The "Venerabile"
484 THE COMMONWEAL March 10, 1926 THE "VENERABILE" COME years ago Monsignor Hugh Benson, in one ^-*of his later novels, imagined for us a walled Rome, set apart and secluded from the rest of...
...Ours is a generation with an intact belief in its own inventions...
...But it can ill afford to lose a memorial so unique to a faith so sorely tried...
...The feast which Cardinal Howard gave in 1688 to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Wales to James II and Mary of Modena, included "an ox, roasted whole, being stuffed with lambs, fowls, and provisions of all kinds...
...Efforts, we are told, are being made to secure some change in Mussolini's architectural scheme which will spare the historic buildings of the Venerabile college, and they are said to have strong diplomatic support...
...Cardinal Pole, Cardinal Allen, Dr...
...To the lover of the past there is something almost heartrending in this constant boring and tunneling through a compost of human life that has swarmed at the highest pitch of civilized intensity for 3,000 years in one circumscribed area...
...They refuse to cap to Spanish Philip's ambassador, and, after Parsons's attack on Elizabeth's right to the throne, "could hardly bear to hear his name...
...Set in surroundings that were eloquent of past persecution and martyrdom, it brought home to them daily the lesson that the Kingdom of Heaven was still to be won by violence, and that the blood of martyrs had not ceased to be the seed of the Church...
...484 THE COMMONWEAL March 10, 1926 THE "VENERABILE" COME years ago Monsignor Hugh Benson, in one ^-*of his later novels, imagined for us a walled Rome, set apart and secluded from the rest of the world, and untouched even by the most plausible of its improvements, to which a generation that had obliterated the past might repair from time to time, for refreshment and relief when the multitude of its inventions became intolerable...
...the Puritan poet, Milton...
...It was Cardinal Allen, that great pilot of the English church through the hurricane of the second Reformation, who, in 1579, transformed the foundation into a seminary for the education of priests "for the mission," as a sister house to Douay and Rheims...
...Even Catholics in whose traditions England plays no part, will not contemplate the disappearance of the venerable fabric without regret...
...Suppressed for twenty years by Bonaparte and the French Directorate, the Venerabile resumed its task of training English seminarists early in the nineteenth century, under secular priests of their own race...
...The annals of the Venerabile make curious reading...
...They insisted on heavy, sweet puddings of sound English texture...
...In 1721, the "old Pretender" (who is James III anywhere legitimism is respected) is their guest of honor, and present at a Mass celebrated by Pope Clement XL Strangely enough, leading Protestants from persecuting England seem to have made a point, throughout penal times, of visiting the college where the young men whom they would hang, draw and quarter so soon as they set foot on its shores, were being trained for martyrdom...
...They objected to Jesuit discipline, to Italian government of any sort...
...Goldwell of Saint Asaph, the last English bishop whose orders were recognized as valid by Rome, and Dr...
...The pious vision is not likely to be realized...
...For their hunted priests it served as an asylum...
...Established in 1330 as a hospice for the relief of English pilgrims, who were being victimized by an earlier generation of profiteers, it was taken over by Henry VII as a residence for the constant legates and ambassadors who were passing between England and Rome in the stormy days of the early sixteenth century...
...To them the "Venerabile," as it has always been called, has been a household name for four centuries...
...For centuries it has reminded them that what English Catholics endured for the sake of their faith, was but one phase of an ordeal that did not spare brothers by creed and spiritual allegiance in other lands...
...Yet, one hundred years later, their loyalties are all for the exiled Stuarts...
...In the pages of the guest book, we are told, can be found the signatures of Harvey, discoverer of the circulation of the blood...
...uThey are endeavoring to establish a sort of democracy," reports one puzzled Cardinal visitor, even while reporting that the lads are umodest, continent and of great piety...
...An article in a recent issue of the London Times gives an interesting account of the threatened college...
...The sturdy English lads who filled its walls, candidates for martyrdom as one and all were, refused to abate a jot of their national prejudices or patriotism...
...The news that improvements, which include a public market, are now threatening the English College in the Via Monserrato comes as something of a shock to all lovers of Rome whose interest does not, as is too often the case, end with the overthrow of the ancient world...
...To English Catholics it is particularly ungrateful tidings...
...Griffith Roberts, the Welsh grammarian and confessor of Saint Charles Borromeo, were all residents...
...indeed, every day that passes seems to set it further and further from actuality...
...At the time of the Armada they are openly antiSpanish, hurrahing for English victories and frankly grieving when any news of a Spanish success reaches them...
...Among their first pupils, and subsequently their loved rector, was that father of the English Catholic revival and link between two ages, Cardinal Wiseman...
...Their insularity breaks out in one quarrel after another...
...and the prim diarist, Evelyn...
...In the interests of history and religion alike, it is to be hoped they will succeed, and that a fabric which has harbored so much devoted and generous blood will be spared...
...The "improvements" will entail the disappearance of a sanctuary associated with the most tragic days of their faith...
...It is the fate of the Eternal City to be a perennial city as well, renewed and refashioned unceasingly, where every spadeful of earth that is excavated turns up to the sky the reproachful mask of vanished ages...
...For the students who reinforced the hard-pressed Church, it was something more than a mere seminary...
Vol. 3 • March 1926 • No. 18
