Me Discedere Caesar Iubet

Who among the hierarchy could write this today? It was during the reign of Gregory XVI that Fr. Nicholas Wiseman, until that time Rector of the English College, educated and ordained priest in Rome, a resident there for 22 years, was created a bishop and sent to be coadjutor to "the venerable Bishop Walsh" in Wolverhampton, England. His departure from Rome is the reason he gives for being unable to provide further personal reflections on lives of the pontiffs at Rome, for Wiseman lived out the rest of his days in England. He writes:

It was a sorrowful evening, at the beginning of autumn, when, after a residence in Rome prolonged through twenty-two years, till affection clung to every old stone there, like the moss that grew into it, this strong but tender tie was cut, and much of future happiness had to be invested in the mournful recollections of the post.

And this is what impresses me - could he have found a more apposite passage to quote? - he appends the following quotation, unidentified of course, for any educated reader of his would have recognized it (I used Google):

Cum subit illius tristissima noctis imago,
___Quae mihi supremum tempus in Urbe fuit,
Cum repeto noctem qua tot mihi cara reliqui,
___Labitur ex oculis nunc quoque gutta meis.

It's too beautiful. A few lines after the ones quoted, we learn that Ovid has been ordered to leave the City by order of Caesar; and it is the Pope who has commanded Wiseman. Though not natural citizens of Rome, like Ovid, how many, like Wiseman, have become her sons by adoption, for the sake of the Church? Happly, they can never be truly exiled from Her simply by removing from the City, for one of the Faith carries Rome everywhere he goes in his heart.




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