians want to die. Why wouldn’t they? Paradoxically, martyrdom held considerable benefits for those willing to take it on. One was its egalitarian entry qualifications. As George Bernard Shaw acidly observed over a millennium later, martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability. More than that, in a socially and sexually unequal era it was a way in which women and even slaves might shine. Unlike most positions of power in the highly socially stratified late Roman Empire, this was a glory that was open to all, regardless of rank, education, wealth or sex. The sociologist Rodney Stark has pointed out that – provided you believe in its promised rewards – martyrdom is a perfectly rational choice. A martyr could begin the day of their death as one of the lowliest people in the empire and end it as one of the most exalted in heaven. So tempting were these rewards that pious Christians born outside times of persecution were wont to express disappointment at being denied the opportunity of an agonizing death. When the later Emperor Julian pointedly avoided executing Christians in his reign, one Christian writer far from being grateful, sourly recorded that Julian had ‘begrudged the honour of martyrdom to our combatants’.

hose watching Isabella process through the cold streets of Segovia could not know that they were witnessing the first steps of a queen destined to become the most powerful woman Europe had seen since Roman times. ‘This queen of Spain, called Isabella, has had no equal on this earth for 500 years,’ one awestruck visitor from northern Europe would eventually proclaim, admiring the fear and loyalty she provoked among the lowliest of Castilians and the mightiest of Grandees.4 This was not hyperbole. Europe had limited experience of queens regnant, and even less of successful ones. Few of those who followed Isabella have had such a lasting impact. Only Elizabeth I of England, Archduchess María Theresa of Austria, Russia’s Catherine the Great (outshining a formidable predecessor, the Empress Elizabeth) and Britain’s Queen Victoria can rival her, each in their own era. All faced the challenges of being a female ruler in an otherwise overwhelmingly male-dominated world and all had long, transformative reigns, leaving legacies that would be felt for centuries. All faced the challenges of being a female ruler in an otherwise overwhelmingly male-dominated world and all had long, transformative reigns, leaving Only Isabella did this by leading a country as it emerged from the troubled late middle ages, harnessing the ideas and tools of the early Renaissance to start transforming a fractious, ill-disciplined nation into a European powerhouse with a clear-minded and ambitious monarchy at its centre. She was, in other words, the first in that still-small club of great European queens. To some she remains the greatest.

Whatever thier individual reasons, Ippolito’s presence in Rome created a focus around which all sorts of people discontented with Alessandro’s reign might coalesce to oppose the Duke.

The latter part of Catherine’s reign was influenced by events in western Europe,

When the later emperor Julian pointedly avoided executing Christians in his reign, one Christian writer, far from being grateful, sourly recorded that Julian had “begrudged the honour of martyrdom to our combatants.” 25

Later, she confessed that ego and prestige played a part; that she loved to possess, to amass. “It is not love of art,” she admitted, in part facetiously. “It is voracity. I am a glutton.” Her agents continued to buy everything available of beauty and value. During her reign, Catherine’s collection expanded to almost four thousand paintings. She became the greatest collector and patron of art in the history of Europe.

Catherine Parr, the last and noblest of the wives of Henry VIII, assiduously aided the development of his moral character. Herself a lady of eminent virtue and great intelligence, she was at pains to instill into his mind those principles which should make his life pure, his reign prosperous, and his subjects happy.

Sophia remembered visiting one of these unfortunates, an older sister of her mother’s, who owned sixteen pug dogs, all of whom slept, ate, and performed their natural functions in the same room as their mistress. “A large number of parrots besides lived in the same room,” Sophia wrote. “One can imagine the fragrance which reigned there.

the only women important enough to have them in Henry II’s reign were Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poitiers.

Tubman despised the licentious atmosphere that plagued towns where Civil War soldiers gathered. As one of the Union doctors complained, the mistreatment of black women was a shame and scandal of occupied Carolina, where lawless conditions reigned during the first year of occupation.

By the 1840s, informal networks were well established, as was the reigning metaphor of the Underground Railroad (UGRR).

Bea was careful to stare down at her beer bottle as she spoke. When she was done the silence reigned again. Bea did not dare look up to see how her admission had been received. She saw one of the men get up from his barstool, but she didn’t look over. She could hear someone moving about the room, but did not turn her head to investigate

A little over ten years after the newly Christian Constantine took power, it is said that laws began to be passed restricting “the pollutions of idolatry.”45 During Constantine’s own reign it seems to have been decreed that “no one should presume to set up cult-objects, or practise divination or other occult arts, or even to sacrifice at all.”46 Less than fifty years after Constantine, the death penalty was announced for any who dared to sacrifice.47 A little over a century later, in AD 423, the Christian government announced that any pagans who still survived were to be suppressed. Though, it added confidently—and ominously: “We now believe that there are none.

Many Romans didn’t like the Christians. They found their reclusive behaviour offensive; their teachings foolish; their fervour irritating and their refusal to sacrifice to the emperor insulting. But for the first 250 years after the birth of Christ, the imperial policy towards them was first to ignore them and then to declare that they must not be hounded. In the encounter between the Christians and the Romans it is the former who are almost without fail remembered as the oppressed and the latter as the oppressors. Yet, apart from Nero, it was almost two and a half centuries before emperors became involved in prosecutions of Christians – and even then, as we have seen, these prosecutions were brief. This was a grace and liberty that the Christians would decline to show to other religions when they finally gained control. A little over ten years after the newly Christian Constantine took power, it is said that laws began to be passed restricting ‘the pollutions of idolatry’. During Constantine’s own reign it seems to have been decreed that ‘no one should presume to set up cult-objects, or practise divination or other occult arts, or even to sacrifice at all’. Less than fifty years after Constantine, the death penalty was announced for any who dared to sacrifice. A little over a century later, in AD 423, the Christian government announced that any pagans who still survived were to be suppressed. Though, it added confidently – and ominously: ‘We now believe that there are none.

THE REIGN OF CATHERINE II In the public mind outside of Russia, Catherine’s long reign, from 1762 to 1796, has gained notoriety because of her phenomenal love life. Her amorous adventures were unquestionably remarkable, but it would be a mistake to dismiss her as a sovereign whose only interest was private pleasure. Nor would it be accurate to regard her as a self-centered woman who merely used men to satisfy her carnal needs. To be sure, from 1752 until her death she had no fewer than twenty-one lovers, generally men in the prime of life with impressive physiques. It is also true that the older she grew, the younger were the men she chose. When she was in her early sixties, for example, she took a twenty-two-year-old lover. She was

Catherine’s motto could well have been that genius is a long patience. With the successive reigns of her sons came her chance to show the world how they had underestimated this disregarded queen. What Catherine lacked in beauty she made up for in intelligence, cunning and family ambition.

He suggested removing or exterminating the inhabitants of the city of Bordeaux and replacing them with a more compliant populace transplanted from another part of France. To Henry’s credit he refused to countenance this idea, but the Constable’s abhorrent methods of punishment could not fail to taint the King in this, the only serious uprising of his brief reign.