Jacobite Rome and the Church of St. Edmund

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There are more sites of Jacobite interest in Rome than in any other European city, although on my recent visit there I saw only one or two of them. The Venerable English College remains a den of Jacobite sympathy – or at least it was a few years ago when I last visited, albeit the seminarian who showed me around this time gave me a blank look when I pointed out the portrait of Henry IX. I photographed this portrait and the arms of King Henry, for whom Pius VII made an exception when he prohibited the display of coronets on Cardinals’ coats of arms.In St. Peter’s I paid homage to the monument to the Stuart kings and the monument to Queen Clementina; later I passed the tomb of James III in the crypt (he seems to be the only non-Pope buried down there) but I was unable to photograph it. It is a fittingly distinguished burial place, although I should still prefer him to be in Westminster Abbey…

Another aim I had in Rome was to track down any remains of the Church of St. Edmund on Campo dei Fiori, recorded by J. B. Mackinlay in 1893 as having been founded either in 1300 or 1350 by a Mr and Mrs Whyte as the chapel of a hostel for English pilgrims; it was absorbed into the Hospital of the Most Holy Trinity and St. Thomas of Canterbury (now the English College) in 1463 (hence the appearance of Edmund in the Hospital seal and later in the Martyrs’ Picture) but a pediment bearing the Plantagenet arms survived near the Church of the Genoese and the Church of St. Cecilia until about 1888 if Mackinlay is to be believed. Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any churches now on Campo dei Fiori at all – the nearest is St. Bridget of Sweden on Piazza Farnese.

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Filed under antiquarianism, history, jacobitism