The Charterhouse of St Martin in Naples

For the feast of St Bruno, the founder of the Carthusian Order, here are some pictures of one of the most beautiful of the order’s monasteries, that of St Martin on the Vomero hill above Naples. Founded in 1325 by Charles, Duke of Calabria, the monastery remained under royal patronage through most of its history as an active monastery. (It was suppressed in 1866, and is now a goverment-run museum.) As a result, it is full of some extraordinarily elaborate decorations, especially from the early 17th century, when the Neapolitan Baroque style was first flourishing. An enormous complex grew up around the church in various phases, and any set of photographs will give only a very small idea of the place.

The main altar and nave of the church.

The Chapel of the Immaculate Conception

 

One of the sections of the large sacristy.

Detailing of the pavement - the Neapolitan Baroque style is especially famous for its highly elaborate floral patterns.

The main choir of the church.

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Reliquary Busts of the Chapel of St Januarius in Naples

The Italian city of Naples keeps three feasts in honor of its Patron St Januarius, the relics of whose blood famously liquify on all three occasions. His principal feast, the anniversary of his martyrdom, is on September 19, but today, the Saturday before the first Sunday of May, there is a commemoration of the translation of his relics (one of several) from Pozzuoli, about 9 miles to the west, the place where he died during the persecution of Diocletian, ca. 305 AD. The third feast, on December 16th, commemorates a miracle which took place in 1631, when he stopped an especially powerful lava flow from Mt Vesuvius that threatened to destroy the city’s winter grain supply.

The Martyrdom of St Januarius in the Amphiteater at Pozzuoli, 1636, by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Januarius was in point of fact bishop of neither Naples nor Pozzuoli, but of Benevento, about 33 miles to the north-east of Naples. In the Middle Ages, a large part of his relics were transferred to the important monastery of Monte Vergine, and from there to the cathedral of Naples only at the very end of the 15th century. In the wake of a horrific plague that devastated the city between 1526 and 1529 (worsened by the events of a series of major military conflicts), the Neapolitans made a vow to build a new chapel to house them; in classic southern Italian fashion, the project was not even begun until 80 years later, and not completed until 1646. The result, however, is one of the most splendid Baroque chapels in all of Europe.

Image from Wikimedia Commons by ErwinMeier, CC BY-SA 4.0

The chapel also boasts a collection of 54 extremely fine silver reliquary busts of the city’s various patrons and other popular Saints, all made by artisans from the city and environs in an era when the art of silversmithing was at its height. At the December feast, the blood relic and several of these busts are carried in procession from the cathedral down to the nearby church of St Clare. The streets of central Naples are very narrow; I once went there for this feast (generally the least crowded of the three), and got to see the liquified blood moving around in its reliquary only a few feet away from me as it passed by on the way back to the cathedral.

Our friend Mr John Ryan Debil of The Home Oratory just visited Naples, and kindly agreed to share with us these pictures which he took of the busts (not all of them) – gratias tibi quam maximas, optime! (I don’t know who the last two Saints are; if you can identify them, please be so good as to leave a note in the combox. UPDATE: thanks to reader SMJ for identifying one of them, and correcting my mistake on another Saint.) 

St Joachim holding the Virgin Mary

St Anne

St Augustine

St Joseph

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The Charterhouse of St Martin in Naples

For the feast of St Bruno, the founder of the Carthusian Order, here are some pictures of one of the most beautiful of the order’s monasteries, that of St Martin on the Vomero hill above Naples. Founded in 1325 by Charles, Duke of Calabria, the monastery remained under royal patronage through most of its history as an active monastery. (It was suppressed in 1866, and is now a goverment-run museum.) As a result, it is full of some extraordinarily elaborate decorations, especially from the early 17th century, when the Neapolitan Baroque style was first flourishing. An enormous complex grew up around the church in various phases, and any set of photographs will give only a very small idea of the place.

The main altar and nave of the church.

The Chapel of the Immaculate Conception

 

One of the sections of the large sacristy.

Detailing of the pavement - the Neapolitan Baroque style is especially famous for its highly elaborate floral patterns.

