AN old tradition relates
that Christianity had not long been
established over the Roman Empire
when one day a youth, weary
and footsore, entered one of the
gates of the Imperial City.
He came from a land in the far north which
few had heard of, and he had long travelled "per
mare et per terras" in his desire to study
the truths of faith by the tombs of the Apostles.
How long Ninian remained in Rome is not
stated; however, by command of the Pope,
he eventually retraced his steps home,
preached the gospel to his fellow-countrymen,
and founded the church of Galloway,
about two hundred years before St. Augustine landed in England.
Scotland, however, was too far
away and the difficulties
of travelling too great for
many
to follow in Ninian 's footsteps,
and so
the clergy was trained, not in Rome,
nor on the Continent, but in the
local monastic schools, which in Scotland, as elsewhere, were then the
homes of
learning and the nurseries of science. After
the monastic schools came the
universities, and St. Andrews and Glasgow
and Aberdeen became
the great
centres of intellectual work. It was only after the religious troubles
of the sixteenth century that the project of instituting a Scots college
in Rome was
formed.
The
ancient
monastery of St. James at Ratisbon,
founded by Marianus Scotus in 1068, had long
since fallen into a state of decay,
and so had the seminary which Abbot
Fleming had instituted in connection
with the old abbey. In 1576 another Scotch college was founded at
Tournay, not to speak of the one in Paris which
owed its existence
to Cardinal Beaton.
As far as Rome was concerned,
there had been a national church dedicated to St. Andrew, and a hospice
for the relief of Scotch pilgrims, long before the Reformation. The
modern church of S. Andrea delle Fratte occupies and marks the spot
where the devout people from beyond the Tweed found a welcome when they
came to visit the holy places at
Rome. It was Clement VIII. who, by a bull
dated December 5, 1600, gave the Scottish Catholics a national college.
Its site, very confined and
unsuitable, was in the Via del Tritone, near the
church of Our Lady of Constantinople. In
1604 it was
transferred to the Via delle Quattro Fontane, opposite to the present
Barberini palace, where it has remained ever since.
The history of this institution
has been given by Mgr. Robert Fraser, the present rector, in an
illustrated article published in the
March number of "St. Peter's Magazine" for
1899. It is remarkably uneventful as far as general interests are
concerned. More
interesting, perhaps, to the reader is another
incident in the history of Scottish-Roman relations, concerning the
prominent place gained by a Scottish gentleman as an archaeological
explorer of the Campagna.
The name of Gavin Hamilton was not
new in Rome. I have found in the records of the sixteenth century an
obligation signed December
3, 1554, by the Reverend Doctor Gavin Hamilton, abbot
of Kylwyning and coadjutor to the see of St.
Andrews in the
kingdom of Scotland, viz., a receipt for the
sum of three
thousand scudi of gold which he had borrowed from the bank of Andrea
Cenami in Paris. For the guarantee of which
sum he deposits
the papal brief of nomination to the coadjutorship of St. Andrews, and
offers the signature of three sponsors. Gavin Matreson, a priest of St.
Andrews, D. Bonard, canon of Dingwall, and Andrew Grayme, a priest of
Brechin. [State Archives, in the Cainpo Marzio, vol. 6166, p. 475.]
His namesake, the painter
and explorer of
the Campagna, was born at Lanark towards the middle of the eighteenth
century, of an ancient and
respected family, the Hamiltons of Murdieston. Having
displayed from an early age a marked
predilection for the fine arts,
and not finding
opportunities to gratify such a taste in his native land, he moved to
Rome, where he soon acquired great renown, and where he passed the rest
of his life, revisiting Scotland only at long intervals
and for very short
periods. [See Lord Fitzuiaurice's article in the Academy, quoted by A.
H. Smith, Catalogue of ... Marbles at Lansdowne House," p. 7.]
I shall not follow his career as
an artist, nor shall I describe his celebrated paintings in the Casino
of the Villa Borghese, representing scenes from the Iliad. His
partiality as an artist for Homeric
subjects is shown not only by the great
frescoes just mentioned, but also by smaller pictures, representing such
scenes as Achilles standing over the dead body of Patroclus, Achilles
dismissing Briseis, and
Achilles dragging the body of Hector, which have
passed into the collections of the Duke of Hamilton, of Lord Hopetoun,
and of the Duke of Bedford. [These subjects have been engraved by Cunego,
Morghen, and others.]
Gavin Hamilton attracts us more as
an archaeological explorer of the Roman Campagna, as an indefatigable
excavator, as a man of enormous activity crowned
by extraordinary
success. He was not working alone, but as a
member of a
company, formed, I am sorry to say, more for a lucrative than for a
scientific purpose. There were three of them, associated from 1769 or
1770: James
Byres, architect; Gavin Hamilton, painter; and Thomas Jenkins, banker.
