English College, Rome
Venerable English College | |
---|---|
41°53′44.328″N 12°28′11.625″E / 41.89564667°N 12.46989583°E | |
Location | Via di Monserrato, 45; Roma, Italia 00186 |
Country | Italy |
Denomination | Roman Catholic |
Website | www |
History | |
Authorising papal bull | 23 April 1579 by Pope Gregory XIII |
Founder(s) | Cardinal William Allen |
Relics held | English Martyrs |
Administration | |
Archdiocese | Rome |
Clergy | |
Rector | Rev. Stephen Wang |
The Venerable English College (Italian: Venerabile Collegio Inglese), commonly referred to as the English College, is a Catholic seminary in Rome, Italy, for the training of priests for England and Wales. It was founded in 1579 by William Allen on the model of the English College, Douai.
The current Rector is Rev. Stephen Wang from the Diocese of Westminster.
History
St Thomas' Hospice (1362–1579)
The English Hospice of the Most Holy Trinity and St Thomas was founded in the
The Hospice of St Thomas grew into the major centre for English visitors and residents in Rome. In 1376 a Chapel was erected on the site of the present College Church, and remnants of the impressive structure still remain in the College Garden. The new Chapel attracted royal patronage and by the reign of
Wardens included Thomas Linacre, founder of the Royal College of Physicians, and Cardinal Christopher Bainbridge, Archbishop of York and Papal Legate, who was poisoned by one of his chaplains at the Hospice on 7 July 1514 and whose magnificent marble tomb remains in the College Church. Robert Neweton, described in 1399 as chaplain procurator of the Hospice of the Holy Trinity & St Thomas the Martyr, may have been a warden[2] as might William Holdernes (fl. 1396)[3]
During the 237 years of its existence, the English Hospice received many thousands of pilgrims, one of the most famous being the mystic, Margery Kempe, who visited in 1416.[4] In 1481, 218 pilgrims stayed here, and during the plague of 1482, the Hospice cared for 96 sick pilgrims. However, two events in the early sixteenth century led to a radical decline in the fortunes of the Hospice.
During the
Foundation of the college (1579)
In 1576, with the encouragement of
Division and disorder overhung the first years of the English College. A Welshman,
The English Romayne Life and Anthony Munday
An interesting description of life in the early days of the seminary comes from the pen of Anthony Munday. Coming to Rome in 1578 with a friend, Thomas Nowell, he stayed at the College and later published his impressions in The English Romayne Life (1582). Here he describes a typical dinner at the College;
“Every man has his own trencher, his manchet, knife, spoon and fork laid by it, and then a fair white napkin covering it, with his glass and pot of wine set by him. And the first mess, or antepast (as they call it)….is some fine meat to urge them to have an appetite….The fourth is roasted meat, of the daintiest provision that they can get, and sometimes stewed and baked meat....The first and last is sometimes cheese, sometimes preserved conceits, sometimes figs, almonds and raisins, a lemon and sugar, a pomegranate, or some such sweet gear; for they know that Englishmen loveth sweetmeats.”
On returning to England, Munday turned informer and helped to betray Edmund Campion and other Jesuit priests.
The age of the martyrs (1581–1679)
The College has been known as the "Venerable English College" since 1818 because of the 44 students who were martyred for the Roman Catholic faith between 1581 and 1679, as well as the 130 who suffered imprisonment and exile. Forty of these have since been canonised or beatified by the Church.
The College's Protomartyr was St
His time soon came, and within four months of landing, he was captured, imprisoned, tortured and finally hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 1 December 1581. Many others followed – including St Robert Southwell, the Jesuit poet (1595), and his fellow Jesuit St Henry Morse, the "Priest of the Plague" (1645). The last College martyrdoms were in 1679 during the anti-Roman Catholic hysteria following the "Popish Plot", when David Lewis, John Wall and Anthony Turner suffered.
The College soon gained a reputation as a nursery of Martyrs. A custom arose of a student preaching before the Pope every
“The Martyrs’ Picture” is the first thing one notices upon entering the College church. It was painted by
The college martyrs
- St Ralph Sherwin, 1581
- Bl Thomas Cottam, 1582
- St Luke Kirby, 1582
- Bl. John Shert, 1582
- Bl. William Lacey (Catholic priest), 1582
- Bl. William Hart, 1583
- Bl. Robert Nutter (priest), 1584
- Bl. John Munden (priest), 1584
- Bl. Thomas Hemerford, 1584
- Bl. George Haydock, 1584
- Bl. John Lowe, 1586
- Bl. Christopher Buxton, 1588
- Bl. Edward James, 1588
- Bl. Richard Leigh, 1588
- Bl. Robert Morton, 1588
- Bl. Edmund Duke, 1590
- Bl. Christopher Bales, 1590
- St Polydore Plasden, 1591
- St Eustace White, 1591
- Bl. Joseph Lambton, 1592
- Bl. Thomas Pormort, 1592
- Bl. John Cornelius S.J., 1594
- Bl. John Ingram, 1594
- Bl. Edward Thwing, 1594
- St Robert Southwell S.J., 1595
- St Henry Walpole S.J., 1595
- Bl. Robert Middleton, 1601
- Ven. Thomas Tichborne, 1602
- Bl. Robert Watkinson, 1602
- Bl. Thomas Tichborne S.J., 1602
- Bl. Edward Oldcorne, 1606
- St John Almond, 1612
- Bl. Richard Smith, 1612
- Bl. John Thules, 1616
- Bl. John Lockwood, 1642
- Ven. Edward Morgan, 1642
- Ven. Brian Tansfield S.J., 1643
- St Henry Morse S.J., 1645
- Bl. John Woodcock O.F.M., 1646
- Ven. Edward Mico S.J., 1678
- Bl. Anthony Turner S.J., 1679
- St David LewisS.J., 1679
- St John Wall O.F.M., 1679
Cardinal Howard and the "king over the water"
The last College martyr suffered in 1679. Two years later most of the College was rebuilt,
During the eighteenth century, the College attached itself to Jacobitism, praying for a restored Stuart monarchy which would be sympathetic to the Catholic faith. The Stuart pretenders, who lived nearby at the Palazzo Muti, were occasional visitors to the College.
