CHAPTER TENI end my journey in Rome, where I visit the places associated with the Apostles, and descend into the catacombs. I attend a solemn ceremony above the tomb of St. Peter, and go out to see the ruins of Ostia.
§ I
FACING the Piazza di San Pietro in Rome is a small cafe that survives in the roadway, its precarious territory marked out by trees in green tubs.
I have sat there many a time drinking coffee or San Pellegrino faintly flavoured with the dust raised by passing omnibuses and cabs, by the feet of monks, friars, nuns, monsignori, pilgrims, and ordinary tourists like myself. I have an affection for this modest cafe, and when it vanishes in some street improvement scheme, as all one's favourite landmarks must if one lives long enough, Rome for me will have lost one of those sentimental anchorages which make us say that we love cities. No one could really love a city: what we really love are the appointments with ourselves which we keep at their street corners.
The first thing I did when I found myself in Rome again was to walk to the Tiber and make my way across the Font San Angelo to the little cafe in the Piazza Rusticucci. With a glow of satisfaction I saw that nothing had altered: it was as dusty and as much in the road as ever; the same little tables were dotted about and apparently the same waiter was flicking at invisible flies with a napkin. Sitting there, I looked straight out to the most superb open space in the world. In the centre rose that obelisk of Aswan granite which witnessed the death of St. Peter, on either side were the fountains, blowing whitely like the plumes of a Life-guard's helmet, and in the background rose St. Peter's, touched by the sunlight of early morning.
The whole square was alive, for it was Holy Week. Every tram-car and omnibus and car that drove up to the end of the piazza let loose a crowd of pilgrims. Some were independent and others were in charge of the village priest. The good man would emerge, earnestly grasping an umbrella, and prudently feeling the ground from the high step of the 'bus with the toe of an elastic-sided boot; then, safely on terra firma, he would marshal his chattering flock, gaze round in search of a missing pilgrim, and eventually march off across the mighty square to become a gesticulating dot on the vastness of the distant steps. There were nuns in starched coifs who exhibited remarkable organising ability in marshalling crowds of small, agile girls; there were numbers of square-faced, Teutonic-looking Poles (for a Polish martyr was to be canonised on Easter Sunday), and there were others whose nationality was baffling. They all marched across the square, where the shadow of the obelisk lay in a black bar like the pointer of a sun-dial; and mounting the long flight of steps, they disappeared into the basilica.
I sat there watching them, thinking that they are the most continuous procession in the history of Mankind: they are the end of a procession that I had encountered in deserts and mountains of the east, beside old rivers of the ancient world, and in cities now fallen into dust: the great procession of Christian pilgrims which has been moving over the world for nineteen centuries. The city of Resafa, now lying silent and dead under the Syrian stars, once echoed to their prayers; the ancient shrine of St. Mena in the sands of Mareotis once gave them precious water in little oval flasks; the God-trodden mountain of Sinai has known them; and in the awful fastnesses of the Egyptian desert they have knelt side by side with the saints.
It was like watching a river still flowing on, a river that, like the Nile, dries up here and there or changes its bed, but never ceases to find its way to the sea. And I thought that could one awaken from his long sleep a primitive Christian of Antioch, Jerusalem, or Alexandria, this procession up the steps of St. Peter's would probably be to him the one entirely comprehensible feature of modern Rome.
§ 2
All Christian pilgrimages must end in Rome, because only in Rome is it possible to descend steps into the depths of the earth and stand in buildings whose walls may have echoed to the voices of St. Peter and St. Paul.
Alone of all the ancient patriarchates of the once Universal Church, Rome has preserved unbroken contact with the Apostolic Age. Even Fifth Century Christians, in an age before the Islamic invasions, when all their holy sites were intact, looked with reverence upon Rome for this very reason. The learned Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, in Syria, wrote to St. Leo about 450 A.D., saying:
" Your city possesses the bodies of Peter and Paul, the fathers of us all, our masters in the faith, whose tombs illumine the hearts of the faithful. These blessed two, inspired by God, have arisen in the East, and spread on all sides their rays:
but it is in the West they have found their setting, it is from the West that they illumine the world. It is they who have given to your seat an incomparable glory: they are the most precious of your possessions."And one of the wonders of the world, which cannot perhaps be fully appreciated by those who have not travelled the stricken battlefields of Eastern Christendom, is that the shrines of Rome, which were the goal of the earliest pilgrimages, are still being visited to this day.
At the outset of my journey, while I was on the road to Kala'at Sim'an, my thoughts had turned, not to the mediaeval pilgrim, but to his distant predecessor, the Greek or Roman pilgrim, who set out while the Roman Empire was yet un-fallen to follow in the steps of Jesus and to visit the places associated with His holy Apostles.
Pilgrimage began within the life-time of those who had known Christ and the Apostles. St. Paula and St. Eustochium, who lived in Bethlehem in the Fourth Century, state that Christians, anxious to see for themselves the scenes of the Crucifixion and the Ascension, came to the Holy Land from the earliest days of the primitive Church. Among the first recorded pilgrims was the great Origen, who was born in Alexandria about 185 A.D. He visited Jerusalem about 238 A.D. to " seek after the footsteps of Jesus and His disciples and prophets." This is about a century before St. Helena uncovered the site of the Holy Sepulchre, which was then occupied by a temple which the Emperor Hadrian had built, possibly to stamp out the sacred associations of the site. He had also rebuilt the city of Jerusalem as a Roman city.
Origen could not have seen Calvary or the tomb of Christ, because they were not uncovered until about 335 A.D., but he was shown a building in which the piety of all early pilgrims was centred until later times. This was the Coenaculum, the House of the Last Supper. It lay, as the Gospel narrative infers, just outside the wall of the city, and thus escaped the destruction under Titus. The upper chamber, the meeting-place of the Apostles after the Resurrection and the scene of Pentecost, was, says St. Epiphanius, a small church as early as 135 A.D., the date when Hadrian transformed Jerusalem into a Roman city. Thus the grandfathers of the Christians who were worshipping in this church in the time of Hadrian might have been present at the Crucifixion. In a country where stone is the common building material, it is possible that the Cosnaculum visited by Origen and the other early pilgrims was actually the house of Mary, mother of Mark, and not a later building erected on the same site. In later ages a more impressive church was built there and was standing when the Moslems captured Jerusalem. They turned it into a mosque, and as a mosque it exists to-day.
Another of the earliest holy places in Christendom was the Cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem. Origen saw it a hundred years before Constantine's basilica, which stands over it to-day, was erected. Writing of this cave, Origen says:
" Everyone in the country knows it, and the pagans will tell again and again to him who cares to hear it, that in the said cavern was born a certain Jesus whom the Christians admire and adore."The full tide of pilgrimage set in after St. Helena had made her journey to Jerusalem in 335 A.D. and had uncovered the sites of the Crucifixion and the Nativity, and had built churches there. Pilgrims now converged on the Holy Land from all parts of the world, and holy sites became multiplied in a not always satisfactory manner. The Fathers of the Church were in two minds on the question of pilgrimage. Some advocated it as an aid to piety; others condemned it, dwelling on the sins of the cities through which the pilgrims were obliged to pass. In 393 A.D. St. Jerome wrote to dissuade a pilgrim, saying that " access to the courts of heaven is as easy from Britain as from Jerusalem, for the kingdom of God is within you."
Pilgrimage to Rome began as early as pilgrimage to the Holy Land. All over the world Christians were aware that the Church in Rome treasured intimate memories of St. Peter and St. Paul, which it prized above all its possessions. There were secret meeting-places in Rome which were hallowed by memories of the Apostles in times when the Church was persecuted, and in the catacombs outside the city the Christians of the First Century had a wonderful record of their earliest history. Fully a century before St. Peter's was built, pilgrims went to Rome to pray beside the Apostle's tomb, which was to be found beside the road on the Vatican Mount, and beside the tomb of St. Paul on the Ostian Way. The great churches which now stand in these two places are like ,an answer to their prayers; for Christians had knelt there in times when there was no vault above them but that of the open sky.
It was often dangerous to be found at the tomb of St. Peter. The Acts of St. Sebastian mention that St. Zoe, surprised on her knees at the tomb, was arrested and led away to martyrdom. Nevertheless, even at this remote period, when the Church was living furtively in the catacombs, pilgrims came secretly to Rome to pray with the faithful and to draw strength from the corporate memory of the Church. St. Paternus was there in 252 A.D. ; St. Marcius travelled from Persia with his wife and sons in 269 A.D. ; and St. Maurus came from Africa in 284 A.D.
There was no St. Peter's and no St. Paul's, no St. John Lateran, and no Vatican. What, then, did these pilgrims see ? They saw the tombs of the two Apostles, and certainly the catacomb of St. Callixtus, in which Christians at that time prayed and celebrated the Mass, and no doubt they saw also the buildings which became the churches of St. Pudenziana, St. Clement, and St. Prisca. All these places are to be seen to-day. They have been handed down from Christians of the First Century through all the adventures and disasters which the early Church suffered in its precious infancy and youth. Nowhere else in the world is there such a satisfying and undeniable continuity with a remote past. It is that continuity which must cause every Christian to ga^e with awe and reverence upon the ecclesiastical antiquities of Rome.
