“A Crown of Everlasting Glory”: The Afterlife of Maria Clementina Sobieska in Material and Visual Culture

Abstract

Maria Clementina Sobieska was the last widely recognised Stuart queen, albeit in exile, and mother to the final generation of the Stuart dynasty. Examining the material and visual culture surrounding her funeral and afterlife, this chapter reinstates Clementina in Jacobite and Stuart history. It also considers the papal role in Clementina’s posthumous image-making, beyond the context of their support for the Stuarts. The research draws on three key written sources for the queen’s funeral in Rome, as well as extant visual representations of the ceremony, to examine her material commemoration, from the monumental to the miniature.

On Sunday 23 January 1735, the city of Rome came to a halt as the corpse of the Jacobite queen in exile, Maria Clementina Sobieska, was transported to St Peter’s Basilica for burial. She had died on 18 January after a period of declining health, at the age of thirty-two. The magnificent procession (Fig. 13.1) consisting of courtiers, representatives of the Scots, English and Irish Colleges, Roman clergy, the household of Pope Clement XII, and the Swiss Guard, accompanied her body through the streets of Rome, while crowds gathered to watch. Looking, as one account reported, “beautiful and majestick, even in death,” the deceased queen, surrounded by 500 torches, moved through the city “like a ray of light in the obscurity of the night.”¹ Those in attendance mourned, it was claimed, “as if this death had taken away a dear family member or friend.”² The next day, this Stuart queen was interred within three coffins—cypress, lead, and oak—and entombed in the vaults of St Peter’s Basilica, where she remains today.³

Fig. 13.1

(Image © Scottish National Portrait Gallery)

Rocco Pozzi (after Panini), Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska, 1702–1735. Wife of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, SNPG SPL 66.3

Wife of the exiled James Francis Edward Stuart, the Jacobite king James VIII/III, Maria Clementina Sobieska (referred to, in this chapter, by her second name) was the last widely recognised Stuart queen, albeit in exile, and mother to the final generation of the Stuart dynasty. By examining the material and visual culture surrounding her funeral and afterlife, this chapter reinstates Clementina in Jacobite and Stuart history.⁴ This chapter considers Clementina’s posthumous image for the exiled Stuarts and their supporters, but also within the context of the Roman curia’s image-making. Death transformed Clementina into a holy queen, and her life was marked on a scale equal to that of contemporary European Catholic royals. Objects associated with Clementina, including bodily relics, were imbued with the power to connect loyal Jacobites with their deceased queen, while commemorative objects, notably a magnificent memorial tomb in St Peter’s Basilica, secured Clementina’s presence within Rome and Britain after her bodily absence. The demand for materials associated with Clementina after her death attests to her success in being identified as a queen, as well as her heightened spirituality. Overall, Clementina provides a fascinating case-study of Stuart queenship. Her particular experience, shaped by her exiled status, sheds light on the role of commemorative practices and material culture in defining queens.

Funeral

Clementina’s funeral, hosted and paid for by Pope Clement XII, was certainly a royal one. The ceremonies corresponded with the practices of other contemporary European monarchies.⁵ It consisted of the three main features common to royal funerals across Europe: the lying-in-state, funeral procession, and burial and obsequies for the dead. Three published textual sources shed light on Clementina’s funeral. One is a pamphlet published anonymously in Dublin and London, 1735, originally translated from a Roman newspaper account dated 29 January.⁶ At fifteen pages long, the pamphlet goes into detail about the funeral, including the decoration, those in attendance, and the obsequies. It is unclear how the translation came to Britain; however, it is likely that it was sent with intent to share the details of Clementina’s commemoration for the benefit of audiences in Britain, pro-Stuart and otherwise. Reference to the pamphlet, more than ten years after its publication, by an English Jacobite painter resident in Rome, James Russel, suggests that it succeeded in doing so. In a letter to his mother dated June 1747, he referred to the account as one which he thought she “could not but have seen.”⁷ Russel offered his own version of the events for the entertainment of his mother, based on an account published in Rome “by the supreme authority,” which was published in 1750 as part of his Letters from a Young Painter Abroad to his Friends in England.⁸

