grand high mass in honour of the pilgrims was on the following eve to be celebrated in the ancient Basilica of St. Peter's. But vast as was its extent, only a part of the pilgrims could be contained and the bronze gates were thrown open to allow the great multitude which filled the square to share the benefits and some of the glories of the ceremony.
The Vatican Basilica of the tenth century, far from possessing its present splendour, was as yet but the old consecrated palace, hallowed by memories of the olden time, in which Charlemagne enjoyed the hospitality of Leo III, when at his hands he received the imperial crown of the West. Similar to the restored church of St. Paul fuori le Mure, as we now see it, it was some twenty feet longer and considerably wider, having five naves divided off by four rows of vast monolith columns. There were ninety-six columns in all, of various marbles, differing in size and style, for they had been the first hasty spoils of antique palaces and temples. The walls above the order of columns were decorated with mosaics such as no Roman hand could then produce or even restore. A grand arch, such as we see at the older Basilicas to-day, inlaid with silver and adorned with mosaic, separated the nave from the chancel, below which was the tribune, an inheritance from the prætor's court of old. It now contained the high altar and the sedile of the Vicar of Christ. Before the altar stood the Confession, the vault wherein lay the bones of St. Peter, with a screen of silver crowned with images of saints and virgins. And the whole was illumined by a gigantic candelabrum holding more than a thousand lighted tapers.
The chief attraction, however, was yet wanting, for the pontiff and his court still tarried in the Vatican receiving the homage of the foreign pilgrims. While listlessly noting the preparations from his chosen point of vantage, Eckhardt discovered himself the object of scrutiny on the part of a monk, who had been listlessly wandering about and who disappeared no sooner than he had caught the eye of the great leader.
Unwilling to continue the target of observation on the part of those who recognized him despite his closed visor, Eckhardt entered the Basilica and took up his station near a remote shrine, whence he could witness the entrance of the pontifical procession, without attracting undue attention to his person. When the pontifical train did appear, it seemed one mass of glitter and sumptuous colour, as it filed down the aisles of the Basilica. The rich copes of the ecclesiastics, stiff with gold and gorgeous brocade, the jewelled mantles of the nobles, the polished breast plates and tasselled spears of the guards passed before his eyes in a bewildering confusion of splendour. In his gilded chair, under a superb canopy, Gregory, the youthful pontiff, was borne along, surrounded by a crowd of bishops, extending his hands in benediction as he passed the kneeling worshippers.
An infinite array of officials followed. Then came pilgrims of the highest rank, each order marching in separate divisions, in the fantastic costumes of their respective countries. In their wake marched different orders of monks and nuns, the former carrying torches, the latter lighted tapers, although the westering sun still flamed down the aisles in cataracts of light. After these fraternities and sisterhoods, Crescentius, the Senator, was seen to enter with his suite, conspicuous for the pomp of their attire, the taste of Crescentius being to sombre colours.
Descending from his elevated station, Gregory proceeded to officiate as High Priest in the august solemnity. Come with what prejudices one might, it was not in humanity to resist the impressions of overwhelming awe, produced by the magnificence of the spectacle and the sublime recollections with which the solemnity itself in every stage is associated. Despite his extreme youth, Gregory supported all the venerableness and dignity of the High Priest of Christendom and when at the conclusion of the high mass he bestowed his benediction on all Christendom, Eckhardt was kneeling with the immense multitude, perhaps more convinced than the most enthusiastic pilgrim, that he was receiving benediction direct from heaven.
The paroxysm only subsided, when raising his head, he beheld a gaunt monk in the funereal garb of the brotherhood of Penitent Friars ascend the chancel. He was tall, lean as a skeleton and from his shrivelled face two eyes, sunken deep in their sockets, burnt with the fire of the fanatic. This was the celebrated hermit, Nilus of Gaëta, of whose life and manners the most wonderful tales were current. He was believed to be of Greek extraction, perhaps owing to his lengthy residence in Southern Italy, near the shrines of Monte Gargano in Apulia. In the pursuit of recondite mysteries of the Moorish and Cabalistical schools, he had attained such proficiency, that he was seized with a profound disgust for the world and became a monk. Several years he spent in remote and pagan lands, spreading the tidings of salvation, until, as it was whispered, he received an extraordinary call to the effect, as was more mysteriously hinted, to turn the church from diverse great errors, into which she had fallen, and which threatened her downfall. Last, not least, he was to prepare the minds of mortal men for the great catastrophe of the Millennium,—the End of Time, the end of all earthly vanity. Special visions had been vouchsafed him, and there was that in his age, in his appearance and his speech which at once precluded the imposter. Nilus of Gaëta himself believed what he preached.
There was a brief silence, during which the Romans acquainted their foreign guests in hurried whispers with the name and renown of the reputed hermit. The latter stood motionless in the chancel and seemed to offer up a silent prayer, ere he pronounced his harangue.
His sermon was delivered in Latin, still the common language of Italy, even in its corrupt state, and its quality was such as to impress at once the most skeptical with the extraordinary gifts of the preacher.
The monk began with a truly terrific picture of the state of society and religion throughout the Christian world, which he delineated with such gloom and horror, that but for his arabesque entanglement and his gorgeousness of imagery one might have believed him a spirit of hell, returned to paint the orb of the living with colours borrowed from its murkiest depths. But with all the fantastic convolutions of his reasoning the fervour of a real eloquence soon began to overflow the twisted fountains, in which the scholastic rhetoric of the time usually confined its displays. These qualities Nilus especially exhibited when describing the pure dawn of Christianity, in which the pagan gods had vanished like phantoms of night. He declared that they were once more deified upon earth and the clear light all but extinguished. And treating the antique divinities as impersonations of human passions and lusts, the monk's eloquence suddenly took the most terrible tints, and considering the nature of some of the crimes which he thus delineated and anathematized, his audience began to suspect personal allusions of the most hideous nature.