Pagan and Christian Rome

by Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani

The main objection brought forward by the opponents is that, after the incident at Antioch, we have no positive knowledge of the actions and travels of S. Peter. Still, there is nothing to contradict the assumption of his journey to Rome, and his confession and execution there. The fact was so generally known that nobody took the trouble to write a precise statement of it, because nobody dreamed that it could be denied. How is it possible to imagine that the primitive Church did not know the place of the death of its two leading apostles? In default of written testimony let us consult monumental evidence.

There is no event of the imperial age and of imperial Rome which is attested by so many noble structures, all of which point to the same conclusion,—the presence and execution of the apostles in the capital of the empire. When Constantine raised the monumental basilicas over their tombs on the Via Cornelia and the Via Ostiensis; when Eudoxia built the church ad Vincula; when Damasus put a memorial tablet in the Platonia ad Catacumbas; when the houses of Pudens and Aquila and Prisca were turned into oratories; when the name of Nymphæ Sancti Petri was given to the springs in the catacombs of the Via Nomentana; when the twenty-ninth day of June was accepted as the anniversary of S. Peter's execution; when Christians and pagans alike named their children Peter and Paul; when sculptors, painters, medallists, goldsmiths, workers in glass and enamel, and engravers of precious stones, all began to reproduce in Rome the likenesses of the apostles, at the beginning of the second century, and continued to do so till the fall of the empire; must we consider them all as laboring under a delusion, or as conspiring in the commission of a gigantic fraud? Why were such proceedings accepted without protest from whatever city, from whatever community, if there were any other which claimed to own the genuine tombs of SS. Peter and Paul? These arguments gain more value from the fact that the evidence on the opposite side is purely negative. It is one thing to write of these controversies at a distance from the scene of the events, in the seclusion of one's own library; but quite another to study them on the spot, and to follow the events where they took place. If my readers had the opportunity of witnessing the discoveries made lately in the Cemeterium Ostrianum, and the Platonia ad Catacumbas; or of examining Grimaldi's manuscripts and drawings relating to the old basilica of Constantine; or Carrara's account of the discoveries made in 1776 in the house of Aquila and Prisca, they would surely banish from their minds the last shade of doubt.

Besides the works of Döllinger, Lightfoot, and de Rossi referred to above, there are thirty or forty which deal with the same question, as to whether S. Peter was ever at Rome. The list of them is given in volume xviii. of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," p. 696, no. 1.

Two roads issued from the bridge called Vaticanus, Neronianus, or Triumphalis, the remains of which are still seen at low water between S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini and the hospital of S. Spirito,—the Via Triumphalis, described in [chapter vi.], which corresponds to the modern Strada di Monte Mario, and joins the Clodia at la Giustiniana; and the Via Cornelia, which led to the woodlands west of the city, between the Via Aurelia Nova and the Triumphalis. When the apostles came to Rome, in the reign of Nero, the topography of the Vatican district, which was crossed by the Via Cornelia, was as follows:—

On the left of the road was a circus begun by Caligula, and finished by Nero; on the right a line of tombs built against the clay cliffs of the Vatican. The circus was the scene of the first sufferings of the Christians, described by Tacitus in the well-known passage of the "Annals," xv. 45. Some of the Christians were covered with the skins of wild beasts so that savage dogs might tear them to pieces; others were besmeared with tar and tallow, and burnt at the stake; others were crucified (crucibus adfixi), while Nero in the attire of a vulgar auriga ran his races around the goals. This took place a. d. 65. Two years later the leader of the Christians shared the same fate in the same place. He was affixed to a cross like the others, and we know exactly where. A tradition current in Rome from time immemorial says that S. Peter was executed inter duas metas (between the two metæ), that is, in the spina or middle line of Nero's circus, at an equal distance from the two end goals; in other words, he was executed at the foot of the obelisk which now towers in front of his great church. For many centuries after the peace of Constantine, the exact spot of S. Peter's execution was marked by a chapel called the chapel of the "Crucifixion." The meaning of the name, and its origin, as well as the topographical details connected with the event, were lost in the darkness of the Middle Ages. The memorial chapel lost its identity and was believed to belong to "Him who was crucified," that is, to Christ himself. It disappeared seven or eight centuries ago. At the same time the words inter duas metas, by which the spot was so exactly located, were deprived of their genuine significance. The name meta was generally applied to tombs of pyramidal shape; of which two were still conspicuous among the ruins of Rome: the pyramid of Caius Cestius near the Porta S. Paolo, which was called Meta Remi, and that by the church of S. Maria Traspontina, in the quarter of the Vatican which was called Meta Romuli. The consequences of this mistake were remarkable; to it we owe the erection of two noble monuments, the church of S. Pietro in Montorio, and the "Tempietto del Bramante," in the court of the adjoining convent. It seems that in the thirteenth century, when some one[71] determined to raise a memorial of S. Peter's execution inter duas metas, he chose this spot on the spur of the Janiculum, because it was located at an equal distance from the meta of Romulus at la Traspontina, and that of Remus at the Porta S. Paolo!

PLAN OF OLD S. PETER'S, SHOWING ITS RELATION TO THE CIRCUS OF NERO

The line of the Via Cornelia, which ran parallel with the north side of the circus, can be traced with precision by the help of the classical, or pagan, tombs discovered at various times along its borders. Let us start from the site of the modern Piazza di S. Pietro. Sante Bartoli, mem. 56-57, says that while Pope Alexander VII. was building the left wing of Bernini's portico, and the fountain of the southern semicircle, a tomb was discovered with a bas-relief above the door representing a marriage-scene ("vi era un bellissimo bassorilievo di un matrimonio antico"). On July 19, 1614, three others were found in the atrium, in one of which was the sarcophagus of Claudia Hermione, the renowned pantomimist. The best discovery, that of pagan tombs exactly on the line with that of S. Peter's, was made in the presence of Grimaldi, November 9, 1616. "On that day," he says, "I entered a square sepulchral room (10 ft. × 11 ft.), the ceiling of which was ornamented with designs in painted stucco. There was a medallion in the centre, with a figure in high relief. The door opened on the Via Cornelia, which was on the same level. This tomb is located under the seventh step in front of the middle door of the church. I am told that the sarcophagus now used as a fountain, in the court of the Swiss Guards, was discovered at the time of Gregory XIII. in the same place, and that it contained the body of a pagan."

We come now to the decisive point, the discoveries made in the time of Urban VIII., when the foundations of his bronze baldacchino were sunk to a great depth, in close proximity to the tomb of S. Peter. The genuineness of the account is proved by the fact that in spite of its great bearing on the question, so little importance was attached to it that, had not Professor Palmieri and Cavaliere Armellini unearthed it from the sacred dust of the Vatican archives, in which it had been buried for three and a half centuries, we should still have been wholly ignorant of its existence.