Pagan and Christian Rome

by Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani

The Atrium of Old S. Peter's.

Sergius I. (687-701) was the first who dared to cross the threshold of the church, which he did, however, not for his own benefit, but to do honor to the memory of Leo I. The inscription in which he describes the event is too prolix to be given here. It tells us that the grave of Leo the Great was in the vestibule below the sacristy. There he lay "like the keeper of the temple, like a shepherd watching his flock." But other graves had crowded the place so that it was almost impossible to single them out, and read their epitaphs. Sergius therefore ordered the body of his predecessor to be removed to an oratory, or chapel, in the south transept of the church, and to be enclosed in a beautiful monument which he adorned with costly marbles, and with mosaics representing prophets and saints. The monument was destroyed by Paul V. on Saturday, May 26, 1607.

The remains of Gregory the Great have also been moved several times. His tombstone must have been worn by the feet of pilgrims, as only eighteen letters out of many hundred have been preserved to our time. These were discovered not many years ago, in a dark corner of the Grotte Vaticane. Two centuries after his death, his successor, Gregory IV. (827-844), carried his remains inside the church, to an oratory near the new sacristy, covered the tomb with panels of silver, and the back wall with golden mosaics. The body remained in this second place until the pontificate of Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Pius II. (1458-1464), who, having built a chapel to S. Andrew the apostle, removed Gregory's coffin to the new altar. The coffin is described as a conca ægyptiaca, an ancient bathing-basin, of porphyry, which was protected by an iron grating. The chapel, the altar, and the tomb were again sacrificed to the renovation of the church in the time of Paul V. On December 28, 1605, the porphyry urn was opened, and the body of the great man transferred to a cypress case; on the eighth day of the following January a procession, headed by the college of cardinals and the aristocracy, accompanied the remains to their fourth and last resting-place, the Cappella Clementina, built by Clement VIII., near the entrance to the modern sacristy. There are now two inscriptions: one on the marble lid, "Here lies Saint Gregory the Great, first of his name, doctor of the church;" the other on the cypress case, "Evangelista Pallotta, cardinal of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, dean of this church, collected in this case the remains of Gregory the Great, and removed them from the altar of S. Andrew to this new chapel. Done by order of Paul V., in the first year of his pontificate, on Sunday, January 8, a. d. 1606." The altarpiece was not painted by Muziano, as stated in old guidebooks, but by Andrea Sacchi. The picture was removed to Paris, with many other masterpieces, at the time of Napoleon I.; but Canova obtained its restitution in 1815. It is now preserved in the Vatican Gallery; the copy in mosaic is the joint work of Alessandro Cocchi and Francesco Castellini.

The history of the pontificate of Gregory has been written and will shortly be published by my learned friend Professor H. Grisar. No better or greater subject could be found than this period when the city, abandoned by the Byzantine emperors, harassed, besieged, starved by the Lombards, found in her bishops her only chance of salvation. They never appear to greater advantage than in those eventful times, when Rome was sinking so low within, when her surroundings were changed into a lifeless desert. The queen who had ruled the world was trampled under the feet of her former slaves, and found assistance and sympathy nowhere. When Alboin overran the peninsula in 568, at the head of his Lombards, with whom warriors of several other races, especially Saxons, were intermixed, the emperor Justin could offer no other help to the Romans than the advice of bribing the Lombard chiefs, or of calling in the Franks. Barbarians for barbarians!

Statue of S. Gregory the Great.

"On the death of Pope John III. in 573, Rome was so closely pressed that it was impossible to send to Constantinople for the confirmation of Benedict I., who had been elected his successor, and the papal throne remained vacant for one year. The same appears to have been the case on the death of Benedict, in 578, when Rome was held in siege by Zoto, duke of Beneventum, for the Lombard power had been distributed among thirty-six duchies. The particulars of this siege are unknown, but it probably lasted two or three years. On withdrawing from Rome Zoto took and plundered the Benedictine convent on Montecassino. The monks retired to Rome and established themselves in a convent near the Lateran, which they named after S. John Baptist, whence the basilica of Constantine or the Saviour subsequently took its name.... The misery of the Romans was aggravated by some natural calamities. Towards the end of 589, several temples and other monuments were destroyed by the flooding of the Tiber, and the city was afterwards afflicted by a devastating pestilence.