Bryce & Damon in Europe
by Pertinax Carrus
Chapter 19: Rome, Part II
Sunday Morning at St. Peter’s
On Sunday morning the guys got dressed up for church, and walked the short distance from their hotel to St. Peter’s Basilica. On the way there, they passed the Castel Sant’ Angelo on the banks of the Tiber. Bryce explained that the core structure was the tomb of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, but it had been transformed into a defensive structure during the third century, about the time the Aurelian Walls were constructed. It was called Sant’ Angelo for the figure of an angel which graces its highest point, a medieval addition. As they turned onto the Via della Conciliazone, Damon remarked with awe on their first clear sight of St. Peter’s Basilica.
“Wait until you get to the square,” Bryce said. “The impact is even greater. I understand that the architect of the square, Gian-Lorenzo Bernini, wanted only narrow entrances at angles to the façade, so the visitor would get the impact all at once. Either way, it’s pretty powerful.”
A few blocks further, and they were in St. Peter’s Square.
“Why do they call these spaces ‘squares’? Damon asked. “I don’t think a single one we’ve seen is actually square.”
“Actually, ‘they’ don’t. The Italians call it a ‘piazza,’ which would be the equivalent of the English ‘place.’ And you remember that in Spain it was a ‘plaza,’ and in France it was a ‘place,’ and in German it was a ‘platz.’ It’s us, the English speaking world, who are screwed up in this case,” Bryce insisted.
Damon just grumbled a bit, but then was busy exploring, approaching one of the fountains which played merrily in the sunshine. There is a huge Egyptian obelisk in the center of the square, with a cross on top. Bryce explained that the obelisk had been brought to Rome in 37 A.D. as decoration by the Emperor Caligula, but it was moved to its present location, and provided with the cross, by Pope Sixtus in the sixteenth century. The cross, containing a fragment of the True Cross, is supposed to represent the triumph of Christianity over the paganism represented by the obelisk. Damon wasn’t sure he liked that. After all, the obelisk came from Egypt, which had a special place in his pantheon.
Bryce distracted him by pointing out that the main area in which they stood was an oval, surrounded by gigantic Doric columns. Atop the colonnade were statues, again representing the popes, like the images at St. Paul’s yesterday. The statues extended all around the square and across the façade of the church. “As you will recall from geometry,” Bryce began. At that, Damon extended his hand into the fountain next to which they stood, and tossed a generous handful of water directly into the face fo his boyfriend.
Bryce yelped, then sputtered, “What was that for?”
“That,” Damon said emphatically, “was for acting like our Roman guide at the Trevi Fountain yesterday. Get off your soapbox and just talk, okay?”
Bryce looked sheepishly at his boyfriend. “Sorry. I guess I do get carried away.”
“Apology accepted. Now, what were you going to say?” Damon said, having made his point.
Bryce wiped his face as he continued. “Well, this space we call St. Peter’s Square is really an oval, designed by the great seventeenth century artist, Bernini. An oval has two focal points, and these fountains, including the one which supplied your water just now, are located in those focal points. Everything is planned. Nothing is haphazard. But, let’s get inside. There’s sure to be a Mass at 10:00, even if the pope is at Castel Gandolfo,” Bryce suggested.
Sure enough, they found that the area to one side of the high altar, in the left hand arm of the cross which was the basic floor plan of the basilica, there was a Mass starting at ten. A priest accompanied by several acolytes appeared. Damon noticed that he had a red cassock beneath his Mass vestments, and in a whisper asked Bryce about that. With a start, Bryce realized that the celebrant was a cardinal, although he had no idea which one. The Mass itself and the sermon were in Italian, which did not help identify the celebrant much. Even American cardinals often spoke Italian when in Rome. At communion time, as Bryce approached, the cardinal held up the host and said, “Corpo di Cristo,” to which Bryce answered, “Amen.” Damon had his arms crossed over his chest, and was given a blessing, with a little tap on the forehead, by the cardinal. When the Mass had ended, Damon remarked, “That was kind of nice.”
