{{lead rewrite|date=September 2018}} An '''embassy chapel''' is a place of worship within a foreign mission. Historically, embassy chapels have sometimes acted as clandestine churches, tolerated by the authorities to operate discreetly. Since embassies are exempt from the host country's laws, which is a form of extraterritoriality, these chapels were able to provide services to prohibited and persecuted religious groups. For example, Catholic embassy chapels in Great Britain provided services while Catholicism was banned under the Penal Laws.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last1=Brown |editor-first1=Jonathan |last1=Elliott |first1=John |title=The sale of the century: artistic relations between Spain and Great Britain, 1604–1655 |date=2002 |publisher=Yale University Press in association with Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid |location=New Haven |isbn=9780300097610}}</ref> A similar role was filled for Protestants by the Prussian embassy chapel in Rome, where Protestantism was unlawful until 1871. With the adoption of laws granting freedom of religion, these embassy chapels have often become regularized churches and parishes, such as that of the Dutch embassy chapel to the Ottoman Empire, now The Union Church of Istanbul.
==History== Early modern embassy staff, who commonly lived in the ambassadorial residence, were permitted to have in-house chapels and chaplains, especially where, in the wake of the Reformation, they lived in a country that banned their religious faith. These soon drew members of the same faith to join the worship services in the embassy. The Dutch Republic sponsored chapels in twelve of its embassies, which acted as churches for local Reformed Protestants. Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor sponsored chapels wherever he could, "that Catholic services might be held to comfort the Catholics of the area, and to promote the further growth of this religion."<ref>Kaplan, Benjamin J., ''Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe,'' Harvard University Press, 2007, Chapter 8, p. 186 ff.</ref> By the late eighteenth century, a new legal principle had come into being, extraterritoriality, according to which "the ambassador and the precincts of the embassy stood as if on the soil of his homeland, subject only to its laws."<ref>Kaplan, Benjamin J., ''Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe,'' Harvard University Press, 2007, Chapter 8, p. 186 ff.</ref> As religious freedom advanced with time, many of the embassy chapels lost their function as safe havens and were converted into churches proper or dismissed.<ref>{{cite book |editor1=Isabel Karremann|editor2=Cornel Zwierlein|editor3=Inga Mai Groote|title=Forgetting Faith? Negotiating Confessional Conflict in Early Modern Europe. |date=2012 |publisher=De Gruyter |location=Berlin |isbn=9783110270051}}</ref>
===Catholic embassies in London=== During the reign of Elizabeth I, Catholicism was gradually outlawed in England, and Catholic masses and worship were prohibited, particularly after the Oath of Supremacy of 1559. With the "Act to retain the Queen's Majesty's subjects in their obedience", passed in 1581, the celebration of Mass was prohibited under penalty of a fine of two hundred marks and imprisonment for one year for the celebrant, and a fine of one hundred marks and the same imprisonment for those who heard the Mass. The reign of Charles I (1625–49) saw a small revival of Catholicism in England, especially among the upper classes. As part of their royal marriage settlement, Charles's Catholic wife, Henrietta Maria, was permitted her own royal chapel (the Queen's Chapel in London, as well as a chapel at Somerset House) and chaplain.
