On display in the Confederate Museum in New Orleans one can find an artifact from the estate of Confederate President Jefferson Davis that has aroused the interested of Catholics for generations—a crown of thorns (some of them over two inches long) wovem together by fine wire and hanging on the upper right corner of a large portrait of Pope Pius IX. At the bottom of the portrait is a Latin passage from St. Matthew’s Gospel scrawled in the pope’s own handwriting: “Venite ad me omnes qui laboratis, et ego reficiam vos, dicit Dominus” [Come unto me, all ye who labor and I will refresh you, saith the Lord] (Matt. 11:28). The museum’s display card, written long ago, says, “Crown of Thorns Prized by President Jefferson Davis To be placed over the head of Pope Pius IX.”
This crown of thorns has been the subject of a great deal of confusion over the years. It is often asserted that this crown wa swoven by Pius IX himself and given as a gift to Jefferson Davis during the latter’s imprisonment in 1866. It is sometimes argued that this was a gesture of support from the pope for the Confederate cause. This assertion is commonly repeated to this day, especially among Catholics nursing sympathies for the Confederacy.
None of this is true. The crown of thorns on display in New Orleans was not woven by Pius IX, nor sent as a gesture of political sympathy to Jefferson Davis. In this essay, we shall explore the origin of the myth, who really made the crown of thorns, what it means, and why it is associated with Pius IX.
At the outset, though, I’d like to credit author and Jefferson Davis scholar Felicity Allen with doing the leg work on this subject. Her 2024 article “Jeff Davis’s Crown of Thorns” for Abbeville Institute Press examines this question with admirable erudition. Allen’s work will be the primary source for this essay. [1]
The Origin of the Myth
Let us begin by considering how the myth of Pius IX sending Davis a crown of thorns originated.
From May 1865 to May 1867 Jefferson Davis was imprisoned in Fort Monroe, Virginia. His confinement was considered very harsh by the standards of the day. He was under constant surveillance and not permitted a moment of privacy, not even for the needs of nature. Neither his wife Varina nor his children were permitted to communicate with him. For the first five days of his imprisonment, he was literally shacked to a ball and chain until public outcry against this treatment led to the chain being struck off.
In December 1866, Pope Pius IX sent Davis the signed picture of himself mentioned above. [2] Jefferson Davis, an Episcopalian who nevertheless had familiarity and respect for Catholicism, was deeply moved by the gesture. [3] Davis believed the picture was a meant as a token of consolation from the pope, “the comforting invitation our Lord gives to all who are oppressed.” [4] Pio Nono’s voice, he said, “came from afar to cheer and console me in my solitary captivity.” His Catholic friend Lucius Bellinger Northrop disagreed, however, suggesting that Davis has misunderstood the gift. According to Northrop, Pius was inviting Davis to use his captivity as a means to reflect on the state of his soul and embrace Catholicism. “You did not understand all the significance of his kindly act,” Northrop told him. “[Pius] delicately invited you to come to him as [Christ’s] vicar.” [5]
While Jefferson Davis’s letters reference the photograph, there is no mention of the crown of thorns in any of Davis’s correspondence. From whence then did the crown originate, when, and how did it become associated with Pius IX?
The existence of the crown was not made public until it was donated to the New Orleans Confederate Museum, sometime between 1891 and 1907, between 25 and 41 years after Davis’s imprisonment [6]. There were as yet no scholars asserting that the crown was woven by Pius IX. In fact, the crown did not appear in any scholarly works until Ishbel Ross’s First Lady of the South: The Life of Mrs. Jefferson Davis, published in 1958. In that work, Ross mentions the donation of the crown to the Confederate Museum and states that Mrs. Varina Davis made the crown for her husband during his imprisonment. Ross unfortunately offered no source for this assertion, which also failed to explain why the crown was hung over the portrait of Pius IX.
This led to further speculation. A few years later, a writing professor from the University of Alabama named Hudson Strode wrote a three-volume biography of Davis. Published in 1964, Strode’s Jefferson Davis: Tragic Hero appears to be the source of the myth that the crown of thorns was woven by Pius IX. Strode mentions a”chaplet of thorns woven by the pope’s own fingers.” [7] Strode offered no evidence for this conclusion, merely stating it as fact. The assertion was repeated two years later in his Jefferson Davis: Private Letters 1823-1889, where Strode said that Pius IX “had sent him a large photograph of himself with a crown of thorns woven by the papal fingers.” [8] It is thus not until 98 years after Pius sent the portrait that we see the first literary claim of the Pian origin of the crown.
As far as anyone can tell, Strode’s assertions are pure speculation based on the relation of the crown to the image in the museum. This sloppy scholarship is not surprising; Strode’s affinity for Davis bordered on hero worship to the point of compromising his objectivity, a fact noted by critics of his work then and now. [9] Strode, however, was nevertheless a celebrated authority on Jefferson Davis in his time. His word was taken as Gospel and the myth of Pius’s crown of thorns is still repeated to this day.
There remains, however, no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the crown of thorns in the New Orleans Confederate Museum originated with Pius IX. But if Pius IX did not make the crown of thorns, then who did?
Who Made the Crown?