They spent most of the next hour touring the interior of St. Peter’s. Bryce explained that this was the “new” St. Peter’s. Early in the sixteenth century, Pope Julius II decided to tear down the original, or “old” St. Peter’s, which dated to the time of the Emperor Constantine. It was in bad shape, but the very concept of tearing down that physical link to the first Christian emperor was an indication of the confidence the Renaissance had that it could equal or excel the ancients. The original design was for a church in the form of a Greek cross, i.e., with all four arms of equal length. This was the plan of the architect Bramante, who began the work, carefully locating the high altar at the center, in the same spot as that in “old” St. Peter’s, which was over the tomb of the Apostle Peter. Michelangelo succeeded Bramante as the architect of the works, and designed a hemispherical dome, but the actual dome, more elongated like half an egg, was the work of his successor, Guglielmo della Porta. A later architect, Carlo Maderno, extended the nave of the church to form the Latin cross of the present church, and designed the façade. The whole process took about a century, not counting the square which came later.
The giant pillars, which mark the four corners of the space around the high altar and support the dome, are immense. They are decorated with statues in the Baroque style, full of movement and life. Among them are statues of St. Longinus, the centurion who commanded at the crucifixion of Christ and pierced his side with his lance, and St. Veronica, who supposedly wiped the face of Christ with her veil on his way to execution, and received a portrait on the veil in thanksgiving. This is the portrait which the guys had encountered back in Tours, the inspiration for the devotion to the Holy Face of Christ begun in the nineteenth century. Relics which claim to be the lance and the veil are housed at St. Peter’s. The other pillars contain statues of St. Helen, mother of the Emperor Constantine, who carried out explorations in Palestine resulting in the discovery of the True Cross, and St. Andrew, brother of the Apostle Peter, whose skull was housed there until it was returned to the Greeks by Pope Paul VI.
Around the rim of the dome is the Latin inscription from the Gospel According to St. Matthew: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam. Bryce translated for Damon, “‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.’ Note that in Latin the singular pronoun is used. ‘Tu’ refers to one person. We used to have that distinction in English, as in the olden times when we used the pronoun ‘thou’ with the variations thee, thy, and thine all referring to one person. Second person singular. It became a custom to refer to superiors in the plural, the ‘you’ form. This is true in most European languages, but the other languages kept the singular as well for family members, close friends, God, and children. In recent centuries, in English, we have lost the singular and familiar form, and a lot of ignorant people think using it in prayer is especially formal, when in fact it is especially familiar. Then, note also, the similarity of the name Peter - Petrus - and the word for rock - petram. I don’t know any Greek, but I understand that the same is true in the original language of the Gospels, and in Aramaic, the spoken language of Palestine at the time of Christ, where rock is ‘kepha’ or something like that, giving us the form ‘Cephas’ sometimes used as the nickname for Peter. He was originally called Simeon bar Jonah, or Simon son of John, you know.”
“Yes, Professor,” Damon commented.
Undeterred, Bryce pointed out the baldachino over the high altar, also designed by Bernini, the architect of the square outside. “When you first come in the door, the church is so immense that the high altar, the proper focus of attention, could get lost in the vast space without this baldachino, which gives some focus to the scene.”
They then made their way around the high altar to the side chapel in the east apse of the church. There, they encountered another work of Bernini, called the Cathedra Petri, the Chair of Peter. This elaborate Baroque reliquary has at the center a ceremonial throne, within which is a wooden chair which was believed at the time of the creation of the work to have been used by the Apostle Peter. Modern tests indicate that it is much later in origin. But the reliquary itself is a major work of art. Surrounding the Chair of Peter are four Doctors of the Church, two Greek (Athanasius and Chrysostom) and two Latin (Ambrose and Augustine). Bryce explained that the term “doctor” here is used in its original Latin meaning of “teacher,” someone with a doctrine, a teaching. Over the entire assembly was a circular window in which is the figure of a dove, the traditional depiction of the Holy Spirit, with rays of gold emanating from her. This symbolized the continuing inspiration of the successors of St. Peter by the Holy Spirit.
By this time, it was getting near noon, so the guys decided to leave the church, even though they had not taken in all it’s treasures by a long shot. On the way out, however, Damon stopped before a monument showing three figures above and weeping angels below. “What’s that?” he asked.
Bryce grinned. “That is the memorial to the last of the royal Stuarts. Your see above the Latin says, ‘To James III, son of James II, King of Great Britain, and to Charles Edward and to Henry, Cardinal Deacon, sons of James III, the last royal heirs of the Stuarts,’ and then it’s dated 1819. Henry Cardinal York was the last of the Stuarts, and he died in 1807, well over a century after his grandfather, James II, was overthrown in the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. His protegé, Ercole Cardinal Consalvi, had the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen create this monument, and he got the Prince Regent of Great Britain, later King George IV, to pay for it. In return, Consalvi turned over to the British government some of the crown jewels which had been in the hands of the last of the Stuarts.”