Ambassadors of Catholic nations sought to provide relief for persecuted English Catholics by protecting worship at their chapels with diplomatic immunity. The English government attempted unsuccessfully several times to dissuade such use of the Spanish and Portuguese embassies between 1563 and 1611.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Trimble |first1=William Raleigh |title=The Embassy Chapel Question, 1625–1660 |journal=The Journal of Modern History |date=1946 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=97–107 |jstor=1872115 |doi=10.1086/237004|s2cid=143718041 }}</ref> In 1610, James I asked foreign ambassadors not to allow English priests to celebrate at, or English Catholics to attend, their chapels, but only the Venetian ambassador complied.<ref>{{cite book |last1=ADAIR |first1=Edward Robert |title=The Extraterritoriality of Ambassadors in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries |date=1929 |location=London}}</ref> Starting in 1624, several arrests of English Catholics leaving these embassy chapels were made, which irritated the French ambassador, the Marquis of Blainville. On March 10, 1630, an order in council forbade Catholics to hear Mass at the embassies. The next Sunday, as reported by the Venetian ambassador, guards were placed in front of the French, Venetian and Spanish embassies, and Catholics were arrested as they left the premises; afterwards the Spanish ambassador, Don Carlos Coloma, unsuccessfully tried to obtain their release.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Trimble |first1=William Raleigh |title=The Embassy Chapel Question, 1625–1660 |journal=The Journal of Modern History |date=1946 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=97–107 |jstor=1872115 |doi=10.1086/237004|s2cid=143718041 }}</ref> Coloma defused the issue by taking residence in the countryside, and demanding that the English government punish those who had violated his diplomatic immunity. Five years later, on April 12, 1635, the council directed Sir John Coke to inform the ambassadors that their diplomatic rights would not be infringed upon, but that penal laws against Catholics would be pursued. When a priest who had said Mass was captured and escaped to the house of the French ambassador Henri de Saint-Nectaire, where he was then recaptured, he was set free because of the right of extraterritoriality, and his pursuers were punished.<ref>{{cite web |title=Venice: July 1635 {{!}} British History Online |url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol23/pp409-426 |website=www.british-history.ac.uk |language=en}}</ref> Over time, enforcement of the law became lenient; Venetian ambassador Anzolo Corer wrote in 1636 that Mass at the chapel of the Queen and at the embassies was "frequented with freedom."<ref>{{cite web |title=Venice: September 1636 {{!}} British History Online |url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol24/pp57-74 |website=www.british-history.ac.uk |language=en}}</ref> In 1637, large crowds attended Mass daily at the Spanish embassy.<ref>{{cite web |title=Charles I – volume 376: Undated 1637 {{!}} British History Online |url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/domestic/chas1/1637-8/pp69-97 |website=www.british-history.ac.uk |language=en}}</ref>
In eighteenth-century London, there were chapels in the French, Spanish, Florentine, Venetian (in the Haymarket), Portuguese (originally in Golden Square, then in South Street, Grosvenor Square), Austrian (on Hanover Street), Neapolitan (in Soho Square), Bavarian (on Warwick Street) and Sardinian embassies.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Paola |last1=Bianchi |first2= Karin |last2=Wolfe |title=Turin and the British in the Age of the Grand Tour |date=21 September 2017 |publisher=Cambridge University Press, 2017 |isbn=9781107147706}}</ref> In London, the streets outside the houses and house chapels of the Spanish, French and Venetian embassies were the scenes of public protests, sometimes violent. The police sometimes attempted to detain British people who attended Catholic services in the embassy chapels. Embassy chapels led to diplomatic tension between the English government and the Catholic governments who operated the embassies between 1625 and 1660.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Trimble |first1=William Raleigh |title=The Embassy Chapel Question, 1625–1660 |journal=The Journal of Modern History |date=1946 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=97–107 |jstor=1872115 |doi=10.1086/237004|s2cid=143718041 }}</ref> In the eighteenth century, English subjects ceased to be harassed for attending services at the Sardinian embassy. On Easter Sunday 1772 James Boswell and Pasquale Paoli "worshipped together at the Sardinian Chapel."<ref>Peter Martin: A Life of James Boswell, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999</ref> When Catholic worship became allowed in London in 1791 with the Roman Catholic Relief Act, the Bavarian, Sardinian and Spanish embassy churches were converted into churches, while the others (Venetian, Neapolitan, Imperial, French and Florentine) were dismissed.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Evinson |first1=Denis |title=Catholic churches of London |date=1998 |publisher=Sheffield Academic |location=Sheffield |isbn=9781850758198}}</ref>