The place of Byres was afterwards taken by Robert Fagan, English consul
at Rome. In volume i. of the "Townley Marbles" the Villa of Hadrian is
indicated as their principal field of operation; but this is not
precisely true. There is no doubt that the discoveries they
made in the
Pantanello, near the gates of Hadrian's Villa, count among the most
successful of the century; but they
had the same if not a better chance at Ostia,
Porto, Ardea, Marino, Civita Lavinia, Torre Colombara, Campo Jemini,
Cornazzano, Monte Cagnolo, Roma Vecchia, Gabii, Subiaco, Arcinazzo, etc.
The
documents concerning these excavations, unedited for the greater part,
will be found in volume iv. of my "Storia degli Scavi di Roma." The
second member of the company, James Byres, architect, was the special
correspondent and
purveyor of Charles Townley, as Hamilton was of
William Fitzmaurice, second Earl of Shelburne, first Marquis of
Lansdowne, and founder of the Lansdowne Museum of Statuary. Byres,
besides working in the interest of the company, carried on a trade of
his own, especially in rare books and drawings and in smaller and
precious objects, among which were the "Mystic Cista" of Palestrina of
the Townley Collection (found 1786), the bronze patera of Antium (found
1782), and the golden fibula of Palestrina,
now in the British
Museum, etc. Byres returned to his native land in 1790,
and died at Tonly,
Aberdeenshire, in 1817, at the age of eighty-five.
"Thomas Jenkins first visited Rome
as an artist, but having amassed a considerable fortune by favor of
Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) became the English banker. He was driven from
Rome by the French, who confiscated all they could find of his property.
Having
escaped their fury, he died at
Yarmouth immediately on his landing after a
storm at sea, in 1798. For an account of his extensive dealings in
antiquities (especially the purchase
and dispersion of the Montalto-Negroni
collection) see Michaelis, Anc. Marbles,' p. 75."
I must say that the dealings of
Hamilton and his associates with the government of the land whose
hospitality they enjoyed were not always fair
and above board.
Payne Knight, giving evidence before the Select Committee of the House
of Commons, on the Elgin Marbles, in 1793, distinctly affirms that
some of the
marbles could only be removed from Rome by bribing the Pope's officials,
while others were "smuggled" or "clandestinely brought away."
In a letter addressed by Hamilton
to Lord
Shelburne on July 16, 1772, we
find the following passage: "In the meanwhile I give
your Lordship the agreeable news that the Cincinnatus (discovered at the
Pantanello in 1769) is now
casing up for Shelburne House, as the Pope has
declined the purchase at the price of
.500, which I
demanded, and has accepted of two other singular figures, . . . which I
have given them at their own price, being highly necessary to keep
Visconti and
his companion the sculptor my friends. Your Lordship
may remember I mentioned in a former letter that I had one other curious
piece of sculpture which I could not divulge. I must, therefore,
beg leave to
reserve this secret to be brought to light in another letter,
when I hope I
shall be able to say it is out of the Pope's dominions.
As to the Antinous,
I am afraid I shall be obliged to smuggle it, as I can never hope for a
license."
And in a second letter, dated
August 6, he adds: "Since my last I have taken the resolution to send
off the head of Antinous in the character of Bacchus without a license.
The
under-antiquarian alone is in the secret, to whom I have made an
additional present, and hope everything will go well."
His luck as a discoverer of
antiques was simply marvellous, and many of his reports sound like fairy
tales. The
year 1769 is the date of the excavations at the Pantanello, the product
of which was mostly purchased by Lord Shelburne for the gallery at
Lansdowne
House. Hamilton himself wrote an account of the proceedings to Townley,
a synopsis of which is given by Dallaway (" Anecdotes of the Arts in
England," London, 1800, p. 364). The
place had already been explored
by a local
landowner, Signer Lolli. Hamilton and
his associates in the antiquarian speculation
"employed some
laborers to re-investigate this spot. They began at a
passage to an old drain cut in the rock, by means of which they could
lower the waters of the Pantanello. After having worked some weeks by
lamplight, and up to the knees in stinking mud full of toads, serpents,
and other vermin, a few objects were found . . . but . . . Lolli had
already carried away the more valuable remains. The explorers
fortunately met
with one of Lolli's workmen, by whom they were
directed to a new spot."
"It is difficult to account,"
Hamilton writes to Townley, "for the contents of this place, which
consisted of a vast number
of trees, cut down
and thrown into this hole, probably from
despite, as having been part of some
sacred grove, intermixed with statues, etc.,
all of which have shared the same fate. More than fifty-seven pieces of
sculpture were discovered in a greater .or less degree of preservation."
[Catalogue given by Agostino Penna, in his Viaggio pittorico della Villa
Adriana, Roma, 1833. The exploration of the Pantanello lasted from 1769
to 1772. Piranesi gives another excellent account in the description of
his plan of Hadrian's Villa.]
