The Incomparable Monsignor by J. L. Heilbron

Author:J. L. Heilbron [J. L. Heilbron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192670618
Publisher: OxfordUP
Published: 2022-04-13T15:56:15+00:00

Crossed Paths

It suited His Majesty to marry on 17 September 1719 in Montefiascone, the seat of a bishop friendly to James, about 100 km from Rome. Clementina traveled there together with her security team, Wogan and Mrs Misset, and with Lady Inverness (Marjorie Hay) and several other courtiers. These few, together with Murray, Lord Inverness, and some priests, made up the company for the almost clandestine ceremony.76 Unusually, a documentary painting was made, in which the most conspicuous actors beside the presiding priest were the Murray siblings, James on the right, superciliously pointing, and his sister, Marjorie Hay, on the left, standing ominously erect behind the queen. The kneeling male trio behind her may be Hay, Wogan, and another Irish officer, O’Brien; a preliminary draft for the painting shows the soldiers standing holding halberds (see Plate 12).77 Wogan signed the register as a witness and received as a reward for all his services the insignificant honor of a knight-baronetcy. Bianchini oversaw the design and coining of a medal to mark the occasion.78 The public celebration of the marriage took place nine months later, on midsummer day in 1720. Bianchini wrote a cantata for the festivities that sang of “the perfect harmony of these two heroic souls.”79 The harmony was not to last much longer than the singing.

The cantata’s cast comprised the sun and the moon, wandering about the Alban Hills dressed as fake shepherds, and two real rustics, Ascanio and Silvio. Since they have the names of the sons of Aeneas, the Trojan founder of Rome, we are to understand them as representations of Italy. It is almost sunrise. The sun, apparently a Jacobite, observes to the moon that the happy hour was approaching when “I in heaven will color the brightest noon with rays of gold … and awaken England to greater hope.” Ascanio and Silvio overhear the chatty luminaries and deduce from their royal countenances that they are not local bumpkins. Ascanio proposes a song in their honor; Silvio advises moderate panegyrics. They delve into the husbandry they know for apt metaphors. Ascanio, to the moon: “Ape industre, che soavi | formi i favi, ecco il tuo Rè.” Silvio, to the sun: “Ape attenta, industriosa | vuoi la Rosa? Ecco il tuo fior.”80 Ascanio: Why are we singing about bees and flowers when we are supposed to be praising heavenly virtues? Silvio: As the luminaries come to share our humble ways, they will know how to interpret our prattle. Bianchini’s modest work may have contributed to a short opera still heard, Ascanio in Alba, also composed for a wedding between an almost royal pair, with an Italian libretto and music by Mozart.

Bianchini’s cantata ends in a quartet in which the sun sings the intriguing lines: “The sun’s ray writes in the heavens and the earth the origin, and the years, and the day, of the royal flowers | and to the celestial genius of the pastors | every star, and every heart, pays homage.” The verse suggests that James and Clementina would be written into the floor of Santa Maria degli Angeli.

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