Mounting the street we soon reach, on the right, the picturesque tenth century west gate (a high narrow arch upon Ionic columns, modernized and plastered over under the Sardinian government) of the Church of Sta. Prassede, which leads into the atrium of the church. This is seldom open, but we can enter by a door in the north aisle.
Sta. Prassede was sister of Sta. Pudenziana, and daughter of Pudens and his wife Claudia, with whom St. Paul lodged, and who were among his first converts (see Ch. X., Sta. Pudenziana). She gave shelter in her house to a number of persecuted Christians, twenty-three of whom were discovered and martyred in her presence. She then buried their bodies in the catacombs of her grandmother, Sta. Priscilla, but, collecting their blood in a sponge, placed it in a well in her own house, where she was afterwards buried herself. An oratory is said to have been erected on the site by Pius I., A.D. 160, and was certainly in existence in A.D. 499, when it is mentioned in the acts of a Council. In A.D. 822 the original church was destroyed, and the present church erected by Pascal I., of whose time are the low tower, the porch, the terra-cotta cornices, and the mosaics. During the absence of the popes at Avignon, Sta. Prassede was one of the many churches which fell almost into ruin, and it has since suffered terribly from injudicious modernisations, first in the fifteenth century from Rosellini, under Nicholas V., and afterwards under S. Carlo Borromeo in 1564.
The interior is a basilica, the nave being separated from the aisles by sixteen granite columns, many of which have been boxed up in hideous stucco pilasters, decorated with frescoes of apostles; but their Corinthian capitals are visible, carved with figures of birds (the eagle, cock, and dove) in strong relief against the acanthus leaves. The nave is divided into four compartments by arches rising from the square pilasters; the roof is coffered.
In the right aisle is the entrance to the famous chapel, called, from its unusual and mysterious splendour, the Orto del Paradiso—originally dedicated to S. Zeno, then to the Virgin, with the invocation "Libera nos a pœnis inferi," and finally to the great relic which it contains. Females are never allowed to enter this shrine except upon Sundays in Lent, but can see the relic through a grating. Males are admitted by the door which is flanked by two columns of rare black and white marble, supporting a richly-sculptured marble cornice, above which are two lines of mosaic heads in circlets—in the outer, the Saviour and the twelve apostles; in the inner, the Virgin between St. Stephen and St. Laurence, with eight female saints; at the angles St. Pudens and St. Pastor. In the interior of the chapel four granite columns support a lofty groined vault, which, together with the upper part of the walls, is entirely covered with mosaic figures, which stand out distinctly from a gold ground.
"Here are SS. Peter and Paul before a throne, on which is the cross, but no seated figure; the former apostle holding a single gold key,[265] the latter a scroll; St. John the Evangelist, with a richly-bound volume; SS. James and Andrew, the two daughters of Pudens, and St. Agnes, all in rich vestments, and holding crowns; the Virgin Mary (a veiled matronly figure), and St. John the Baptist standing beside her; under the arch of a window, another half-figure of Mary, with three other females, all having the nimbus, one crowned, one with a square halo to indicate a person still living; above these, the Divine Lamb on a hill, from which the four rivers issue, with stags drinking of their waters; above the altar, the Saviour, between four other saints,—figures in part barbarously sacrificed to a modern tabernacle that conceals them. On the vault a colossal half-figure of the Saviour, youthful but severe in aspect, with cruciform nimbus, appears in a large circular halo supported by four archangels, solemn forms in long white vestments, that stand finely distinct in the dim light. Within a niche over the altar is another mosaic of the Virgin and Child, with the two daughters of Pudens, in which Rumohr (Italienische Forsch.) observes ruder execution, indicating origin later than the ninth century."—Hemans' Ancient Christian Art.
The relic preserved here (one of the principal objects of pilgrimage in Rome) is the column to which our Saviour is reputed to have been bound, said to have been given by the Saracens to Giovanni Colonna, cardinal of this church, and legate of the crusade, because, when he had fallen into their hands and was about to be put to death, he was rescued by a marvellous intervention of celestial light. Its being of the rarest blood jasper is a reason against its authenticity; the peculiarity of its formation having even given rise to the mineralogical term, "Granito della Colonna." A disk of porphyry in the pavement marks the grave of forty martyrs collected by Paschal I. The mother of that pope is also buried here, and the inscription commemorating her observes an ancient ecclesiastical usage in allowing her the title of "episcopa:" "Ubi utique benignissimæ suæ genitricis, scilicet Dominæ Theodoræ, Episcopæ corpus quiescit." In this chapel Paschal I. saw the spirit of his nephew dragged to heaven by an angel, through the little window, while he was saying a mass for his soul.
The high altar covers the entrance to a small crypt, in which are two ancient sarcophagi, containing the remains of the sainted sisters Prassede and Pudenziana. An altar here, richly decorated with mosaic, is shown as that which existed in the house of Prassede. Above is a fresco, referred to the twelfth century, representing the Madonna between the sainted sisters. At the end of the left aisle is a large slab of granite (nero-bianco), upon which Sta. Prassede is said to have slept, and above it a picture of her asleep. In the centre of the nave is the well where she collected the blood, with a hideous statue of her squeezing it out of a sponge.
The chapel at the end of the left aisle is that of S. Carlo Borromeo, who was cardinal of this church, and contains his episcopal throne (a wooden chair) and a table, at which, like St. Gregory, he used to feed and wait upon twelve poor men daily. The pictures in this chapel, by Louis Stern, represent S. Carlo in prayer, and in ecstasy before the Sacrament. In the cloister is an old orange-tree which was planted by him, but is still flourishing.
Opposite the side entrance of the Orto del Paradiso is the tomb of Cardinal Cetive (1474), with his sleeping figure and statuettes of SS. Peter and Paul, Sta. Prassede, and Sta. Pudenziana. This will recall Browning's quaint forcible poem of 'The Bishop who orders his tomb at Saint Praxed's church.'
"Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace.
. . . . . . . . . . .
And there how I shall lie through centuries,
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!"