Francis Augustus MacNutt

Francis Augustus MacNutt (February 15, 1863 — December 30, 1927) was an Indiana-born Roman Catholic writer and an American diplomat who later became a high ranking Vatican official.

MacNutt was a papal Knight of St Gregory and Papal Chamberlain to Popes Leo XIII and Pius X, the only American so appointed at the time. He was also for sometime an American diplomat and a prolific writer of plays and histories. MacNutt married Margaret Ogden, grand-daughter of Clement Moore who wrote the famous Christmas poem "T'was the Night Before Christmas" and they established themselves in Rome at the Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona. Their home was the center of social life for the Roman nobility and senior church officials. Today, it is the Embassy of Brazil.

MacNutt was highly influential in Vatican circles and was a close friend to three popes, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV and also to Cardinals Merry del Val and Mario Rampolla, both Vatican Secretaries of State. His influence was also known in the Austrian Imperial Court where he established close ties with the Royal Family including Empress Zita. He was offered Austrian nobility as a baron but quietly refused the distinction. At the Vatican, he worked to find solutions to the "Roman Question" which kept the Vatican and the Italian Kingdom apart following Italy's seizure of the Papal States in 1870.

In 1903 MacNutt bought a small castle for himself and his wife, "Schloss Ratzotz," as a summer home at Bressanone/Brixen in what is today northern Italy. He died there of cancer in 1927 two years before the Vatican and the Italian Kingdom established diplomatic relations which saw the establishment of the Vatican as an independent sovereign state based on much of his ideas and work.

In 1926, the year before his death, he wrote his autobiography, a two volume privately printed text, which was later edited by Father John Donovan and published in 1936 as "A Papal Chamberlain: The Personal Chronicle of Francis Augustus MacNutt." The preface was written by G.K. Chesterton and the foreward by John Cardinal Hayes of New York. It was published by Longmans, Green and Co.

He died on December 30, 1927, at Schloss Ratzotz and is buried in the graveyard of Santa Maria am Sand in Millan near Bressanone in the largely German-speaking province of South Tyrol, Italy. His headstone makes no mention of his papal titles or accomplishments. He was buried in the habit of a Third Order Lay Franciscan.

Bibliography

Autobiography

A Papal Chamberlain: The Personal Chronicle of Francis Augustus MacNutt (1936), featuring a preface by G. K. Chesterton.

Biographies

Bartholomew De Las Casas: His Life, His Apostolate, and His Writings[1] (1909)

Fernando Cortes and the Conquest of Mexico, 1485-1547 (1909)[2]

Fernando Cortes: His Five Letters of Relation to the Emperor Charles V, 1519-1526 (1908)[3]

Plays

Three Plays: Balboa, Xilona, The Victorious Duchess[4] (1916)

References

  1. ↑ MacNutt, Francis Augustus. "Bartholomew De Las Casas: His Life, His Apostolate, and His Writings".
  2. ↑ MacNutt, Francis Augustus. Fernando Cortes and the Conquest of Mexico, 1485-1547. New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1909.
  3. ↑ MacNutt, Francis Augustus. Fernando Cortes: His Five Letters of Relation to the Emperor Charles V, 1519-1526. New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1908.
  4. ↑ MacNutt, Francis Augustus. "Three Plays: Balboa, Xilona, The Victorious Duchess".
  • "Francis Augustus MacNutt". Findagrave.com. Retrieved 30 January 2016.
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