==List== ===In London=== [[File:London Warwick Street Church Front.JPG|thumb|right|The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory, which was the chapel of the Portuguese Embassy between 1730 and 1747, and the chapel of the Bavarian embassy afterwards.]] *Sardinian Embassy Chapel<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Trimble |first1=William Raleigh |title=The Embassy Chapel Question, 1625–1660 |journal=The Journal of Modern History |date=1946 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=97–107 |jstor=1872115 |doi=10.1086/237004|s2cid=143718041 }}</ref> *Spanish Embassy Chapel, now St James's, Spanish Place<ref>{{cite book |editor-last1=Brown |editor-first1=Jonathan |last1=Elliott |first1=John |title=The sale of the century : artistic relations between Spain and Great Britain, 1604-1655 |date=2002 |publisher=Yale University Press in association with Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid |location=New Haven |isbn=9780300097610}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Trimble |first1=William Raleigh |title=The Embassy Chapel Question, 1625-1660 |journal=The Journal of Modern History |date=1946 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=97–107 |jstor=1872115 |doi=10.1086/237004|s2cid=143718041 }}</ref> *Royal Bavarian Chapel (Portuguese and then Bavarian embassy)<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Trimble |first1=William Raleigh |title=The Embassy Chapel Question, 1625–1660 |journal=The Journal of Modern History |date=1946 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=97–107 |jstor=1872115 |doi=10.1086/237004|s2cid=143718041 }}</ref> * French, Florentine, Neapolitan, Venetian, and Austrian embassies (non extant today)<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Trimble |first1=William Raleigh |title=The Embassy Chapel Question, 1625-1660 |journal=The Journal of Modern History |date=1946 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=97–107 |jstor=1872115 |doi=10.1086/237004|s2cid=143718041 }}</ref> * Russian Orthodox Chapel, former Russian Embassy in Welbeck Street<ref>{{cite book |last1=Christopher Birchall |title=Embassy, Emigrants and Englishmen: The Three Hundred Year History of a Russian Orthodox Church in London |date=2014 |publisher=Holy Trinity Publications (November 1, 2014) |isbn=978-0884653363 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Opening of the historic building of the Russian Orthodox Church in London (1813 -1920) - News and Announcements - Diocese of Sourozh |url=http://www.sourozh.org/maineng/2016/10/12/opening-of-the-historic-building-of-the-russian-orthodox-chu.html |website=www.sourozh.org |access-date=26 June 2018 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Страница не найдена |url=https://www.rus.rusemb.org.uk/data/doc_rus/The%20Russian%20Church%20in%20London.pdf |website=Посольство России в Великобритании |access-date=26 June 2018}}</ref> * St Etheldreda's Church<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Trimble |first1=William Raleigh |title=The Embassy Chapel Question, 1625–1660 |journal=The Journal of Modern History |date=1946 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=97–107 |jstor=1872115 |doi=10.1086/237004|s2cid=143718041 }}</ref>
===British chapels abroad=== *St George's chapel in the British Embassy in Madrid, today St George's Anglican Church<ref>{{cite book |editor-last1=Brown |editor-first1=Jonathan |last1=Elliott |first1=John |title=The sale of the century : artistic relations between Spain and Great Britain, 1604–1655 |date=2002 |publisher=Yale University Press in association with Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid |location=New Haven |isbn=9780300097610}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=PLACES OF WORSHIP: St. George's Anglican Church, Where Everyone is Welcome |url=https://www.guidepost.es/st-georges-anglican-church-everyone-is-welcome/ |website=Guidepost Magazine |date=21 July 2015}}</ref> *Chapel and English Cemetery in the British Consulate in Málaga<ref>{{cite web |title=English Cemetery in Malaga, History of the Cemetery, Andalucía, Costa del Sol, Spain |url=http://www.andalucia.com/cities/malaga/english-cemetery/cemetery-history.htm |website=www.andalucia.com|date=25 November 2011 }}</ref> * British Embassy Chapel in Paris<ref>{{cite web |title=AN ANGLICAN ADVENTURE: The history of St George |url=https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2005/2-september/books-arts/book-reviews/an-anglican-adventure-the-history-of-st-georges-anglican-church-in-paris |website=www.churchtimes.co.uk |access-date=26 June 2018}}</ref> * Christ Church, Jerusalem, the seat of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, located on the site of the British Consulate until World War 1 <ref>Crombie, ''A Jewish Bishop in Jerusalem'', 243.</ref>