The search at Torre Colombara,
near the ninth mile-stone of the Appian
Way, began in the
autumn of
1771. Two spots were chosen about half a mile apart: one supposed to
have been a temple of Domitian, the other a villa of Gallienus. Hamilton
was struck by the number
of duplicate statues found in these excavations, one
set being greatly inferior to the other in workmanship and finish, as if
there had been an array of originals and one of replicas. The statues
lay dispersed all over the place, as if thrown aside from ignorance of
their value, or from a religious prejudice.
Some were lying
only a few inches below the surface of the field, and bore marks of the
injuries inflicted upon them by the ploughman.
First to
come to light was
the Marcus
Aurelius, larger than life, now at Shelburne House.
The Meleager, the
jewel of the same collection, and one of the finest statues in England,
was next found; and also the so-called "Paris Equestris," sold by
Jenkins to Smith Barry, Esq. The
same gentleman purchased at a later period a
draped Venus, to which was given the
name of Victrix. In fact, most of the leading
European collections have their share of the finds of Torre Colombara.
The Museo Pio Clementino secured the celebrated Discobolus, now in the
Sala della Biga, n. 615, the colossal bust of Serapis, now in the
Rotonda, n.549, and
some smaller objects; [Compare Helbig's Guide, vol. i.
p. 236, n. 331, and p. 217, n. 304.] Mr. Coch, of Moscow, a sitting Faun
and an Apollinean torso of exquisite grace; Dr. Corbett, a
Venus; Lord
Lansdowne, an Amazon; and so forth.
The crowning point of Hamilton's
career must be found in the search he
made in the spring
of 1792 among the ruins of Gabii. Ciampini, Fabretti, Bianchini,
and other
explorers of Latium had
already identified the site of this antique city, the
Oxford of prehistoric times, with that of Castiglione on the southeast
side of the lake of the same name. Many valuable or curious remains had
come accidentally to light in tilling the land, especially in the
vicinity of the temple of Juno, which marks the centre of the Roman
municipium, and of the church of S. Primitive, which
marks the centre
of Christian Gabii. These discoveries having become more and more
frequent in the time of Prince Marc' Antonio Borghese the elder, he
readily accepted Hamilton's application to
make a regular
search.
The work began in March, 1792,
and lasted
a comparatively short time; yet the results were such that Prince Marc'
Antonio was obliged to add a new wing to his
museum in the
Villa Pinciana, to exhibit the Gabine marbles, the summary description
of which by Ennio Quirino Visconti (Rome, Fulgoni, 1797) forms a bulky
volume of one hundred and eighty-one pages and fifty-nine plates.
Hamilton had laid bare two important edifices: the temple of Juno, with
its sacred enclosure and its hemicycle opening on the Via Praenestina,
and the Forum
and the Curia of the Roman Gabii. Here he found
eleven statues or important pieces of statues of mythological subjects;
twentyfour statues or busts or heads of historical personages, including
Alexander the Great, Germanicus, Onaeus Domitius Corbulo, the greatest
Roman general of the time of Nero, Claudius, Geta, Plautilla, etc.;
seven statues of local worthies, seven pedestals with eulogistic
inscriptions, besides columns, mosaic pavements, architectural
fragments, coins, pottery, glassware,
and bronzes.
The end of the Borghese Museum is
well known. The most valuable marbles, those from Gabii included, were
removed to Paris by the first Napoleon, for which an indemnity of
fifteen millions of francs was promised to Prince Borghese.
The greater part
of this sum
remained unpaid at the fall of the French Empire,
and is
still unpaid. England, as usual, had
her share in the spoils from Gabii. Visconti
informs us that a beautiful polychrome mosaic floor, discovered among
the ruins of a villa, at a certain
distance from the temple of Juno,
was purchased by "my Lord Harvey, count of Bristol,"
and removed to his
country seat in Somersetshire. The year 1717 marks the arrival of the
"last of the Stuarts" in the States of the Church. Under the name of the
Chevalier de St. Georges, James III., son of James II. and of Mary
Beatrice of Modena, sought the hospitality of Pope Clement XI., Albani,
in the beautiful ducal castle at Urbino.
The Chevalier de
St. Georges was not altogether unknown to the Romans. Many among the
living remembered the celebration made by Cardinal Howard on the
announcement of his birth in 1688,
when an ox stuffed with game was roasted in
one of the public squares, and served to the populace. A rare engraving
by Arnold van Vesterhout represents this event. ["Stampa di un bue
arrostito intero, ripieno di diversi animali, comestibili in publica
piazza, da distribuirsi al volgo, in occassione delle allegrezze
celebrate in Roma dal Card. Howard, per la nascita del principe Giacomo."
Roma, 1688.]
