The Venerable English College

Saturday several of us had the opportunity to visit the English College here in Rome, the oldest English institution outside of England.  Founded in 1579, it succeeded the Hospice of Saint Thomas established in 1362,  begun by John and Alice Shepherd as a center for English pilgrims.

The Main Chapel

Rosary sellers by trade, the couple purchased the site for a guild which cared for burgeoning number of visitors following the holy years 1300 and 1350.  Or to be precise, the "poor, infirm, needy and wretched persons from England".  The not-so-poor as well began to congregate there as well, and by the time of Henry VII, the nickname had been given of ‘the King’s Hospice’.

Our Lady of Walsingham

Henry VII’s son had a different relationship with Rome, and when Henry VIII took supremacy of the Church in England, coming to Rome suddenly took on a different light.

45 years after Henry’s schism, Catholics in England were still considered traitors, and to support or welcome a priest was a capital crime.  The foundation of the English College was to form priests to minister to the underground minority, though returning to England as a cleric meant death upon being apprehended.

The Martyrs Chapel

The walls of the College today list the 44 graduates who were killed in England over a 100 year period, from 1581 to 1678.  Brutality was integral to the government’s executions, and the second floor of the chapel was lined with images of alumni who had been killed, providing a testimony to their classmates who would follow them.

A favored form of execution, developed by Edward Longshanks of Braveheart fame, was to hang, draw, and quarter the condemned: being cut down from hanging before dying, the person’s abdomen was cut open to sequentially remove organs, and then the body was chopped in quarters after death.

 

In the English College the tradition developed of gathering to sing the Te Deum upon receiving news of the martyrdom of a graduate.  Saint Philip Neri lived across the street from the school, and on seeing the students in the street would greet them, “Salve flores martyrum,” meaning, ‘Hail, blossoms of the martyrs,’ as in the midst of studies they already recognized their fate.

Still in use as a seminary today, the College now bears the name Venerable, an appellation indicating its age and significance for the English people.

Ceiling of the refectory: Saint George