§ 3
I entered St. Peter's, where the tomb of the Apostle stands beneath Bernini's splendid canopy at the western end of the basilica.
Every time I enter this church, I am amazed by its size and by what Goethe called the ability of art as well as nature to set aside every standard of measurement. Even Karnak is not so daring an exercise in size as St. Peter's; but I would willingly forego the sight of so much magnificence for one glimpse of old St. Peter's, with its lost mosaics and its nave of columns.
Kneeling pilgrims surrounded the marble balustrade of the Confession. Each one gazed downward, past the curving marble steps and the praying statue of Pius VI, to the bronze doors leading to the sepulchral crypt in which lie the bodies of St. Peter and the early Popes. The relics that are within have never been disturbed. A great church was built over them in the Fourth Century. It was pulled down in the Sixteenth and an even larger church was erected; and still the hallowed bones lay untouched in the secrecy of their rocky sepulchre, while mountains of rare marble were piled above them.
When the pilgrim has made his devout prayers in this sacred place, it is perhaps right that he should remember the faithful ones who long ago took up the bodies of the martyrs and gave them burial, thus handing them down through the centuries as the sacred possession of the Church.
The Vatican is believed to take its name from the Latin word votes, a prophet or soothsayer, for on Mount Vaticanus once stood an Etruscan oracle which told the future. In the First Century, the Emperor Caligula built a race-course there and imported from Egypt the obelisk, which now stands in the middle of the Piazza di San Pietro, to mark the centre of the spina, the narrow central platform around which the horses and the chariots turned in their courses. When Nero became emperor, he chose this race-course as the scene of his hideous tortures of the Saints, when Christians steeped in tar were burned as torches in the arena. There, probably in the year 67 A.D., St. Peter was crucified.
On the night of St. Peter's death, those who loved him presented themselves before the civil authorities and made the same request that Joseph of Arimathea made to Pilate for the body of our Lord. We can be certain that among them were St. Linus, St. Anacletus, and St. Clement, the three immediate successors to the pastorship of the infant Church. Their request was one that was never at this period refused. It was the Roman law that when sentence of death had been carried out, the bodies of those put to death must be handed over to the relatives.
In the darkness of that night a scene must have occurred in Rome which reproduced in nearly every detail the scene in Jerusalem on the night of the Crucifixion. Like his Master, St. Peter was taken from the Cross and swathed in fine linen; he was then placed with sweet-smelling herbs and spices in a sepulchre hewn from the rock. This tomb, which is now beneath the high altar of St. Peter's, was, in the year 67 A.D., an open cemetery on the side of the Via Cornelia. On the left of this road rose the north walls of the Circus; on the right, in the very shadow of them, was this cemetery, 'which later excavation has proved to be full of pagan and early Christian burials. Possibly a member of the Church offered his own tomb, as St. Joseph offered his for the body of Jesus. And in this place St. Peter was buried.
The first shrine was erected over the grave of the Apostle by St. Anacletus, who had been ordained a presbyter by St. Peter and became the third Bishop of Rome. This shrine was the usual cello, memoria, and was no doubt above ground, clearly visible to everyone who passed along the Via Cornelia. It was probably made by carrying the walls of the tomb upward and forming a chamber above. Below this, and round the grave of the Apostle, were buried the Popes for the first two centuries, from St. Linus, who succeeded St. Peter, to St. Victor, who reigned probably from 189 until 199 A.D.
When the Emperor Constantine became Christian and the persecutions came to an end, he granted the request of Pope Sylvester that a great church might be built above the ancient Papal cemetery in the Via Cornelia. According to the custom of the time, the original grave was not touched and old St. Peter's was built round it in such a way that the tomb lay beneath the high altar. Constantine used the north wall of the old Roman Circus of Nero as the foundation for the south wall of his basilica, so that the south side of old St. Peter's occupied nearly the whole northern portion of the Circus from whose tiers of seats the Roman crowds had watched the burning and crucifixion of the martyrs over two and a half centuries before.
The early pilgrims entered a church very different from the present St. Peter's. Five and thirty steps, which pilgrims ascended on their knees, led to the facade of the entrance court, or atrium, a large marble court open to the sky and surrounded by cloisters. In the centre of this court marble columns upheld a bronze canopy beneath which was a colossal gilded pine cone that gushed water, an ablution fountain for the use of those about to enter the church.
Crossing this court in the sunlight, the pilgrims passed into a vast, dim church of pillars, where seven hundred lights burned day and night before fifty-two altars and chapels. The walls and arches glowed with gold mosaic, and the floor was of white marble taken from Nero's circus. Towards the west end of the church twisted columns upheld a canopy; beneath this lay the tomb of St. Peter. The church ended in a western apse and a wide, semi-circular tribune with a central throne for the Pope, and on the arch of the tribune was the famous mosaic, now lost, showing the Emperor Constantine on his knees, offering a model of his church to the Saviour.
Had we visited old St. Peter's at the time of the Saxon pilgrimages, we should have knelt at the Confession as pilgrims do to-day, but we might have been able to see the tomb of the Apostle. It was the custom for pilgrims to lower kerchiefs or other small objects on the end of a stick kept there for the purpose, so that they might be hallowed by contact with the sarcophagus of St. Peter. There was a deacon of Tours called Agiulphus, who visited the tomb about the year 600 A.D., and on his return gave a detailed description which St. Gregory of Tours quoted in De Gloria Martyrum:
" St. Peter is buried in a church called from ancient times the Vatican," he wrote. " His sepulchre, which is placed under the altar, is very rarely entered. However, if any one desires to pray, the gates by which the place is fenced are opened, and he goes in above the sepulchre and then, having opened a little window, puts his head within, and makes request according to his needs. Nor is the result delayed, if only the petition is a just one."
The deacon also refers to the practice of lowering cloths into the tomb, and this is also mentioned by certain bishops who, during the reign of St. Hormisdas, asked that cloths might be laid actually upon the tomb of the Apostle. St. Gregory the Great also alludes to the custom, in a letter replying to the innocently audacious request of the Empress Constantina for the head of St. Paul. " I am distressed that I neither can nor dare do what you enjoin," wrote St. Gregory, " for the bodies of the Apostles Peter and Paul glitter with so great miracles and terrors in their churches, that one cannot even go to pray there without great fear. Moreover, let my most tranquil lady know that it is not the custom of the Romans, when they give relics of saints, to presume to touch any part of the body ; but only a cloth is put into a box and placed near the most sacred bodies of the saints. . . ."
The custom survives to this day. Behind the bronze doors of the Confession is a niche where the pallia, which the Pope sends to newly consecrated archbishops, are kept in a gold casket. The proper description of a pallium—pallium de corpore sancti Petri—" from the body of St. Peter "—preserves the early meaning of this custom. The pallium is a strip of white lambs' wool which is worn round the neck, over the chasuble, by archbishops on certain occasions, and is always buried with them. It is assumed that the gift of a pallium represents the custom of handing the mantle of a dead teacher to his disciples; and in Egypt it was the custom for the new Patriarch to take the pallium from the dead body of his predecessor and place it round his own neck, an act which constituted succession to the headship of the Egyptian Church.
It will be seen from the references I have given that in remote times it was possible to approach, and possibly to see, the tomb of the Apostle in old St. Peter's. It is generally believed that the tomb was walled up during the barbarian invasions in order to protect it from the Goths, the Vandals, and the Saracens, and it has not been seen since that distant time, except by chance during the rebuilding of the basilica in the year 1594.
Constantine's church began to show signs of age long before the Sixteenth Century. Its wooden roof was eaten by rats and the south wall, which had been built on the wall of Nero's circus, began to subside. It was therefore decided to erect a new church. In the year 1594, while the architect, Giacomo della Porta, was working above the tomb of St. Peter, the ground gave way and he was able to see into the vault, which thus became visible for the first time for about eight hundred years. Pope Clement VIII was instantly informed, and calling three cardinals, Bellarmine, Antoniano, and Sfondrato, he went at once into the basilica. While the architect held a torch above an opening in the tomb, the Pope and the three Cardinals looked down and saw the gold cross, as high as a man, which Constantine and Helena had placed on the tomb of the Apostle in the year 326 A.D. It is said that by the light of the torch they were able to make out the legend: Constantinus Augustus et Helena Augusta ham domum regalem simile fulgori coruscans aula circumdat—" Constantine Augustus and Helena Augusta surround this royal dwelling with a court shining with like splendour." One account says that the Pope ordered the opening to be securely sealed with cement in his presence; another states that he considered the possibility of exposing the crypt to view as in primitive times, but was opposed everywhere by the superstition that any alteration to the tomb of St. Peter would be followed by terrible misfortunes.