The marriage of James III. with
Mary Clementina, granddaughter of the great John III., Sobieski, of
Poland, arranged by
Clement XI. in 1718, was attended with considerable
difficulties. While
crossing the Austrian territory, she was detained in
one of the Tyrolean castles by order of Charles VI., Emperor of Austria.
She
succeeded, however, in eluding the vigilance of the keepers, and,
disguised in a young man's attire, made good her escape. When she
reached Rome in the spring of 1719, the Pope bade her take up her
quarters in the monastery of the Ursulines, in the Via Vittoria. This
monastery still exists, although transformed into a royal
Academy of Music.
The marriage was celebrated in the village of Montefiascone, on the
Lake of
Bolsena, where the royal couple spent their honeymoon. There is a scarce
engraving of the wedding ceremony, by Antonio Frix, from a sketch by
Agostino Masucci, bearing the title: "Funzione fatta per lo sposalizio
del re Giacomo
con la principessa Clem. Sobieski."
In Rome they established their
residence in the Palazzo Muti-Savorelli, now Balestra, at the north end
of the Piazza
de' Santi Apostoli, the rent being
paid by the Pope. The Pope also offered
them an annual
subsidy of fifteen thousand dollars, besides a wedding present of a
hundred thousand. The old baronial manor of the Savelli at Albano was
put at their disposal for a summer
residence. [After the death of his parents and
brother the Savelli manor passed into the hands of Cardinal York. An
English visitor who saw it about 1800 gives the following details:
"Cardinal Stuart . . .has a palace in Albano, which was given him by the
Pope. He never resides there, but successively lent it to the Spanish
ambassador, and to the princesses Adelaide and Victoire, aunts of the
unfortunate Lewis XVI. . . . This palace ... is furnished in the
plainest manner, and in one of the principal rooms are maps of London,
Rome, and Paris, as also one of Great Britain, on which is traced the
flight of the late Pretender." See Description of Latium, p. 69, London,
1805.]
The birth of their first son,
which took place December 31, 1720, gave occasion for great
manifestations of loyalty. The event was announced by a royal salute
from the guns of the Castle of St. Angelo,
and by the joyous
ringing of some two thousand bells. N.
544 of the "Diario
di Roma" contains an account of the baptism of the infant prince under
the name of Charles Edward. The sponsors were Cardinal Gualtieri for
England, Cardinal Imperiali for Ireland,
and Cardinal
Sacripante for Scotland. Clement XL said mass in the chapel of the
English college, and
gave, as presents, a Chinese object valued at four
thousand dollars and
a cheque amounting to ten thousand.
Their second son, Henry Benedict,
Duke of York, was born in 1725 and baptized by Pope Benedict XIII. in
the chapel of the Muti palace. Among the presents received on this
occasion were the "Fascie benedette." "Fascie" in Italian
means a long
band of
strong white linen, with which newborn infants are tightly swathed
during the first months of their life. However ungentle this practice
may seem, it is kept up in Italy even in our
own days, as the
people believe they impart more
firmness of limb to their children by swathing
them in
this manner.
The habit of the papal court of
presenting these fascie to the eldest born of a royal house dates as far
back as Clement VII., Aldobrandini. This
Pope gave them,
for the first time, in 1601, to Henry IV. of France, whose second wife,
Maria de' Medici, had given birth to the dauphin, the future Louis XIII.
The fascie
were intrusted to a special ambassador, Maffeo Barberini,
who afterwards
became Pope Urban
VIII.
The presentation of the baby bands
to James
III. and his Queen Clementina is fully described in no.
1200 of the "Diario
di Roma."
It took place on April 5, 1725, the prelate selected as envoy
extraordinary being Monsignor Merlini Paolucci, Archbishop of Imola.
The bands
and other articles of a rich layette were enclosed in two boxes, lined
with crimson velvet embroidered in solid gold. There were bands also
ornamented with gold embroidery, and
others of the finest Holland linen trimmed
with exquisite lace. The gift to the infant prince was valued at
8000 scudi.
From the same invaluable source,
the "Diario di Roma" (n. 2729), we gather many particulars about the
death of Queen Clementina, which took place on January 18, 1735, and
about her interment in St. Peter's. The theatres were closed, much to
the annoyance of the managers and
the public, as it was carnival time; also the
illuminations and fireworks prepared in honor of the newly elected
Cardinal Spinelli, Archbishop of Naples, were given up.
The funeral
ceremonies began in the parish church of SS. Apostoli, where the body of
the Queen was
exposed on a catafalque, of which
we have an etching
by Baldassarre Gabuggiani.
