S. Charles: one feature every artist gets right is that wonderful nose
Today was the feast day of Saint Charles, another of the great champions of the sixteenth-century Reformation - the real one, not that protestant movement. It caused me to travel back in my memories to my frequent visits to the great church in Rome dedicated secondarily to him (primarily to the great fourth-century patriarch of Milan, Saint Ambrose), a centre I think for the Milanese, just as various European peoples have their own community centres in churches around the Holy City. In the church of Saint Ambrose and Saint Charles is preserved the actual physical heart of the Saint, somehow preserved - this was a present to the church and to Rome by a relative of the Saint, Cardinal Frederick Borromeo.
I feel some affection for this man that I know hardly anything about, because (I think) of his love for the Church, and his love for the people. He came of a noble family and had an uncle who became a Pope. In those days, that was an excellent way to be made a cardinal, but few cardinals become great Saints. What is it about Saint Charles and broke the mould? Not only was he a powerful intellect, but he seems to have had considerable diplomatic skills and so was able to an extent to manage the course and the completion of the Council of Trent, the Church's response to the protestant challenge. He then executed the reforms of the Council in the archdiocese of Milan, in a thoroughgoing programme that the archbishop himself entered into enthusiastically, providing a personal example. He lived the ascetic life, gave his life to the poor and, during the great plague of 1576, personally administered to the most vulnerable, the sick and the dying. He died on the third day of November, at the age of forty-six, worn out by his ministry.
His physical heart, preserved as a relic in that church, is a symbol of that great love he had for the people, and the next time I'm in Rome I'll be paying it a visit again.
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