On Saturday,
July 21st while showing a visitor from Scotland our
town’s claim to English protection, I realized the monument was celebrating its 500th
anniversary-and no one in town was interested…except us.
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| 500 years of English protection |
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| detail of Henry VIII's coat of arms |
Five centuries may seem like a long time, but not in the layer cake of European history and not in an area where Etruscan tombs and
sanctuaries dating from 800-300 BC dot the landscape.
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| detail of Cardinal Bainbridge's coat of arms |
The year 1512 was a very busy one. Among the
happenings in Europe:
- the battle of
Ravenna on April 11th
- Pope Julius II
opened the Lateran Council in May
- Michelangelo’s
Sistine Chapel paintings were publically shown for the first time in
November
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| Holbein's portrait of Henry VIII |
- a baby named
Anne Boleyn was born
-Niccolò
Macchiavelli was expelled from Florence
by the Medici, newly returned to power.
- Martin Luther
was named Doctor of Theology in
Wittenberg.
In the new world
the Spanish began importing black slaves
to Hispaniola to replace the local Indians who were perishing at an alarming rate while along the coast of Newfoundland, European fishermen began exploiting the banks of cod fish, sending the dried cod back to Europe.
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| English ambassador visits Vetralla |
On July
20th, 1512 Pope Julius II donated the Castle of Vetralla, an
important post between Rome, the
papal port of Civitavecchia and the city of Viterbo, to the English crown.
Cardinal
Christopher Bainbridge, Henry VIII's ambassador to Rome during those years and the only English prelate at the opening of the 5th Lateran Council, accepted for his king.
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| funerary monument of Cardinal Bainbridge, Venerable English College,Rome |
In Vetralla, a sculpted marble monument and a smaller plaque with the date were set above the main portal of the castle, thus sealing the
alliance between young Henry VIII and
the Papacy in the Cambrian League against the French.
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| axes and squirrels feature on Bainbridge coat of arms |
For the first time, Henry laid
claim to some French land, thus the
title King of France
(REX FR) was included in the inscription of the Vetralla monument.
Over the
centuries the heraldic plaque was moved several times and since the 1700s it has graced the main
staircase of the governor’s palace, now the City Hall.
A few years ago volunteers cleaned the monument revealing the full
beauty of its heraldic motifs. Several coins from the early 19th century were found
lodged among the intricate carvings.
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| Andrea Natali cleaning the 1512 English monument |
Unfortunately no documents concerning the monument have yet come to light and most
of the local population continue to ignore its significance and its
very existence.
This post is part of my submission for Team Florens, a meeting to be held in autumn where themes such as boosting economy through cultural awareness will be debated.
Hopefully local cultural identity can grow and use existing historical monuments, especially those with international connections like the Vetralla 1512 monument, to create opportunities for tourism in towns not on regular tourist circuits. Learn more about Fondazione Florens here.
Latest visitors to Vetralla from England were a group of young university students who had cycled all the way from Manchester, through Holland, France and northern Italy. They were amazed at the English connections we pointed out to them.
posing beneath the English monument and
the bust of Cardinal Henry Stuart, Duke of
York, protector of Vetralla
