The church of S. Croce has seen another strange death of a Pope,—that of Sylvester II. (999-1003), a Frenchman, Gerbert by name. A legend, related first by cardinal Benno in 1099, describes him as deep in necromantic knowledge, which he had gathered during a journey through the Hispano-Arabic provinces. He is said to have carried in his travels a sort of a diabolical oracle, a brazen head which uttered prophetic answers. After his election, in 999, he inquired how long he should remain in power; the response was "as long as he avoided saying mass in Jerusalem." The prophecy was soon fulfilled. He expired in great agony on Quadragesima Sunday, 1003, while celebrating mass in this church, the classic name of which he seems not to have known. The legend asserts that his sins were pardoned by God, and that he was given an honorable burial in the church of S. John Lateran. A mysterious influence, however, hung over his grave. Whenever one of his successors was approaching the end of life, the bones of Sylvester would stir in their vault, and the marble lid would be moistened with drops of water, as stated in the epitaph, which is still visible in S. John Lateran, against one of the pillars of the first right aisle. It begins with the distich:—
ISTE LOCVS MVNDI SILVESTRI MEMBRA SEPVLTI
VENTVRO DOMINO CONFERET AD SONITVM.
We are ready to forgive the originators of the legend about the rattling of the bones; the verses are so bad and distorted that it is no wonder they were wrongly understood. Their author wanted to express the readiness of the deceased to appear before the Lord at His coming; but, not being particularly successful in the choice of his language, his simple-minded contemporaries, so inclined towards the supernatural, saw in the words venturo domino an allusion to the coming, not of the Sovereign Judge, but of the future Pope; and they thought the expression ad sonitum referred not to the trumpet of the last judgment, but to the rattling of the bones whenever a dominus venturus might appear on the scene.
This popular interpretation soon became official. John the Deacon has accepted it blindly in his description of the Lateran. "In the same aisle (the last on the left, near the Cappella Corsini) lies Gerbert, archbishop of Reims, who took the name of Sylvester after his election to the pontificate. His tomb, although in a dry place, sends forth drops of water even in clear and dry weather," etc. The tomb was opened and destroyed in 1648. Rasponi, an eye-witness, describes the event in his book "De Basilica et Patriarchio Lateranensi" (Rome, 1656, p. 76): "In the year 1648, while new foundations were being laid for the left wing of the church, the corpse of Sylvester II. was found in a marble sarcophagus, twelve feet below the ground. The body was well composed and dressed in state robes; the arms were crossed on the breast; the head crowned with the tiara. It fell into dust at the touch of our hands, while a pleasant odor filled the air, owing to the rare substances in which it had been embalmed. Nothing was saved but a silver cross and the signet ring."
The church of S. John Lateran has passed through the same vicissitudes as that of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, but with less detriment. Clement VIII., who reconstructed the transept; Sixtus V., who rebuilt the north portico; Innocent X., Pius IX., and Leo XIII. have all been more merciful than Benedict XIV. At all events, if the sight of the church itself in its present state is distasteful to the true lover of ancient and mediæval Rome, nothing could delight him more than the cloisters of Vassalectus which open at the south end of the transept. I speak of the building as well as of its contents. The cloisters have just been restored to their original appearance by Leo XIII. and by his architect, conte Francesco Vespignani, and a museum of works of art from the old basilica has been formed under its arcades.
THE CLOISTERS OF THE LATERAN, AS NOW RESTORED
