"Sous le règne de Paul IV., Palestrina faisait partie de la chapelle papale; mais il fut obligé de la quitter, parce-qu'il était marié. Il se retira alors dans une chaumière perdue au milieu des vignes du Mont Cœlius, et là, seul, inconnu au monde, il se livra, durant de longs jours, à cette extase de la pensée qui agrandit, au-delà de toute mesure, la puissance créatrice de l'homme. Le désir des Pères du concile lui ayant été manifesté, il prit aussitôt une plume, écrivit en tête de son cahier, 'Mon Dieu, éclairez-moi,' et se mit à l'œuvre avec un saint enthousiasme. Ses premiers efforts ne répondirent pas à l'idéal que son génie s'était formé; mais peu à peu ses pensées s'éclaircirent, et les flots de poésie qui inondaient son âme, se répandirent en mélodies touchantes. Chaque parole du texte retentissait clairement, allait chercher toutes les consciences, et les exaltait dans une émotion commune. La messe du pape Marcel trancha la question; et Pie IV. s'écria, après l'avoir entendue, qu'il avait cru assister aux concerts des anges."—Gournerie, Rome Chrétienne, ii. 195.
Following the lane of S. Stefano Rotondo—skirted by broken fragments of Nero's aqueduct—almost to its debouchment near St. J. Lateran, and then turning to the left, we reach the quaint fortress like church and convent of the Santi Quattro Incoronati crowned by a stumpy campanile of 1112. The full title of this church is "I Santi quattro Pittori Incoronati e i cinque Scultori Martiri," the names which the Church attributes to the painters being Severus, Severianus, Carpoforus, and Vittorinus; and those of the sculptors Claudius, Nicostratus, Sinforianus, Castorius, and Simplicius,—who all suffered for refusing to carve and paint idols for Diocletian. Their festa is kept on Nov. 8.
This church was founded on the site of a temple of Diana by Honorius I., A.D. 622; rebuilt by Leo IV. A.D. 850; and again rebuilt in its present form by Paschal II., who consecrated it afresh in A.D. 1111. It is approached through a double court, in which are many ancient columns,—perhaps remains of the temple. Some antiquaries suppose that the church itself was once of larger size, and that the pillars which now form its atrium were once included in the nave. The interior is arranged on the English plan with a triforium and a clerestory, the triforium being occupied by the nuns of the adjoining convent. The aisles are groined, but the nave has a wooden ceiling. Behind the tribune is a vaulted passage, partly subterranean. The tribune contains a marble throne, and is adorned with frescoes by Giovanni di San Giovanni.[168] In the right aisle are preserved some of the verses of Pope Damasus. Another inscription tells of the restoration of the church in the fifteenth century, and describes the state of desolation into which it had fallen.
"Hæc quæcumque vides veteri prostrata ruina
Obruta verberis, ederis, dumisque jacebant."
Opening out of the court in front of the church is the little Chapel of S. Sylvestro, built by Innocent II. in 1140. It contains a series of very curious frescoes.
"Showing the influence of Byzantine upon Roman art is the little chapel of S. Silvestro, detailing the history of the conversion of Constantine with a naïveté which, with the exception of a certain dignity in some of the figures, constitutes their sole attraction. They are indeed little better than Chinese paintings; the last of the series, representing Constantine leading Pope Sylvester's horse by the bridle, walking beside him in his long flowing robe, with a chattah held over his head by an attendant, has quite an Asiatic character."—Lord Lindsay's Christian Art.
"Here, as in so many instances, legend is the genuine reflex, not of the external, but the moral part of history. In this series of curious wall-paintings, we see Constantine dismissing, consoled and laden with gifts, the mothers whose children were to be slaughtered to provide a bath of blood, the remedy prescribed—but which he humanely rejected—for his leprosy, his punishment for persecuting the Church while he yet lingered in the darkness of paganism; we see the vision of St. Peter and St. Paul, who appear to him in his dreams, and prescribe the infallible cure for both physical and moral disease through the waters of baptism; we see the mounted emissaries, sent by the emperor to seek St. Sylvester, finding that pontiff concealed in a cavern on Mount Soracte; we see that saint before the emperor, exhibiting to him the authentic portraits of the two apostles (said to be still preserved at St. Peter's), pictures in which Constantine at once recognises the forms seen in his vision, assuming them to be gods entitled to his worship; we see the imperial baptism, with a background of fantastic architecture, the rite administered both by immersion (the neophyte standing in an ample font) and affusion; we see the pope on a throne, before which the emperor is kneeling, to offer him a tiara—no doubt the artist intended thus to imply the immediate bestowal of temporal sovereignty (very generally believed the act of Constantine in the first flush of his gratitude and neophyte zeal) upon the papacy; lastly, we see the pontiff riding into Rome in triumph, Constantine himself leading his horse, and other mitred bishops following on horseback. Another picture—evidently by the same hand—quaintly represents the finding of the true cross by St. Helena, and the miracle by which it was distinguished from the crosses of the two thieves,—a subject here introduced because a portion of that revered relic was among treasures deposited in this chapel, as an old inscription, on one side, records. The largest composition on these walls, which completes the series, represents the Saviour enthroned amidst angels and apostles. This chapel is now only used for the devotions of a guild of marble-cutters, and open for mass on but one Sunday—the last—in every month."—Hemans Mediæval Christian Art.
In the fresco of the Crucifixion in this chapel an angel is represented taking off the crown of thorns and putting on a real crown, an incident nowhere else introduced in art.
The castellated Convent of the Santi Quattro was built by Paschal II. at the same time as the church, and was used as a papal palace while the Lateran was in ruins, hence its defensive aspect, suited to the troublous times of the anti-popes. It is now inhabited by Augustinian Nuns.
At the foot of the Cœlian beneath the Incoronati, and in the street leading from the Coliseum to the Lateran, is the Church of S. Clemente, to which recent discoveries, have given an extraordinary interest.