Royal Visitors to Rome

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 16, 26 April 1923, Page 23

Royal Visitors to Rome

(By A. H. A., in the London Catholic Times.) . It is stated that early in the coming spring King George V. and Queen Mary will go to Rome, and that their stay there' will include receptions both at the Vatican and the Quirinal. Until very recently it was impossible for a visitor to Rome to be received during the same visit by both Pope and King, but one of the last acts of the late Pope Benedict XV. was to decide that for the future a visit to the Quirinal should not be a bar to an audience at the Vatican. King Canute and the People. It is just 896 years since a reigning King of England went to Rome and was received in audience, by the Sovereign Pontiff. The Pope was John XIX., and the King was Canute, the Danish ruler of Anglo-Saxon England. In the winter of 1026 he started on the journey to Rome, and made a long stay there in the opening months of 1027. Conrad the Salian, who had been elected Emperor of Germany, had come to Rom© to be crowned, and Canute was present at his coronation on March 26. Besides visiting the sanctuaries of the Holy City, Canute discussed with the Pop© the affairs of his kingdom. He represented to the Pope that, when the Archbishops from England came to Rome to receive the pallium excessive dues had been demanded of them, and asked that this matter should be reformed. “A .decree was passed to stop this grievance,” he writes, on his return, to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and he adds: “Whatever I asked of the Pope for the good of my people was granted willingly, and confirmed by oath.” Visits of the Saxon Kings. Many of the Saxon kings had visited Rome. Amongst these Royal pilgrims were Caedwalla, Ina, Off a of Mercia, and Ethelwulf. Caedwalla and Ina both resigned their crowns in order to spend the last years of their lives in Rome. When Ethelwulf went to Rome in 855, during the pontificate of Benedict 111., he took with him his son and heir, a boy of six years of age. The boy lived to be the greatest of the Saxon kings, one of the best and most enlightened kings that ever occupied a throne —Alfred the Great. St. Edward the Confessor’s Vow. St. Edward the Confessor made a vow to visit Rome, like so many of his predecessors, but it was represented to him that the times were too critical for him to be absent for many months from his kingdom. He, therefore, sent an ambassador to Rome to ask the Pope what he should do. The Pope dispensed him from his vow, but decided that, as he could not make his intended pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles, he should distribute among the poor of his kingdom alms to the amount of the probable expenses he would have incurred if he had gone to Rome; and, further, he was either to erect or to repair a monastery dedicated to St. Peter. The abbey church of St. Peter at Westminster, founded long before by King Sobert, was in a dilapidated condition. St. Edward rebuilt it on a larger scale, adding also new buildings to the monastery. He was thus the second founder of the church that still keeps his sacred relics, and Westminster Abbey is a monument of the devotion of old England to the Holy See. A Stream of Pilgrims From England. In Saxon times there was a constant stream of pilgrims from England to Rome, where they had a hospice specially maintained for them. After the Norman■ conquest there were no more Royal pilgrimages to Rome. But two of the exiled Stuarts'died there, and their tombs in St. Peter’s are inscribed with their titles as “Kings of England,” in right of their claim to be the legitimate successors of their grandfather, James IT. One is the tomb of “Charles III.,” best known .as the “Young Chevalier,” Prince Charles Edward, the hero of 1745, the promise of whose early years was darkened by the miserable record of his later life. ;,V ; The Last of the Stuarts. , y The other tomb' is that of “Henry 1X.,” his younger .brother, and £he last of the Stuart line. After the failure Eof this elder brother’s efforts to win back the crown of England, Prince Henry (“Duke of York” in the exiled Jacobite Court) studied ‘ for the priesthood, was ordained and promoted to the See of Frascati and the Cardin a late. He was a model prelate, noted above all for the care of the

poor, among his people. He survived until 1807. In his last years the old feud between the Houses of Stuart and Brunswick had become a thing of the past. George I. provided an annuity for the Stuart “Cardinal of York” when the French occupation of the Papal States deprived him of most of his revenues. In return the Cardinal bequeathed to the Prince of Wades (afterwards George IV.) crown jewels he had inherited from James.. When he died the Government of George 111. provided the cost of the monument erected to his memory in St. Peter’s, the work of Oanova. Queen Alexandra’s Audience. In the latter years of the pontificate of Leo XIII. an English Queen, was received in audience at the Vatican. She was Queen Alexandra, who was then making a tour in Italy. It is an interesting coincidence that the last of the Royal visitors from England to Rome in Catholic days was the Danish King of England, Canute, and the first in our own time was the Danish princess, Queen Consort of England. Her son, King George, will be the first reigning King of England, since the Reformation to be received as an honored guest by the Father of Christendom.