The source Russel references appears to have been the official record of Clementina’s life and funeral as commissioned by Clement XII, Parentalia Mariae Clementinae, published in December 1736.⁹ As well as containing a detailed description of the funeral, the Parentalia is a celebration of Clementina’s life, containing accounts of her lineage, marriage, and evidence for her saintly virtues. It offers a textual portrait of the queen as she was seen in Rome, as a person of eminent virtue, piety, and charity. It was written by Cardinal Vincenzo Gotti, who had been Clementina’s confessor in Bologna and prior of the Dominican monastery there.¹⁰ Evidence in the Stuart Papers suggests that the Stuart court had a hand in contributing to the text through Sir Thomas Sheridan, a Catholic Irishman, who had been a longstanding member of the exiled court (at Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Rome) and acted as under-governor to her son Prince Charles from 1725.¹¹ Sheridan’s input might be interpreted in a similar vein to the publications of another exiled Irish Jacobite, Charles Wogan, who was instrumental in freeing the young Princess Clementina from capture and delivering her safely to Rome for marriage in 1719.¹² As Clare Carroll argues, these textual accounts are central to understanding the experience of the Irish exile, in which faith and national identity were bound up with allegiance.¹³

Contemporary visual interpretations of Clementina’s funeral ceremonies also survive. The Parentalia contains engraved copies of two paintings made by Giovanni Paolo Panini, a celebrated painter of ancient and modern buildings in Rome, who was commissioned to capture scenes from the funeral.¹⁴ One image depicts the lying-in-state of Clementina in the church of Santi XII Apostoli (Fig. 13.2), the court’s parish church, close to the Palazzo del Re. It offers an impression of the decorations, including the enormous catafalque, or bed of state, with a crowned canopy, on which she was placed. A double plate engraving of the funeral procession, by Rocco Pozzi (Fig. 13.1) communicates the scale of the event within the urban space of Rome, depicting a long procession snaking from Santi XII Apostoli to St Peter’s Basilica in the distance. Groups and individuals in attendance are numbered and identified in the key below.

Fig. 13.2

(Image © Scottish National Portrait Gallery)

Balthasar Gabbugiani (after Pannini), Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska, 1702–1735. Wife of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, (1735), SNPG SPL 66.2

These accounts and images ultimately represent an ideal impression of the ceremony and the individual they celebrated, and this should be remembered when using them as sources for the events of the funeral. They are as much a part of the image-making which surrounded Clementina in life and death as the events of the funeral itself. Despite the effort and expense that went into producing royal funerals, they are ephemeral.¹⁵ Courts produced more durable textual, material, and visual records of the events, such as funeral books, engravings, and medals, to replace and extend the influence of the material symbols, words, and gestures of the ceremonies.¹⁶ These disseminated a version of the celebrations to those who could not attend, evidenced the splendour of the court, and connected audiences to the royal family. Possibly, and more importantly, they materialised the festivities for posterity.¹⁷ James VIII/III sent copies of the Parentalia to Paris for dissemination amongst supporters in France and from there, Britain.¹⁸ He also gifted a decoratively bound version to the Scots College at Paris.¹⁹ The college was not only geographically well placed to circulate this information to the exiled Jacobite community living in Paris and at nearby Saint-Germain-en-Laye.²⁰ As a place for the education of young Scots, it played a central role in “nurturing and diffusing Jacobite sentiments.”²¹ Lewis Innes, James’s contact there, was a key political figure, as well as a religious confidant for the exiled Stuarts.²² Overall, gifting the book to the college was a gesture which cemented ties of shared faith, exile, and loyalty to the Stuart cause.

As with other royal funerals of the early modern period, during the ceremony, Clementina’s body was “entangled in a web of symbols, images, and texts.”²³ As Catriona Murray has argued, with reference to the funeral effigy of another Stuart queen consort, Anna of Denmark (1574–1619), the material culture of Clementina’s funeral “publicly inscribed her human form….with diverse meaning.”²⁴ At each stage, the use of royal iconography—alongside “materials of magnificence” such as velvet, gold thread, and large quantities of black cloth—claimed and proclaimed the exiled queen’s royal status, and that of the court which buried her.²⁵

While the offices of the dead were performed in the church of Santi XII Apostoli, the embalmed body of the queen, lying open to view upon a catafalque was dressed in royal regalia. The Parentalia specifies that her dress was “according to the English tradition,” emphasising her status as member of the English royal dynasty.²⁶ As the 1735 English account described, Clementina was clothed in

robes with rich gold clasps, and laced with gold and ermine, over which was put a mantle of purple velvet, lin’d with ermine, with black tufts, adorn’d with gold lace. Upon her legs were silk stockings, with gold clocks [embroidered decoration at the ankles], and the shoes were of purple velvet, embroider’d with gold; and upon her hands, white gloves adorn’d after the same manner. Upon her head was a bonnet of purple velvet, broder’d with ermine at the edge, under which, her hair, hanging loose about her neck.²⁷

