Pagan and Christian Rome

by Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani

A Portrait head of S. Peter; from a medallion in répoussé discovered by Boldetti in the Catacombs of Domitilla. —B Portrait head of S. Paul; from a medallion preserved in the Museo Sacro Vaticano.—Both are works of the second century.

The custom found imitators in other churches and in other cities. Speaking of the gallery of Popes in the duomo at Siena, Symonds remarks how the accumulated majesty of their busts, larger than life, with solemn faces, each leaning from his separate niche, brings the whole past history of the Church into the presence of its living members. A bishop walking up the nave of Siena must feel as a Roman felt among the waxen images of ancestors renowned in council or war. "Of course," Symonds concludes, "the portraits are imaginary for the most part, but the artists have contrived to vary their features and expressions with great skill." This statement may be correct in a general way, especially in regard to the Middle Ages, but is subject to important exceptions. There is no doubt, for instance, that the likenesses of SS. Peter and Paul have been carefully preserved in Rome ever since their lifetime, and that they were familiar to every one, even to school-children. These portraits have come down to us by scores. They are painted in the cubiculi of the catacombs, engraved in gold leaf in the so-called vetri cemeteriali, cast in bronze, hammered in silver or copper, and designed in mosaic.[105] The type never varies: S. Peter's face is full and strong, with short curly hair and beard, while S. Paul appears more wiry and thin, slightly bald, with a long pointed beard. The antiquity and the genuineness of both types cannot be doubted. After the peace of Constantine, when Sylvester, Mark, Damasus, Siricius, and Symmachus began to fill the city with their churches and memorial buildings, and as the habit of exhibiting in each of them portraits of the founders became general, it is evident that the author of the collection of portraits in S. Paul's, which dates from the fifth century, must have had plenty of authentic originals at his disposal. Next to these portraits, in the power of exciting the imagination and appealing to the sentiments of visitors and pilgrims, come the tombs of the Popes. I place them next to the images, because the tombs were of the most simple and modest character, and marked only by a name, or by an inscription which a few could read and decipher. But to us, passionate students of history and art, those graves are invaluable; they mark the various stages of the decline and fall of the great city from year to year, as well as of her glorious resurrection; they chronicle the leading events which have agitated Rome, Italy, and the world for the last sixteen centuries. To be sure, there are considerable breaks in the chain, due to the destruction of old S. Peter's, which contained eighty-seven graves; but the descriptions of Pietro Mallio, of Maffeo Vegio, and of Pietro Sabino, and the drawings of Grimaldi and Ciampini, help us to fill the gaps.

Ferdinand Gregorovius was inspired to write his book on the subject while in contemplation of the monument of Paul III., Farnese. He glanced around in the dim light of the evening and saw effigy after effigy of venerable men, seated on their marble thrones, with outstretched hands, like an assembly of patriarchs intrusted with the guardianship of their church. He devoted many hours to the study of this class of monuments, so strikingly Roman, "for in Rome, more than in any other city of the world, does investigation lead one in the footsteps of Death." His volume,[106] however, seems to me more like an essay written in hours of depression than an exhaustive and satisfying treatise. The materia prima has greatly increased since he wrote, owing to the discoveries made in the catacombs, in libraries and archives, and to the reproduction by photography of the fragments collected in the sacred grottos of the Vatican. If any of our younger colleagues are willing and prepared to go over the work in a critical spirit, let them divide the subject into three periods. During the first, which begins with the entombment of S. Peter, June 29, a. d. 67, and ends with that of Melchiades, a. d. 314, the bishops of Rome were interred in the depths of the suburban cemeteries, and their loculi marked with a simple name. During the second period, which begins with the peace of Constantine and ends with the destruction of the Vatican basilica in 1506-1606, the pontifical graves were mostly ancient sarcophagi or bathing basins from the thermæ, accompanied by an inscription in verse, and, as the Renaissance was approached, by canopies of Gothic or Romanesque style. In the third period, which ends with our time, the new church of S. Peter is transformed into a papal mausoleum which is worthy of being compared in refinement of art, in splendor of decoration, in richness of material, in historical interest, with the Pantheons of ancient Rome. I shall select from each of the three periods a few representative specimens.

The Tomb of Cornelius, on the Appian Way. In 1849, while de Rossi was exploring the Vigna Molinari between the Via Appia and the Ardeatina, in his attempt to define the site and extent of the various cemeteries which undermine that region, he found a fragment of a marble slab with the letters ···· ELIVS MARTYR.

Tombstone of Cornelius.

Excited by a discovery the capital importance of which he was able to foresee at once, he asked an audience of the Pope, Pius IX., and begged him to purchase the Vigna Molinari, and grant the funds necessary to discover the crypt to which this fragment of a tombstone belonged. After listening quietly to the arguments by which the young man was advocating his cause, the Pope answered only four disheartening words: "Sogni di un archeologo!" (dreams of an archæologist). At the same time he gave orders for the immediate purchase of the vigna (now called dei Palazzi Apostolici) and for the appropriation of an "exploration fund." In March, 1852, a crypt was discovered on the very border of the Appian Way; in the crypt was a tomb, and with it were the missing fragments of the epitaph of Cornelius.