Finalizing Holiday Plans

Persevering readers of this blog (if there are any) will know that I am heading to England, Scotland and Italy for a holiday at the very end of this year and the start of next - which is quite typical of me, being so contrary as to head to the far north in mid-winter! I know Traddies like to be climate change deniers out of a general sense of contrariety, but I for one wouldn't mind some warming coming up very soon...

While I have to sort out the English leg of my holiday, it will be spent in London and Oxford; but for the benefit of my Scottish contacts, my very distant relatives, I can confirm that I'll fly up to Edinburgh on Monday the 4th of January, and stay in the Athens of the North over three nights, before departing for Florence on Thursday: so I'll keep Epiphany in Scotland.

Firenze - città bellissima! I can't wait to get back there - I'll stay at my usual hotel on the banks of the Arno for two nights, and then take the train to Rome on the morning of Saturday January 9th. The local Carmelites tell me I simply must make it to the shrine of one of their incorruptibles, St Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart, of their Order...

Once in the Eternal City, I will catch up with several other Aussies, and we should have a pleasant time, hopefully at last including a day-trip to Assisi, before I have to leave for Australia on Thursday the 14th: I will have the weekend in Melbourne before finally getting home on Sunday afternoon.

Burns reminds me that best-laid plans gang aft agley... I trust the Lord will preserve and guide me, as He ever has.

Gunpowder Treason

As Fr Garnet, Provincial of the Jesuits in England, affirmed at the time, the plot to blow up the King, Queen, and the Three Estates of the Realm on the 5th of November 1605 was a most immoral and wicked plan (for one thing, one cannot willy nilly slay the innocent, along with those believed guilty of tyranny and oppression, by committing mass murder); not that that spared poor Father, since not only were the conspirators detected and hanged, but so was he - for not revealing what they had brought to him in confession, as well as for being a Popish priest.

Some Traditionalists may get a bit misty-eyed, and rather wish that Providence had permitted, rather than foiled, the careful firing of gunpowder beneath the State Opening of Parliament: but this is folly; ends justify not means. And further, as has been pointed out before, if the blast had been set off, even with the gunpowder "decayed", the huge explosion would have blown King James with his Lords and Commons to kingdom come, certainly (as recent tests have proven) - but almost as certainly, this would have not resulted in any Catholic restoration of merrie England: on the contrary, it would have most probably whipped up a Protestant vigilante frenzy, resulting in a reverse St Bartholomew's Day Massacre of English Catholics, one and all: for all would have been regarded as most barbarous conniving bloodthirsty fiends. Charles and his sister would have survived (they were not at the Lords), and easily eluded capture, and the Protestant succession to the throne would not have been harmed; but Catholics and Catholicism would have been even worse regarded in England thereafter than they were in reality.

To-day also marks that low point in English history, when James II lost his chance of keeping his throne by his pigheaded attempts to push his absolute authority and the cause of Catholicism when he had no hope of succeeding - for on this day in 1689 William III, that canny Dutchman, arrived in England, promising to preserve English (Protestant) laws and liberties; James found his power ebbed away, and he had to flee. If only James, the last of the Stuarts, had not been so stubborn and foolhardly as to alienate everyone!

As an amusing note, from the infamous Guy Fawkes, and the custom of making a ragtag "Guy" to burn at a bonfire on the anniversary of this day, came the expression "guy", originally for some oddly drest fellow, then for any man, and now, in the plural "guys" for any group of men, and even, as I myself use it, as an informal expression addressable to a gather of both sexes.

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.

Sir Edward Carne

Another monumental inscription at San Gregorio al Celio:

D.O.M.

EDOVARDO CARNO BRITANNO EQVITI AVRATO IV[-]
RISCONSVLTO ORATORI SVMMIS DE REBVS BRITA[-]
NNIAE REGVM AD IMPERATOREM, AD REGES, BISQ.
AD ROMANAM ET APOSTOLICAM SEDEM QVARVM
IN ALTERA LEGATIONE A PHILIPPO MARIAQ. PIIS
REGIBVS MISSVS OBORTO DEINDE POST MORTEM
MARIAE IN BRITANNIA SCHISMATE SPONTE PATRIA
CARENS OB CATHOLICAM FIDEM CV[M] MAGNA INTE[-]
GRITATIS VERAEQ. PIETATIS EXISTIMATIONE DECE[-]
SSIT HOC MONVMENTVM GALFRIDVS VACHANVS
ET THOMAS FREMANNVS AMICI EX TESTAMENTO POS.
OBIIT ANN. SALVTIS MDLXI XIIII CAL. FEB.

Here is the story of his life and end as given in the Dictionary of National Biography.

Requiescat in pace. Amen.

Robert Peckham, R.I.P.

Robert Peckham was an Englishman who left all he loved in England when his nation fell from the Catholic Faith; he died in Rome on the 13th of September 1569, and had a memorial erected to him in the forecourt of San Gregorio al Celio, where I'm staying. It appears that he had the friendship and the aid of his fellow-escapee from evil Elizabeth, the last of the English hierarchy, Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St Asaph (who assisted at Trent, and ordained St Philip Neri).

I feel a great sadness at this and a connexion to him, and to a fellow Englishman also commemorated by a plaque at St Gregory's, since it was from this same church that St Augustine of Canterbury and his companions went forth in 597 at Pope Gregory the Great's command to bring the pagan English the True Faith; and here one of the faithful remnant of their mission came to die when all seemed lost, when after near a thousand years faithlessness and immorality seemed to triumph in Our Lady's Dowry, which had been Merrie England.

On the last day, I hope to stand, all unworthy, yet penitent, by the side of such stedfast men - and not with Henry, Elizabeth, and all damned heretics and craven followers of worldly expediency.

Here is the inscription:

D.O.M.
ROBERT PECHAMO ANGLO
EQVITI AVRATO
PHILIPPO ET MARIAE
ANGLIAE ET HISPAN. REGIBVS
OLIM CONCILIIS
GENERE RELIGIONE VIRTVTE
PRAECLARO
QVI CVM PATRIAM SVAM
A FIDE CATHOLICA DEFICIENTEM ADSPICERE
SINE SVMMO DOLORE NON POSSET
RELICTIS OMNIBVS QVAE IN HAC VITA
CARISSIMA ESSE SOLENT
IN VOLVNTARIVM PROFECTVS EXILIVM
POST SEX ANNOS
PAVPERIBVS CHRISTI HAEREDIBVS
TESTAMENTO INSTITVTIS
SANCTISSIME E VITA MIGRAVIT
IDIB. SEPT. ANN. MDLXIX AETATIS SVAE LIV
THOMAS GOLDOVELLVS EPISCOP. ASAPHENSIS
ET THOMAS KIRTONVS ANGLI
TESTAMENTI PROCVRATORES POS.