St. Peter's Basilica

Editor's note from Alex:  Finally the moment Arthur had been waiting for-- the reason we came to Italy was because he wanted to see St. Peter's Basilica in person.  It think it will be clear from this post that the trip was worth it and we thoroughly enjoyed St. Peter's.

We woke up early and headed for St. Peter's, intent on beating the lines.  Even the nuns at the convent were taken aback that we were skipping breakfast to get to the basilica early.  As we walked up to the massive structure, we were struck with the the beauty of the courtyard and facade.  In the center was an Egyptian obelisk, one of thirteen throughout Rome.  Topped with a crossed the large monument symbolizes Christianity's supremacy over all other worldview.  The columns of the facade form an ellipse, like the arms of the Mother Church enveloping all who come near.  We walked towards the entrance, among the first there, and quickly got through security.  We headed towards the giant doors, some which open only on very special occasions, and headed inside.

In his podcast, Rick Steves says that when he lead tours, he always goes inside first and watches his tour group as they come in to the church for the first time; that one of the most rewarding parts of his job is the awe and wonder that shows on the faces of all as they come in.  The expression on the Protestant couple from the Midwest, gasping at the sight of a picture book sprung to life, would have surely made him smile.  Vast columns of marble lined the nave, the crossing arms still a long ways off.  The vaulted ceiling seemed impossibly far away.

I have been in larger building; most sports arenas probably are.  But sports arenas are utilitarian buildings meant to house large numbers of people for the purpose of watching some event; St. Peter's Basilica is the event, and its purpose is to draw the viewer into a stupor of awe and a spirit of contemplative reflection.  Nothing, not all of the churches we had yet seen, could match St. Peter's in scale or effort to achieve that end.  I felt almost dizzy, my sense of proportion completely thrown off by the immensity of the structure and proportions of objects therein.

As big as it is; the architects actually tried to make it feel smaller.  Statues overhead are bigger than ones beneath to make them seem closer.  Way across the way, the stained glass window representing the Holy Spirit as a dove is much larger than normal.  Sienna, whose Duomo is designed to looked as large as possible (remember, they were in a contest with Florence) had strips of green marble through their walls and columns with the thickness getting smaller and smaller to make them seem farther away, St. Peter's had no need of any such tricks, and I find it amazing that they actually went out of their way to make it feel smaller.

Alex and I both did the Rick Steves audio tour as we walked through the building.  Among all the amazing sculptures surrounding us, one very literal spot, for all its modesty, stands out.  A purple marble circle in the floor marks the very spot Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day, 800 A.D, back before the building obtained the splendor it now enjoys.  Few dates in history are as significant, though I certainly didn't know it before our vacation.  On that day, the power of the church in temporal matters was codified in a way on parallel with what occurred with Constantine's Edict of Milan, near 500 years earlier.  Boy have the results been a mixed bag.

There is a lot to contemplate in the temporal power of the Church through history played out in the silent walls of St. Peters.  Financial riches founded the construction of this magnificent building, riches only the church of the time could assemble.  At least partly, the motive for beginning construction was a preservation of power, bringing a prominence to Rome, so long a backwater that two centuries before a pope tried to move his seat of power to Avignon in France.

But Peter died in Rome and that is where the papacy belonged, or so St. Catherine of Sienna (see how all this ties together?) successfully argued seventy years later, so if the papacy wanted to strengthen its legitimacy during a time when spiritual leaders, I think I can uncontroversially state, were behaving badly, the pope better clean up Rome.  So construction begins, and the results are magnificent despite money being poorly managed and indulgences begin to be offered to make up for the difference, which raises the ire of a German monk about the same time a lot of Northern European leaders are starting to ask why they are sending so much of their wealth down to the Italian peninsula.  At least in part, that question made them a little more willing to listen to that crazy German monk, who posts 95 theses and mentions the basilica in three of them.

Four centuries of history, centered around this great building, and perhaps more accurately centered around that purple dot in the floor where Alex and I now stood.

There was of course much more history and much more art to see.  There is the canopy of Bernini three stories tall right over the main alter, directly under which it is believed the remains of St. Peter rest.  The bronze for the canopy actually came from the doors of the Pantheon we visited the previous day.  There is the spot where it is believed Peter was crucified, whose death impacted the world perhaps more than the purple dot I spent three paragraph pontificating on; dying in the service of a carpenter whose death most certainly impacted the world more profoundly than any other event.

The side chapels are all incredible, Michelangelo's pieta, the masterpiece above all the other masterpieces this master created in his life, called us to mourn once again the consequence of our sins, embodied in the tortured corpse of Jesus.  I touched the foot of the statue of Peter that so many people for so long have; collectively we have worn the foot smooth and it was fascinating to think of all those that had come before.

