reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches

She may have been prepared to receive him in England -and this was considered politically necessary to keep the Irish in their place – but Odo Russell, the unofficial Bristish Diplomatic Agent in Rome, made a formal offer of Malta to the Secretary of State, cardinal Antonelli. Antonelli, in a famous reply, thanked her Britannic majesty for her generosity and solicitude for the security of the person of His Holiness but assured Russell that there was little prospect of His Holiness being able to avail of the offer as he suffered greatly from sea-sickness!!

I have photos of the entire inner workings of that clock, the actual timekeeping thing itself is tiny. Will post when I’m at home for Christmas 😀

Will probobly take awhile to fix, as its hard to get at and a lot of these styles of repair need Bord Pleanala approval, or some crazy planning thing.

Some places even need permission from the planning folk to fix terribly leaking roofs.

@Praxiteles wrote:

She may have been prepared to receive him in England -and this was considered politically necessary to keep the Irish in their place – but Odo Russell, the unofficial Bristish Diplomatic Agent in Rome, made a formal offer of Malta to the Secretary of State, cardinal Antonelli. Antonelli, in a famous reply, thanked her Britannic majesty for her generosity and solicitude for the security of the person of His Holiness but assured Russell that there was little prospect of His Holiness being able to avail of the offer as he suffered greatly from sea-sickness!!

My point remains that, despite the several hundred years during which England had severed religious ties with the papacy, and in spite, too, of the anti-Catholicism that had become a salient feature of English public life, Queen Victoria was nonetheless prepared both to acknowledge the temporal claims of the papacy and to receive the Pope in a manner much more benign than was the attitude of HIS OWN PEOPLE! Give credit where itis due.

It is also to the credit of George III, the Prince Regent, and various ministers of state within the British govt of an earlier date in the nineteenth century that all but two shiploads of priceless booty plundered by Napoleon from the Vatican musea and art galleries were restored by Britain after 1814. [Apparently two ships sank. so perhaps some day part of the treasure may be recovered.]

The papacy had Cardinal Consalvi to thank for this arrangement. His diplomatic skills were quite remarkable. It was he who, when Napoleon in a fit of rage threatened to destroy the Catholic Church ‘overnight’, coolly replied to the Little Emperor that if 1800 years of priests could not destroy the Church, his army scarcely stood much of a chance. The British govt and people were charmed by Consalvi, who found a surprisingly welcome reception at the Court of St James’s.

When Pope Pius VII [over whose election in Vienna Cardinal Consalvi presided as Camerlengo] died, Consalvi assigned a Protestant to design the monumental tomb of Pius VII. It is the only monument in St Peter’s Basilica to have been designed and executed by a Protestant. This before the ‘age of ecumenism’. The figures of the Pope flanked by St Peter and St Paul, in classical style, are rather too static for my taste. Perhaps, Prax, you might add a photo of it on this thread and on the Brother Michael Augustine O’Riordan thread.

I assume that it was Consalvi and Pius VII who placed the kneeling statue of Pius VI in the crypt/confessio. The pontiff is portrayed gazing upwards in an attitude of prayer from the floor of the confessio to the Holy Spirit in the underside of Bernini’s great bronze baldachino. I regret to mention that that satue (which I much prefer to that of Pius VII) has been displaced by the modern Cristo Re altar and has been relegated to the last place in the chapel of the popes in the crypt of St Peter’s Basilica. Pius VI, who reigned as Supreme Pontiff during the carnage of the French Revolution, was later abducted by Napoleon and brought in a carriage across the Alps and eastwards to Vienna. The Pope was not granted even rest stops, even though he was suffering intensely from kidney stones. The rickety ride alone up the Italian penninsula and across the alps was a living martyrdom for the old man. He died in humiliation north of the Alps. His was the longest pontificate after Leo XIII.

The placement of the statue of Pope PIus VI at the base of the confessio of St Peter’s Basilica was itself a tribute to the faithful witness of this successor of St Peter and his close link to the Prince of the Apostles.

So … viewed in the historical context of the temporal humiliation of the papacy in the 19th century, Queen Victoria comes out of this mess looking rather good!

Here is Berthel Thornvaldsen’s monument to Pius VII in the south transept of St. Peter’s Basilica. It was completed by the Danish artist -and pupil of Canova’s – in 1832.

And here is Canova’s monument to Pius VI, placed in the Confessio of St. Peter’s. Pius VI died at Valence in France in 1799 but his remains were not returned to the Basilica of St. Peter’s until the reign of Pius XII in 1949.

@Praxiteles wrote:

I wonder whether we are not mixing up monuments here: is it not Tenerani’s (1866) monument to Pius VIII at the door to the sacristy of St. Peter’s , also in the South transept, that has the figures of the Apostles Peter and Paul?

Zapped again, Prax! Touche!

I had dashed off the earlier message nowhere near my usual site, on my way to another place. Indeed there was a confusion of monuments. For what it’s worth, I find both monuments somewhat static, though the statues of Sts Peter and Paul seem to me even more static than the figures on the monument of Pius VII.

Thanks for the photos. And for the corrections.

The statue of Pius VI which used to be in the confessio of St Peter’s was moved, was it not? I thought that it was repositioned at the end of the crypt near the exit. The upward gaze is less effective in its current location than it was when in the confessio. Of course, the statue may now be back in its original spot. I stand to be corrected.

Canova’s monument for Clement XIII on which he worked from 1783-1792. This monument marks the arrival of the neo-classical ididom into the basilica.

And, what is probably the most famous monument in St. peter’s Basilica, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s monument of 1678 for Pope Alexander VII – who built the colonnade in St. Peter’s Square

@Praxiteles wrote:

And, what is probably the most famous monument in St. peter’s Basilica, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s monument of 1678 for Pope Alexander VII – who built the colonnade in St. Peter’s Square

Note the movement of this piece. The colourful marble cloth covers the head of winged Death as the Grim Reaper extends the hour glass, for none of us knows the day or the hour when the Son of Man shall come.

@Rhabanus wrote:

Note the movement of this piece. The colourful marble cloth covers the head of winged Death as the Grim Reaper extends the hour glass, for none of us knows the day or the hour when the Son of Man shall come.

Note too that Alexander is not in the least perturbed by that greatest misfortune of all – sudden death! NOte too that the statue of Truth has her foot placed firmly on England!