This same superstition was roused so violently thirty-two years later that it spread beyond the Vatican to every corner of Rome. The erection of Bernini's heavy canopy had made it necessary to find firmer foundations for the four pillars, and in June, 1626, when Bernini began to excavate in the crypt, he discovered human remains almost at once. A superstitious crisis was caused by the deaths, one after the other, of several men closely associated with the work, and when Pope Urban VIII became indisposed, Rome said that the reconstructions should cease. It was the Pope's duty—not an easy one in tlie face of such general superstition—to decide whether to abandon the erection of the canopy, or to continue with the work; and he, " since he knew his intention to be most upright and that the action itself had no other object than the honour and glory of God," decided with courage to continue the excavations. These proved that beneath the high altar of St. Peter's, and grouped round the body of the Apostle, are layers of tombs in which lie not only the skeletons of martyrs, but bones of early date which bear the signs of fire. Fortunately a detailed account of these discoveries was written at the time by R. Urbaldi, a canon of St. Peter's, and lay hidden away in the Vatican archives until Professor Armellini discovered it in 1891.
" Two of the principal coffins were uncovered," wrote Urbaldi, " and each of them was seen to contain two bodies. The shapes and forms could be distinguished, and also that their heads were towards the altar. They were clothed with long robes down to the heels, dark and almost black with age, and were swathed with bandages like infants; the bandages also passing over the head. These bodies were placed side by side with the utmost care. Both these and all the others in the coffins, as soon as they were touched and moved, were resolved into dust, and except some portions of clothing, nothing resisted the touch. It was not possible to form any particular or individual idea of either the names or size of these bodies, but the tradition is very clear and certain that close to the body of St. Peter there were buried those first patriarchs and fathers of our Church, whose blood was the seed of this holy and great republic. . . ."
Such quantities of remains were discovered as the work went on that they were reverently reinterred in coffins of cypress wood as each excavation was completed, places being found for them as near as possible to those which they had occupied so many centuries before.
" They began to excavate for the second foundation opposite the first, in front of the confession," continues Urbaldi.
" Not more than three or four feet down there was discovered at the side a large coffin made of great slabs of marble, but since this did not interfere much with the site needed for the foundation, it was thought sufficient only to cut it back.
When its end had been cut off they were surprised to see within ashes with many bones, all adhering together and half burned. These brought back to mind the famous fire in the time of Nero, three years before St. Peter's martyrdom, when the Christians, being falsely accused of causing the fire, and pronounced guilty of the crime, afforded in the Circus of the Gardens of Nero, which were situated just here on the Vatican Hill, the first spectacles of martyrdom."
During the digging of the fourth foundation, on the Gospel side of the altar, a tomb was found which contained two bodies.
" Their faces could be distinguished and their clothing seemed large and full and reaching to the feet. In one could be seen the shape of the vestments open over the shoulders, and in both the fine texture of the albs, which were worked for a space of two fingers from the bottom with a small arabesque pattern. The undergarments were large and full, and of monastic shape, dark and almost black in colour. Everything was almost dust except only the hair, which was long and hanging, of a chestnut colour, but straight, looking as if it had been recently cut. Some few bones were also found preserved in a box apart. Many conjectured these to be two of the first Popes, who were Greeks."
When a plan of the excavations was made, it was seen that the saints had been buried like spokes in a wheel, pointing towards a central place which contained the sarcophagus of St. Peter. " These bodies surrounded St. Peter," wrote Urbaldi, "just as they would have done when living at a synod or council."
Not the least of the miracles is that Rome, although more than once given over to pillage, should still retain what St. Jerome called " her coronet of martyrs."
§ 4
I went down into the crypt, which is one of the most solemn places in Rome. If solemnity implies repose, the church above, with its stupendous vistas and its population of baroque angels and more than life-size popes, could never be called solemn. You might call it triumphant or exultant, or even militant. Every monument leans forward in action, surrounded by folds of swirling drapery, and every cupid bursts with health and faith.
But when you leave behind all this superb vitality, this almost riotous sacredness, and take the little winding staircase that leads beneath the church, you come into a silent place of shadows, of old walls, of low, vaulted ceilings where plain electric-light globes cast a faint glow in the darkness. Big stone coffins lie here and there, and, approaching them, you read the name of dead Pontiffs—Nicholas I, who died in 867, and Calixtus III, who died in 1458. In a dark corner are three plain tombs lying against the wall, with the plaster peeling and cracking; cheap plaster that is veined to look like marble. And you read that here repose the bodies of Francis James Stuart, " King James IV " of England; Charles Edward Stuart, " King Charles III "; and Henry, Cardinal York, " King Henry IX." The last Stuarts lie in the plainest tombs in the crypt, but rich in their nearness to the grave of St. Peter. Their beautiful memorial by Canova, in the church above, was placed there, not by those who would have drawn the sword for them, but by George IV; and while it reflects most creditably upon George IV, how its magnanimity underlines the bitter tragedy of the last of this brilliant, unhappy, and attractive line of kings.
While I was walking round this solemn vault, whose roof you can touch with a stick, I came across a red granite sarcophagus that contains the body of the only Englishman who ever sat in the chair of St. Peter. He was Nicholas Breakspear, who reigned from 1154 to 1159 as Pope Adrian IV. He was a poor lad, born at Langley, near St. Albans, whose father left him destitute. Nicholas begged his way to France, and, after studying at Paris, became a servant in the house of the canons regular of St. Rufus, near Valence. As time went on, his leadership, his piety, and his learning, gained him admission to the order, and eventually he was made abbot. His discipline was so strict that certain of the canons complained to Pope Eugenius III, which served merely to bring to notice the stern virtues of the abbot, for the Pope marked him down for a higher position. He soon became Cardinal of Albano and was sent to Scandinavia, where he was so successful in strengthening the relations between the Holy See and the northern kingdoms that he was called the Apostle of the North.
His reign as Pope was one continuous battle with rebellion and an endless struggle against the ambition of Frederick Barbarossa. When Barbarossa came to Rome to be crowned Emperor, the Pope rode out to meet him at Nepi; but Barbarossa did not come forward, as he should have done, to take the bridle of the Pope's mule and help him to dismount, whereupon Adrian refused him the kiss of peace. The struggle between Barbarossa's pride and Adrian's firmness continued for several days, and ended only when Barbarossa consented to lead the Pope's mule by the bridle in front of the German army. The Pope then greeted him with the kiss of peace and they proceeded towards Rome. Six years of constant trouble followed, and Adrian died just as he was preparing to excommunicate Barbarossa. A more remarkable career could hardly be imagined than that of the poor English boy who begged his way from St. Albans and ended by sitting in the chair of St. Peter.
I noticed that the few visitors who were wandering round the crypt never looked at the floor, which is one of the most interesting and least thought of memorials in Rome. It is the pavement of Constantine's basilica. The ancient stones are worn and cracked, and it was on this level, if not actually on these stones, that our Saxon kings, that Charlemagne himself, and all the pilgrims of the Middle Ages, knelt in homage.
§ 5
Rome is still a small city from whose streets you can quickly escape into the country. You pass out of the walls and after •a mile or two find yourself travelling along country roads, with sienna-coloured houses and old farms lying here and there. Cypress trees stand in solemn groups and flowers grow from the hot earth. When the sun passes behind a bank of cloud, a swift shadow moves over peaceful distances enclosed by lines of faintly blue hills.
I drove out one afternoon to the Abbey of Tre Fontane, which is built over the traditional place of St. Paul's martyrdom. There has never been any doubt that St. Paul was beheaded " at the third mile-stone " along the Ostian Way. No other site has ever challenged the accuracy of this tradition. In the reign of Nero the place was called Aquae Salviae—the Salvian Springs. At a later time the picturesque legend sprang up that as the Apostle's head struck the earth, it bounced three times and at every meeting with the earth a stream of water gushed forth.
Passing the superb basilica of St. Paul's-Without-The-Wall, where the Apostle's headless body is buried, I followed the Via Laurentina, which runs across a stretch of country near a bend in the Tiber. A narrow country lane led off the main road to the left, and this ended at a tall archway over which bougainvillaea drooped in purple cascades. Eucalyptus trees, which grow everywhere, prove what a malarial swamp this place must have been at no distant date. Visitors who went there in the early part of the last century speak of it as a horrible, fever-ridden spot, deserted in summer except for a few pale monks, listless and shivering in the quagmire. The anopheles mosquito was so numerous at one time that the place became uninhabitable, and therefore Pope Pius IX gave it in 1865 to those storm troops of agriculture, the Trappists.
Those grim, hard-working, silent men took the place over and, with the help of prison labour, turned it into a semi-tropical paradise. They have drained the swamps, planted the right kind of trees, and the result is that you pass beneath the archway into something like a botanical garden. Unfair as it was, I could not help comparing this energetic example of monasticism with the listlessness of the Egyptian monks, who would have died steadily year after year in a place like this. It would never occur to them to drain it and make it habitable. God put the mosquitoes there, they would argue, so why bother about it ? But they would never have abandoned the site, even though to live there meant certain fever and death.