The Parentalia and Russel’s account add that the queen carried royal regalia—a gold crown on her head, gold sceptre in her right hand, and ivory rod in her left—also depicted in Balthasar Gabbugiani’s engraving (Fig. 13.2).²⁸ The English account notes that the regalia were placed at her feet in the coffin.²⁹ The use of magnificent textiles extended beyond the queen’s body to the bed on which she lay and the interior of the church surrounding her. The crowned canopy of the catafalque was made of black cloth laced with gold and lined with ermine.³⁰ The walls of the church were also hung with black, gold-trimmed fabric, as well as white cloths painted to look like ermine (visible in the engraving).³¹ The purple ceremonial robes of the thirty-two cardinals in attendance would have further added to the splendour.³²

If these rich and regal materials identified Clementina Sobieska as a royal person, insignia which surrounded the corpse throughout the ceremonies specifically spoke of her role in the Stuart and Sobieski dynastic successions. Flags or banners carrying the heraldry of Scotland, England, Ireland, and Poland were stationed close to the queen’s body at all times, while the cloth on which she lay was embroidered, in gold thread, with her personal insignia: the united Stuart and Sobieski arms (depicted at the base of Fig. 13.2).³³ Inscriptions on banners in the church of Santi XII Apostoli reinforced Clementina’s dynastic connections: she was named threefold as consort of James III (although the two English publications censor this detail in their transcription and translation); granddaughter of the celebrated Catholic hero, John III Sobieski, King of Poland (who led the Catholic League to victory over the Turkish army at Vienna in 1683); and as “excellent mother of the most accomplished princes,” Charles and Henry Stuart.³⁴ As they had for Anna of Denmark, the use of national and dynastic signs in the material culture of her funeral defined Clementina’s “lineal, maternal and transnational identities” as daughter, wife, mother, and queen.³⁵ They celebrated her role in uniting two royal dynasties through marriage, and securing the Stuart succession. Simultaneously, the Stuart dynastic representation at the centre of Clementina’s funeral served to reinforce the royalty and glory of those she left behind.

Alongside—and central to—Clementina’s royal identity, the funeral secured for her a deeply religious one. On the left side of the church, one banner assured mourners of Clementina’s place in heaven: “Not human Greetings, But Angels meet her with Joy, to join in [H]Allelujahs.”³⁶ Inscriptions emphasised her “piety to God, charity to others, and denial to herself,” and claimed that “whilst she liv’d, Rome beheld a mind truly great and Christian.”³⁷ She was presented as “a pattern to posterity,” while the English account ends with an exhortation for “surviving mortals” to “reflect and profit by this great example.”³⁸ The funeral celebrations, and the accounts which described it, reminded the citizens of Rome, the wider Catholic community, and her would-be subjects in Britain, to follow the example of her behaviour. As queen consort, like her Stuart predecessors, this was one of Clementina’s roles in life, and it continued to be so in death.³⁹ One banner reveals the particularly gendered role of queens consort to act as a model of ideal femininity. Read alongside the other banners, a rhetorical question posed to “virgins” and “matrons,” asking “Who now shall guide your steps to honour and to fame?,” implies that the memory of the life of this deceased queen would continue to serve as a role model for women.⁴⁰

It is notable that, while surrounded by materials of royal magnificence, Clementina’s body was simultaneously dressed with symbols of piety and poverty. The Parentalia, the English account, and Russel’s account all say that while lying in the church before 23 January, and at the point of burial, Clementina was dressed in the habit of the Dominican nuns.⁴¹ The Parentalia claims that the choice of robes was Clementina’s own.⁴² While the reasons for this are not yet wholly evident, a few connections can be made between Clementina and the Dominican Order. While in Bologna, shortly after having returned to the court after a self-imposed separation between 1725 and 1727, Clementina’s confessor Gotti was prior of the Dominican convent.⁴³ She may have developed a strong relationship with the Order during this difficult period in her life, and at the time when she became increasingly pious. The queen also gifted a relic of St Dominic to the English Dominican convent at Brussels.⁴⁴ While Clementina was not strictly a nun, she may have been a tertiary, or lay, member of the Order, aiming to live by their teachings of obedience, chastity, and poverty. The habit does reflect the reality of Clementina’s life in which she took great care over her personal religious observances, acted as a patron of a confraternity and churches of Rome, and made charitable donations.⁴⁵ At certain moments during the funeral ceremonies, through dress, Clementina’s body was defined as a highly devout one, while simultaneously remaining regal.