===Other=== *Prussian Embassy chapel in the Cottarelli Palace in Rome<ref>{{cite web |title=Modern Churches in Historical Rome |url=https://www.romeartlover.it/Alchiese.html |website=www.romeartlover.it |access-date=26 June 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=J. Gordon |title=The Museum: A Quarterly Magazine of Education, Literature, and Science, Volume 1 |year=1862 |page=33 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A8oRAAAAYAAJ&q=Prussian+Embassy+chapel+rome}}</ref> *Prussian embassy chapel in Turin, which hosted the Waldensian community before it was legalized in 1848<ref>{{cite book |last1=Maltby |first1=A. H. |title=The Quarterly Christian Spectator, Volume 10 |date=1838 |publisher=Indiana University |pages=64 }}</ref> *The Union Church of Istanbul,<ref>{{cite web |title=049. The Chapel at the Dutch Consulate General in Istanbul: a place of work and worship {{!}} Robert Schuddeboom |url=http://robertschuddeboom.com/?p=369 |website=robertschuddeboom.com |access-date=26 June 2018 |archive-date=27 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180627005443/http://robertschuddeboom.com/?p=369 |url-status=dead }}</ref> which started as the Dutch embassy chapel in Istanbul *Our Lady of Divine Providence Chapel, Kabul, the chapel of the Italian Embassy<ref>{{cite web |last1=Stancati |first1=Margherita |title=Afghan Church Endures Amid War and Strife |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323384604578326953607830168 |website=Wall Street Journal |access-date=26 June 2018 |date=18 March 2013}}</ref> *Chapel of the Transfiguration, Ashgabat<ref>{{cite web |last1=Fides |first1=Agenzia |title=ASIA/TURKMENISTAN – Fr. Madej: "Ecumenism is our daily life" – Agenzia Fides |url=http://www.fides.org/en/news/63635 |website=www.fides.org |access-date=26 June 2018}}</ref> (Apostolic nunciature in Turkmenistan) * Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos Church in Beijing (Russian Embassy)<ref>{{cite web |title=History |url=http://orthodoxbj.com/en/history/ |website=orthodoxbj.com}}</ref> * Orthodox church of Saint Catherine in Rome (Russian Embassy)<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Povoledo |first1=Elisabetta |title=Russian Orthodox Consecrate Parish in Rome |newspaper=The New York Times |date=24 May 2009 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/world/europe/25iht-rome.html |language=en}}</ref> * Church of the Metamorphosis (Kottakis) (Russian embassy in Athens)<ref>{{cite web |title=The Metamorphosis, Sotira Kottaki Church |url=http://www.athensattica.gr/en/you-are-here/what-to-see/churches-monasteries/item/5420-the-metamorphosis,-kottakis-sotira |website=www.athensattica.gr |access-date=26 June 2018 |language=en-gb |archive-date=27 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180627033939/http://www.athensattica.gr/en/you-are-here/what-to-see/churches-monasteries/item/5420-the-metamorphosis,-kottakis-sotira |url-status=dead }}</ref>{{Clarify|date=May 2022}} * Church of Saint Benoit, Istanbul and St Louis of the French chapels in Istanbul (French embassy)<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freely |first1=John |title=The companion guide to Istanbul and around the Marmara |date=2000 |publisher=Companion Guides |location=Woodbridge |isbn=9781900639316 |page=254 |edition=Rev. and updated}}</ref> * Spanish embassy chapel in Istanbul<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freely |first1=John |title=The companion guide to Istanbul and around the Marmara |date=2000 |publisher=Companion Guides |location=Woodbridge |isbn=9781900639316 |page=254 |edition=Rev. and updated}}</ref> *Orthodox chapel in the Russian embassy in Turin<ref>{{Cite web|title=Un po' di Russia a Torino: incontro con Padre Ambrogio, parroco della comunità di San Massimo Vescovo – Piemonteis| date=14 November 2017 |url=http://www.piemonteis.org/?p=3496|access-date=2021-01-16|language=en-US}}</ref> *Ar-Rahman Mosque located inside the Iranian embassy in Pyongyang, North Korea
==See also== *House church *Clandestine church
==References== {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== *Harting, Johanna H. ''History of the Sardinian Chapel, Lincoln's Inn Fields''. London: R. & T. Washbourne, 1905. *Kaplan, Benjamin J., Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, Harvard University Press, 2007 *Trimble, William Raleigh. “The Embassy Chapel Question, 1625–1660.” The Journal of Modern History, vol. 18, no. 2, 1946, pp. 97–107. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1872115.
* Category:Religious persecution Category:Diplomatic immunity and protection