S. Michael, poised in mid-air, sheathes his avenging sword above the huge round tower that was the tomb of Hadrian, and by turns the hiding-place of the popes or the prison of their enemies.
Darkly looming against the blue-white sky, the bronze figure of Rome's guardian angel for ever holds his weapon half-way out of his scabbard, like the suspended threat of an avenging power.
Dark-browed Roman women are hanging out inconceivable colored rags that surely never can have served for human raiment, to dry on the wooden rails that mark our [pg 215] road. They are jabbering, in harsh and femininely shrill tones, their curtailed patois of the Roman tongue; and the lark, in advance of the season, is carolling overhead in the motionless air and in the quivering light of the mid-day sun. We re-enter the city by the Porta Angelica, and are standing on the fields of the Vatican, where stood Nero's circus and Nero's gardens. Of all the characters of the heathen Roman Empire, none comes more prominently forward as the very type of human depravity and accomplished wickedness than that of Nero. He seems the embodiment of evil heightened by a versatility of talent and varnished by the gloss of a false poetic sense that makes him the exact opposite to all that produces heroic virtue in its greatest charm, as well as its highest glory, among the Christian saints. His was the poet nature debased to the lowest sensuality and the meanest vanity. And in the mystic saints, is there not ever something of the poet nature carried to its most subtle expression and its utmost elevation in the ascetic purity and tender devotion of a S. Francis or a S. Gertrude? There is a wonderful sequence in the low-lying, half-hidden events of the church's history. There is a marvellous counterbalancing of good against evil, as though the providence of God had (if we may use the expression) taken pleasure in substituting light for darkness, and beauty for ugliness; selecting in each the exact counterpart of the other, and placing them in juxtaposition. And so it is in this spot, which most brings to our recollection the lavish and foul luxury of Rome's artist emperor, the degraded being who was by turns actor, poet, musician, wrestler, or coachman, but fiend always! There, where the horrid pomp of his midnight revels was lighted up by the living and burning forms of the meek martyrs of the church—there we now have the grandest monument of the faith for which those martyrs died that ever has been, or probably ever will be. And the great saints, the pillars of the church, the founders and foundresses of her armies of religious orders, stand now, sculptured in cool marble niches along the aisles of that gorgeous Basilica which stands on the very ground of Nero's infamous gardens. There, too, was another “Potter's Field,” in which to bury strangers; for the clay soil on which S. Peter's is built had served in the old Roman manufactory of bricks and earthenware. The potters had excavated numberless caves on the slopes of the Vatican hills, where subsequently the Christians concealed themselves, and, as in the other catacombs of Rome, celebrated the divine mysteries and buried their dead. It is said that S. Peter himself, on his first journey to Rome, baptized many in these very catacombs—many, probably, who later on had received that other baptism of blood in the ghastly revels of Nero's gardens, and whose remains were gathered together secretly by the brethren, and buried in the caves of the “Potter's Fields.” And now the strangers have become possessors; the holy dead have consecrated what might well have been called another “field of blood”; and the successors of S. Peter sit in reverend state and govern Christendom on the very spot where the first Bishop of Rome celebrated in secret the first Masses Rome ever witnessed. The grain of mustard-seed has indeed become a great and goodly tree, and the [pg 216] birds of all nations and all ages lodge in the beneficent shadow of its branches.
The whole history of the Basilica of S. Peter, whether the first that sheltered the relics of the apostles, or the present more magnificent one, built from the designs of Bernini, and completed by Michael Angelo, teems with facts of this nature.
The old roof of S. Peter's was covered by Pope Honorius I. with the gilt bronze tiles that had roofed, some historians say the temple of Romulus, others that of Jupiter Capitolinus, possibly of both; as though the first founders of pagan Rome, the Romulus and Remus of history and legend, were to pay tribute to the founders of Christian Rome, the great apostles SS. Peter and Paul, whose blood cemented the walls of the early church, and over whose sacred relics that venerable roof was to hang; or, as if the false Jove, dethroned and vanquished by the fisherman, were stripped of his splendor to do honor to the true God. The tiles have been removed elsewhere now, but the fact still retains its touching import. And the like is carried out in the present Basilica; for the Pantheon, raised to the honor of its myriad of demon gods, gave up the bronze of its portico at the command of Urban VIII., that out of it Bernini might fashion that wonderful work, the Baldacchino over the high altar. Wonderful work! that, as we gaze at it, never weary and ever admiring, we ask ourselves in what way the mind of the architect[78] wrought when he brought forth this splendid design. Did it come to him at once, like the one grand idea ruling all the cadences of action in a Greek play? Or did he build it up, piece by piece, in his soul, and touch and retouch the beautiful image like the finished diversities of an idyl? We incline to the first, for that is most like inspiration, and the Baldacchino of S. Peter's must have been an inspiration.
