Pagan and Christian Rome

by Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani

In 1633, when Giovanni Severano wrote his book on the Seven Churches, only one bit of ruins could be identified, the door and apse of the church of S. Stephen, to which a powerful convent had once been attached. Stranger still is the total destruction of the portico, two thousand yards long, which connected the city gate—the Porta Ostiensis—with the basilica. This portico was supported by marble columns, one thousand at least, and its roof was covered with sheets of lead. Halfway between the gate and S. Paul's, it was intersected by a church, dedicated to an Egyptian martyr, S. Menna. The church of S. Menna, the portico, its thousand columns, even its foundation walls, have been totally destroyed. A document discovered by Armellini in the archives of the Vatican says that some faint traces of the building (vestigia et parietes) could be still recognized in the time of Urban VI. This is the last mention made by an eye-witness.

Here, also, we find the evidence of the gigantic work of destruction pursued for centuries by the Romans themselves, which we have been in the habit of attributing to the barbarians alone. The barbarians have their share of responsibility in causing the abandonment and the desolation of the Campagna; they may have looted and damaged some edifices, from which there was hope of a booty; they may have profaned churches and oratories erected over the tombs of martyrs; but the wholesale destruction, the obliteration of classical and mediæval monuments, is the work of the Romans and of their successive rulers. To them, more than to the barbarians, we owe the present condition of the Campagna, in the midst of which Rome remains like an oasis in a barren solitude.

S. Paul was executed on the Via Laurentina, near some springs called Aquæ Salviæ, where a memorial chapel was raised in the fifth century. Its foundations were discovered in 1867, under the present church of S. Paolo alle Tre Fontane (erected in the seventeenth century by Cardinal Aldobrandini) together with historical inscriptions written in Latin and Armenian. I have also to mention another curious discovery. The apocryphal Greek Acts of S. Paul, edited by Tischendorff,[89] assert that the apostle was beheaded near these springs under a stone pine. In 1875, while the Trappists, who are now intrusted with the care of the Abbey of the Tre Fontane, were excavating for the foundations of a water-tank behind the chapel, they found a mass of coins of Nero, together with several pine-cones fossilized by age, and by the pressure of the earth.

Tombstone of S. Paul.

The "Liber Pontificalis," i. 178, asserts that Constantine placed the body of S. Paul in a coffin of solid bronze; but no visible trace of it is left. I had the privilege of examining the actual grave December 1, 1891, lowering myself from the fenestella under the altar. I found myself on a flat surface, paved with slabs of marble, on one of which (placed negligently in a slanting direction) are engraved the words: PAVLO APOSTOLO MART · · ·

The inscription belongs to the fourth century. It has been illustrated since by my kind and learned friend, Prof. H. Grisar, to whom I am indebted for much valuable information on subjects which do not come exactly within my line of studies.[90]

IV. Houses of Confessors and Martyrs. This class of sacred buildings has been splendidly illustrated by the discoveries made by Padre Germano dei Passionisti under the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo on the Cælian. The good work of Padre Germano is not unknown in America, thanks to Prof. A. L. Frothingham, who has described it in the "American Journal of Archæology." The discoverer himself will shortly publish a voluminous account with the title: La casa dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo sul monte celio.

The church has the place of honor in early itineraries of pilgrims, because of its peculiarity in containing a martyr's tomb within the walls of the city. William of Malmesbury says: "Inside the city, on the Cælian hill, John and Paul, martyrs, lay in their own house, which was made into a church after their death." The Salzburg Itinerary describes the church as "very large and beautiful." The account of the lives of the two brothers, and of their execution under Julian the apostate, is apocryphal; but no one who has seen Padre Germano's excavations will deny the essential fact, that in this noble Roman house of the Cælian some one was put to death for his faith, and that over the room in which the event took place a church was built at a later age.