“I kind of thought that style looked familiar,” Damon said. “That’s the same guy we ran across in Mainz and Lucerne, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely right,” Bryce congratulated his boyfriend. “You’re acquiring quite an eye for artistic styles.”
Damon blushed. “We have to hurry,” he said.
Outside, St. Peter’s Square was filling up with local Romans, tourists, and pilgrims, all come to receive the papal blessing, or at least to take photographs. As Father Long suggested, a large number were jean clad, although Bryce and Damon had dressed up for Mass. The guys were able to find a place near one of the fountains from which they could see the large screen and also the window in the Vatican Palace where the pope normally appeared when he was in Rome. Promptly at noon, the screen came alive. Pope Benedict was seen reading a brief message, leading the rosary, and then imparting a blessing on the crowd. As the Holy Father made his Sign of the Cross, so also did the several thousand people in the square, including Bryce and Damon.
There were several restaurants along the Via della Conciliazione, and, although they were over-priced, the hungry teenagers ate their midday meal there.
The Roman Forum
When they had completed their midday meal, Bryce asked his partner, “Have you had enough of churches for the day?”
Damon replied, “I’m here to learn more about you, Boyfriend, so I’m game for whatever you have up your sleeve.”
“I appreciate your confidence, but even I get enough of churches on occasion. How about if we spend the afternoon in ancient Rome?” Bryce proposed.
“Sounds good to me,” Damon agreed.
After leaving the Vatican area, they returned to the Hotel Cicerone and changed into more comfortable clothing, including jeans, short-sleeved shirts, and soft shoes. Then, following the same route as the day before, they made their way to the Via del Corso, but continued on past the point where they turned off before to the Casa Santa Maria. They came to the Piazza Venezia, on which is located the National Monument to Victor Emmanuel II. It was an imposing monument in the later nineteenth century, overdone, style. Damon remembered Victor Emmanuel as the first king of a united Italy, thanks in large part to his prime minister, Camillo di Cavour. He laughed when Bryce told him the Romans referred to the monument as “the wedding cake” for its overdone style, which looked like something in sugar icing, or marzipan.
From the Piazza Venezia, they made a slight bend to the Via dei Fori Imperiali, which immediately brought them to the Column of Trajan. Trajan was a Roman Emperor in the early second century who was the last conquering ruler of Rome. After his time (98-117), it was mostly defensive fighting, attempting to keep the enemy beyond the frontiers. Trajan conquered the regions of Mesopotamia (Iraq today, abandoned almost immediately after his death) and Dacia (Roumania today, held for about a century and a half). The column was erected to commemorate his victories over the Dacians, depicting scenes from his campaigns and his victory in a spiraling manner up the column, which is nearly a hundred feet high. After inspecting the column, and photographing it, the two travelers proceeded along the Via dei Fori Imperali to the forum of Trajan, but it was of considerably less interest, just ruins. However the bordering Market of Trajan has been called the world’s first shopping mall, and as such had some interest.
However, the real gem came on the other side of the street. From the street, they took in the rather unimposing structure called the Curia, which was the meeting place of the Roman Senate after the time of Caesar, and next to it the Church of Ss. Luca and Martina, on the site of the original curia from the republican period. A little farther along there were a series of maps showing the development of the Roman Empire, but including as a final one the Italian domination of Albania, the Greek Islands, Lybia, and Ethiopia, obviously put up during the Mussolini years. Every time Bryce saw that last map, he wondered why the government did not take it down. A little distance beyond that was the entrance to the Roman Forum.
This modern entrance began next to a ticket booth, and passed between the Temple of Antoninus and Fausta on the left and the Aemilian basilica on the right. There at the entrance, in addition to tickets, they purchased a guide book put out by the Archaeological Superintendency of Rome (Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma), which proved to be too detailed for their visit, but would provide interesting reading for the future, when they were more familiar with the various buildings and other structures mentioned.
“Let’s at least follow the pattern the guide book recommends, going in a counter-clockwise direction from here,” Bryce suggested.
“Okay by me,” Damon agreed, as he wondered at the ruins laid out before him. “They didn’t preserve things very well here, did they?”
