Her niece was Mother (St.) Katherine Drexel who wore the habit of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a religious order which she founded for the evangelization of North American Indian and black children. There are still people living today who knew Mother Drexel and met her in person.
This gift came about through her friend Count Ditalmo di Brozza. In return, she was presented with the former flabella, later exhibited in the museum of the University of Pennsylvania until they were returned to her family in 1930. The whereabouts today are unknown.
I believe the flabella donated by Lucy Drexel were made in Naples. The set was used from 1902-1964. I hope the set will one day make a comeback. Their rightful place is not a museum. They were made to be used and not to sit idle.
Trips to Europe were always privileged moments in the cultural formation of the Catholics of the world. Visitors came to the Vatican from the far ends of the earth and were overwhelmingly impressed by the splendor and acts of courtesy shown to the Roman Pontiff by the traditions of the Papal Court.
Recently I was privileged to visit the Papal Summer villa at Castel Gandolfo where the museum of the Papal Court is kept today (formerly located at the Lateran Palace). One set of the flabella (singular flabellum) are on display in the piano nobile (on the side facing the lake), dating from the reign of Pope Leo XIII. This set was used exclusively in the Vatican for seven pontificates, ending with Paul VI.
I include several photos below, illustrating the famous fans from the past with their white ostrich plumes. The palms of the fans display the arms of the Holy See, worked in heavy gold thread on a crimson field of rich felt. The embroidered tiara is surrounded by a display of flowing acanthus leaves. The flabella were designed to be relatively light weight, held aloft by members of the Court.
The flabella were ceremonial liturgical fans to show honor that were carried on either side of the pope on the sedia gestatoria as well as on either side of the canopy if the pope was in procession. They rested on either side of the papal throne, seen in many vintage photos of papal events, seen below. The Patriarch of Lisbon also shared this prerogative. The tradition was common in the liturgy of the East and West and was mentioned in the fourth century Apostolic Constitutions (VIII, 12), intended to keep insects away from the sacred species on the altar:
"Let two of the deacons, on each side of the altar, hold a fan, made up of thin membranes, or of the feathers of the peacock, or of fine cloth, and let them silently drive away the small animals that fly about, that they may not come near to the cups".
Before the flood tide of modernity we had nice things and the theological virtue of charity was expressed in the Papal Court by the external manner of courtesy, a social rite nourished through the centuries by Catholic culture. It was always on display in the Vatican, guaranteed and protected by the deeply rooted protocols of the Court, a man-made institution directed to the glory of God. Courtesy was thus a higher virtue, made manifest by the traditions of the Court that guided and protected this noble trait nourished through the centuries as a virtue of knighthood.
Up until Vatican Council II these blessed traditions of the Court had undisputed superiority. It brings to mind a verse from Schiller: "Joy reigned in the halls of Troy before the tall rock fell." When the ax fell in the 1960s it became no longer popular to dress or act like your uncle or grandfather. Even though it may have seemed like the right thing to do at the time, in retrospect, there was no good reason to abolish these traditions. The defacement of the Court was the result of giving voice to the spirit of the age that had no common cause with courtesy or tradition.
The flabellum were last seen in 1964. That was a time of radical repulsion and repudiation fomented by the modern and revolutionary world, with its preference for secularism. Above all it was imposted on Catholic identity first by the cinema and then by the media and finally by the Church officials who imposted the "spirit" of the Council. Liberalism fought hard to abolish the monarchy and the papacy and the Papal Court and to substitute them with another order of things, a "New Order" that erased courtesy from the cultural milieu.
May Lucy Drexel pray for us and the Church and we also invoke the intercession of Mother Drexel, a great American woman who valued helping the poor while also fostering the virtue of courtesy and greatness. Let us pray these traditions will find their way home for a full return to the Court. And let us pray against the grim excesses of secularism that still further threaten the doctrine of the Church and the papacy.
Source: Catholic Answers.