The main choir of the church.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

ICKSP Takes on New Apostolate in Naples

Two years ago, we reported that the Archdiocese of Naples, Italy, had established a new home for the regular celebration of the Traditional Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation at the church of the Archconfraternity of Santa Maria del Soccorso all’Arenella. We recently received word from the organizers of the Mass, the Coetus Fidelium «Sant’Andrea Avellino», that His Eminence Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, has now entrusted the celebration of this Mass to the priests of the Institute of Christ the King, beginning last week on the feast of the city’s principal Patron Saint, Januarius.

The Coetus fidelium «Sant’Andrea Avellino» wishes to express their gratitude to Cardinal Sepe for his paternal and pastoral solicitude in their regard, and likewise to the superiors of the ICK, Mgrs Gilles Wach and Michael Schmitz, and to Don Aldo Scatola, the parish priest of Santa Maria del Soccorso, and head of the Archconfraternity, for his generous hospitality. (Below, various Masses at the church of Santa Maria del Soccorso all’Arenella.)

St Cajetan, and the Church of San Paolo Maggiore in Naples

Today is the feast of St Cajetan, the founder of the Clerks Regular of the Divine Providence, the very first order of Clerks Regular. They are usually referred to as the Theatines, since one of the other founders, Gian Pietro Caraffa, was bishop of the city of Chieti, “Theate” in Latin, in the Abruzzo region; he would later be elected Pope with the name Paul IV (1555-59). Cajetan himself was born to a noble family of Vicenza in the Venetian Republic, but spent much of his life in Rome. The name “Clerks Regular of the Divine Providence” refers to the fact that, in imitation of the poverty of the Apostles, whose spirit they hoped to revive in the Church, they neither begged like the mendicants, nor accepted permanent endowments like the monks, but lived on whatever might be offered to them spontaneously by the faithful.

The Vision of St Cajetan, by Michelangelo Buonocore, 1733. While praying in the Chapel of the Crib at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome on Christmas Eve, the Saint beheld the Virgin Mary, who then passed the Baby Jesus to him to hold; he is frequently represented this way in art.  

It may fairly be said that Cajetan’s ministry in Rome, and that of his order, which was certainly important, but never very large, has been overshadowed by his near contemporary St Ignatius, the founder of what would become a vastly larger and more widespread order of Clerks Regular, and by St Philip Neri and the Oratory in the following generation. This is partly because the Council of Trent was only just getting started at the time of his death; St Cajetan belongs to the generation whose good example in evil days would lay the groundwork for the sweeping and highly effective reforms of the Counter-Reformation.

The revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints describes his mission field thus: “The state of Christendom at this time was not less than shocking. The general corruption weakened the Church before the assaults of Protestantism and provided an apparent excuse for that revolt, and the decay of religion with its accompaniment of moral wickedness was not checked by the clergy, many of whom, high and low, secular and regular were themselves sunk in iniquity and indifference. The Church was ‘sick in head and members’. The spectacle shocked and distressed Cajetan, and in 1523 he went back to Rome to confer with his friends of the Oratory of Divine Love. They agreed that little could be done otherwise than by reviving in the clergy the spirit and zeal of those holy pastors who first planted the faith, and to put them in mind what this spirit ought to be, and what it obliges them to, a plan was formed for instituting an order of regular clergy upon the model of lives of the Apostles.”

After founding a house of his order in Naples, St Cajetan died there in 1547, and is buried in the crypt of the Theatine church of San Paolo Maggiore in the heart of the city. The Order tended to attract not just a large number of its vocations from among the aristocracy, but also a great many aristocratic patrons; it also did not unlearn the lessons imparted to the Church by earlier Orders like the Cistercians and Franciscans, that the poverty of religious is not practiced by impoverishing the house of God. The Theatines and their patrons built a number of very beautiful churches; those of Munich and Naples are particularly outstanding. Here then are a few photos of San Paolo Maggiore.

The body of St Cajetan in the crypt of the church.

The high altar

The church was badly damaged during the bombing of Naples in 1943, which caused the ceiling to collapse and mutilated the paintings on it. Note that the side chapels are isolated from the central nave, a typical feature of Italian Counter-Reformation churches.