I walked under the eucalyptus trees, looking for someone to show the churches to me, but the place appeared deserted. There are three churches close together in the garden, one of them a circular baroque building on a slightly higher level to the right. The word " Silentio " was written everywhere, but there was no need for it: the only sound was the cooing of ring-doves in cages among the tall dark trees. Turning a corner I came upon a human being, a Trappist monk who was digging in the soil with a kind of violence. I felt that every spadeful was doing his soul good. He thrust the spade into the earth as if he were striking it into the heart of Satan, and he lifted it and shot the soil away as if he were shovelling sin. The sweat stood on his head and he gave himself no rest.
I wanted to talk to him, but there was a notice with " Silentio " within a few yards of him. I remembered Robert Louis Stevenson's disastrous attempt to talk to a Trappist, and thought it better not to risk a mutual embarrassment. In the hope that he might be temporarily released from his vow of silence, I lingered near watching him, wondering why he worked with such unbecoming zeal. He turned and saw me, and with a slightly resentful expression continued to dig with fury. He was quite a young monk, and his face would have pleased El Greco.
I went into one of the three churches, which astonished me because it was that rare thing in Rome, an almost Gothic building. I stood in a long, bare, white nave that might have come from France. While I was wondering in whose honour this church was built, an elderly French Trappist, evidently one whose duty it is to show visitors round, came up and told me that it was the church of St. Vincent and St. Anastasius. He told me the story of St. Vincent.
" He was a deacon of Saragossa, in Spain," he said, " and was tortured and slain under Dacian during the persecution of Diocletian in 304 A.D. The Christians gathered his remains and eventually buried him in the cathedral at Valentia. In the Eighth Century, when the Christians of Valentia were forced to fly from the Moors, they took up the relics of St. Vincent and went by sea to a cape, now called Cape St. Vincent, where they buried his relics. In the Twelfth Century the relics were taken up from Cape St. Vincent and placed in the cathedral at Lisbon.
" Who was St. Anastasius ? He was a Persian who became a monk at Jerusalem. One day he made a journey to his native land, and was martyred there by the Persians in 628 A.D."
When we came out of the church, we saw the young monk still digging.
" Why does he dig with such zeal? " I asked.
" It is always so with him," replied the monk softly. " He is like that."
" He looks as if he is digging a grave against time."
" That may be so," he replied. " Now, this is the Church of Santa Maria Scala Coeli—the ' Ladder of Heaven.' You think it is a strange name for a church? Yes; perhaps it is a strange name. But when I tell you the reason for it, I think you will say it is a beautiful name. Once when St. Bernard was saying Mass here, he had a vision of a ladder which rested on this church and went up into heaven. And as he looked, he saw souls ascending the ladder with white angels leading them upward, and he knew that these were the souls of those who had been released from Purgatory by his prayers. That is why we call the church by that name. You must now come and see the church of San Paolo alle Tre Fontane. ..."We climbed down the little hill and entered the church which is built over the Salvian Springs. It is not a beautiful church, but it is an unusual one. Three altars stand in a row, and beneath each altar is one of the springs. You can hear the water bubbling and gurgling beneath the marble. Steps lead down to one of the springs, where water can be seen moving darkly out of the earth. The monk told me that in the Sixteenth Century the church was built by Giacomo della Porta on the site of an ancient church.
The Trappists made a number of discoveries when they put Tre Fontane in order, but perhaps the most remarkable was the finding of coins of the time of Nero among a number of almost fossilised pine-cones. As soon as these were discovered, it was remembered that in the Greek apocryphal Acts it is stated that St. Paul was executed beneath a stone pine.
The monk departed to lead a group of stolid Polish peasants through the churches, and I went out into the garden, where a strong smell of eucalyptus led me to a small building not far from the gate. Here I found a little shop full of chocolate, which the monks make, and also stacked with flasks and bottles of " Liquore Eucaliptina," a yellow liqueur made by the Trappists from eucalyptus pods. I bought a bottle of this, but I discovered the pleasure of drinking the liqueur was slightly marred by the memories it so vividly suggested of lying in bed suffering from a bad cold. Still it was worth buying for the delightful little decorative label on each bottle, carefully painted in blue and red by some Trappist father whose heart was in the library with the illuminated manuscripts.
Another of the products of Tre Fontane are rosaries of a substantial kind, made from eucalyptus pods strung together, each bead the size of a hazel nut and as hard as stone.
§ 6
I spent a day descending into the depths of the catacombs.
They are apparently visited by every Easter pilgrim, for I found all the catacombs crowded and the churches above filled with people waiting to go down in batches.
In some churches a priest or a monk would ask what nationality predominated. As this was difficult to say without holding an examination, for we were a bewildering mixture of English, French, Germans, Italians, and Poles, it was generally the first person to speak who naturalised us, and a priest or monk, who spoke, or gallantly attempted to speak, the required language, was produced to lead us down into the earth.
I had never before systematically explored the catacombs, and as I went from one to another, I was astonished by their number and size. Apart from the fact that they are all, of course, dark, and all more or less like the shafts and workings of coal mines, there are hardly two of them alike. Some are well cut, with wide passages, some narrow and badly designed; some are vaulted and decorated, with a pretence at architecture, and some are rude undecorated tunnels in the volcanic rock. It would take weeks to explore every catacomb in Rome, possibly months, for only a few of them are open to the public.
An attempt was once made to measure the length of these underground workings, and the total came to five hundred and eighty-seven miles! An Italian archaeologist made an estimate that from the First to the Sixth Centuries at least six million bodies must have been laid to rest there. Five of the catacombs were in existence in Apostolic times, and the rest date from the Second to the Fourth Centuries. After the Peace of the Church under Constantine, only five or six small catacombs were excavated, for the necessity had then ceased to exist and Christians could be buried above ground.
It was once believed, and even now is still sometimes said, that the catacombs were old, worked-out tunnels, from which veins of sand had been extracted, and that the Christians found them ready when the persecutions of the Church made it necessary to hide the dead. But Father Marchi has proved beyond all question that no pagan so much as delivered a single blow with a pick-axe in order to make these miles of passages: they are entirely the work of the first Christians, who employed a special class of excavator—fossores, or grave-diggers—to make them. These people were evidently a kind of minor clergy, and as time went on they exercised an administrative control of the catacombs and devised a regular scale of charges for those who desired to be buried there. In times of peace, it is unhappy to relate, some Christians lost their air of meek and attractive submission and became rapacious profiteers, willing to sell burial sites near the martyrs for as much as they could get for them. St. Gregory the Great stopped this disgraceful custom in 597 A.D., at a time when five gold scudi was the price for a tomb near that of a martyr.
The entrance to most of the catacombs is near a church, sometimes in the church itself. There is a little door which opens on a flight of steep steps leading into a pit of darkness. It was a strange experience to descend these steps with a crowd of men and women and to find oneself in a long tunnel, dank-smelling with wet, dead air, whose pitch-darkness was only partially relieved by the lighted tapers which we held. As we advanced in single file, sometimes with bent heads, we would try to keep together, haunted by the fear of dropping behind and becoming lost in the maze of awesome passages which lay to left and right. Now and then the person in front would allow his taper to go out and he would turn quickly and ignite it from the taper behind, as if hating to be without its comfort for a second in that gruesome place.
Once, in the catacomb of St. Agnes, I was the last person in the file. The blackness seemed to lie on my back like a weight, and, as we went on, I could see a long line of variously held yellow tapers ahead, their light wavering over square and semi-circular graves in the corridor. The person in front of me was a plump, blonde Polish girl with cheeks like a couple of ripe apples. In spite of the fact that we could not speak the same language, she kept turning with solemn, blue saucer-wide eyes and making remarks in a tone of voice which indicated that she was startled and appalled. Once, as we were turning the corner of a gallery, her taper lit the interior of a tomb in which, to her horror, she saw a considerable portion of an early Christian lying in the soft dust. She stopped, and her taper went out! In her agitation she jabbed it in the light of my taper and put that out also; and the darkness came down on us like a hood. While I fumbled with a box of matches, I knew what a horrible experience it would be to become lost in the catacomb of St. Agnes, and by the light of my match I saw cheeks no longer apple-red but a very unripe green. Until we caught up with the glimmering line of lights, it was rather like wandering through several pages of Edgar Alien Poe at his worst.
I thought of St. Jerome, who as a youth wandered through these catacombs with the same feeling of awe and astonishment which is visible on the faces of people fifteen centuries later. He would spend the week studying grammar under Donatus, or rhetoric under Victorinus, and then on Sundays he would go down into the catacombs and prowl about in the dark, discovering the tombs of the martyrs and reading the old inscriptions on the clammy walls.
" When I was a boy in Rome, being instructed in liberal Studies," he wrote, " on Sundays, with others of my own age, I used ro wander about the sepulchres of the apostles and martyrs; and I often went into crypts dug out of the depths of the earth, which have along the walls, on each side as you enter, bodies of the dead; and everything is so dark that those words of the prophet are almost fulfilled: ' They descend alive into hell.' Now and then a light from above modifies the horror of the darkness, but it seems rather a hole pierced to let down the light than a window, and as you advance step by step, and are immersed in the blackness of night, you are reminded of the words of the poet: ' The very silence fills the soul with dread.' "
St. Jerome wandered in the catacombs about the year 360 A.D., and his account might well have been written to-day.