The funeral cavalcade from the
parish church to the Vatican, of which there is a print
by Rocco Pozzi,
was attended by the college of cardinals in their violet or mourning
robes. On the preceding day the governor of the city, Monsignor Corio,
had issued the following proclamation:
"On the occasion of the
transferment of the mortal remains of
Her Majesty
Clementina Britannic Queen, which will take place to-morrow with due
and
customary solemnity, and with the view of removing all obstacles which
might interfere with the orderly progress of the pageant from the church
of SS. Apostoli to St. Peter's, we, Marcellino Corio, Governor of Rome
and its district . . . order, command, and bring to notice to all
concerned, of whatever sex or condition of life, not to trespass or
intrude over the line of the procession with their coaches, carriages,
or wagons, under the penalty of the loss of the horses besides other
punishments for the owners of the said coaches, carriages,
and wagons, while
the coachmen
or drivers shall be stretched three times on the rack
then and
there without trial or appeal. Given in Rome from our residence this
day, January 21, 1735."
(Signed) Marcellino Corio,
Governor; Bartolomeo
Zannettini, Notary.
The college of the Propaganda
commemorated the event
by holding an assembly in which
the virtues of Mary Clementina were celebrated and sung in twenty
different languages, including the Malabaric, the Chaldsean, the
Tartaric, and the Georgian. Two monuments were raised to her: one in SS.
Apostoli, one in St. Peter's. The
first consists of an urn of "verde antico,"
and a tablet of "rosso," containing the celebrated epigram:
Hie Clementinas remanent prsecordia:
nam Cor
caelestis fecit, ne superesset, amor.
I have a suspicion that the
distich was written by Giulio Cesare Cordara, S. J., a great admirer of
the late princess. The same learned man wrote a pastoral drama, called
"La Morte di Nice" (Nike's Death), printed at Genoa, 1755, and
translated into Latin by Giuseppe Vairani.
The body was laid
to rest in St. Peter's, in a recess above the door leading to the
dome (Porta della
Cupola). The
tomb, designed
by Filippo Barigioni, cut in
marble by Pietro Bracci, with a mosaic medallion by Cristofori, was
unveiled on December
8, 1742. [Literature: Vita di Maria Clem., etc.,
Bologna, 1744; Parentalia Marios Clem. Magnce Brittannice reginaz, Romse,
1735; Solenni esequie di Maria Clem., etc., celebrate in Fano, Fano,
1735; Casabianca Francesco, Epicediumpro immaturofunere Marias Clem.,
Roinae, 1738; Il Cracas, n. 3960, 3322, 2990; Pistolesi, // Vaticano
descritto, vol. i. p. 257.]
It cost 18,000 scudi, taken from
the treasury of the chapter of St. Peter's.
It seems that the happiness of
Queen
Clementina's domestic life was occasionally affected by passing clouds.
After her death the king [See Francesco Cecconi, Roma antica e moderna,
1725, p. 669.] took even more interest in Roman patrician society.
In a book of records of Pier Leone
Ghezzi, now
belonging to the department of antiquities of the
British Museum,
I have found the account of a visit paid by the king
to Cardinal Passionei in his summer
residence at Camaldoli near Frascati, on
October 19, 1741. "The King of England," Ghezzi says, "was accompanied
by the Princess Borghese and
the Princess Pallavicini, alone, without any escort
of 'demoiselles d'honneur.''
Many interesting particulars about
the life of the pair in Rome,
related by contemporary daily papers, are now almost
forgotten. They
were very fond, for instance, of enjoying the popular
gathering called the Lago di Piazza Navona. This noble piazza, still
retaining the shape of the old Stadium of Domitian and Severus
Alexander, over the ruins of which it is built, used to be inundated
four or six times a year, during the hot summer months, by stopping the
outlet of the great fountain of Bernini, called the Fontana dei Quattro
Fiumi. Stands and balconies were erected around the edge of the lake;
windows
were decked with tapestries and flags; bands of music played, while the
coaches of the nobility would drive around where the water was shallow.
It was
customary with the owners of the palaces bordering on the piazza to send
invitations to their friends, and treat them with refreshments and
suppers.
The first mention I find of the
presence of James and Maria Clementina at this curious gathering dates
from Sunday, August
11, 1720. They were the guests of Cardinal Trojano
Acquaviva, who had built a stand in front of his church of S. Giacomo
degli Spagnuoli, hung with red damask
trimmed with bands of gold. Refreshments were
served, and
the royal guests took such pleasure in the spectacle
that twice again they appeared at that same balcony before the season
was over, on August
25 and September 1.
The young Prince Charles was
allowed to see the Lago for the first time in 1727, August 4.
The following
year, taking advantage of the absence of his mother, Charles amused
himself by throwing half-pennies into the water and watching the
struggles of the young beggars to secure a share of the meagre bounty, "cosa
di poca decenza per un
figlio di Re."
