"After preliminary prayers from Scripture singularly apt, the pope goes down from his throne, and, armed with a silver hammer, strikes the wall in the doorway, which, having been cut round from its jambs and lintel, falls at once inwards, and is cleared away in a moment by the San Pietrini. The pope, then, bare-headed and torch in hand, first enters the door, and is followed by his cardinals and his other attendants to the high altar, where the first vespers of Christmas Day are chaunted as usual. The other doors of the church are then flung open, and the great queen of churches is filled."—Cardinal Wiseman.
"Arrêtez-vous un moment ici, dit Corinne à Lord Nelvil, comme il était déjà sous le portique de l'église; arrêtez-vous, avant de soulever le rideau qui couvre la porte du temple; votre cœur ne bat-il pas à l'approche de ce sanctuaire? Et ne ressentez-vous pas, au moment d'entrer, tout ce que ferait éprouver l'attente d'un évènement solennel?"—Mad. de Staël.
We now push aside the heavy double curtain and enter the Basilica.
"Hilda had not always been adequately impressed by the grandeur of this mighty cathedral. When she first lifted the heavy leathern curtains, at one of the doors, a shadowy edifice in her imagination had been dazzled out of sight by the reality."—Hawthorne.
"The ulterior burst upon our astonished gaze, resplendent in light, magnificence, and beauty, beyond all that imagination can conceive. Its apparent smallness of size, however, mingled some degree of surprise, and even disappointment, with my admiration; but as I walked slowly up its long nave, empanelled with the rarest and richest marbles, and adorned with every art of sculpture and taste, and caught through the lofty arches opening views of chapels, and tombs, and altars of surpassing splendour, I felt that it was, indeed, unparalleled in beauty, in magnitude, and magnificence, and one of the noblest and most wonderful of the works of man."—Eaton's Rome.
"St Peter's, that glorious temple—the largest and most beautiful, it is said, in the world, produced upon me the impression rather of a Christian pantheon, than of a Christian church. The æsthetic intellect is edified more than the God-loving or God-seeking soul. The exterior and interior of the building appear to me more like an apotheosis of the popedom than a glorification of Christianity and its doctrine. Monuments to the popes occupy too much space. One sees all round the walls angels flying upwards with papal portraits, sometimes merely with papal tiaras."—Frederika Bremer.
"L'Architecture de St. Pierre est une musique fixée."—Madame de Staël.
"The building of St. Peter's surpasses all powers of description. It appears to me like some great work of nature, a forest, a mass of rocks, or something similar; for I never can realise the idea that it is the work of man. You strive to distinguish the ceiling as little as the canopy of heaven. You lose your way in St. Peter's, you take a walk in it, and ramble till you are quite tired; when divine service is performed and chaunted there, you are not aware of it till you come quite close. The angels in the Baptistery are enormous giants; the doves, colossal birds of prey; you lose all sense of measurement with the eye, or proportion; and yet who does not feel his heart expand, when standing under the dome, and gazing up at it."—Mendelssohn's Letters.
"But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone—with nothing like to thee—
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true.
Since Zion's desolation, when that He
Forsook His former city, what could be
Of earthly structures, in His honour piled,
Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,
Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty,—all are aisled
In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.
"Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
And why? it is not lessen'd; but thy mind,
Expanded by the genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of immortality; and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by His brow."
Byron, Childe Harold.