Tea at Trianon: Encountering Capuchins in 1630s London

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, July 28, 2023

Encountering Capuchins in 1630s London

From Hypotheses:

Here I focus on one interesting example of the Capuchin influence in Britain and draw attention to only one aspect of that example. It is perhaps not widely known that in 1630 twelve French Capuchins arrived from Paris to serve at the chapels of Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, and the French Ambassador. Details about this French Capuchin presence in England are preserved in a manuscript account of one of the friars, Fr Cyprien de Gamache, written many years later. This manuscript, written in French, provides an incredibly rare glimpse into the lives of Capuchins in the period beyond official rules, constitutions, and theological works.[5]

One aspect of Fr Cyprien’s account that is particularly interesting is the relationship it describes between French Capuchins in London and the Protestant majority they attempted to convert to Catholicism. It details the mindset of a group of Capuchins, situated in the chapel of a French queen, but in a country very much alien to their sensibilities. It reveals much, for example, about the extent of their ambitions to secure conversions. Fr Cyprien tells us that one of the key decisions taken almost immediately after their arrival in London was for them to begin learning English to preach, undertake confession, and engage with the populous. While their native French would have more than sufficed with Henrietta Maria and the royal court, many of whom spoke French, the Capuchins clearly sought wider impact beyond the elite circles they had been brought into. Like Capuchins in many other countries in the period, they saw a wider public ministry and engagement with the poorer classes as an important element of their mission and identity.

In one humorous passage, Fr Cyprien describes how the Capuchins played up their identities as the foreign and Catholic ‘other’ in London to attract conversions. Since their arrival in London, they had been the subject of many rumours and gossip. They would soon find crowds of visitors eager to look around their cells and find out more about their way of life:

People talked of them in their houses; they said that they were persons so strange, wearing dresses so extraordinary, leading so austere a life, that every one conceived a desire to see them. Accordingly, persons of quality, ministers, people of all conditions, who had never been out of the kingdom, came to see them, as one goes to see Indians, Malays, Savages, and men from the extremities of the earth.[6]

As a result, the Capuchins harnessed this curiosity and controlled how they were perceived. They decided, for example, to remove their straw mattresses and pillows, leaving nothing but the bare boards to lie on. ‘This little self-denial’, Fr Cyprien tells us, ‘was admired by the English whom curiosity had brought into their chambers’. While touring the cells, the Capuchins would tell the crowds that England had been ‘full of monasteries and of holy friars’ like them before the schisms of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, and spoke about their earnest desire to fully imitate Christ. This approach, bordering on a form of ‘religious tourism’ in 1630s London, provided ample opportunity for the Capuchins to generate conversation with Protestant onlookers. ‘The English language had become more familiar to us, and easier’, Fr Cyprien notes, ‘one converted person brought several others, who were either related to him, or friends of his’.

Equally, once a new Catholic chapel at Somerset House, staffed by the French Capuchins, was opened in 1636, Fr Cyprien records that the doors could not be closed for three successive days, only then being closed so Charles I and some of his courtiers could see the sight for themselves. The chapel, with its optical illusions, grand paintings and 40-foot-tall monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament, would have been striking to the public crowds that flocked in to see it. Fr Cyprien tells us that the chapel remained open to ‘satisfy the devotion of the Catholics and the curiosity of the Protestants’. The Capuchins at the chapel would hear confession, celebrate Mass, carry the sacrament to the ill or imprisoned, lead confraternities, deliver lectures and even teach children. Much of this was done in both French and English, and such a sight must have been impactful on the curious who visited the chapel.[7] (Read more.)