Suspecting Strode’s story to be a fabrication, historian Felicity Allen wrote to the Vatican Archives in 1980 to ask if there were any record of a crown being gifted by Pius IX to Jefferson Davis. The archives responsed that it was not possible to find an answer; in other words, there was no record of any such incident but it could not be ruled out either. [10]
Allen decided to search for the original records of the donation to the Confederate History museum, which by the 1980s were being housed in the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University in New Orleans. The Head of the Rare Books and Manuscripts, Wilber E. Meneray, responded to Allen’s inquiry about the crown in a 1985 letter:
We do have a list of the items donated by the Davis Family over a period of time from 1891 through 1907. The majority were donated in 1891. . . . The inventory states “. . . picture of Pope Pius IX with an autograph comforting Latin sentence inscribed on it…. The Pope sent this picture to Jefferson Davis whilst a prisoner at Fortress Monroe. Accompanying the picture is a crown of thorns made by Mrs. Davis that hung above it in Mr. Davis’ study.” [11]
Meneray’s letter is important in two respects. First, it echoes the unsourced claim made by Ishbel Ross in 1958 that the creator of the crown was Varina Davis. Second, it explains why the crown of thorns is hung upon the portrait of Pius IX: this is how it was arranged in the Davis household. The curators of the museum were presumably attempting to replicate the original arrangement from Jefferson Davis’s study.
But is there any hard documentary evidence that the crown was made by Varina Davis? And why would Jefferson Davis hang a crown made by his wife upon a portrait of Pope Pius IX?
The final piece of the puzzle comes from the pages of the Confederate Veteran, an early 20th century publication dedicated to preserving the memoirs of Confederates. In Vol. 37, No. 5 (May, 1930) an article was printed entitled “Reminiscences of Jefferson Davis.” Its author was “Miss Nannie Davis Smith,” who was the granddaughter of Jefferson Davis’s oldest sister, Anna and who was very close with the Davis’s after the war. In fact, she was present with Varina attending to Jefferson Davis when the latter died in 1889. In the article, Nannie mentions the portrait of Pius IX and says that the crown of thorns was woven by the Davis’s and hung on Pius’s portrait “after Pope Pius IX had likewise been despoiled and persecuted.” [12]
The article by Nannie Davis Smith fills in the rest of the missing pieces. She says specifically that the crown was woven “after Pope Pius IX had…been despoiled and persecuted.” This can only refer to the events of 1870, when the Italian Unification deprived Pius of the Papal States and inaugurated generations of persecution of the Church by the secular Kingdom of Italy. This also helps us understand why Jefferson Davis placed this crown on the portrait of Pius. We know that Davis was deeply moved when Pius communicated with him during the former’s captivity at Fort Monroe. Now, four years later, seeing Pius similarly despoiled and persecuted, Davis had his wife weave a crown of thorns to be hung on the pope’s portrait as an act of solidarity with his sufferings and a gesture of compassion for the suffering pontiff. Allen sums up the matter thus: “So it was, after all, not by the pope or for Davis that the crown was made, but for the pope, to link his suffering to Christ’s. And its maker can no longer be in doubt. It was simply Mrs. Davis.” [13]
As to the question of whether Pius IX was a Confederate supporter, this, too, can be answered in the negative. I refer the reader to Matthew Plese’s 2022 piece in The Fatima Crusader, which deals at length with Pius’s relationship to the Confederacy and demonstrates that Pius’s alleged support for the Confederate cause is vastly overstated. [14]
[1] Felicity Allen, “Jeff Davis’s Crown of Thorns,” Abbeville Institute Press, July 24, 2014. Available online at https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/jeff-daviss-crown-of-thorns/
[2] In her article, Allen mentions that a second portrait exists signed by Pius IX, identical to the one in New Orleans and with the same date, but a different verse. This time the pope quotes the Latin of Psalm 94, “Today if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your heart.” It is displayed in the Davis’s post-war home in Beavoir, Mississippi. Presumably, Pius had sent Davis two portraits, one remaining in Beavoir, the other deposited in New Orleans.
[3] Davis actually attended the Catholic school of St. Thomas in St. Rose Priory in Wilkinson County, Mississippi in 1815, the only Protestant in the school.
[4] Allen, 2014
[5] Ibid.
[6] Wilber E. Meneray, Letter to Felicity Allen, August 6, 1985. Cited in Allen.
[7[ Hudson Strode, Jefferson David: Tragic Hero (Harcourt & Brace: New York, 1964), 302
[8] Allen, 2014
[9] For example, see “The Cornerstone of Objectivity: Davis’ Reaction to Stephens’ Speech,” This Cruel War, August 26, 2015. Available online at https://web.archive.org/web/20160626144743/http://www.thiscruelwar.
com/the-cornerstone-of-objectivity/
[10] Allen, 2014
[11] Wilber E. Meneray, Letter to Felicity Allen, August 6, 1985.
[12] Nanny Davis Smith, “Reminiscences of Jefferson Davis,” Confederate Veteran, Vol. 37 No. 5 (May 1930), quoted in Allen.
[13] Allen, 2014
[14] Matthew Plese, “Why Did Pius IX Support Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy?” The Fatima Crusader, Aug 5, 2022.
Phillip Campbell, “Pius IX Did Not Give Jefferson Davis a Crown of Thorns,” Unam Sanctam Catholicam, May 25, 2025. Available online at https://unamsanctamcatholicam.com/2025/05/pius-ix-did-not-give-jefferson-davis-a-crown-of-thorns