Above: Prince and Princess Bibesco wedding, 1919. Image taken from “An Autobiography” by Margot Asquit published by Doran, New York in 1922.
Ancient pagan cultures and the Judeo-Christian world have always “canonized” their heroes. The Greeks and Romans, like other idolatrous peoples, regarded the epoch-making heroes of their cultures as divine beings—in short, as demigods. Jewish culture has handed down to us the stories of the prophets of the Old Testament and, more rarely, of kings such as David and Solomon, or legendary warriors such as the Maccabean brothers. If the epic stories of Achilles, Odysseus, Heracles, or Aeneas are still read today, it is because of their exemplary character. They were, and remain, models of heroism and virtue.
Christian culture brought about a profound transformation, as can be seen in the lives of the desert fathers and hermits among whom Saint Anthony the Great shone so brightly. Military and physical heroism, grounded in secular virtues, was replaced by spiritual heroism, in which the adversaries confronted by the one advancing on the path of virtue are the fallen angels:
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places (Ephesians 6:12).
In other words, there was a transition from pre-Christian, military-chivalric heroism to Christian spiritual heroism, founded upon the power and grace of God. The exorcisation of the possessed, asceticism and mysticism, the practice of discernment, spiritual warfare—all these are realities and acts that are possible, indeed intelligible, only within a Christian context. From its very beginnings, the Church has held up as examples those heroes of the faith who practiced the supernatural virtues—Faith, Hope, and Charity. Their canonization, whether formal or informal, has always been the privileged means by which concrete models of holiness are proposed to us.
At the same time, Saint Francis de Sales reminds us of an important truth: many of these models are more worthy of admiration than of imitation. This is especially evident for us laypeople. It is clear that ascetic saints, monks, and contemplative nuns can be imitated only within a life of withdrawal that is practicable in monasteries and presupposes special graces. This is why we also need models suited to the vocation of the laity. For centuries—indeed, for more than a millennium—the world of the European Christian aristocracy provided such lay models.
If we think of families distinguished by holiness, such as that of Saint Macrina and Saint Basil the Great—which gave the Church no fewer than seven saints—or that of Saint Margaret of Scotland, or of other royal families such as that of Saint Stephen of Hungary and the Árpád dynasty, or of the illustrious Cardinals Charles and Federico Borromeo, we find in all these cases saints who emerged from the ranks of royalty and the aristocracy. Today, the true meaning of the word “aristocracy” has largely been forgotten. It is time to remember it: the rule of the good, of the virtuous (from the Greek aristos, “best of its kind, noblest, bravest, most virtuous,” and kratos, “rule, power”).
Understood in this sense, royal and aristocratic families furnished the Christian world, for centuries upon centuries, with its foremost models of excellence and virtue. This does not, of course, exclude the existence of counterexamples: members of royal and aristocratic houses who failed to honor their vocation and instead became occasions of scandal. Unfortunately, contemporary television and film tend to highlight almost exclusively this latter aspect. Yet this should not prevent us from discovering those truly remarkable members of the great royal and aristocratic houses of the past.
Received into the Catholic Church by Abbé Mugnier on 18 April 1912,[1] Princess Marthe Bibesco was profoundly transformed by her gradual conversion. A writer, memoirist, and diplomat of exceptional stature, she left in the thousands of pages of her writings abundant evidence of her Catholic commitment. Her journals are not only an inexhaustible source for the history of the twentieth century but also a testimony to her constant practice of the virtue of prudence. She rigorously avoided rash judgments, gossip, and calumny. Reading her pages, one becomes acutely aware, on the one hand, of how degraded today’s journalistic and media culture has become, feeding almost exclusively on scandal and defamation, and, on the other, of the radiant dignity of a person who avoided all such things with incomparable elegance.
Among all the practices of the religious life, two have always held pride of place: prayer and meditation. While the former is generally present in the life of every Christian, the latter—so insistently recommended by Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint Alphonsus Liguori—has been almost entirely forgotten. For most Catholics, the very notion of “meditation” evokes, if anything, Zen practices, but scarcely ever “active contemplation” or “mental prayer.” None of these realities was foreign to Princess Bibesco. Her journals are filled with biblical references—the fruit of her meditations.
At the end of most of her daily entries, often written in English and carefully dated, we find a verse from the day’s biblical reading. If we follow these references attentively, we discover not only that the author read Sacred Scripture daily and continuously, but also that she sought in its sacred words the keys to understanding the events through which she was living. Consider, for example, an entry from 1915, when the First World War was already wreaking havoc:
16 February 1915
Luncheon at Saint-Cloud (Princess Marie Bonaparte’s residence) with Briand and Le Bon. Dinner there as well. Reports had begun to circulate of cities reduced to ashes.
‘Literally, heaps of ashes,’ Briand remarked.
‘I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands’ (Mark 14:58).
