"A la première, l'âme vient à l'instant même de s'échapper du corps. Ce chef glorieux est plein de vie! A la seconde, les ombres de la mort couvrent déjà ses admirables traits; à la troisième, le sommeil éternel les a envahis, et, quoique demeurés tout rayonnants de beauté, ils disent, sans parler, que dans ce monde ces lèvres ne s'entr'ouvriront plus, et que ce regard d'aigle s'est voilé pour toujours."—Une Chrétienne à Rome.[365]
The pavement is an ancient mosaic representing the Four Seasons, brought from the excavations at Ostia. The interior of this church has been beautified at the expense of a French nobleman, and the whole enclosure of the Tre Fontane has been improved by Mgr. de Merode.
"As the martyr and his executioners passed on (from the Ostian gate), their way was crowded with a motley multitude of goers and comers between the metropolis and its harbour—merchants hastening to superintend the unlading of their cargoes—sailors eager to squander the profits of their last voyage in the dissipations of the capital—officials of the government charged with the administration of the provinces, or the command of the legions on the Euphrates or the Rhine—Chaldean astrologers—Phrygian eunuchs—dancing-girls from Syria, with their painted turbans—mendicant priests from Egypt, howling for Osiris—Greek adventurers, eager to coin their national cunning into Roman gold—representatives of the avarice and ambition, the fraud and lust, the superstition and intelligence, of the Imperial world. Through the dust and tumult of that busy throng, the small troop of soldiers threaded their way silently, under the bright sky of an Italian midsummer. They were marching, though they knew it not, in a procession more really triumphal than any they had ever followed, in the train of general or emperor, along the Sacred Way. Their prisoner, now at last and for ever delivered from captivity, rejoiced to follow his Lord 'without the gate.' The place of execution was not far distant, and there the sword of the headsman ended his long course of sufferings, and released that heroic soul from that feeble body. Weeping friends took up his corpse, and carried it for burial to those subterranean labyrinths, where, through many ages of oppression, the persecuted Church found refuge for the living, and sepulchres for the dead.
"Thus died the apostle, the prophet, and the martyr, bequeathing to the Church, in her government, and her discipline, the legacy of his apostolic labours; leaving his prophetic words to be her living oracles; pouring forth his blood to be the seed of a thousand martyrdoms. Thenceforth, among the glorious company of the apostles, among the goodly fellowship of the prophets, among the noble army of martyrs, his name has stood pre-eminent. And wheresoever the holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge God, there Paul of Tarsus is revered, as the great teacher of a universal redemption and a catholic religion—the herald of glad tidings to all mankind."—Conybeare and Howson.
Let us now return to the grand Basilica which arose to commemorate the martyrdom on this desolate site, and which is now itself standing alone on the edge of the Campagna, entirely deserted except by a few monks who linger in its monastery through the winter months, but take flight to St. Calisto before the pestilential malaria of the summer,—though in the middle ages it was not so, when S. Paolo was surrounded by the flourishing fortified suburb of Joanopolis (so called from its founder, John VIII.), whose possession was sharply contested in the wars between the popes and anti-popes.[366]
The first church on this site was built in the time of Constantine, on the site of the vineyard of the Roman matron Lucina, where she first gave a burial-place to the apostle. This primal oratory was enlarged into a basilica in 386 by the emperors Valentinian II. and Theodosius. The church was restored by Leo III. (795—816), and every succeeding century increased its beauty and magnificence. The sovereigns of England, before the Reformation, were protectors of this basilica—as those of France are of St. John Lateran, and of Spain of Sta. Maria Maggiore—and the emblem of the Order of the Garter may still be seen amongst its decorations.
"The very abandonment of this huge pile, standing in solitary grandeur on the banks of the Tiber, was one source of its value. While it had been kept in perfect repair, little or nothing had been done to modernize it, and alter its primitive form and ornaments, excepting the later addition of some modern chapels above the transept; it stood naked and almost rude, but unencumbered with the lumpish and tasteless plaster encasement of the old basilica in a modern Berninesque church, which had disfigured the Lateran cathedral under pretence of supporting it. It remained genuine, though bare, as S. Apollinare in Classe, at Ravenna, the city eminently of unspoiled basilicas. No chapels, altars, or mural monuments softened the severity of its outlines; only the series of papal portraits, running round the upper line of the walls, redeemed this sternness. But the unbroken files of columns along each side, carried the eye forward to the great central object, the altar and its 'Confession;' while the secondary row of pillars, running behind the principal ones, gave depth and shadow, mass and solidity, to back up the noble avenue along which one glanced."—Cardinal Wiseman.
On the 15th of July, 1823, this magnificent basilica was almost totally destroyed by fire, on the night which preceded the death of Pope Pius VII.
"Quelque-chose de mystérieux s'est lié dans l'esprit des Romains à l'incendie de St. Paul, et les gens à l'imagination de ce peuple parlent avec ce sombre plaisir qui tient à la mélancolie, ce sentiment si rare en Italie, et si fréquent en Allemagne. Dans le grand nef, sur le mur, au dessus des colonnes, se trouvait la longue suite des portraits de tous les papes, et le peuple de Rome voyait avec inquiétude qu'il n'y avait plus de place pour le portrait du successeur de Pie VII. De là les fruits de la suppression du saint-siège. Le vénérable pontife, qui était presqu' un martyre aux yeux de ses sujets, touchait à ses derniers moments lorsqu'arriva l'incendie de Saint-Paul. Il eut lieu dans la nuit du 15 au 16 Juillet, 1823; cette même nuit, le pape, presque mourant, fut agité par un songe, qui lui présentait sans cesse un grand malheur arrivé à l'église de Rome. Il s'éveilla en sursaut plusieurs fois, et demanda s'il n'était rien arrivé de nouveau. Le lendemain, pour ne pas aggraver son état, on lui cacha l'incendie, et il est mort après sans l'avoir jamais su."—Stendhal, ii. 94.
"Not a word was said to the dying Pius VII. of the destruction of St. Paul. For at St. Paul's he had lived as a quiet monk, engaged in study and in teaching, and he loved the place with the force of an early attachment. It would have added a mental pang to his bodily sufferings to learn the total destruction of that venerable sanctuary, in which he had drawn down by prayer the blessings of heaven on his youthful labour."—Wiseman, Life of Pius VII.