We have not yet discussed the dome.  St. Peter's is big, and it deserves two posts.  Next time, we'll climb to the top.  Omnia Vincit Amour.

A Productive Day

After a quick, continental-style breakfast at the convent, we started day one in the Eternal City.  We would spend most of the day marveling at the ruins of the pre-Christian republic with some quick side trips to conveniently placed churches and monuments along the way. Alex had made a list of the main things we wanted to be sure to see and a list of things we would squeeze in if possible, in then end, we were able to visit every site on both lists; it was a very productive day.

We began by heading towards the Pantheon, the large Roman dome who would inspire the Renaissance architects when it came time to rediscover the art of dome building 15 centuries later.  The great dome has been re-purposed many times during that time and walking up to it, you could hardly but wonder at the permanence of a structure and how the landscape must have changed over the time it stood there.  Inside, Rick Steves walked us through the sites of the single roomed monolith.  Raphael, Corelli (composer) and Victor Emmanuel (the first king of a united Italy) are all buried here.

We headed out towards the ruins of the Roman forum.  Here among the marble columns and arches left standing, business among the Roman elite occurred.  We walked, again guided by Rick Steves, along the paths where Caesar walked (and was ultimately assassinated).  We went to the imperial palace and stood where the emperors throne once stood; the seat from which decisions affecting the whole of the western world and about a third of the world's population were made.  We saw the arch of Titus, commemorating the fall of Jerusalem you read about prophesied in the Bible.  Closer to the Colosseum stand the arch of Constantine, whose victories would usher in Christianity as the state religion.  Farther back in time, but all right there together is the palace of the Vestal Virgins, priestesses of the old Roman religion.  All of this, a thousand years of history whose implications are still being played out today, was before us in something like a quarter section of land.

As we perused these ruins, we kept a keen eye on the line into the Colosseum.  Initially, it looked like we would have to resign ourselves to a very long wait, but checking back later we found a lull in the line and was able to enter after no more than 10 minutes in line.  Again listening to Rick Steve's tour, we walked along the atria and viewed the ground where so many would suffer and die.  We marveled at the engineering mastery of Rome's architects; the Colosseum is nothing if not colossal, and the elevators and structural workings of the building was a thing of awe.  I wonder if any present day football stadiums will look in anywhere as good of shape in 2000 years.

The major sites of the day visited, we headed next to St. Peter-in-Chains church, so named for the relic it houses.  In a small box we could view the chains legend holds bound Peter as he was held prisoner in Rome and the chains that bound in Jerusalem, which miraculously fused together when someone was examining both.  Built in the 5th century A.D, the chains are not nearly the coolest thing about this incredible site.  What steals the show is Michelangelo's Moses, a marble sculpture so lifelike we half expected him to get up and start knocking some heads together to punish the Israelites for setting up the golden calf.  It was a great stop among Rome's lesser known sites, which meant Alex got a much needed respite from the crowds.

Many of the biggest sites checked off, we stopped for some pizza and ate near one of Rome's 2000 public fountains, making it easy to pinpoint our exact location.  With plenty of daylight to go, we headed toward the ruins of the ancient Roman market and saw Trajan's Column.  From there, it was just across the street to Victor Emmanuel's Monument, whose construction in 1885 made it the most modern building we had yet seen.

We also viewed many churches on this day.  Standing out in our memory is the church dedicated to St. Ignatius, with much fine gold gilding.  Somewhat ironically, with all that gold that went into the gilding there wasn't enough set aside for the construction of a dome, so they hired a painter to paint the appearance of the inside of a dome instead.  He did a fine job of it, but as you walk around and view it from more than one angle the trick is pretty quickly discovered.   We viewed the very French Church of St. Louis, whose frills and ornateness definitely screamed of its Baroque influences.

The church that stand out in my mind the most for this day, however had to be Santa Maria sopra Minerva, where the remains of St. Catherine of Sienna are interred.  After being in Sienna and seeing the influence of this woman, she was more than a random historical figure.  It was much like going to the Eisenhower library in Abilene and seeing where the former President and Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Forces was laid to rest; both were such palpable experiences.

We finished off our day with gelato on the famous Spanish Steps and some people watching, which Alex thoroughly enjoyed.  I sat back in wonder, trying to take it all in.  It had been a full day, and we had seen a ton.  The following day, we would see what had made me long to visit Rome in the first place, St. Peter's Basilica, and the thought of what we had seen and what we were yet to see filled me with awe.  Omnia Vincit Amour.