Identifying Clementina with the persona of a nun did not necessarily conflict with contemporary understanding of queenship. The language of the funerary inscriptions surrounding Clementina’s body used the crown as a metaphor to relate Clementina’s earthly royal status with her elevated position in heaven. The inscriptions placed higher value on the place she would occupy in heaven: “the crown she merited, and valued most, she has found in heaven.”⁴⁶ Similar language was adopted by Jacobites writing their condolences to James VIII/III. Colonel Owen O’Rourke, the Jacobite diplomatic representative in Vienna, was comforted by the prospect that “the Queen now wears a crown of ever lasting glory.”⁴⁷ Sister Mary Rosa Howard of the English Dominican convent in Brussels was consoled by the thought that the “holy Queen” Clementina’s good works had “embellished her crown,” and now she exchanged “an earthly one for a heavenly diadem.”⁴⁸

Above all this, it was arguably Clementina’s burial within St Peter’s Basilica which spoke most loudly of her identification as a pious royal figure, and the place which she subsequently adopted within the culture of eighteenth-century Catholicism. Buried alongside popes, a fellow Catholic “queen without a realm” who had made her court in Rome, Christina of Sweden (1626–1689), and most notably, the tomb of Saint Peter himself, Clementina entered a pantheon of religious figures celebrated within a significant space for the Roman Catholic Church.⁴⁹ Pope Clement XII’s decision to have Clementina entombed in the basilica was not only a declaration of her status as a queen (a queen consort in exile) and his personal support for the Stuart claim to thrones of Britain.⁵⁰ It can also be understood as part of his personal, papal, and institutional aggrandisement. Through the events of the funeral, and in the Parentalia which officially recounted it, Clement’s reign and Clementina’s life and memory were bound together. As the concluding lines of the Parentalia declared: “we will remember how important faith and virtues were under the happy reign of Clement XII … the glorious deeds of one and the other [Clement and Clementina] will be remembered.”⁵¹ Clementina’s life was made available to be harnessed for a wider agenda of eighteenth-century Catholicism. With her physical body entombed within the Basilica of St Peter, Maria Clementina Sobieska became quite literally, as one banner described, an “ornament” of Rome, of the Catholic faith, and of the Stuart dynastic cause.⁵²

Monumental Legacy

Considered in the context of eighteenth-century Catholicism, Clement XII’s and, subsequently, Benedict XIV’s contributions to the commemoration of Clementina were arguably part of a broader agenda to fashion an “enlightened” Catholic Church.⁵³ In keeping with the attributes required in eighteenth-century saints, Clementina’s “heroic virtue” and charitable works were celebrated.⁵⁴ The Parentalia emphasised how, especially later in life, Clementina devoted herself to helping the poor and suffering, pursued a life of religious observations, and denied herself material comforts.⁵⁵ Her royal marriage could, furthermore, be interpreted as an act of heroism. The text claims that while Clementina would have willingly followed the celibate life of a nun, she was destined, by Divine Providence, to “the marriage bed” as queen consort of James VIII/III.⁵⁶ Considering how the exile of the Stuart dynasty was bound up with their commitment to the Catholic Church, her fulfilment of her duty as wife and queen might have been interpreted as particularly heroic. As a pious and even saintly queen, Clementina fitted into a female typology of the Catholic Church which included the Virgin Mary—as mother of Christ and queen of heaven—and other more recent exemplary noble female saints such as Catherine de Ricci, and her Stuart consort predecessors.⁵⁷ Thus, as well as celebrating her individually, Clementina’s posthumous memory was incorporated into a lineage of holy women, part of a progressive narrative for the church.⁵⁸

Shortly after Clementina’s death there were some reports of miracles being performed through her intercession, and there appears briefly to have been an enquiry into her beatification.⁵⁹ Although this ultimately never went ahead, in their patronage of her funeral, publication of the Parentalia, and creation of artworks to commemorate her, Popes Clement XII and Benedict XIV pursued activities which resemble the official processes of eighteenth-century sanctification. Their decision to support the posthumous commemoration of Clementina reflects the efforts of the papacy to maintain control over beatification, and the individuals who were selected for that honour.⁶⁰ The mid-eighteenth-century popes—Benedict XIV in particular—understood the power of images and material culture to shape the narrative of saintly people, and, in turn, the church they represented.⁶¹

A posthumous portrait of Clementina by Agostino Masucci, engraved in 1737 by Michael Sorello (Fig. 13.3), depicts the queen kneeling before an altar. She holds a prayer book open and with hand on breast gazes at a monstrance—which contains the consecrated Host—illuminated by divine light. The gesture indicates that Clementina is emotionally touched by this divine inspiration through her devotion. The presence of three putti’s heads hints at her place in heaven, and at the divine experience the queen is undergoing. As in the funeral ceremonies, symbols of Clementina’s earthly status are not absent from the portrait. She wears an ermine trimmed robe and brocade gown, materials appropriate to her social status. The royal regalia, crown, and sceptre, lie at her knees. However, the queen does not look at them, preferring to focus on her religious devotion. A cushion also lies discarded—a nod towards the self-mortification and rejection of comforts which Clementina was said to have pursued later in life. This portrait can be situated within the tradition of “enlightened” saints’ portraits which intended to emphasise humanity rather than mystic experiences, reminding viewers of the individual’s exemplary virtues and celebrating their “felicity in heaven,” from where they could act as intercessor.⁶² The parallels between this image, and that of Charles I’s portrait in the frontispiece of the Eikon Basilike (1649) (and its multiple versions) furthermore tie Clementina into a particularly Stuart visual culture of sanctity.⁶³ In both prints, the kneeling royal sitter gazes into divine light, while their discarded crowns announce a new heavenly status.

