Pilgrimage of the Earls” (1609)

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The “Nation” in Rome 23

Chapter 1 The “Nation” in Rome: Ó Cianáin’s “Pilgrimage of the Earls” (1609)

After a journey of over half a year from Rathmullan, County Donegal, the Ulster chieftains Hugh O’Neill, Rory O’Donnell, and Cúchonnacht Maguire entered Rome in April of 1608.1 Unable to exercise any kind of political power or open religious freedom in Ireland, these chieftains, also recognized as earls by the English crown, had set out for Europe, pinning their hopes on support from the king of Spain. Just months after their departure in September 1607, James I declared the earls’ departure to be treason2 and that the crown would confis- cate their lands to create the Plantation of Ulster in 1609, making any sort of return short of an armed invasion impossible. Later, in 1613, the English Parliament would declare them traitors by an act of attainder. They had left Ireland setting out for Spain, only to be diverted by a storm and landing in Quillebeuf near Le Havre, and from there journeying to Louvain and departing in February for Rome. Along with some 110 of their followers was the author of the sole narrative account of their journey, Tadhg Ó Cianáin. The Irish scribe recorded their arrival with a pomp and circumstance encouraging the percep- tion that they were fulfilling their ambition to gain support from Spain and the pope for a renewed battle against the English to attain political self-determina- tion in Ireland, a struggle that had previously ended in defeat at the close of the Nine Years’ War (1594–1603).3 On Tuesday, April 29, 1608, Archbishop of Armagh Peter Lombard, an Old Englishman from Waterford (and no doubt because of this not O’Neill’s first choice for the position), met them at the Ponte Molle, a mile from the Porta del Populo.

1 Their names in Irish are Aodh Ó Néill, Rudhraighe Ó Domhnaill, and Cú Chonnacht Mag Uidhir, which is how Ó Cianáin refers to them. For the ease of the English-speaking reader, I have rendered their names in English form. 2 James I, “A Proclamation Touching the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell,” 1607, UCC, CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts. 3 Among the most important accounts of what is known as “the flight of the Earls,” see Micheline Kerney Walsh, Destruction by Peace: Hugh O’Neill after Kinsale (Armagh, Northern Ireland: Armagh Diocesan Historical Society, 1986), and her An Exile of Ireland: Hugh O’Neill Prince of Ulster; John McCavitt, The Flight of the Earls; O Ciardha, Finnegan, and Peters, eds., Flight of the Earls/Imeacht na nIarlaí; Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour in Britain and Ireland.

The details that Ó Cianáin focuses on in his account of their initial arrival in Rome and those that he omits (whether out of ignorance or strategic choice) shed light on the role that this experience of exile has on the conception of Irish identity. The Irish writer makes no mention of “the English papists,” whom Sir Henry Wotton, English ambassador to Venice, reported were sent to meet the earls, “by commandment from the Pope.”4 The emphasis instead is on the presence of Archbishop Lombard, the top Irish representative of the Church, and the Roman cardinals’ recognition of the Irish. Identified by Ó Cianáin as “the primate of Ireland” (príomháidh na hÉireann), the title itself is a kind recognition of nationality, necessarily linked with and endorsed by Roman Catholic administrative hierarchy. Lombard had come to Rome as a representative of the University of Louvain, where he graduated first in his class.5 He had become a member of the papal household and “one of the clos- est advisors to the popes … later serving as the president of a committee preparing the condemnation of Galileo’s cosmology as heretical in 1616 and a lobbyist for clerics who needed special faculties from the Inquisition for their missionary work in Ireland.”6 Lombard’s example shows there was the possi- bility for Irish clerics to achieve positions of power in Rome, but that those came at the cost of subordinating local Irish needs to those of the global Roman Catholic Church. It was largely through the efforts of these clerics rather than through the Ulster chieftains that the Irish gained influence in Rome. The cardinals of Rome showed their respect for these Irish nobles by outfit- ting them with “fifteen coaches, all except a few coaches drawn by six steeds” and sending their stewards “to welcome them and to receive them with honour.”7 From the Ponte Molle, or Milvio, they went to St. Peter’s, where they made the traditional pilgrimage to the seven churches. From St. Peter’s, they were brought to a “splendid palace” that “His Holiness the Pope had set apart for them in the Borgo Vecchio,” the Palazzo Salviati near to the church of Santo Spirito and the church of San Onofrio.8 Months earlier the Spanish Royal

4 Calendar of State Papers Ireland 1606–8, 654. 5 Turas na dTaoiseach nUltach as Éirinn: From Rath Maoláin to Rome, ed. Nollaig Ó Muraíle (Rome: Pontifical Irish College, 2007), 266, 267. Hereafter referred to as Turas na dTaoi- seach. 6 On Lombard, see Bruno Boute, “Our Man in Rome: Peter Lombard,” in O’Connor and Lyons, The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe, 112; and Thomas O’Connor, “A Justification for Foreign Intervention in Early Modern Ireland: Peter Lombard’s Commentarius (1600),” in O’Connor and Lyons, Irish Migrants in Europe after Kinsale, 1602–1820, 118–34. 7 Turas na dTaoiseach, 267, 269. 8 Paul Walsh had identified this as the Palazzo dei Penitenzieri (now the Hotel Columbus on Via della Conciliazione); see Turas na dTaoiseach, 269, 564. Fearghus Ó Fearghail