Going the Distance

Our station churches have been at various distances over the last several days--generally about a 15-20 minute walk through the still-dark center of Rome. Today however tested our stamina, as we had to go a whole half block to arrive at the splendid Dodici Apostoli--the basilica named for not one, not two, but all twelve of the apostles!

It merits these bonus points by being the burial place of two of the original college: Philip and James the Less (watch for the signs: Saint James the Less Catholic Church . . . 'what do they do, skip the offertory?'). In addition to those two guys, the martyrs buried at the Apronian catacomb were carried here by the barefoot Pope Stephen VI in 886 to protect them from vandalizing invaders (very similar to invading vandals). Shoes, incidentally, had been invented by that era, but Stephen dispensed with them in his hike in indication of the bigger shoes the martyrs had left us to fill.

The inscription on the Apostles' tomb reads: "Hic Condita Sunt Corpora SS. Apostolor. Philippi et Iacobi Min.", which goes to show that even an apostle can't get people to bother writing out their whole name.









Image on tomb taken from New Expanded Version: instead of just 5 loaves and 2 fish, a whole bucket of each.




The tomb is in the crypt, from which this shot was taken:










Technically you could say I'm cheating by using this photo, since I took it last November.



You may have left your heart in San Francisco, but Clementina Sobieska left hers at the Church of the Twelve Apostles. Having lived across the street in the Palazzo Muti with her husband James III (and VIII--he collected numbers), the two of them lived in exile from England, where James' father (James II, and VII, of course--don't get those numbers mixed up) had been kicked out as king. James II (and VII) had made the big mistake of flunking a test (the Test Act of 1678 required all those holding office to take an oath denying Transubstantion, the invoking of the Saints, and the Sacrifice of the Mass--'for preventing Dangers which may happen from Popish Recusants') and, among other things, issuing the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, which would have decriminalized being a Roman Catholic in Merry Old England. So of course James III (and VIII), who like his father James II (and VII) was a dangerous Popish Recusant, was in no way suitable to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

James III (and VIII) unfortunately seems to have been what triggered his dad getting kicked off the English throne. James II (and VII)'s two older daughters were Protestants, and the Merry Old English could figure these Papist shenanigans would quickly cease once one of them became Supreme Governor of Everything Good and True. Supreme Governor of the Church of England Charles II had ordered the two of them to be raised as Protestants when his younger brother James didn't have a II or a VII, since he was just Duke of York. But when James got his II and VII after his brother's death (who had also screwed up at the end by becoming a Papist), he and his wife were publicly Catholic: so with James III (and VIII) being born on June 10th, 1688, England faced the grim prospects of a Catholic dynasty.

Glorious things followed however when James II (and VII)'s daughter Mary's husband William III (got all that?) received an invitation 3 weeks later to come restore Good Old (well, New) Protestantism to a less Merry, feeling its age Older England. At first William of Orange hesitated, thinking the English wouldn't welcome a foreign invader, but then he found that the preference was clearly for a Protestant Dutchman over a Catholic Englishman. So the James's (of all numeric varieties) lived outside of England after he and his army showed up.

James III (and VIII)'s kids were pretty remarkable too--his two sons were both born here in Rome; one, Bonnie Prince Charlie, hung out with the Highland Clans, and as the Scots tend to do, raised ruckus in the North of England for a brief while, the other, Henry Benedict Stuart, went on to become a Cardinal here in Rome. All three of them with Clementina, sans heart, are buried at Saint Peter's, which coincidentally is also in Rome, and another one of those 12 guys we mentioned earlier is also buried there.