In a Roman Sacristy...

...it's amazing what you find. The picture shows the tiny sacristy of San Gregorio dei Muratori and Fr Joseph Kramer, who I got to know in my Roman days. During my visit, he brought down a dusty box, which normally lives on top of a cabinet, and proclaimed it to be a Jacobite relic:

It is a confraternity habit that once belonged to Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia (1751-1819), who after the death of his cousin, the Cardinal Duke of York, in 1807 was recognised by Jacobites as 'Charles IV'. By this time he had abdicated his Sardinian throne after the death in 1802 of his wife, the Venerable Marie-Clotilde of France (a sister of Louis XVI and now on the road to canonisation). Charles Emmanuel retired to Rome and actually died as a Jesuit novice at Sant'Andrea al Quirinale.

The church of San Gregorio de Muratori was built by the Roman Confraternity of Builders (muratori) and, from 1931, used by St Leonard of Port Maurice's Archconfraternity of the Friends of Jesus and Mary on Calvary, which originally conducted the Via Crucis in the Colosseum. It was to this group that Charles Emmanuel belonged and his habit is preserved in this little sacristy to this day.