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Being "British" In Rome: The Welsh at the English College, 1578-1584

In 1580, nearly four hundred years after Pope Innocent III terminated Welsh hopes of ecclesiastical independence by upholding Canterbury's jurisdiction over Wales, Gregory XIII followed in his predecessor's footsteps by again quashing Welsh dreams of clerical freedom from England. Yet, unlike their forebears, the Welsh diaspora in Rome during the 1570's did not advocate the ecclesiastical independence of Wales from England. Rather, they sought to protect their influence over the English College of Rome, which contained a significant number of Welsh students headed by a Welshman from 1565 to 1579. This article demonstrates how, exactly, the Welsh emigres used the sacred history of their province as an important aspect in their defense of this national institution. The name of this establishment, the English College or Collegium Anglorum, does not indicate an obvious arena for Welsh influence. Indeed, Gregory XIII recognized this discrepancy when he allegedly remarked, "Why (quoth he) I made the Hospitall for Englishe men, and for their sake I have given so large exhibition: and not for the Welsh men."1 Yet, during the late 1570's, the principal founder and rector of the English College, the Welshmen Owen Lewis and Morys Clynnog, viewed their institution instead as the Seminarium Britannicum. Importantly, while the term "British "gradually acquired its modern significance during this period, Owen Lewis employed the term Britannia as a synonym for Wales, referring, like Geoffrey of Monmouth, to England and Wales respectively as "nationem Anglicam" or "nationem Britannicam."2 Thus, when the English students and their Jesuit mentors sought to topple the Welsh oligarchy during Lent of 1579, the Welsh exiles reacted by turning to Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1135) in order to defend their interests and attack their Saxon enemies in Rome. The Welsh exiles did more than merely recite a few lines of provincial history in order to defend their influence over the English College. They also worked as ecclesiastical historians and antiquarians in an attempt to prove one of Geoffrey of Monmouth's stories, which had direct relevance for the prestige of the Welsh in Rome. Namely, in the final pages of Geoffrey's history, Cadwaladr, the last king of the Britons, renounced his claim to the throne of Britain, which passed to the Saxon invaders, in order to make a pilgrimage to Rome, where he died in the year 689.3 In the late 1570's, during the reconstruction of St. Peter's, the English exiles claimed to discover an ancient tombstone in St. Peter's that bore the name of Caedwalla, king of Wessex, who according to Bede had died in Rome during a pilgrimage, also in the year 689/ The Welsh exiles, already furious with the demands presented by the English students in the English College, unequivocally denounced the archaeological interpretation of the English students, and proposed instead that the unearthed tomb belonged to Cadwaladr. This debate, which attracted the attention of Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto (the Vatican Librarian) due to the incessant letters of several Welshmen in Rome, was essentially a new spin on an old historiographical debate between supporters of Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth, but it received added importance in Rome circa 1580 when tensions between the two sides were already running high in the battle for control of the Collegium Anglorum or Seminarium Britannicum.5 By the end of 1579 the Jesuits had taken control of the English College. They stripped Morys Clynnog of his rectorship and wardenship, while Owen Lewis retired to the court of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo in Milan, and in the following years the presence of Welsh students at the seminary gradually decreased to nothing.6 Yet, despite their losses, during the 1580's the Welsh exiles turned with new energy "to avenge in the archive their defeats on the battlefield."7 Their attempt to "prove" the legend of Cadwaladr in Rome belonged to a longstanding tradition that held that Wales' special relationship with Rome could reinforce Welsh identity and protect Welshmen from English aggression. …