Fig. 13.3

(Image © Scottish National Portrait Gallery)

Michael Sorello after Agostino Masucci, Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska, 1702–1735. Wife of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, (1737), SNPG SP III 77.3

The monuments which were built to Clementina are another significant component of her legacy. Discussing the monumental culture of Restoration Stuart Britain, Murray has argued that “monuments literally recreated the royal body”: they became an extension of the monarch, substituting their bodily presence, and had the ability to command the same sacred power that the monarch themselves had.⁶⁴ This connection between monarch and monument became more powerful when the monument, as in the case of Clementina, contained that actual body. While, in 1735, Clementina’s body was entombed in the crypt at St Peter’s Basilica, and her precordia (her organs), were placed within a monument in the church of Santi XII Apostoli, in 1739, Clement XII commissioned a second monument for her inside St Peter’s (Fig. 13.4). Designed by Filippo Barigioni, it was sculpted and completed by Pietro Bracci by 1742.⁶⁵ The monument was placed in the left aisle of the basilica, near to the Baptistery, and built over the doorway leading to the dome. Parallel to the monument for Queen Christina of Sweden, the two exiles, who were separated from their earthly crown by loyalty to the Catholic faith, make their own typology.

Fig. 13.4

(Image Author’s own)

Monument to Clementina Sobieska in St Peter’s Basilica, 1742, commissioned by Pope Benedict XIV, by Filippo Barigioni, Pietro Bracci, and Pietro Paolo Cristofari

Carved in marble and porphyry, materials used throughout the monumental scheme of the basilica, the design includes putti who hold up royal regalia, and a female figure sits atop a sarcophagus, holding out the flaming heart of divine love. The monument incorporates a portrait of Clementina in mosaic, after her 1725 Martin van Meytens portrait. She is depicted with her head uncovered and hair powdered, wearing court dress, sash of the Order of the Garter (the English noble order), and jewels, recognisable as a queen. Overall, the monument’s iconography signalled Clementina’s royal status in life and her elevated position in the afterlife.

In January 1745, ten years after her death, Clementina’s body was removed to this more public site. James Russel described the ceremony and the monument in a letter to his mother. He expected her (and other readers, since the letter was published) to be much more “entertained” by this “fine piece of modern art” than by other “ancient curiosities” of Rome.⁶⁶ Russel explained how the Choir chapel was “hung all over with black velvet, fringed and laced with gold,” as well as “a large canopy of state of the same stuff … supported by four angels.”⁶⁷ As in her funeral ceremony, Clementina’s corpse was placed under this canopy, “covered with a pall of gold tissue, &c. over which were fixed two little angels, one holding a crown, the other a sceptre.” Once again, the use of rich materials, royal insignia, inscriptions, and candles illuminated the body, emphasising its sacred royalty. In a miniaturised version of her original funeral ceremony, Clementina’s corpse was carried in procession to the monument, attended by cardinals and the nobility of Rome, and deposited in the porphyry urn. As an object which contained and represented the deceased person’s body, the sculpture had the power to remind the viewer of Clementina’s absence, and simultaneously embody her presence. A large, static object, the audience for the monument itself was limited to those who entered the basilica. In the context of the eighteenth-century British “Grand Tour,” with Rome as a principal destination, this included some of the Stuarts’ supporters and would-be subjects.⁶⁸

Visiting elites (usually young men) seeking cultural capital, artists undertaking training, and pilgrims, amongst others, are likely to have encountered the monument at St Peter’s Basilica. However, through being copied and circulated in alternative media, the commemorative function of the monument was extended beyond the city walls. In 1742, a medal was commissioned by Benedict XIV to celebrate the completion of the monument (Fig. 13.5).⁶⁹ The obverse depicts a bust of the pope himself and a legend dating the medal. The reverse depicts the monument with the inscription, in Latin, “to the memory of Maria Clementina, Queen of Great Britain.” We might think of the medal as a miniature version of the monument. Reproduced in another form of sculpture, it could transport the monument—and the commemoration of Clementina—beyond Rome to Jacobites and Catholics across Europe.