Shortly after the death of the "
In 1773
In 1796
Wiseman and the golden age
The College, without staff or students, survived the Napoleonic period: account books and legal meetings continued throughout the period, largely due to the support of the Cardinal Protector, Romoaldo Braschi-Onesti, nephew of Pius VI. In 1818 an English rector, Robert Gradwell, was appointed and started the life of the College anew with a small group of students, including Nicholas Wiseman, who subsequently became rector at the age of 27 (1828) and the first Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster (1850).
Wiseman succeeded in making the College a centre of intellectual and social life. He became a professor of
In 1866 Pope
The World Wars
The inter-war period saw the rectorships of
Hinsley did a great deal of restructuring work, including the buying of a new villa at Palazzola. This former Franciscan Friary replaced the cramped summer house at Monte Porzio which students had used since the seventeenth century. In 1926, with the help of front page support from The Times, Hinsley saved the College from a scheme of the Rome city planners to destroy some of the buildings to make room for a covered market.
World War II resulted in a second period of exile for the College. Dressed in civilian clothes, courtesy of the stageman, the house left Rome on 16 May 1940 and narrowly secured places on the last boat for England from Le Havre, which was about to fall. The College buildings were used as a hospital organised by the Knights of Malta from 1941 to 1944. Students continued classes and seminary life first at Ambleside in the Lake District and then at the Jesuit Stonyhurst College, returning to Rome in the autumn of 1946.
The Second Vatican Council
The English and Welsh bishops stayed at the College during the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), as they had done during the First Vatican Council (1869–70).
Recent history
In 1979, on the College's fourth centenary,
On 1 December 2012 (Martyrs' Day – its annual commemoration of former students who had suffered martyrdom), the College celebrated the 650th anniversary of the foundation of the original hospice on the site with a concelebrated Mass at which the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were present as representatives of the Queen, together with the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, and the Cardinal Archbishop Emeritus of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, a former Rector of the College. This celebration was followed by a papal audience with Pope Benedict XVI on 3 December 2012.
In April 2017
The college arms
The College's coat of arms follows ecclesiastical usage. It features the symbol of the Pope's apostolic authority, namely, the
The college garden
Although located in central Rome, the College possesses an extensive garden (laid out substantially as it was in the days of the Martyrs) and a swimming pool, recently refurbished with the aid of the Friends of the Venerabile. As swimming pools were for many years prohibited for reasons of water conservation, it was once classified as a water storage facility, and a remnant of this former association survives in the College slang term for the pool, the tank. The garden contains a number of Roman columns and other pieces of classical stonework, as well as pillars and window frames from the 14th-century Chapel.
College alumni
Twentieth century
- Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet
- Cardinal Francis Bourne
- Cardinal Arthur Hinsley
- Cardinal William Godfrey
- Cardinal William Theodore Heard
- Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor
- Norman St John-Stevas
- Sir Anthony Kenny
- Archbishop Paul Gallagher
- Cardinal Michael Fitzgerald
- Archbishop Patrick Altham Kelly
- Cardinal Vincent Nichols
Burials
- Christopher Bainbridge, in the chapel of St Thomas of Canterbury at what was then called the English hospice in Rome.
- Francis Fenwick (1645–1694), an English Benedictine monk.
- George Gilbert, benefactor of the Jesuits.
See also
- Beda College
- English College, Douai
- English College, Lisbon
- English College, Valladolid
- The Scots College (Rome)
- San Silvestro in Capite
- List of Jesuit sites
References
- ^ a b c "History", Venerable English College
- ^ Plea Rolls of the Court of Common Pleas; National Archives; CP 40/555; (1 Henry IV); first entry: Robtus Neweton capellanus p'curator hospitalis Ste Trinitat' & Sti Thome Martiris in urbe Romana
- ^ Plea Rolls of the Court of Common Pleas; National Archives; CP 40/541; year 1396; third entry, with "london" in the margin
- ^ "Kempe, Margery (c. 1373 – c. 1440 )." British Writers: Supplement 12. Ed. Jay Parini. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2007. 167–183. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 23 October 2013
- ^ For all of these see Edward Chaney, The Grand Tour and the Great Rebellion: Richard Lassels and 'The Voyage of Italy in the Seventeenth Century (Geneva: Slatkine, 1985), passim
- ^ a b Cooper, Clenocke (1887). Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 37. . In
- ^ a b c Cronin, Charles. "The English College, in Rome." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 5. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. 18 February 2018
- ^ Lamb, Christopher. "Fire Breaks Out in Rome's Venerable English College", the Tablet, 31 May 2017
External links
- Venerable English College, Rome
- The College Villa, Palazzola
- Friends of the Venerabile
- Sermon by Pope John Paul II on the Fourth Centenary of the College
- Letter from Pope John Paul II for the Fourth Centenary of the College
- National Archives College Details
- The Forty Four
- Interactive Nolli Map Website