“I guess not. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the forum was kind of abandoned, but comments by visitors indicate that a lot remained until the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. That’s when most of the destruction took place, when these ancient structures were treated more or less like quarries for contemporary structures. That confidence which the Renaissance had that it could rival the ancients had a down side, too,” Bryce replied. “But at least what remains is better than what some would have for this spot. I remember after we came back from a trip a few years back, and were showing some pictures to a neighbor who is an engineer, his comment was, ‘Why don’t they clear away all this junk and put in something practical, like a shopping center or parking lot?’”
Bryce and Damon both shook their heads at such philistinism. Then they began their journey around the Roman Forum.
“This area marks the place of the Aemelian basilica,” Bryce said, indicating a stone flooring marked by the bases of columns.
“Wait. I though a basilica was a type of church,” Damon said.
“Now-a-days, that’s pretty much true, but originally it referred to a rectangular building type with a wide center aisle and two narrower side aisles, with a semi-circular area at one end called the apse. In ancient Rome, before the triumph of Christianity, basilicas were mostly business places, like malls today. It says in our guide book that this area on the front, called the Portico of Gaius and Lucius Caesar, was used mostly by money changers. They were kind of ancient bankers. There were all kinds of places minting money, of varying weights and purity of metal, so money changers could exchange your local money for the kind in use wherever you were, in this case, in Rome,” Bryce explained.
“Kind of like the bank where we bought Euros before setting out on this trip,” Damon said, nodding his understanding.
“Right.”
“This little building looks pretty well preserved,” Damon said, as they approached the Curia Julia.
“According to our guide book, this is the Curia Julia, the same building we saw from the street above. Notice how much deeper the ground level is here. The Roman Forum filled up with dirt over the centuries, and that helped preserve some things. The present street level is quite a bit higher than in ancient times. But, back to this particular building, it was the meeting place of the Senate during imperial times. The original curia was replaced by this building, started under Julius Caesar but completed by Augustus.”
“Let me have that guide book. You already know too much as it is,” Damon demanded. Laughing, Bryce handed over the guide book. “Okay, it says we can go inside, so let’s go,” Damon added.
Inside the Curia, they noted the banks along the sides which provided platforms for the seats of the senators, and the place for the presiding officer at the front.
“I remember that Caesar Augustus tried to keep up the fiction that Rome was still a republic. What was that called? Prince something?” Damon said.
“Principate,” Bryce supplied. “In theory, the Princeps, or first citizen, shared power with the Senate from the time of Augustus to the time of Diocletian, three centuries later, and even after that the Senate functioned as the town council of Rome. This place would have been in use for a long time.”
“The building is not all that impressive, but the floor is great,” Damon observed.
“I think the building was probably decorated more when it was in use,” Bryce speculated.
“Do you think this is what the republican curia looked like, too?” Damon asked.
“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. That would fit with the idea of pretending the republic continued to exist,” Bryce replied.
“Those old emperors could get pretty ruthless,” Damon commented. “Why did they keep up the appearance of the republic? Surely everyone knew it was a sham.”
“Kind of like modern dictators,” Bryce supplied. “Public relations. It made for greater public acquiescence in imperial rule if there were not too many outward changes. Dictators today often have legislatures of one sort of another to rubber stamp their decisions, and they call their countries republics. Same thing in old Rome. The emperors were really military dictators. You remember ....”
“Yeah. Dr. Dickinson told us. ‘Imperator,’ the Latin word for ‘emperor,’ was originally the title for a successful general, like ‘commander-in-chief,’” Damon interrupted.
“Right. And that’s why, for three centuries, there was no regular way to select the next emperor. How can you designate the next commander-in-chief? One of the constitutional flaws which contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire, because it resulted in frequent civil wars, with rival generals struggling for power,” Bryce supplied as they moved back outside.
“Hey, the guide book says King Romulus was assassinated at this place called the Niger Lapis. I thought Romulus was just a legend,” Damon protested, reading from the book.
“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s in the book somewhere, but it’s a fact that the written stories handed down from ancient times correspond almost exactly to the evidence produced by modern archaeology. Take this whole area of the forum, for example. It was originally a swampy area between hills, with the Capitoline there,” Bryce pointed, “and the Palatine there” he pointed to the left, “and this low hill called the Velia, a kind of extension of the Esquiline, on this side,” he again pointed down the Via Sacra and up to the Via dei Fori Imperiali. “Roman legends says there were three settlements here – Latin, Trojan, and Greek – before Romulus combined them to form Rome in 753 B.C., and modern excavation confirms that there were settlements on the three hills when the valley here where the forum is now was a marsh. But, around the middle of the eighth century B.C. the forum was drained, and no longer used for burials, and the three settlements were combined. Now, whether this was done by one man, and whether he was named Romulus, I can’t tell you, but I wouldn’t toss that out, either.”
