San Pietro in Montorio ― Burial Place of the Exiled Irish in Rome 1608―1623

Project Description

This work is the first comprehensive record of what is the most iconic Irish diaspora burial site in Europe, and it is now at writing-up stage. San Pietro in Montorio, west of the Tiber on Gianicolo was the focus of the Irish community that found itself unexpectedly confined to the city of Rome in 1608 after the ’Flight of the Earls’. At least seven but possibly as many as eleven or more members of O’Neill’s and O’Donnell’s court in exile were buried there between 1608 and 1623. In 2005 a detailed survey of the grave-slabs and memorials in the church floor was conducted followed by an exploration of two burial vaults in 2006. The burial vaults, the surviving grave-slabs and their inscriptions, the earliest records of these and of their architectural context, together with correspondence between two successive Spanish ambassadors and the Spanish court of Philip III about the interments, inform the circumstances of the community’s exile.

Figure 1: San Pietro in Montorio

Figure 2: Recording Inscriptions in San Pietro

Figure 3: Detail of the O'Donnell Arms

Figure 4: Investigating the crypt in San Pietro

The Renaissance church of San Pietro in Montorio initially funded by the Valois King Louis XI of France, and subsequently by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was completed in 1500 to a single nave plan, terminating in a polygonal apse. The nave is divided into five bays, each housing a dedicated chapel and altar. Below the floor level a crypt for burial vaults runs between the pier abutments. In 1523 Raphael’s Transfiguration had adorned the reredos of the main altar. The façade of the church is classically simple and refined in Renaissance style. Commemorative plaques on the façade and balcony express the intense patronage that the church enjoyed, more especially from Philip III of Spain (1598-1621) who played a key role in the destiny of the Irish community in Rome. Bramante’s Tempietto which is placed centrally in the cloister garth was commissioned by the Spanish royal family in 1502. It was in this environment of very fine sixteenth-century Italian artistic and architectural achievements that the exiled Irish community buried their dead. Their surviving grave-slabs are located in the floor of the nave beside Cappella San Giovanni Battista, one of the two large pseudo-transepts before the sanctuary.

The inscriptions on the grave-slabs along with descriptions of their precise locations in the nave were published in 1664 in the second volume of Gasparo Alveri’s Della Roma in ogni stato. In his scheme the Irish grave-slabs were arranged in a set of four, Hugh O’Neill below his son Hugh baron of Dungannon, and Eugene Matthews below Rory and Cathbarr O’Donnell. Although the position of a grave-slab in a church floor does not necessarily indicate the location of a corresponding burial in the crypt beneath, the relatively young age of the church ( c. 1500) at the time the first of the Irish were buried there in 1608 makes it likely that their vaults lay directly or almost directly below the slabs.

The marble grave-slabs inscribed to Rory and Cathbharr O’Donnell and to Hugh, baron of Dungannon were contrived as a set piece, although some minor nuances in the production of the inscriptions suggest two different hands at work. The design of the slabs fits comfortably into the canon of Italian memorials of the period, especially in terms of the use of coloured marble inlay for family arms, crests, memento mori and border ornament. It is their polemical inscriptions, however, that establish them as more than just grave-slabs, and it is because of the inscriptions that such large rectangular slabs of marble were required. Hugh O’Neill’s slab has not survived but Alveri’s 1664 record indicates that it was quite plain and was simply inscribed D.O.M. HUGONIS PRINCIPIS ONELLI OSSA (To God the Best and the Greatest. The bones of Prince Hugh O’Neill).

Two accessible vaults in the vicinity of the surviving Irish grave-slabs were investigated in the knowledge that during the post-Risorgimento repaving of the nave floor approximately 68 grave-slabs, including those of O’Neill and Matthews, were removed or cut up, and the hatches through which the vaults below were originally reached sealed over by the new marble floor. The contents of vaults were also periodically cleared out to make room for new burials. The results of the investigation suggest that in order to make room for the Azzurri family burials, the Irish burials were removed from the vault that runs beneath their grave-slabs and re-deposited in a nearby vault.

Project Team

Dr Elizabeth FitzPatrick with contributions by Joe Fenwick and Dr Mark Stansbury

Contact Details

Dr Elizabeth FitzPatrick ( Profile)

Department of Archaeology,

School of Geography and Archaeology, NUI, Galway

Contact: elizabeth.fitzpatricknuigalway.ie

Funding Bodies

NUI, Galway Millennium Research Fund 2002-3

Ireland―Italy Bilateral Cultural Agreement travel bursary 2003-4

Project Publications

2007 San Pietro in Montorio: burial place of the exiled Irish in Rome, 1608–1623 . History Ireland 15, No. 4, 46-51.

2006 The Ballyshannon fragments and the tomb of Rudhraighe O’Donnell at San Pietro in Montorio, Rome . Association of Church Archivists Newsletter 34, 4-6.

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