“There are some signs,” said the monsignore. “We have art patrons who pay enormous sums for old masters.”
“Our art patrons lack imagination,” said Patsy. “It is so easy, so obvious, to buy ‘old masters,’ to patronize Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli! I should pick my men, give ’em the track, and let ’em show their paces. Wait till I build my cathedral: you will see an architect, a painter, and a sculptor or two.”
“‘The hand that rounded Peter’s dome, wrought with a sad sincerity,’” quoted the monsignore. He had come to tell us about the Pope’s opening the Porta Santa on Christmas eve,—the first of the many functions of this Anno Santo.
Finally we “muzzled” Patsy, and the monsignore seized his chance to speak.
“As the ceremony was in the portico of St. Peter’s,” he said, “a comparatively small place, very few invitations were issued. The papal throne was erected near the Porta Santa,—the Jubilee door,—it is the one on the extreme right of the portico, you will remember it by the cross upon it. The Pope knocked three times upon the Porta Santa with a mallet, saying as he did so, “Aperite mihi portas justitiae (Open to me the door of justice).” At the words the door (which was last opened by Leo the Twelfth, in 1825) fell away as if by magic, and His Holiness walked alone into the vast empty church, where there was no other living being but himself. He tottered down the aisle, past the splendid tombs of his predecessors, beneath that unmarked sepulchre over the door, where Pius the Ninth lies waiting the day when he must make room for him in his tomb as he made room for him on his throne. At the shrine of St. Peter the Pope knelt and said a prayer. For me that was the great moment in the whole gorgeous ceremony.”
“It all comes back to the simple human situation of an old man passing the tomb where he soon must lie!” was Patsy’s comment.
“It is just the simple human situation that the Church always comes back to,” said the monsignore.
“Oh, I say! simple, you know! That’s putting it a little strong. The scene you describe is simple and touching, but, as a rule, the services over there are more gorgeous and theatrical than religious!”
“Granted,—St. Peter’s is the stage on which the dramas of the church are played. Why not? Why not use every art to the glory of God—music, the drama, all the rest? There are a hundred quiet parish churches where one can go for devotion and aspiration.”
Patsy’s company is always stimulating, but he rather interfered with my getting all the information I wanted from the monsignore. I did manage to extract the facts that the Anno Santo was instituted by Boniface VIII., in 1300, that it was originally meant to celebrate it every hundred years; that the Romans petitioned to have the time shortened to every fifty years, then to thirty-three years (the supposed earthly life of Christ), and finally to every twenty-five years; that at the five other Basilicas in Rome ceremonies like those at St. Peter’s were celebrated on the same day—a cardinal opening the Porta Santa in each, and that during the Anno Santo plenary indulgence is obtainable by all Catholics who pass a certain number of times in a given number of days, through the holy doors of St. Peter’s, and the five other Basilicas, repeating the appointed prayers.