The catacomb of St. Callixtus stands below a fine garden of the Trappists. Here everything was very business-like. Three monks were darting about behind a counter, selling an incredible number of post-cards, medals, rosaries, and replicas of the lamps found in the catacomb. As the visitors emerged from this shop, they were divided into language groups. My group consisted of about twenty English schoolgirls in charge of a nun, three Americans, and a Japanese. Our guide was a tall, thin Englishman—not a monk—who carried a wax taper twisted round the end of a long stick. He uncoiled a little piece of this taper whenever the wax began to burn down. At the door of the steps he handed each one of us a taper, and we followed him into the cold darkness.
This was the finest catacomb I had so far seen. I had the impression that it was probably one known to St. Jerome, for it had air holes which sent a pale green light into the main shaft. We groped our way towards a high crypt in which many of the Popes who had occupied the chair of St. Peter from 168 to 296 A.D. had once been buried. The walls around gaped with their empty tombs, for their bones were removed to other churches in Rome soon after the Peace of the Church. A narrow, dark passage led down to another crypt, where we saw the effigy of a young woman in white marble lying on her side as if asleep. This was St. Cecilia, who was martyred in 177 A.D. and whose remains, after lying here for some time, were taken to the beautiful church of St. Cecilia-in-Trastevere.
In the course of our journey we came upon a remarkable sight in the very depth of the catacomb. A small group of men and women were kneeling before a tomb, like early Christians, Candles were alight. A young priest was folding his vestments and placing them in a bag. He had just celebrated Mass on the tomb of a martyr. The guide told us that over fifty Masses had been said by visiting priests that morning in the Catacomb of St. Callixtus.
I noticed here, as in all the other catacombs, the absence of the Cross as a Christian symbol. The early Christians rarely used it: they used instead the Greek monogram of Christ. They loved to paint pictures of our Lord as the Good Shepherd, not the Christ of later art, but a youthful, beardless figure, sometimes holding a lyre or with a shepherd's crook in His hand. I noticed that one of the most frequent tomb paintings was the figure, generally of a woman, standing at prayer with extended hands, in the same attitude that I had seen the Copts adopt in their churches. These figures personify the soul of the departed.
I made a list of the New Testament scenes that were painted here and there on the tomb chambers, for I thought it interesting to see which particular incidents in the Gospel narrative appealed to the first members of the Church. There were several Baptisms, I saw one Annunciation, and a group that may have been the meeting of our Lord with His disciples after the Resurrection. The Raising of Lazarus was not uncommon, and there was one unmistakable picture of Jesus talking with the Woman of Samaria at the well of Sychar.
The dove is frequently seen on the walls of the catacombs, and so are the peacock and the pelican. The symbolism of the dove is well known, but the reason why the Christians adopted the peacock is not perhaps so familiar. This bird, which was sacred to Juno, was in pagan times let loose from the funeral pyre of an empress to signify her deification, and the Christians borrowed it as a symbol of immortality. The pelican represented the Redeemer, who gave His blood for mankind, for it was a common fable in ancient times that if a snake bit young pelicans the parent bird would tear his breast and revive them with his blood. This symbol again became popular in Christian art at a much later period, when St. Gertrude had a vision of Christ in the form of a pelican, feeding mankind from His breast.
Emerging again into the daylight, I walked along the Via Appia to the catacomb of St. Sebastian. We were taken down by a quick, enthusiastic little Franciscan, who kept whirling round on us on steps and in narrow passages, pointing out something with the exclamation " Magnifique, hein?", and then striding off again down the long, cold corridors. This catacomb is lit by electricity, which makes it much easier to see, without detracting from its im-pressiveness.
It was the only catacomb in Rome which mediasval pilgrims visited. The others were lost and forgotten until they were discovered in later times. The catacomb of St. Sebastian has always been a pilgrimage place because of the legend, which there is every reason to believe, that the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul were removed there for safety in early times, before their churches were built.
A new interest was given only a few years ago by the discovery of many tombs of the Apostolic period. The little Franciscan told us how one day—I think he said in 1919— a Brother Damien was digging a grave when he suddenly fell through the bottom into a First Century house, and only just escaped falling into the well, which still contained water. When this building was cleared, it was seen to contain the tomb of a First Century Roman called M. Clodius Hermes.
" Magnifique, hein ? " exclaimed the monk, leading us to this astonishing fragment of Apostolic Rome, thirty feet down in the earth.
"Who was M. Clodius Hermes?" asked the Franciscan. No one answered him. Then in a dramatic way he lifted his arm and began to chant these words from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans:
" ' Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the brethren that are with them. . . .' Hermes ! This is the tomb of Hermes! "
We looked down into the silent cavern of tomb niches, conscious that we were looking into a building which St. Peter and St. Paul may have known; a building that existed in the time of Nero. A few steps along the corridor, the monk pointed to a skeleton in a long sarcophagus. The end had fallen out, exposing the feet.
" Look at those bones! " he cried. " Those feet may have walked to St. Peter; those knee-bones have bent to St. Paul! Here lies a Christian of Apostolic Rome. . . ."
He turned and led the way up to the church.
§ 7
Thirty feet or so beneath some of the oldest churches in Rome are buildings of the First Century in which the Apostles may have preached, baptised, and celebrated the Holy Mysteries. Among these churches are St. Pudenziana, St. Clement, St. Prisca, on the Aventine, and St. Prassede.
St. Pudenziana stands in the Via Urbana, almost at the top of a gentle hill, with twenty-four steps leading down to its paved courtyard. There is nothing about the exterior to indicate the great age of the building, for it has been restored from time to time. Even when you enter the church, there is nothing remarkable; it is a square pillared building which has lost its character, the aisles having been turned into side-chapels. Then you see the mosaic in the dome over the altar, and you can look at nothing else. This is one of the earliest mosaics in Rome, and may perhaps be earlier than the year 400 A.D.
It shows our Lord seated on a throne, holding a book on which are the words " Dominus conservator ecclesiee Puden-tianae "—" the Lord, Preserver of the Pudentian Church "— and at the back, as part of a scenic background, rises a terraced mound on which towers an immense jewelled cross. Seated to the right and left of the Saviour are the Twelve Apostles, St. Peter on the left hand—the place of honour in Roman times—and St. Paul on the right. The Apostles are in Roman dress, and behind St. Peter and St. Paul stand two female figures holding wreaths.
The background of this mosaic is a fascinating scene. It shows a group of buildings of the Roman period, red-tiled and entirely characteristic of the Fourth Century. Probably because I had recently been reading an account of Constantine's first basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, it occurred to me that this scene might be a contemporary picture of that church and Golgotha; and the more closely I looked at this mosaic, the more certain I felt that I was right. The mound which rises behind the figure of Christ, with the richly jewelled cross on the summit, seemed to bear a striking resemblance to Golgotha as it was in Constantine's time. The clearest contemporary account of Golgotha is that by the nun Etheria, whose travels in Sinai I have mentioned. She was in Jerusalem about the year 460, and says that Constantine's architects left Golgotha as an abrupt, detached rock standing in the open air in the midst of a beautiful cloister. The rock had been richly decorated with mosaic, and on top was a tall cross covered with jewels and gilding. After the pilgrims had prayed beside the tomb of Christ, it was the custom for them to be conducted to the cross by the Bishop. Here, standing in the open air round the foot of Golgotha, they sang many kyrie eleisons while the Bishop's throne was moved round the rock,
My delight at having perceived what I felt was the artist's intention was increased some months later, when I discovered that two authorities whose opinion is worth more than mine have already offered this interpretation: D. Ainaloff, the Russian writer, and Mr. George Jeffreys, in his book on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. If this interpretation is correct, how enormously it adds to the interest of this mosaic, which is thus a contemporary picture, executed perhaps by an eye-witness, or prepared under the supervision of an eyewitness, of the first Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built by Constantine the Great in 336 A.D.
The Sacristan of St. Pudenziana showed me a portion of the nave which has been taken up to expose the red bricks of a Roman building. The remains of a house of the First Century lie under the church, at a depth of about twenty to thirty feet, and an ancient tradition dsclares this to be the house of Cornelius Pudens, one of the first members of the Apostolic Church. Here, it is believed, St. Peter lived, preached, baptised, and celebrated the Holy Mysteries. As I looked down into these ruins, I tried to imagine the time when the light of day shone into its atrium, and when, behind closed doors and with the faithful around him, St. Peter asked for a table to be brought for the mystery of the Last Supper.
During all the misfortunes of the early Church an extraordinary sanctity surrounded the House of Pudens. A table was kept there for three and a half centuries on which it was claimed St. Peter had celebrated the Holy Eucharist. When St. John Lateran became the Cathedral Church of Rome early in the Fourth Century, this table was taken from St. Pudenziana to the new church; and there it has remained encased in the high altar. So precious was the association of the table in the minds of the Christians of the Fourth Century, that one plank of it was allowed to be retained in its original home; and this is to be seen to-day, built into the altar at St. Pudenziana. Cardinal Wiseman, who was titular cardinal of this Church, wished to test the truth of the tradition that the plank at St. Pudenziana and the table encased in the altar of St. John Lateran were of the same wood. He had both scientifically examined, and the report was that the wood is identical.