As we pass beneath the deep shadow of the great colonnade of S. Peter's into the vast piazza facing the Basilica, it is like stepping from the mazes of a forest out into the sunny plain. Almost catching the diamond spray of these ever-joyous fountains, we mount the easy steps, so dignified in their gradual ascent, and pass into the gallery of the façade with the same awe-struck feeling we have experienced when suddenly we have found our frank glance come in unexpected contrast with the deep, scrutinizing gaze of a dark eye and the overhanging solemnity of a thoughtful and heavy-laden brow. And first the bass-relief before us tells us the history of the church. Christ delivers the keys to S. Peter, who, kneeling, receives the tokens of his high office. At either end of the long gallery are the equestrian statues of two great imperial defenders and benefactors of the church: Constantine the Great still gazes on the labarum that appeared to him in mystic form not far off on that very hill of Monte Mario, pine-crowned, and where now stands a church in commemoration of the event—an event which turned the City on Seven Hills, the Babylon of the prophecies, the woman drunk with the blood of the martyrs, into the Eternal City, the port of the church's bark, the patrimony of S. Peter, and the home of all Christian hearts—the city of which a great and royal sufferer once said; “J'ai trouvé [pg 217] que Rome est l'endroit où on peut le mieux se passer du bonheur.”[79] Here all sorrow is ennobled, all grief is sheltered. The great King of the church is himself “the Man of Sorrows,” and here his Vicar reigns!
At the very entrance we pause to ponder over as touching an elegy as ever was written in memoriam; and the grief it portrays is that of the other great defender of the church, whose equestrian statue meets us on the left end of the gallery—Charlemagne mourns for Adrian I.
“I, Charles, write these verses, weeping for my father! Yea, my father, my dear love! These verses are my lamentation for thy loss. Be thou ever mindful of me, whose memory seeks thee dwelling with Christ in the blessed region of heaven. The priests and the people loved thee with a great love, and all with one love, best of shepherds! Great friend! I mingle in one our names and our illustrious titles. Adrian and Charles—emperor, I; and father, thou!”
In the history of nations, as in the life of individuals, there is a not unfrequent repetition of events bearing the same type though not the same in fact. They give a characteristic coloring to the biography of the individual or the history of the people. The events and the man react on each other. But this is especially true, and in a far deeper sense, with the history of God's church. When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they spoiled the Egyptians. They carried away as a tribute the treasures unwillingly conceded by their former masters. The Christian world, on the conversion of Constantine, stepped forth from the darkness and despotism of paganism, and Charlemagne, as if in commemoration of this antitype of that deliverance, endowed the church of S. Peter with rich tributes from Egypt for the benefaction of the clergy, and for the lighting and repairing of the great Basilica. Human governments are generally ungrateful; but the church is a divine government, though carried on through human agents, and gratitude is one of her virtues and one of her most distinctive attributes. Constantine and Charlemagne are not forgotten. Their statues guard the entrance of S. Peter's, as erstwhile their power guarded and endowed the see of Peter. Nor shall even the weaker sex fail of the tribute liberally paid to loyalty and devotion. There is something sublime in the gratitude depicted in the monument to the Countess Mathilda, who holds in her hands the mitre and the keys, as though to suggest the idea of consigning them to the protection of the great mediatrix of the incorrigible Emperor of the West, Henry IV., and who had sheltered in her own dominions the great S. Gregory, and done so much to increase the patrimony of the church. A royal father giving his crown and sceptre into the hands of a favorite child could not more touchingly portray the loving appreciation of the sovereign pontiffs towards one who had been so true to the church's cause. And time has no effect in diminishing the gratitude of that church which is built upon a rock, and where all is enduring, any more than it has in diminishing the glory of the saints; for it was Urban VIII. who erected the monument in S. Peter's to the spiritual daughter of the great Hildebrand, Gregory VII.—a grateful memory of [pg 218] more than six hundred years' standing!
We have often heard people complain of a sentiment of disappointment on first entering S. Peter's. It has been accounted for by the fact that the perfect proportion and harmony of the whole, producing therefore no startling contrasts, fail to effect so sudden an impression on the mind as would be the case were the harmony less absolute. To this it may be replied that some minds are more alive to impressions of harmony, and others to those of contrast. We can best speak from experience, and we all agreed that nowhere had we felt such a sense of completeness and its consequent repose fall upon our souls as when we pushed aside that heavy leathern portal, and passed within the precincts of S. Peter's. I do not remember ever to have done so, though I have probably been there fifty times, without an involuntary pause as I first entered; and before approaching the holy-water stoups, supported by white marble boys of six feet high, who carry a large marble shell between them, and, everything being large in proportion, fail not to look like infants, in spite of their real size. The first chapel to the right as you enter is the one in which a large number of very valuable relics are kept in rich reliquaries, and which are only shown to the public on certain days. These are distinct from the great relics of the Passion, which are exhibited to the crowd from the loggia in the dome on either side of the high altar during Holy Week. I used to be attracted to that chapel, which is otherwise less striking than many of the others, by the Pietà of Michael Angelo. In my father's house in England we have that same Pietà, said to be an original. It is on a smaller scale and unfinished; at least the head and features of Our Lady always gave me that impression. Not so the figure of Our Lord, which is full of the sad tenderness of death. The utter supineness of the limbs and of the arm, which has fallen off Our Lady's lap, and hangs down; the beauty of the worn face; the wonderfully graceful and yet manly hands, pierced, like the feet; the general position of the whole body, like a broken flower flung on the Mother's lap—are full of the deepest religious feeling and pathos. But it is difficult thoroughly to appreciate it where it stands in S. Peter's. It is over the altar, and one had need do as I used to do at P——, when a child, to be able to appreciate all the details. I used to go alone, when I was sure of not being caught, down the dark, dreary passage which led to the dark, disused chapel, on the damp, marble pavement of which stood this supposed original of the Pietà. Then getting a chair from a bath-room in the vicinity of the chapel, I stood upon that, so as to bring myself nearly on a level with the head of Our Lady, and thus be able to look down, as she does, on the dead Christ supported on her knees.