From St Gregory on the Caelian

A tablet in the forecourt of San Gregorio al Celio records the following saints and worthies who came from this place in the days of its first flowering, after St Gregory turned his family home into a monastery (originally dedicated to St Andrew, to whom St Gregory had a great devotion - hence the naming of St Andrew in the Embolism at Mass):

• St Gregory himself, founder and father of the monastery;
• St Eleutherius, abbot;
• Hilarion, abbot;
• St Augustine, Apostle of the English;
• St Lawrence, Archbishop of Canterbury;
• St Mellitus, Bishop of London and soon afterward Archbishop of Canterbury;
• St Justus, Bishop of Rochester (Roffensis);
• St Paulinus, Archbishop of York;
• St Maximianus, Bishop of Syracuse;
• SS Antonius, Merulus and John, monks;
• St Peter, Abbot of Canterbury;
• Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury;
• Merinianus, Archbishop of Ravenna;
• Probus, custodian of the house of pilgrims (curator xenodochii) at Jerusalem, chosen by St Gregory;
• Sabinus, Bishop of Callipolis;
• Felix, Bishop of Messina;
• Gregory, Cardinal Deacon of St Eustachius.

• Here also lived for a long time the mother of St Gregory, St Silvia.

Most of these men were sent on the English Mission - or should we call it, as the Anglicans mocked at English Catholics in recent centuries, the Italian Mission?

St Augustine of Canterbury and his monks preach the Gospel to King Ethelbert of Kent.

So the Church in England, which converted the pagan Angles, Jutes and Saxons, was Roman as Rome itself... none of these men forswore the Faith, broke with the Pope, reviled the Roman Mass, rejected the Saints, married against the canons of the Western Church, nor chose Caesar over God. Let Anglicans attend to this lesson: the witness of the first millennium of Christianity in England is against them.

Roma

According to my itinerary, I should arrive to-day in Rome at the airport just after 6 am local time. After that, I'll take the train into the City, and walk the last few hundred metres from Circus Maximus station (!) to my accommodation at San Gregorio al Celio. Once this is done, and I've had a chance to catch my breath, my plan is to proceed direct to St Peter's, as every Catholic should. Pray for me - I want to avoid pickpockets!

Ad limina...

San Gregorio al Celio

It's not what you know, it's who you know...

Herr Schütz having tipped me off about a decent spot to stay at while in Rome, I've made contact, and arranged to stay at the monastery of St Gregory the Great on the Cælian Hill: about 500 m south of the Colosseum. But wait, there's more: to my amazement, it turns out that this monastery (in the care of the Camaldolese monks since the sixteenth century) was the family villa of Pope Gregory the Great, the very one that he turned into a monastery dedicated to St Andrew in the late sixth century, even before he ascended the Chair of St Peter.

The church (repaired and redecorated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - before Australia was colonized!) contains both an episcopal throne he used, and a chapel into which is incorporated the cell once dwelt in by Gregory while he was a monk, while his mother, St Silvia, is buried nearby. (St Silvia had her own house chapel, which later became the monastery of St Sabas - on whose feast this blog was begun, and under whose patronage it is placed: what a coincidence!)

What an astonishing prospect that I'll be staying in so historic a place, less than 5 km from the Vatican.

(The Triumph of St Gregory, on the vault of the nave)

I leave for Rome just over a month from now, and will be there - but for an overnight trip to Florence and back - from the 8th to the 18th of September.

SS Peter and Paul, Apostles of Rome, pray for us.

All ye Holy Martyrs of the Roman Church, pray for us.

St Gregory the Great, Apostle of the English, pray for us.

All Holy Popes, pray for us.

St Philip Neri, pray for us.

St Silvia, pray for us.

All Saints of the Holy Roman Church, pray for us.