Standing in the House of Pudens, I remembered St. Paul's words in the Second Epistle to Timothy, probably written in Rome shortly before the Apostle's death. In this he sends greetings to Timothy from " Pudens, and Linus, and Glaudia." That Linus was the St. Linus who became St. Peter's successor as head of the Church seems fairly certain, and that Pudens was the Pudens of St. Pudenziana, or his son, seems also evident. But whether Pudens and Claudia were married, as so many people have liked to imagine, is open to doubt.
Many attractive theories linking these two with Britain have been built up on the strength of a Roman inscription found at Ghichester, which is often said to contain the name of Pudens. Unfortunately a break occurs in the inscription at a critical point, leaving only the four last letters of a name, " ente," which might just as well terminate the name Clemente as Pudente. Therefore all these theories are merest supposition.
Still, as you descend into the excavated chambers beneath St. Pudenziana, your feet tread the pavements of First Century Rome; the walls that rise around may have sheltered the Apostles and their first followers; and you seem very near to the times when St. Paul wrote:
" Do thy diligence to come before winter. Eubulus greeteth thee, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and all the brethren. The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit. Grace be with you. Amen."
§ 8
The church which delights me more than any other in Rome is the church of St. Clement. It has belonged to the Irish Dominicans since 1623, and is the only church in Rome which has triumphantly survived the architectural reformation of the Renaissance.
This lovely building preserves intact all the characteristics of an early basilica. An atrium open to the sky, with a fountain in the centre and cloisters all round, leads to the main east entrance to the church, from whose doors you look westward towards the altar. It is a severe columned church of marble, with mosaics in the dome of the apse, a choir, or schola cantorum, marked off in the nave behind low marble walls and entered by a gate at the east end. Behind the altar is an apse with the episcopal throne in the centre of a semi-circular marble seat. As in St. Peter's, the celebrant at the Mass faces east and officiates with his face to the congregation, the altar between them.
There has always been a tradition that the Church of St. Clement was built on the site of the house of St. Clement. the disciple of St. Peter and third successor to the Papacy. As early as 385 A.D., St. Jerome mentions this church as a venerable building. Until the year 1857, it was believed that the present church was the one mentioned by St. Jerome. But the Prior, Father Mulooly, had for years suspected that earlier remains lay beneath it; he began to excavate and quickly saw that his supposition was correct.
For fifteen years Father Mulooly worked to bring this early church to light, and came upon an even greater discovery, which, however, he was never fated to see as we see it to-day, for he died in 1880. This was the actual house of St. Clement, upon which the first church had been built.
Steps lead down to this from the baptistry. I went with the usual crowd of tourists and pilgrims, in charge of a young Dominican who had a strong look of T. E. Lawrence about him. He spoke Italian, because most of us seemed to be Italians that day, but, when I got him alone, I spoke to him in English and he replied with a lovely brogue.
" Where do you come from? " I asked.
" County Cark," he said; and smiled with delight at the recollection of it.He told me some interesting details of Father Mulooly's work. It seems that as soon as the First Century buildings were discovered, water began to fill them. Neither the method nor the money to drain them were discovered during Father Mulooly's lifetime, and it was not until 1912 that the work of draining the underground working was begun with the help of Cardinal O'Connell, Archbishop of Boston, who had been made Cardinal Titular of St. Clement's. It was decided to dig a brick tunnel to the church from the Colosseum, which is seven hundred yards away. This was completed in 1914 and the water now runs from St. Clement's to the Colosseum, where it enters an ancient Roman drain that is still in working order between that point and the Tiber.
" Ye'll excuse me a moment," said the Dominican; then turning to the crowd, he told them in Italian various things about the place in which they were standing.
" Will I be saying it in English for any of ye? " he asked. Someone said " yes." Then, in his fine soft Irish voice, he said:
" Ye're standing now in the house where St. Clement lived and where, maybe, he wrote his Epistle to the Corinthians. Have ye all read that epistle? Take a look at the old walls. The first Christians came here; the blessed saints and the holy martyrs of the olden time. It's a wonderful thing I'm showing you. ..."
And very earnestly he moved about, pointing out things here and there, looking rather like a saint himself in the gloom of that underground cavern, warning us to miss nothing because we were in one of the most wonderful places in Rome.
§ 9
I received a card of admission to St. Peter's for Easter Sunday, when one of the rarest and most complex ceremonies in the world was to be conducted by the Pope: the creation of three saints at a solemn Mass of Canonisation. The saints who were thus to be raised to the altars of the Church were St. Andrea Bobola, St. John Leonard!, and St. Salvatore da Horta: a Pole, an Italian, and a Spaniard.
The formal processes and the enquiries which take place before the Pope consents to prepare a Bull of Canonisation are undoubtedly the most protracted of all human transactions. It is the rarest possible event for a man to be made a saint during the life-time of anyone who knew him, even though the necessary procedure may have been begun shortly after his death. The courts of enquiry sit sometimes for centuries, examining the orthodoxy, the life, and the reputed miracles of the proposed saint, and it is no uncommon thing, after his qualifications have been discussed by successive popes and successive papal courts, for him to be denied the company of the elect.
It is first necessary for a proposed saint to become beatified. This also is a timeless and complex process. Having become beatified, he is granted the title of" Venerable " and achieves a local sanctity in the country or the religious order to which he belonged during his life. The next step rests with the proposed saint himself. He must perform at least two unquestionable miracles after beatification, by which God indicates that His servant is to joint the saints of the Church. It is the task of a special court, known as the Congregation of Rites, to examine these alleged miracles with the utmost cynicism. The court is addressed by the Postulator of the Cause, who is rather like a defending counsel in a lawsuit, and he is opposed at every turn by the Promoter of the Faith, known as " the Devil's Advocate," whose task is to place every possible difficulty in the way. Should the claim survive the first meeting of this Court, which is held in private, a public meeting is called which is attended by all the Cardinals who are at that moment in Rome. The Pope attends in state. He is borne in, seated in the state litter, the sed.ia gestatoria, and vested in thefalda, a white silk vestment which falls over his feet and is raised as he walks, by two assistants; this garment is only worn by the Pope on occasions of great state. He wears also the amice, alb, girdle, a red stole and cope, and a gold mitre. Divine guidance is solemnly asked and a decree is published ordering public prayers. The third meeting is attended by all the Cardinals, Patriarchs, Archbishops, and Bishops in Rome, and also by every Bishop whose Diocese is within a hundred miles of Rome. The Pope presides over this meeting, and, if a written vote results in favour of the canonisation, His Holiness gives his consent and announces the date on which the ceremony will be held in the Vatican Basilica.
In the early morning I went through enormous crowds to St. Peter's. Every door of the church was besieged by men upon whose white shirt-fronts the morning sun shone strangely, and by women in black, with mantillas draped on their hair. Swiss Guards in padded doublets and steel breastplates, tall red plumes rising from their casques, stood on guard at the doors, while Papal chamberlains, in white ruff and black trunk-hose, examined the tickets. There was many a poignant and heated scene between these Elizabethans and those unhappy persons who had brought the wrong cards of admission, or who had forgotten them altogether. To return and find the right ones would have been useless. It would be impossible to get through the crowds, even if the doors of St. Peter's, which are always closed long before a Papal ceremony begins, had still been open.
One determined woman on the verge of hysterics flung herself picturesquely on the crossed halberds of two Swiss guards and tried to force her way in. It was a dramatic picture, but my appreciation was modified by sympathy for the woman, who had dressed with great care and had probably left her ticket behind from sheer nervous excitement. Nothing could be done; and the last I saw of this poor lady was a tragic figure in black escorted by two embarrassed but soothing chamberlains; as it disappeared round the corner of a baroque out-building, the group bore a remarkable resemblance to a scene from Twelfth Night.
When I entered the church, I became aware of an immense crowd which I could not see: the people filling the nave and transepts. They made a noise like bees about to swarm. This sound echoed all about the vast church in a constant, rhythmic buzz. Crimson and gold banners hung from the roof, long, narrow cloths that hid the pillars and gave an appearance of extraordinary richness to the church. There must have been hundreds and thousands of electric candles all over the building and outlining the dome.
Led by an official from whose velvet cape peeped the point of a rapier, I was taken to one of the most privileged places in St. Peter's: the small space in the apse, near the Papal throne, which is reserved for the royal family, the diplomatic corps, the Pope's relatives, and the Order of Malta. The excellence of my seat was bewildering, for to be privileged to see a Papal ceremony from such close quarters is not only a critical test of one's powers of observation, but of one's knowledge.