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For the Feast of St Philip Neri: The Oratory of Naples

The Naples Oratory was founded in 1586 by three disciples of St. Philip Neri, Antonio Talpa, Giovanni Giovenale Ancina (later bishop of Saluzzo, beatified in 1889) and Francesco Maria Tarugi (later cardinal), only 11 years after the Congregation of the Oratory was officially approved by Pope Gregory XIII. It was the Congregation’s first house outside of Rome, and since the founders came from the church where St Philip lived, San Girolamo della Carità, the Neapolitans have always called them the “Girolamini”. (“Girolamo” is Italian for “Jerome.”) It was immediately a tremendous success, and for centuries one of the most important religious institutions in Naples; the complex of buildings (including a huge church, two cloisters, one of which is also very large, and several smaller oratories) occupies a full hectare of land right in the middle of the city, across the street from the Cathedral. In its heyday, it was patronized by most of the important families in the city, which was then the capital of a large independent kingdom; it became famous for its art collection and magnificent sacristy. Like many of the great cultural and religious institutions of the former Kingdom of Naples, the Oratory has suffered much from various acts of suppression and confiscation; the center of Naples was also bombed during World War II, and a part of the complex which was damaged, the Oratory of the Assumption, is still in need of restoration over 70 years later. Nevertheless, the Girolamini remains one of the great monuments of St Philip’s apostolic labors, and those of his sons throughout the world.

The façade of the church, seen from the via dei Tribunali, the ancient decumanus maximus of Naples in Roman times.

The central nave seen from the door.

The coffered ceiling (partly missing) with an image of St. Philip.

The high altar.

An angel holding a candlestick at the corner of the sanctuary, carved by the Neapolitan sculptor Giuseppe Sanmartino, better known for the famous image of the veiled Christ in the nearby Sansevero Chapel. (see linked article)

The right side-aisle. As in many Italian Counter-Reformation churches, the side-aisles are deliberately arranged as a kind of blind that separates the side chapels from the central nave, so that the faithful would not be distracted from the principal ceremony at the main altar.

A side altar dedicated to St Charles Borromeo. St Philip and St Charles knew each other personally, and the latter made generous donations towards the building of the Chiesa Nuova, the Oratory of Rome; they are pictured together in the altarpiece. In the statue, St Philip is shown trampling on a cardinal’s hat, a symbol of the many ecclesiastical dignities offered him, and always refused. The two busts on either side may be Ss. Cosmas and Damian, since a church named for them was pulled down to make way for the Girolamini; when this was done in the Counter-Reformation period , it was often on such terms that the new foundation was required to preserve devotion to the titular saints of the old one.

The main side-altar of the left transept contains relics of St Ignatius of Antioch, and the Roman martyrs Ss. Nereus and Achilleus. Another disciple of St Philip, the renowned historian Cesare Baronius, was made cardinal of the church of Ss Nereus and Achilleus in 1596, and presumably donated these relics. (It was Baronius who read the commendation prayers for St Philip as he lay dying.) I have never before seen a sepulcher in an altar decorated like this.

An emblem representing the heart of St Philip, enflamed with the love of God, in the floor close to the main door. Neapolitan Baroque churches are often filled with this elaborate kind of mosaic known as entarsia, in which the pieces of stone are cut as much as possible in the shape the artist wishes to make, rather than into lots of tiny pieces which are then used to build the images. (Some kinds of stone, however, are too brittle for this to be very practical, and more, smaller pieces are used, as with the yellow stone around the heart.)

The small cloister though which one now enters the church, with the dome above.

The great cloister.

The dome of the chuch seen from the great cloister.

The façade of the cathedral, seen from the former buildings of the community.

On the right side of the Duomo is the large chapel of Naples’ Patron Saint, Januarius (San Gennaro), the relic of whose blood famously liquifies on his three feast days. The chapel houses over 40 silver busts of various Saints, including this one of St. Philip; these are often carried in procession though the heart of the city by various confraternities on the three feasts.