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| The Martyrdom of Simeon Cardon and his Five Companions |
During the French invasion of the Kingdom of Naples in 1798, Napoleon’s Grande Armée installed the short-lived and widely unpopular Parthenopean Republic, a treacherous Franco-Jacobin satellite state propped up with French bayonets. Though Sicily remained in control of the Bourbons, the brutal conquest of the Neapolitan portion of the Kingdom was violent and bloody, and as so often is the case with anti-Bourbon historians, the abominable crimes of the Republic receive little to no attention in comparison to the loyalists’ reprisals.
Among the many atrocities committed by the so-called “enlightened” conquerors, was the massacre of six Cistercian friars on May 13, 1799 at the Gothic Abbey of Casamari, bordering the Papal States. Following the capture of Naples, a band of French men-at-arms returning northward came upon the ancient Abbey. Welcomed by the prior Simeon Cardon, a Frenchmen who only a few years earlier fled the revolutionary atrocities in his homeland, the soldiers sacked and desecrated the church in hatred of the faith (Odium fidei). As Cardon and the five other friars attempted to recover the Consecrated Hosts strewn across the sanctuary floor they were shot and murdered in cold blood. After the departure of the soldiers, the martyrs were interred in the Church by the surviving monks.
Closed by Napoleon in 1811, the Abbey recovered with the restoration of the Bourbons. Suppressed again by the Italian State in 1873, it was stripped of its assets. Amazingly, the Cistercians did not abandon the abbey and it continues to be a popular religious destination today for tourists and pilgrims alike. In commemoration, I’m posting a Prayer for the Blessed Martyrs Simeon Cardon and Five Companions:
We humbly beseech the mercy of your majesty, almighty and merciful God, that, as you have poured the knowledge of your Only Begotten Son into the hearts of the peoples by the preaching of the blessed Martyrs Simeon Cardon and five companions, so, through their intercession, we may be made steadfast in the faith. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
~ Giovanni di Napoli, May 29, Feast of Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi
Addendum: On a sad note, we learned that Don Eugenio Romagnuolo, Abbot at Casamari, recently passed away from Covid-19. Our thoughts and prayers are with Don Romagnuolo, his family, friends and brethren, as well as the parishioners at Casamari. Requiescat in pace.