What connection is there between the horrors of war and the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ quoted by the Princess? She does not tell us, but leaves us to reflect for ourselves. In this way, we follow in her footsteps, learning that nothing that happens is unrelated to Divine Providence. A day later she notes that it is the beginning of Lent—Ash Wednesday. Her comment, written in the midst of war, is filled with tragic evangelical significance:
There is no shortage of ashes.
I could continue for many pages, offering other examples and perhaps attempting to decipher their meaning. Ever since I began reading Princess Bibesco’s journals, I have not ceased doing precisely that. Yet nothing is more important than what I shall now say: reading her writings makes me want to become a better person. In contemplating with wonder someone who is genuinely virtuous—someone who makes no effort to draw attention to herself, but shines as naturally as the sun on a spring day over Lago Maggiore—we come to perceive the beauty of Goodness and Truth. Perhaps no work illustrates this more powerfully than her extraordinary novel Isvor, le pays des saules (Isvor, the Land of Willows), published in Paris in 1923.
Though ostensibly an autobiographical literary work, Isvor is one of the most haunting novels of the twentieth century. Drawing upon Princess Bibesco’s intimate knowledge of the deep Romanian countryside, it recounts the lives of peasants in a world where the ancient echoes of Homer and Virgil can still be heard.
I have read this singular and incomparable work several times, always with fascination. As I progressed through its pages, I felt myself sinking ever deeper into a kind of utopian realm, beyond history itself, where the pre-Christian world of the gods had somehow met the apostles and saints of the Gospel. For these simple people, who understood nothing of the demands of modern life and were content to live as their forebears had lived for thousands of years, embodied an unimaginable amalgam of pagan superstition and Christian faith.
Without ever judging them, and in perfect harmony with her own virtues, Princess Bibesco portrays them exactly as they were, while with princely discretion she sought to help them whenever the opportunity arose. Even when those whom she assisted stole timber from the Bibesco estates—despite the fact that she herself freely gave them wood from her family’s lands—or attempted to secure advantages they had not earned, she always acted precisely as Our Lord Jesus Christ had taught:
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also (Matthew 5:40).
Yet nowhere is the grandeur of holiness more evident than in one of the immortal scenes Princess Bibesco recounts in this novel. It is impossible to read it without feeling overwhelmed by the moral beauty of a soul that lived Christian charity to perfection. Equally impossible is it not to notice the extraordinary discretion of the narrative. At no point does the reader perceive even the faintest trace of vanity—that subtle pride which so often taints the good deeds of those who wish to appear better than they truly are. Without ever aspiring to be a teacher of etiquette or morality, Princess Marthe Bibesco succeeds far better than a thousand self-appointed masters in showing us not only how Aristocratic, Christian virtues may be lived in practice, but also in awakening within us the desire to possess them ourselves.
Before such an achievement, there is little left for me to do but remain silent, inviting you instead to read and to meditate—to meditate and to read—one of the most beautiful pages of literature and Christian witness ever written:
Whenever I smell June raspberries, or see the flesh-coloured velvet of the melting fruit, and its rosy wine oozing from the baskets exposed to the sun, the remembrance of an old pain quickens again in my heart.
I had just arrived at Isvor. I felt I was going to weep, there, at the station, in front of everybody, and that I’d have to hide my tears, when suddenly I heard someone break into sobbing among the crowd. My tears were checked on the edge of my eyes, as if held back and dried by my anxious glance to see who it was who could have ventured to weep out loud.
It was a young woman. Her clothes were in disorder, the plaits of her hair undone, her scarf had fallen to the ground, and a station porter was shaking her violently by the arm. She hid her face, and he was treading on the raspberries in front of her spilt from her overturned baskets.
The station-master, trying hard to guide me towards the door, was eager with explanations. This woman was a thief… She was known… she gathered raspberries without a permit… she was not an orphan: no, she had never had any parents… nor a widow: she had not been married. She was a nuisance in the station, running down alongside the incoming trains. It must be put a stop to…
The crowd parting, I went up to the woman. I tried to discern the face hidden behind her hands, which could not hold back her flowing tears. And suddenly she fell on her knees. Before I knew what she was doing, I could feel the warmth of her lips pressing my shoes.
I raised her. I think I kissed her. And having now some excuse for tears, I dared to cry myself. And the anniversary of that day must be about now. For today, on my way to the station, I met on the road the daughter of the widow Marie, carrying green baskets full of fresh raspberries, and the air grew sweet as she passed, and wasps were buzzing after her.[2]
[1] “The Conversion of Princess Marthe Bibesco:” https://onepeterfive.com/the-conversion-of-princess-marthe-bibesco/ [Accessed 25 July 2026].
[2] Isvor, the country of willows, by Princess Bibesco, Translated by Hamish Miles, New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1924, pp. 147-148.