I find the last mention of their
presence in 1731, in the balcony of Cardinal Corsini, whose pastry-cooks
and butlers had been at work for three days and nights in preparing the
supper-tables. The Lago is thus described by de la Lande in his "Voyage
en Italic dans les Annees 1765 et 1766," v. p. Ill : "La grande quantite
d'eau, que donnent ces trois fontaines [of the Piazza Navona] procurent
en ete un
spectacle fort singulier, et fort divertissant. Tous les dimanches du
mois d'aout, apres les vepres, on ferme les issues des bassins. L'eau se
repand dans la place, qui est un
peu concave, en forme de coquille.
Dans 1lespace de
deux heures elle est inondee sur presque toute sa longueur, et il y a
vers le milieu deux ou trois pieds d'eau. On vient alors se promener en
carrosse tout autour de la place. Les chevaux marchent dans l'eau; et la
fraicheur s'en communique a ceux meme, qui sont dans la voiture. Les
fenetres de la place sont couvertes de spectateurs. On croirait voir une
naumachie
antique. J'ai vu le palais
du Cardinal
Santobono Caracciolo rempli ces jours la de la plus belle compagnie de
Rome. II faisoit lui-meme les honneurs de ses balcons par ses manieres
nobles, et engageantes, auxquelles il joignoit les refraichissemens les
plus fins. Autrefois on passoit la nuit a la place Navone. On y soupoit,
on y faisoit des concerts. Mais Clement XIII. a proscrit tous les
plaisirs. Des l'Ave Maria on commence
a desecher la place. II arrive quelque fois
des accidens a cette espece de spectacle. Des chevaux s'abattent, et si
l'on n'est pas tres-prompt a les degager, ils se noyent. C'est ce que
j'ai vu
arriver aux chevaux du prince Barberini en 1765. Mais quand on suit la
file avec moderation, l'on n'est gueres expose a cet inconvenient. L'eau
ne vient pas au dela des moyeux de petites roues dans 1'endroit ou les
carrosses se promenent."
In Sir Alexander Dick's "Travels
in Italy" (1736), printed in "Curiosities from a Scots Charta Chest,"
by the Hon.
Mrs. Atholl Forbes, there are many jottings about the Duke of York as a
boy of eleven: "The little young duke . . . was very grave
and behaved like a
little philosopher. I could not help thinking he
had some
resemblance to his great-grandfather Charles the First. . . . The Duke
of York . . . danced very genteelly," etc.
Charles Edward, after the death of
his father, lived in retirement under the
name of Count of
Albany, and, following the advice of France, married the Princess Louise
of Stolberg, his junior by thirty-two years. After they had spent some
time together in Tuscany, as guests of the Grand Duke Leopold, the
countess left the conjugal roof and established herself in Rome under
the guardianship of her brother-in-law, Cardinal York. We shall deal no
longer than is necessary with this lady; she died in Florence in 1824,
after many adventures, with which any one who has read the life of
Alfieri, the great Italian tragedian, must necessarily be acquainted.
Charles Edward
died in Florence on January 31, 1788. His
body was removed
to Frascati, the episcopal see of his brother, and a "recognitio
cadaveris" was performed before the
entombment in St. Peter's.
The body was found
clad in a royal robe, with the crown, sceptre, sword,
and royal
signet-ring; there were also the insignia of the knighthoods of which
the sovereign of Great Britain is the grand master de jure. The cardinal
did his best, to obtain a state funeral in Rome; but the Pope refused,
on the ground that Charles Edward had never been recognized as a king
by the Holy
See.
The Duke of York, younger son of
James III., was elected cardinal on July 3, 1747, while in his
twenty-second year. [Compare Life of Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal
Duke of York, by Bernhard W. Kelly, London, Washbourne, 1899: "A good
little work, which might have been much better had its author gone to
such accessible sources as von Reuinont's Grafin v. Albany, Mr. Lang's
Pickle the Spy, and above all James Browne's History of the Highlands.
The last, a great but neglected storehouse of Jacobite lore, contains
more than a score of letters by, to, or about the cardinal "
(Athenaeum).]
Officially he was called the
Cardinal Duke of York; but after the death of the elder brother he
proclaimed himself the legitimate sovereign of Great Britain and
Ireland, under the name of Henry IX. Within the walls of the Muti
palace, or of the episcopal residence at Frascati, he claimed the title
of Majesty, but among his colleagues of the sacred college he was simply
styled, "His Serene Highness Henry Benedict Mary Clement, Cardinal Duke
of York."
Such a profusion of
names was not
calculated to please his colleagues,
who more than once found a way of showing
their disapproval.
The friendship between Pope
Benedict XIV. and the young prince of the church
became rather
strained in 1752. It seems that the latter had taken an extraordinary
fancy for a certain Mgr. Lercari, his own "maestro di camera," while his
father could not tolerate his presence. Lercari's dismissal was asked
and
obtained; but the two friends continued to meet almost daily, or else to
communicate by letters. Annoyed at this state of things,
James III. applied
to the Pope for advice and help, with the result that young Lercari was
banished from Rome on the night of July 19.