A few yards away, in the centre of the apse, a white throne stood beneath a cloth of state; it was approached by seven steps carpeted in red. Behind the throne rose that enthusiastic wave of baroque which terminates St. Peter's to the west: the Cathedra Petri of Bernini. Four immense figures in agitated draperies, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Athanasius, and St. Chrysostom, representing the Latin and the Greek Churches, stand at the corners of a weighty golden chair which is poised in mid air and escorted by two plump cupids, who hold the Papal tiara and the keys of St. Peter. Nothing could have formed a more remarkable contrast to this flamboyant throne than the simple white one below it on which the Pope was to sit.
Five hours passed imperceptibly. History was always crossing the blue carpet of the apse. Sometimes it would take the form of an officer of the Swiss Guard in Michelangelo's uniform, or a member of the Noble Guard in scarlet tunic, white buckskin breeches, and black thigh-boots, a cavalry corps that once escorted the Pope's carriage and guarded him on journeys. Although the Papal stables are now empty, these men still wear spurs. A man in a uniform that puzzled me appeared for a moment: a man in blue and orange, grasping a brass helmet. A chamberlain told me that he was one of the Pope's firemen, a corps first organised by Pius VII.
I saw a pathetic little comedy in the seats opposite, which were reserved for the cardinals. Two simple young village priests had somehow found their way, almost hand in hand, into this exalted part of the church. They grasped broad-brimmed black hats and their soutanes were made of black alpaca, or something that looked like it. They could hardly believe their good fortune to find themselves so near the throne of the Holy Father, and smiles of delight passed over their faces as deliberately, and with the casualness of complete innocence, they walked up the apse and carefully selected two of the best seats reserved for the Sacred College. At nearly every great ceremony which I have attended, something like this has happened. It is always the innocent who stray boldly into the seats of the mighty; but unfortunately they do not stay there very long.
It never for one moment dawned on these young men that they had done anything audacious. Their simple country faces glowed with pleasure as they sat there, and not one of the chamberlains noticed them as he passed to and fro with a wand, escorting the mighty to their places. A stately figure in red and ermine slowly walked over. One of the Cardinals had arrived. The expression on the faces of the young priests, as this Prince of the Church appeared, has been repeated many a time in pantomimes when a character becomes slowly aware of the ogre. They looked up, at first pleasantly, then doubtfully, and at last in panic. His Eminence leaned forward and, I am sure, broke it to them with kindness; for a pale smile answered him and, grasping their broad hats, they fled. I looked for them everywhere, but never saw them again. I like to think that someday one of them may have the right to sit there, even perhaps in the chair of St. Peter; for such things are not impossible.
Suddenly a silence spread over the church. The next instant the whole building sprang into light. A sigh of astonishment passed in a long wave of sound through the building. The vast dome was now a colossal bowl of gold round which one could see the letters, glittering in fire: Tu es Petrus, et super ham petram isdificabo ecclesiam meam. . . ." From the direction of the nave sounded the tread of a slow procession. Monks in the brown, white, or black habits of their orders, each one holding a lighted candle, cross-bearers, and priests, could be seen diverging to left and right into the transepts. Painted banners of the new saints dipped over the heads of the crowd.
The space on each side of the Papal throne was now a court which lacked only its Sovereign. The College of Cardinals sat to left and right, and from the apse to the high altar, facing each other in two rows, sat the Archbishops, the Bishops, the Generals and Procurators of Religious Orders, and the mitred abbots, wearing white vestments and mitres of white linen or damask. From high above the entrance doors of St. Peter's sounded the stately music of the Papal March, played on mellow silver trumpets, and at the sound of it the whole church with its thousands of people broke into a roar of welcome; for the Pope was entering St. Peter's. The soft sound of the feet of priests was now succeeded by the deeper tread of marching men, in which I heard a faint background of spurs chinking and of arms. I could see nothing yet, for the view down the nave was cut off by the high altar and the great crowd of dignitaries around it, but I could tell where the Pope was by the sound of cheering which advanced with him. It came near and nearer, and then died away as the procession reached the high altar; and then I saw the Papal Court enter the apse. Lifted on the shoulders of men in suits of red damask, the Pope, startlingly white, was borne forward seated in the sedia gestatoria, every now and then lifting his hand to trace the sign of the Cross in the air. The Sediari walked with a gliding motion, so that the state palanquin passed smoothly on its way. Above the Pope was carried a white canopy upheld by poles which were borne by Pala-frenieri, and behind them walked fan-bearers carrying long-hafted fans of peacocks' feathers. There were Swiss Guards, halberds, drawn swords, chamberlains, ushers and mace-bearers, all moving with slow, measured steps, and all part of a perfect historical group which culminated in the successor of St. Peter, seated in white, vested in the falda beneath a white cope, and with a mitre of gold brocade upon his head.
The bearers of the palanquin passed slowly to the throne and lowered the poles. The Pope took one step from the sedia to the white throne and turned to face the great church, where the thousands of still white candles blazed in arcs, clusters, and long glittering lines. Only on the high altar were the candles alive and moving in a current of air. Motionless behind the throne stood two officers of the Noble Guard, with drawn swords carried at the salute.
A Cardinal advanced to the throne, accompanied by the Master of Ceremonies and a Consistorial Advocate. The Advocate, kneeling, addressed the Pope in Latin:
" Most Holy Father, the Most Reverend Cardinal here present earnestly begs your Holiness to inscribe the Blessed Andrea Bobola, John Leonardi, and Salvatore da Horta in the catalogue of the saints of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to ordain that they be venerated as Saints by all the Christian faithful."
A secretary, standing on the steps of the throne, replied that his Holiness was much edified by the virtues of the Blessed, but, before making any decision, he exhorted all those present to assist him in imploring the intercession of the Heavenly Court. Whereupon the Cardinal and the Advocate withdrew to their places.
The Pope then knelt at a faldstool, while two cantors intoned the Litanies of the Saints, to which all the assembled dignitaries made the responses.
The Cardinal and the Advocate approached the throne a second time to make their request, and again the Pope ordered prayer. An attendant took the Pope's mitre, and his Holiness, his head covered with a white skull-cap, knelt at the faldstool and prayed while the Miserere was sung. Still on his knees, the Pope intoned the Veni Creator Spiritus, and then, rising, stood during the rest of the hymn. For a third time the Postulants approached the throne with their request, and this time the Pope replied that he would make the proclamation.
Wearing the mitre, and seated on the throne, the Pope then read the solemn declaration and named the date of the feast days of the new saints. The Te Deum was sung and the ceremony of Canonisation was over. The Mass of Canonisation was now ready to begin.
The Pope had given permission for Mass to be celebrated in St. Peter's by a Cardinal. I was too far from the altar to follow the intricate ritual, but now and again I could see the white figure of the Cardinal-Celebrant moving there, facing the east in the historical position of a Fourth Century priest, assisted by a Canon of the Lateran and with a deacon and a sub-deacon on the altar steps. Either the Cardinal or one of his assistants would walk from time to time towards the throne to receive the Pope's blessing. After the deacon had sung the Gospels, the book was brought solemnly in procession for the Pope to kiss. And it was at this point in the Mass that I was astonished to hear the sound of pigeons cooing in St. Peter's. At first I thought that in the silence which had pow spread through the church I could hear the birds that fly about in the piazza outside; but this sound was too loud. There were pigeons, or doves, actually inside the church, and the mystery was soon revealed in the most beautiful ceremony I have ever seen. It was the Offertory.
The whole width of the apse was suddenly filled by a procession of monks, men in black court dress, and others, who advanced towards the Pope holding little baroque and Gothic cages made of silvered wood in which song-birds and ringdoves were chirping and cooing. Behind came men carrying silver and gold barrels of water and wine and a golden tray with loaves of bread on it. As they slowly advanced step by step towards the Pope, there was dead silence in the church save for the lovely cooing of the doves and the bright chirping of the little birds.
The men knelt at the foot of the throne, and as each one brought his offerings, the Pope leaned forward slightly and blessed it. The little birds did not know that they were in the presence of the Sovereign Pontiff and chirped brightly, putting their heads on one side and gazing up into the blaze of light in which he sat, and he solemnly moved his hand over them in the sign of the Cross. This ceremony was performed three times, once for each of the new saints, and it is a relic of days when the early Christians brought offerings of food, wine, and candles to Church for the service of the altar or the upkeep of the clergy, and the aid of the poor. And whenever a new saint is created, these offerings are still given to the Pope; and I am sure that when St. Francis was made a saint all the small birds sang like a May morning as they were carried to St. Peter's chair. '
The Mass proceeded, and at the moment of Consecration the Master of Ceremonies removed the white skull cap from the Pope's head and four chaplains knelt at the altar, holding lighted torches. All the silence in the church seemed to be gathered up and intensified round the altar as the Cardinal-Celebrant elevated the Host. But no bells rang, or are ever rung at this moment in the presence of the Pope. There was instead a ring of arms as the Swiss Guard knelt and as the Noble Guard and the other troops brought their swords down in salute; and from the gallery at the end of the church the silver trumpets played a slow and solemn anthem.