“Kind of like some of your Catholic stories,” Damon mused, “like that shroud at Turin. The science can’t prove it was the burial cloth of Jesus, but what science says fits with what the traditions say.”
“Exactly,” Bryce agreed. “Our ancestors weren’t as stupid as modern people seem to think sometimes. They knew the difference between fact and fiction. They weren’t always right, but they passed on real facts from generation to generation by word of mouth more often than we want to give them credit for.”
“I seem to recall that my own ancestors in West Africa had a similar arrangement,” Damon pondered.
“People are the same, pretty much, wherever and whenever you find them, and they tend to solve problems in similar manners, in this case passing on the knowledge of the past in a time before written records,” Bryce agreed.
Close by was one of the ancient monuments which remains in good shape, the Arch of Septimius Severus, who was the Roman Emperor from 193 to 211. Bryce and Damon admired the work, with Bryce attempting to translate the inscription above, but he did not seem to be able to get a good view of it, the glinting sun getting in the way. In any case, it praised the Emperor, that much could be taken for granted. This more or less marked the place where the Via Sacra, the Sacred Way from the east through the forum, began its ascent to the temples on the Capitoline. Ancient victory parades, or triumphs, marched down this way, ending with sacrifices to the gods on the Capitoline.
“I seem to remember that this guy was an African,” Damon asserted.
“True,” Bryce agreed. “He came from the area of Libya today. A successful general who seized power, he still represented one of the last decent rulers before the real decline in the third century.”
“Us Africans are pretty decent folk,” Damon preened.
“Us Romans, too. And sometimes an African can be a Roman,” Bryce quipped.
“What’s this?” Damon said, changing the subject by indicating a small round brick structure just beyond the Arch of Septimius Severus. “The guide book calls it the umbilicus urbis.”
“That means the navel of the city,” Bryce translated. “If I remember correctly, it was the sacred center of the city. All distances were measured from here, for example. You need to have a center, a point of reference, for things to make sense.”
“Okay,” Damon said. That seemed to apply to more than just Roman ruins.
They then made their way around the forum, past the Julian basilica, much larger than the Aemilian basilica on the other side of the open space, to the Temple of Castor and Pollux. According to legend, the twin gods came to the aid of the Romans in a critical battle with the Latin League, which was trying to restore the last king, Tarquin the Proud, after the founding of the republic in 509 B.C. Its three soaring columns are one of the well recognized images of Rome. Then, a little farther in, is the remnant of the Temple of the Divine Julius. After he secured power, Augustus had his uncle and adoptive father, Julius Caesar, declared a god by the Senate. Many of the subsequent emperors did the same for their predecessors. The concept of a separation between church and state did not exist in the Classical world until the Christians came along. As Bryce reminded Damon, it was Jesus who said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”
Sort of behind these last two structures was the area belonging to the vestal virgins. Their chief function was keeping alive the fire in the Temple of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth and home. There were six of them, chosen as children, and dedicated to virginity for thirty years. If they violated that obligation, they were buried alive, and their lover flogged to death. Christians did not invent the idea of a group of single women living together for religious reasons.
Passing these ruins, the visitors essentially passed out of the ancient forum. The structures on left and right as they walked down the Via Sacra were once mostly private houses and businesses, except for the late Basilica of Maxentius, which was completed by Constantine. That brought them to the Arch of Titus, erected by his brother Domitian towards the end of the first century A.D. to celebrate the Roman victory over the Jews, and the destruction of Jerusalem. There were depictions of the menorah and other sacred objects being carried in triumph. From there, they looked across to the Flavian Amphitheater, called the Roman Colosseum, built in part by Jewish captives from that same campaign. To their left was the former monastery of Santa Francesca Romana, now the Antiquarium Forense, or headquarters of the forum excavations, with an interesting museum.
But growling stomachs decided the two adventurers to seek a different kind of satisfaction. Just as with St. Peter’s in the morning, there was too much to take in in a single visit, and they would come back to ancient Rome as well.