St Thomas at the English College in Rome

Abstract

Thomas of Canterbury has very particular significance for the Venerable English College in Rome, the Roman Catholic Seminary originally founded in the 16th century in the properties of the medieval pilgrim hospice. The archbishop came to have physical, spiritual and political associations with the institution as a result of his exile from England and royally sanctioned murder, so much so that the English and Welsh national church in the papal city is now dedicated to him. In the context of the Protestant Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in Britain, students and exiled priests studying at the Roman college looked to Thomas’s example of resistance to secular interference, reinforced by means of relics and depictions of Thomas in a highly charged pictorial scheme in the college church.