CHAPTER XI.[ToC]
Papal Rome—Narrow streets—St. Angelo—Benvenuto Cellini—St. Peter's—Pietà Chapel—The Dead Christ—Tomb of the Stuarts—Anniversary of St. Peter's—Grand ceremonial—Cardinal Howard—The Vatican—Pictures—Pauline and Sistine Chapels—"The Last Judgment"—Pinacoteca—Raphael's "Transfiguration"—The Madonna—Christian Martyrs—Sculptures—Tapestries—Leo XIII.—Italian Priesthood—St. John Lateran—Marvellous legends and relics—Native irreverence to sacred edifices.
"The Papal City," says Howels, "contrives at the beginning to hide the Imperial City from your thoughts, as it hides it in such a great degree from your eye." I had often asked our guide what had become of this or that column or statue of ancient Rome, and he replied that the popes, jealous of the greatness of Pagan Rome, and the interest excited in the minds of the present generations, Catholic and Protestant, removed them as quietly as possible after their disinterment, lest the world should say that the glory and grandeur of the Pagans of old exceeded that of the Papacy.
We drove through a labyrinth of narrow, dirty, crowded streets, crossing the Tiber by the fine bridge of St. Angelo. The picturesque castle of this name was a very important fortress in the Middle Ages. It was commenced by Hadrian, and afterwards finished as a family mausoleum by Antoninus Pius, and must always possess a romantic interest from the part it played in the life of that most whimsical and audacious of autobiographers, Benvenuto Cellini. The account he gives of his escape from its dungeons is quite Dumasesque in its thrilling details; and this is not the only famous escape in the records of the fortress, Pope Paul III., who was confined there in his youth, having succeeded in making a secret exit.
Turning to the left through one of the narrow streets, we find ourselves suddenly in a very fine piazza, before the largest Christian temple in the world—colossal St Peter's. It stands proudly and grandly on the Vatican Hill, on the site of the earliest Christian church, built by Constantine the Great in the fourth century.
In the centre of the great piazza, which slopes upwards, is an ancient Egyptian obelisk brought from the circus of Nero, and surrounded by points of the compass let into the pavement. This is flanked by two immense fountains, from which the water rises in a sparkling column to the height of seventy feet. They are supplied by an aqueduct from Lake Bramano, some seventeen miles distant.
St. Peter's is approached from the piazza, by a long-graduated series of great steps. It is from the top of these that the Pope gives his blessing at Easter to the multitude in the immense court below. The piazza is environed by more than a thousand shops, which impede the view, considerably foreshorten and hide the great dome of St. Peter's, and detract from its imposing grandeur; causing the façade to appear of an immense and disproportionate height. The whole stupendous structure—the cross of which, lifting itself literally to the blue skies, can be seen over the hills from the sea—occupied 116 years in building, and was continued during the reigns of eighteen popes. Leo X. was one of these, and his scheme of raising money for the work by the sale of indulgences, went far to produce the Reformation. Truly God's ways are wonderful, the almost trifling acts of a single person often bringing about the most mighty results and changes in the world!