At the Pax Domini a Cardinal approached the altar and knelt side by side with the Cardinal-Celebrant, from whom he received the Kiss of Peace. He returned to the throne and gave the Pax to the Pope, who handed it on to his two assistant Cardinals, from whom it passed quickly in succession along the line of Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops; and watching this ancient ceremony in St. Peter's, and in the presence of the successor of St. Peter, I remembered the little bare-kneed acolytes in the Chaldean Church at Baghdad, who had run through the church in the early morning, touching the hands of the congregation.
Having finished the Mass, the Celebrant retired with his ministers. The men in red came to the throne with the sedia gestatoria, and once again the Pope passed whitely through the church, with his aged hand moving in blessing; and I went out into the sunlight to a great sound of bells.
§ 9
I have always wished to see Ostia, but the chance did not come until I was on the point of leaving Rome. I drove out one lovely afternoon, for the ancient port of Rome is only fourteen miles to the south-west, and found myself in another Pompeii.
The Tiber now flows in a different bed, so that Ostia is no longer the ostium, or mouth, of the river. Long low marshes and sand-hills stretch from the ruins to the distant sea, but as you wander about these marshes, it is possible to trace in the ground the shape of the harbours in which the Roman fleet once anchored.
The main street runs through the ruins for a great distance, paved with huge blocks of stone, and from it branch side streets which lead you to the private houses, baths, and blocks of tenement flats which have been lying for centuries beautifully preserved under a covering of sand. Ostia should be entirely comprehensible to this age, because it thought of nothing but getting rich on trade, and evidence of this is everywhere visible. It was, of course, the great granary of Rome. Here was stored the corn which stopped the mouth of revolution, or failed to stop it, as the case might be. The Egyptian corn ships, which were a State service, always came across from Alexandria and anchored at Ostia, where the grain was stored until the capital required it. You can see the remains of these granaries, and also the barracks where the corps of firemen were quartered, an important department of Ostia's municipality.
Overlooking the theatre is a large open space, the Forum, which is lined all the way round with the head-offices of the shipping companies. It is an ancient Cockspur Street and, like Cockspur Street, it indulged in decorative effects. Nearly every mosaic courtyard shows Neptune, dolphins, tridents, and ships, and each office has a mosaic pavement on which are depicted corn-ships and such-like subjects, with a notice proclaiming that part of the world with which the company traded. These are probably among the earliest examples of commercial advertisement.
It is difficult to imagine that Ostia was once the busiest and most important seaport in the world. This now melancholy ruin, deserted both by life and the sea, once fed the hungry mouth of Rome, and most new things found their way to the heart of the Empire along its paved main-street. The Apostles and the Saints trod these stones in the early age of the Church, and though we know from Acts that St. Paul was sent to Rome overland from Puteoli, near Naples, it may well be that St. Peter came first to Ostia. It is certain that other saints and martyrs used this port in the course of their missionary lives.
Sitting in the theatre and gazing out over the forlorn marshes, I remembered that it was in an inn at Ostia that St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, died. The description other death is one of the most tender and beautiful passages in his Confessions. Mother and son were waiting at Ostia for a boat to Africa, and one day, hand in hand at the window of the house in which they were lodging, they gazed down into a little garden and talked together about eternal things in an exaltation of spirit. She said to him most lovingly that having seen him become a Christian at last, she felt there was no more delight in the world. Five days after she fell ill with a fever, and it was seen that she would die. St. Augustine knew how often she had expressed a wish to be buried near the body of her husband, and it pained him that she should die in Ostia, so far from her own home. Divining his thoughts, St. Monica told him to bury her anywhere, because, " Nothing," she said, " is far from God."
To read St. Augustine's description of his grief is again to enter one's own sorrow at the same parting in one's life, for never, I think, has a man's pain at the sudden ending of " that most sweet and dear custom of living with her "— as he put it—been more sharply and truly put into words. He tells us how he stood dry-eyed at her grave-side, unable to weep, and how, in order to drive sorrow away, he went to the baths; but " after I had bathed, I was the same man I was before; the bitterness of my sorrow could not be sweat out of my heart."
Then he pours out his heart in prayer, all the time thinking of her and begging God to be kind and merciful to her in the life to come.
As I sat overlooking this quiet place of broken walls and old roads, I thought how fifteen centuries ago this town must have gone about its busy work and its pleasure, watching ships coming in laden or setting off to the four corners of the Roman world; how the lights would have been lit at night and how people would have gone out to dinner, all unconscious that St. Monica had died, or that her son was suffering an immortal grief that would carry the name of Ostia with it onward into the most distant future. And the very ruins now open to the sky, the ruins of the baths with their hot and cold rooms and their pretty floors, might be the buildings in which St. Augustine tried to sweat the sorrow from his heart.
Walking down to the harbour, where the tough grass stands knee-high, I thought of another great name that clings to Ostia, that of the fiery St. Jerome. Two years before St. Monica died at Ostia, St. Jerome, smarting under the scandal and the suspicion with which the worldly-minded of Rome had covered him, took ship at Ostia for Antioch. Somewhere -'-perhaps on this very marsh where the weeds grow so high— rocked the ship in which St. Jerome impetuously wrote his letter to the virgin Ansella:
" I write this in haste, dear Lady Ansella, while the ship spreads its sails. I write with sobs and tears, yet giving thanks to God to have been found worthy of the hatred of the world. Salute Paula and Eustochium, mine in Christ whether the world pleases or not, salute Albina, your mother, Marcella, your sister, Marcellina, Felicita: say to them that we shall meet again before the judgment seat of God, where the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed. Remember me, glorious pattern of chastity, and by your prayers appease the sea waves."
The ship spread its sails and took St. Jerome away from Rome for ever. When you go into the underground caverns of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, a Franciscan will lead you to a dark cave, half rock and half masonry. " Here is the cell in which St. Jerome lived until the end of his life," he will tell you. " And here he wrote the Vulgate and all his many letters and treatises."
He takes you on in the dark until you come to a narrow passage leading to another cave: " Here are buried St. Jerome, St. Paula, and St. Eustochium—the saint and the two holy women who left a rich life in Rome to come and live at the birthplace of our Blessed Saviour. . . ."
One end of St. Jerome's journey was here at Ostia; the other in Bethlehem.
The low land is wide and the sea is nowhere visible. In the old days, however, waves pounded on the shores where sand now stretches for miles. Upon those shores, probably a full century before St. Augustine or St. Jerome were at Ostia, this place was chosen as the scene of that " little work of gold," the Octavius ofMinucius Felix, the first piece of Christian apologetics.
Three friends were spending a brief holiday by the sea, at Ostia. " This is a delightful place," writes Minucius, " where I hoped to find in sea-bathing an agreeable and beneficial treatment from certain humours from which I suffered. Owing to the vacation, legal work was slack and had made way for the vintage."
His friends were Octavius, a Christian, and Caecilius, who was not yet converted.
One morning the three friends started to walk down to the sea, and, on the way, Cascilius saw a statue of Serapis and kissed his hand to it, which caused Octavius to say that he really could not permit his dear friend to go about venerating stones and living in such darkness, especially on such a lovely day.
" While Octavius was speaking we were half way between Ostia and the sea, and were already nearing the open beach, where the gentle waves, which laved the furthest stretch of sands, extended and as it were laid it out for a promenade. The sea is always restless, even when the winds are still, and although it did not reach the shore in white, foaming waves, we were highly delighted to see it curling and winding round and about our feet, when we dipped them at the water's edge."
They walked on together while Octavius told them about a sea voyage he had recently made, and they stopped to watch some boys playing " ducks and drakes."
" This game is played as follows," says Minucius, " A shell, rounded and polished by the constant movements of the waves, is picked up from the beach and firmly grasped between the fingers on the flat side. The player then stoops, and, bending down, throws it as far as he can along the top of the water. The missile either skims the surface, or cutting through the crest of the waves darts along, springing in the air. The boy whose shell goes furthest, and oftenest jumps out of the water, claims the victory."
Only the unconverted Caecilius takes no pleasure in the sight, but holds himself aloof rather sulkily, at last confessing that he deeply resents the fact that his friend Octavius should have made such a remark about his spiritual life. In the most friendly way the three men sit down on a rock jutting out into the sea and thrash out the question of Christianity versus paganism.
Their conversation is long and learned. Caecilius defends the gods of Rome; Octavius expounds the faith of Christ. He admits that before he was converted he was more than a sceptic, and as a lawyer had probably tortured Christians who had confessed their faith, in the hope of making them recant. He proceeds to expound the Christian doctrines, and the end of the conversation is the conversion of Caecilius.
" After this we retired, all three joyful and happy: Caecilius because he believed, Octavius because he was victorious, and I myself because of the conversion of the one and the victory of the other."
I was happy to have ended my journey at Ostia among such memories as these. It pleased me to think that I had seen the Euphrates flowing southward through Mesopotamia, that I had seen the Nile carrying Egypt on its ancient banks, and that now, at last, I stood with my journey complete upon the place where the Tiber once brought ships to Ostia. I walked thoughtfully away through this old town, feeling the regret for something over and done, but hoping that a man may not have fared too badly if he returns from his travels with those words in his heart which were said in this town of Ostia so long ago: " Nothing is far from God."