Fig. 13.5

(Image © National Museums Scotland)

Medal commemorating the completion of the monument to Clementina Sobieska in St Peter’s, 1742, H.1962.919

The medal not only commemorates Clementina’s death but also celebrates Benedict’s contribution to the memorialisation of her. It fits within the material culture of the centralised eighteenth-century canonisation process. After a successful canonisation, medals, prints, and painted pictures were presented as gifts to a restricted group of recipients to mark the occasion.⁷⁰ They materialised the official acceptance of the newly sanctified individual into the canon of the faith. Like the funeral, medal and monument can be interpreted as part of Benedict’s efforts to shape and control the reception of an exemplary figure. While not officially canonised or beatified, the medal commissioned by Benedict XIV, as well as the Masucci portrait, offer examples of the way in which, through material and visual culture, the life and memory of this Stuart queen were appropriated and disseminated for a reformed Catholicism.

Jacobites also used the monument for their own commemoration of their queen. A few years after the letter describing the monument to his mother, Russel sent a drawing of it to his sister Clementina, which he thought he “cou’d not send … to any person more proper.”⁷¹ She was, it may be assumed, named after the Jacobite queen. The letter also contained sketches of Clementina Sobieska’s original tomb in St Peter’s and the monument for her precordia in Santi XII Apostoli. Russel’s other sister, Elizabeth, received one of the medals commissioned by Benedict XIV.⁷² These sketches and the medal would have been treasured as objects which tied a family of young Jacobite women to their deceased queen and allowed them to personally participate in the memorial culture of the exiled Stuarts. In this context, the sketches and the medal have a gendered didactic function. They act as a reminder to Clementina’s female subjects to reflect on her life as an example. The Russels were, in fact, a nonjuring Protestant family (their father, a clergyman, refused to swear the oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian monarch), evidence that devotion to the deceased Clementina and the use of material culture to commemorate her extended beyond a shared confessional identity.⁷³

The Russel family exchanges, including the sketches, did not remain private, however. A selection of Russel’s letters was published in 1748 as Letters from a Young Painter Abroad to his Friends in England.⁷⁴ Jason Kelly has suggested that the Russel family formulated the idea to publish Russel’s letters around 1746, possibly as a “money-making” scheme for his brother William’s new print shop.⁷⁵ James Russel arrived at Rome in 1740, with the intention of training as a painter, but made a more successful career for himself as cicerone—a tutor/tour-guide/agent figure. Advertised as the private correspondence of a “young painter abroad” to his family and friends, the letters have been carefully selected, and possibly edited, to produce a “didactic” account of Rome.⁷⁶ The result was a guidebook to the city and its environs.

Apparently a success, a second edition of the Letters was published in 1750, in two volumes.⁷⁷ The second volume contains copperplate engraving reproductions of Russel’s drawings of Clementina’s tomb in St Peter’s Basilica and the two monuments (Figs. 13.6 and 13.7). Correspondence from the Russel family not published in the Letters reveals that, in March 1747 and February 1748, Russel’s father had specifically requested sketches of the monuments with the intention of making engravings from them, which he did in Paris in November 1748.⁷⁸ The published plates were dedicated to Dr John Monro and Roland Holt. James Russel had acted as cicerone, antiquarian, and painter for these men during their travels in Rome and Naples between 1745 and 1747, during which time the group “openly consorted” with James VIII/III.⁷⁹ Thus, the dedication of these sketches publicly reinforced networks of Jacobite fraternity. But inclusion of the story of Clementina’s death, funeral, and the monuments in the Letters placed Russel’s correspondence about the exiled Stuarts beyond the context of personal devotion to the family. In publishing sketches of the monuments and an account of the funeral in a book about the “curiosities” of Italy, the Russels ensured that the material culture surrounding Clementina’s death reached an audience greater than the Jacobite community in Britain. By doing so, this situated the exiled Stuarts within the landscape of Grand Tour Rome, viewable alongside the ancient and modern cultural artefacts of the city.

Fig. 13.6

J. Russel, Plate II. Vol.II, Letters from a Young Painter, 1750, printed engraving of Russel’s illustration of the monument to Clementina Sobieska in St Peter’s Basilica. With thanks to the University of Edinburgh Special Collections

Fig. 13.7

J. Russel, Plate I. Vol.II, Letters from a Young Painter, 1750, printed engraving of Russel’s illustration of the tomb in St Peter’s Basilica and monument to Clementina Sobieska in SS XII Apostoli. With thanks to the University of Edinburgh Special Collections

