To obey the pope and to serve the king: cardinals, identity and ceremony in the national churches circa 1700

Abstract

Between spring and summer of 1696 a series of related disputes of precedence took place that resulted in changes to the ecclesiastic ceremonies associated with the Papacy and the cardinals at Rome. These altercations were in fact the reflection of the conflicts then being settled in Europe at the end of the Nine Year’s War (1688–97). In a way, the conflicts inherent in the late seventeenth century can be interpreted as a prologue to what was to happen in the Eternal City during the prolonged War of the Spanish Succession. Most of the disputes studied in this article were played out in the national churches at Rome, in ceremonies making use of important musical elements. As will be seen, the national churches became the theater of these disputes of precedence and the resulting conflicts, staged by cardinals, both foreign and Italian, who in some cases (although not always) held the post of Cardinal Protector of a nation. The Roman ceremonial codifies a complex practice that requires a period of learning and a process of adaptation on the part of the foreign cardinals. Not surprisingly, the College of Cardinals was made up of a multitude of foreign cardinals who, as such, had difficulty adapting to cultural practices unknown to them. The study of ceremony and music in certain types of public celebrations sheds light on the important concept of nationality and loyalty, especially when they come into conflict with each other. The ceremonies practiced by several cardinals (of different origins with diverse bonds of loyalty) allow us to observe, in addition, how both concepts are more complex than one might think: loyalties can be multiple, to the Sacred College, to the sovereign, to the Pope, while national identity might go beyond geographical origin. In concrete cases, this multiplicity of factors explains isolated musical events of great relevance in the national churches that until now have been interpreted as anecdotes (as will be seen in the case of Grimani and Santa Maria dell’Anima in 1707). This chapter proposes to use several of these ceremonial conflicts that occurred in that time frame (1696-1714) as case studies, making use of methods proposed by Maria Antonietta Visceglia studying the concrete practice of the ritual and analyzing the experiences of individual characters. These contributions to the study of ceremony can also be understood under the notion of performance.