The cardinal
resented the measure as a personal offence, and on the following night
he left the paternal home for Nocera. Benedict XIV. wrote several
letters pointing out how such an estrangement between father and son,
between Pope
and cardinal, would give satisfaction to their common
foes on the other side of the Channel. After five
months of brooding
the duke gave up
his resentment, and accepted Mgr. Millo as "maestro
di camera." The reconciliation, which took place on
December 16,
pleased the court and the people beyond measure, because father and son,
king and cardinal, had won the good graces of all classes of citizens by
their charities and
affable manners, so different from the dignified
gloom
characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race abroad.
His nomination to the bishopric of
Frascati, July 13, 1761, is the next important event
we have to
chronicle, as it was the indirect cause of the destruction of one of the
noblest monuments
of the old Latin civilization. In the mean time there
are some curious particulars to be called to
mind in connection
with his residence at Frascati, the diocese of which he governed for
forty-three years. He loved this residence so dearly that whenever he
was called to Rome to attend a consistory or a "Cappella Pontificia,"
more than once he killed his carriage-horses in his haste to get back to
Frascati. His banqueting hall was always open to guests,
and very often
messengers were dispatched to Rome on the fastest ponies to secure the
delicacies of the season. The members of his household were all handsome
and imposing, their liveries superb.
The library of the local seminary contains
still a valuable set of English standard works, and the cathedral many
precious vessels, the gift of this generous man. It is a pity that we
should be compelled to bring home to him an act of wanton destruction,
for which I can find no apology. [There is a fine portrait of the
Cardinal by Pompeo Batoni in the National Portrait Gallery. Sins of the
Drunkard, a temperance tract by him, is read to the present day, I
believe, in every church of the diocese of Liverpool, twice a year.]
Visitors to the Eternal City
and
students of its history know how the beautiful Campagna is
bounded towards
the south by the Alban
Hills, the graceful outline of which culminates in a
peak 3130
feet high, which the ancients called Mons Albanus, and moderns call
Monte Cavo. On this peak, visible from Latium, Etruria, Sabina,
and Campania,
stood the venerable temple of
Jupiter Latialis, erected by Tarquinius Superbus as the meeting-place of
the forty-seven cities which formed the Latin confederation.
The temple was
reached by a paved road which branched off from the Via Appia at Ariccia,
and
crossing the great forest between the lakes of
Nemi and Albano,
reached the foot of the peak in the vicinity of Rocca di Papa.
The pavement of
this Via
Triumphalis, trodden by the feet of Q. Minutius Rufus, the conqueror of
Liguria, of M.
Claudius Marcellus, the conqueror of Syracuse, of
Julius Caesar, as dictator, etc., is in a marvellous state of
preservation; not so the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, which stood
at the summit of the road.
From a rare drawing of about 1650
in the Barberini library we
learn that the federal sanctuary stood, facing
the south, in the middle of a
platform enclosed and
supported by a substructure of great blocks of tufa.
Columns of white marble, or of giallo antico,
and marble blocks
from the cella of the god, inscribed with the "Fasti Feriarum Latinarum,"
lay scattered over the sacred area, in the neighborhood of which
statues, bas-reliefs, and votive offerings in bronze
and terracotta
were occasionally found. These remains were mercilessly destroyed in
1783 by
Cardinal York, to make
use of the materials for the rebuilding of the
utterly uninteresting church and
convent of the Passionist monks which he
dedicated to the Holy Trinity on October 1 of the same year. This act of
vandalism of the last of the Stuarts was justly denounced by the Roman
antiquaries, and we wonder why so great an admirer of ancient art as
Pius VI. did not interfere to prevent it.
The temple was one of the national
monuments of Italy, and no profaning hand should have been allowed to
remove a single one of its stones. It was not necessary to be a student
or a philosopher to appreciate the importance of the
place. "On the summit of Monte
Cavo," writes an English visitor contemporary with these events," it is
impossible not to experience sensations at once awful
and delightful;
the recollection of the important events which led the masters of the
world to offer up at this place their homage to the Deity is assisted by
the great quantity of laurel still growing here."
The same visitor
saw in the garden of the
convent "fragments of cornices of
good sculpture; and when we were on the hill the masons were employed in
making a shell for holy water out of part of an antique altar." How
often have I sat on one of the few blocks of stone left on the historic
peak to tell the tale of its past fortunes and glory, wondering at the
strange chain of events which prompted a scion of the savage Picts to
lay hands on the very temple in which thanks
had been offered
to the Deity for Roman victories and Roman conquests in the British
Isles!
When the Romans were raising their
mighty ramparts to confine the Caledonian tribes within prescribed
boundaries, and cut them off, as it were, from the rest of mankind; when
Agricola was building his nineteen forts, A. D. 81, between the Forth
and the
Clyde; when
Lollius Urbicus completed this line of defence, A. D.