Distributing the Queen

As James Russel took the initiative in supplying his family with materials relating to the deceased Stuart queen, Jacobites on the Continent and in Britain were diligent in acquiring relics of Clementina. The eighteenth-century exiled Stuart court had inherited a tradition of royal relic culture, particularly the distribution of hair jewellery, from their seventeenth-century predecessors, especially around the “martyrdom” of Charles I.⁸⁰ As Alexandra Walsham states, the concept of the relic is a “slippery, elastic, and expansive” one.⁸¹ It can include corporeal remains—such as hair—and secondary objects associated with and used by the deceased (or otherwise absent) person.⁸² Due to their association with a holy person, relics have innate ability to work as an “intercessory force,” often manifested in healing.⁸³ There were some reports of Clementina’s relics performing miracles shortly after her death; in September 1735, James VIII/III wrote to Lewis Innes of two “miraculous cures” in Lorraine and in Avignon, which had been “wrought by [Clementina’s] intercession.”⁸⁴ James himself found “a great deal of comfort” on hearing of the “sudden cure” of a nun, Mme de Soisson, although he was reluctant to “make a noise” about it until it had been properly authenticated, which it does not appear to have been.⁸⁵

These, however, are exceptional instances. Influenced by the work of historians of material culture and emotions, here the term relic is used expansively, applied both to objects used in religious and non-religious contexts.⁸⁶ Desire for relics of the Stuarts was shared by their Catholic and Protestant followers. What is important is that these fragments of Clementina had the capacity to embody her whole, materialising the remembering of her in a way which invoked her presence.⁸⁷ They were (and potentially still are) “potent objects” which demanded an emotional response, whether to inspire awe, devotion, or even “galvanize people to take dynamic action to transform their everyday lives.”⁸⁸ Usually small and transportable, as objects which “carry meaning over space as well as allowing it to endure in time,” relics were ideally placed for use by the Jacobites in their expression and practice of loyalty to the exiled Stuarts, as well as for distribution by the court in their attempts to sustain that loyalty.⁸⁹ As Matthew Martin has suggested of the relics of James VII/II, through the “spatial expansion of the human body, manifesting the same power and presence as the whole” afforded by the relic, the deceased person continued to have agency.⁹⁰ The material legacy of Clementina as Jacobite queen empowered her to act on and for her supporters in the afterlife.

Some of Clementina’s relics inhabited a place within the religious institutions of exiled British Catholics. These continental colleges and convents held an important role in the Catholic and Jacobite diaspora community, particularly in the education of Catholic youths, provision of accommodation to travellers, and maintaining networks (social and political) between the exiled community on the continent and the community at home in Britain.⁹¹ At Sister Mary Rosa Howard’s convent in Brussels, a relic of St Dominic which had been gifted by the queen was given renewed attention after her death, “many coming to see it no less as being sent by so holy a princess as to pay devotion to the s[ain]t.”⁹² Hearing from Sister Mary Rosa of proposals to build an altar for the relic, James VIII/III made a gift of £25 to the convent, and sent the nun “a little of the Queen’s hair … cut off after her death,” which he expected would be “very agreeable” to her.⁹³ With Clementina’s death, the meaning of the saint’s relic and that of Clementina’s became intertwined. At the request of Lewis Innes, at the Scots College in Paris, Clementina’s hair and a book of devotion she had used joined an existing collection of relics of the exiled Stuarts: the brain of James VII/II, and precordia of Mary Beatrice of Modena and Princess Louise-Marie.⁹⁴ National Museums Scotland similarly hold a set of lace cuffs and an eighteenth-century bed coat which are alleged to have been sent from the Stuart court to the English convent at Louvain, where significant numbers of Jacobite women were part of the community.⁹⁵

Within these communities, the deceased queen’s relics added to the practices of a certain brand of Catholic Jacobite devotion. Claire Walker has suggested that such examples of “Stuart memorabilia” were part of a “ceremonial culture of Jacobite worship.”⁹⁶ Transformed into sacred objects, Clementina’s relics were part of an ideology which claimed for the Stuarts the sacrality of monarchy, which was one of the core principles of their legitimacy to inherit the British crowns.⁹⁷ They were also part of a culture of sacrifice and shared experience of exile. Particular to the identities of these English nuns, their religious practices united faith, exile, and loyalty to the Stuarts.

Sister Mary Rosa Howard also played a role in distributing relics beyond her convent. Throughout 1735–1736, she wrote to the exiled court to make requests for some of Clementina’s hair and any other objects which had belonged to her, having been commissioned by English Jacobites to acquire them. She wrote to James Edgar, the court secretary: “I have letters from our Chief families in England pressing me to get [from] ye any the least thing of our Queen’s out of their veneration to her Majesty’s memory.”⁹⁸ While the desired objects were more conventional relics such as hair or belongings, Sister Mary Rosa also requested printed portraits of the queen to satisfy the demands of her petitioners, hinting at the power that portraits have, similar to relics, to embody the absent individual.⁹⁹ Edgar was able to return some hair. Though not as valuable as that which she had previously been sent, Edgar assured the nun that it was the queen’s “veritable hair cut by [her maids] out of her head in her lifetime.”¹⁰⁰

