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.
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