144, by the
addition of a rampart and
ditch between old Kirkpatrick and Borrowstoness; when
Hadrian raised his wall and his embankment, A. D. 120, between the Tyne
and the Solway, subsequently repaired
by Septimius
Severus, did they dream that the day would
come when one of
the Picts yonder would follow in their footsteps along the Via
Triumphalis, and wipe off from the face of the earth the temple of the
god to whom the conquering heroes had paid respect, and presented votive
offerings from the islands beyond the Channel?
There is another and
more glaring
instance of this striking irony of fate to be found in Rome itself. The
palace
of Augustus on the Palatine Hill,
where the emperor lived for forty years, kept in repair as a place of
pilgrimage down to the fall of the Empire, this most august of Roman
historical relics, after having been plundered in 1775 of its contents
by the Frenchman Rancoureuil, fell in 1820 into the hands of Charles
Mills, Esq. This Scotch gentleman caused the Casino (built and painted
by Raffaellino dal Colle near and
above the house of Augustus) to be
reconstructed in the Tudor style with Gothic battlements, and raised two
Chinese pagodas, painted in crimson, over the exquisite bathrooms used
by the founder of the Empire. And for the branches of laurel and the
"corona civica," which in accordance with a decree of the Senate
ornamented the gates of the palace, Charles Mills substituted the
emblem of the
Thistle.
The death of Cardinal York, which
took place at ten p. m. of July 13, 1807,
was mourned by the
population of the diocese of Frascati as an irreparable loss. He had
been their good and generous pastor for half a century, he had been
cardinal for sixty years, he had been archpriest of St. Peter's for
fifty-six; in his long career he had
won the good graces of every one, and made no
enemies. The body was removed to Rome and exposed in the main hall of
the Palazzo della Cancelleria. The
funeral was celebrated on the following
Thursday, July 16, in the parish church of S.
Andrea della
Valle, in the presence of Pius VII. and the Sacred College.
The same evening
the coffin was removed to St. Peter's, and placed in the crypts, near
those of his father and brother. The three last representatives of a
valiant and noble race, whose faults had been atoned by long
misfortunes, were thus reunited and laid to rest under the mighty
dome of the
greatest temple ever raised for the worship of the true God.
I need not dwell on the cenotaph
raised to their memory opposite that of Maria Clementina, nor on the
well known dedication REGIME STIRPIS STVARDIAE POSTREMIS! The Duke of
Sussex, sixth son of George III. and
brother of George IV. and William IV., who
contributed fifty guineas towards the erection of the memorial, was a
special admirer of the old cardinal, having been his neighbor for one
whole
summer on the hills of Tusculum
and Albano. [The Alban and Tusculan hills have always been in favor with
the English visitors to Rome since the eighteenth century, and there is
110 villa in that district which might not be associated with an
historical name. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester lived some months in
the Villa Albani at Castel Gandolfo, and the Duke of Sussex passed a
whole summer at Grottaferrata, within the diocese of the last of the
Stuarts. Pius VI. gave a dinner to the duke in the farmhouse of la
Cecchignola, on the Via Ardeatina, where the venerable old Pontiff used
to go in the month of October, to amuse himself with the Paretajo. The
Paretajo consists of a set of very fine nets spread vertically from tree
to tree in a circular grove, in the centre of which flutter the decoy
birds. At the time of the great flights of migratory birds the catching
of one or two hundred of them in a single day is not a rare occurrence,
if the Paretajois skillfully put up.] Kelly says in connection with his
visits: "It is said on good
authority that one of the brothers of George IV. took
a journey to Frascati, to receive in 'orthodox fashion from the hands of
Henry IX. the healing touch which had
been denied to the rulers of his own dynasty,"
and that knowing the cardinal's pretence to a royal title, he, the son
of George III., had not hesitated to comply with his wish. English
describers of Rome are in the habit of quoting with relish the
well-known passage of Lord Mahon:" Beneath the unrivalled
dome of St.
Peter's lie mouldering the remains of what was once a brave
and gallant heart;
and a
stately monument from the chisel of Canova, and at the charge, I
believe, of the house of Hanover, [The monument was really erected at
the expense of Pius VII. ] has since risen to the memory of James III.,
Charles III., and Henry IX., kings of England,
names which an
Englishman can scarcely read without a smile or a sigh."
Lord Mahon could
have saved both his smiles and
his sighs if he had simply read with care the epitaph
engraved on the monument, which says: "To James III., son of James II.,
King of Great Britain, to Charles Edward, and Henry,
Dean of the Sacred
College, Sons of James III., the last of the Royal
House of Stuart."
Let us join, however, with Lord Mahon in the prayer which is heard so
often in Roman funeral services: Peace be with
them! REQUIESCANT
IN PACE! |