In addition to Jacobites in England, Sister Mary Rosa acted as intermediary for the Archduchess Maria Elisabeth, governor of the Austrian Netherlands. Already in possession of several other “curiosities” such as Stuart medals before the queen’s death, in November 1736, she had demanded of Sister Mary Rosa Howard “any thing that had ever belonged to her Majesty.”¹⁰¹ Sister Mary Rosa herself had only “a small part of her Majesty’s haire, which for all the treasurs [sic] in the world [she] would not part with.”¹⁰² The appeal of the deceased, exiled Stuart queen and desire to possess physical relics of her extended beyond those who owed her their allegiance as British subjects. The Stuart court’s willingness to meet those demands may be seen as part of their European diplomacy to garner support for the family.¹⁰³

A ring containing a miniature portrait of Clementina and a piece of her hair can also usefully be considered in terms of the relic and reliquary (Fig. 13.8). Now in the collections of National Museums Scotland, it belonged to a Scottish Jacobite woman, Isabella Strange, the sister of Andrew Lumisden, secretary to the Stuart court in exile, and wife of Jacobite engraver, Robert Strange.¹⁰⁴ Isabella’s will lists the ring, requesting that it should be passed first to her daughter and then to her granddaughter.¹⁰⁵ It provides another example of the particularly female-gendered dimension to the culture surrounding the Jacobite queen. Painted in watercolour on ivory, the portrait is copied from one done by Francesco Trevisani, although the only publicly known extant example is an engraved copy made by John Faber Jr in 1737. The miniature portrait is set between two garnets or rubies, and on its reverse is a panel of hair (which we assume to be Clementina’s) and the cipher CR for Clementina Regina in gold wire. Containing various miniatures, or fragments, of Clementina, in the form of the portrait, cipher, and hair, this ring had the power to embody her whole. The portrait and hair could work like relics to form a physical “bridge” between two separated people in affective relationships.¹⁰⁶ Encased together in precious materials, this assemblage resembles a reliquary.¹⁰⁷

Fig. 13.8

(Image © National Museums Scotland)

Portrait Ring, NMS X.2015.105.3

Similarly, the sketches and medal sent by James Russel to his sisters might also be considered as quasi-relics. Sarah Randles has discussed how mediaeval pilgrim tokens carrying depictions of relics had the potential to act in the same way as the original relic, especially when the token had been in contact with it.¹⁰⁸ As miniature versions of the monument that contained Clementina’s decaying body, the medals—themselves small sculptures—represented the Stuart queen in a moveable, tangible, and durable form. Easily circulated and designed to be carried close to the devotee’s person, the medal and the portrait ring not only prompted memories of the deceased queen but also made for a potent point of contact between her and loyal Jacobites. As objects which could potentially be gazed at, touched, worn, and displayed (on the body and in more directed forms of showing), they both stimulated and supported the emotional practices which underpinned loyalty to the exiled Stuarts amongst Jacobites in Britain. Just as relics facilitate contact with the saintly person and act as a channel for their heavenly powers, they can connect individuals and demand emotional responses in secular terms of love and longing. This dual interpretation is important when examining the “relics” of the exiled Stuarts, where royalty and sanctity, love, and loyalty, were intertwined.

Conclusion

The treatment of Maria Clementina Sobieska’s body after death, and the relics which emanate from it, speak of a shared culture which surrounded her. As Walsham argues, objects only become relics by “consequence of the beliefs and practices that accumulate around them.”¹⁰⁹ They are evidence of the ability of shared faith—whether in religion or in the Stuart dynasty—to imbue “mundane objects” with meaning and power.¹¹⁰ Ultimately, Clementina’s relics existed and worked only as a result of the collective belief in her divine royal power, her status as exemplary figure, and her position in the Stuart (and Sobieski) dynasty. They speak of her place within a cultural memory not only of Jacobitism but also of the Catholic faith. This cultural memory was shaped and secured by the funerary honours offered to her by Pope Clement XII, carried through in the formal written, visual, and material legacy of the ceremonies, and in monumental sculpture. Throughout, Clementina was consistently identified as a queen who had not only succeeded in securing the Stuart dynastic lineage but had done so as an example of piety and object of loyalty. While celebrating a past life, the commemoration of Clementina had import for the present and future of both the Stuart dynasty in exile, Jacobite aspirations for their restoration in Britain, and the image of the Catholic Church. Attending to the material culture which surrounds the death and afterlife of the last widely acknowledged Stuart queen re-inserts her firmly not only within the narrative of Jacobitism, but also of eighteenth-century queenship, and sacred monarchy of the early modern period.