A lot classier than the Popemobile

Pius IX carried into Vatican I on the Sedia

Gestatoria -- 1870.  note the large fans, the

flabella, on either side of the Pope. 

Well my time in Rome has been interesting for a variety of reasons.  I don’t know the people that Rocco Palma does with Whispers in the Loggia.  I need to remember to read that blog more often as I do like it and he really knows the right people to get the scoop on things that circulating in the back alleys of the Eternal City, but I try to keep the focus on history and not current events so I need books more than “sources.”  I have lived in Rome off and on over the last twenty-some years and been a frequent visitor in the in between times so I have had chance to develop a lot of friendships with people who are insiders to the system.  Rome is the most incredible rumor mill that I have ever encountered and I do hear the most curious things.  The problem is that since the Holy See is a bureaucracy and “power” is distributed among so many different discasteries—and at different levels of those dicasteries—is that there are few reliable ways to check rumors for whether they are “an idea,” “a proposal,” “a recommendation,” or “a decision.”   There is a rumor floating around that Benedict is going to bring back the sedia gestatoria, the portable throne on which popes were carried for centuries on the shoulders of the palafreneiri.  I had seen the sedia gestatoria on my first visit to Rome back in 1978 when I saw Paul VI carried into the Basilica of Saint Paul fuori le mura for the Corpus Christi Mass.  That was just about its last cry.  Paul died two months later and his successor John Paul II did away with the portable throne and then, at the insistence of the papal masters of ceremonies, brought it back so that he could be seen above the crowds.  It was back only a week or two when he died and his successor John Paul II flatly refused to use it.  Voila la popemobile.  We had all thought the sedia gestatoria  finished, but Benedict loves rooting around the Vatican attic as we all know and so perhaps we shall see it again.  I am a bit skeptical but maybe we should watch for Christmas Midnight Mass! 
      My biggest concern is that I would think that it might be a bit dangerous.  Should anyone take a shot at the pope while he is high above the crowd it would be difficult to get him down quickly before a second or even a third shot could be fired.  Or an attack on the footmen carrying the sedia gestoria—bring down a couple of them and send the Pope toppling down to perhaps serious injury.    Popemobiles can be speeded up—not as fast as one would like, but fast enough—and on ground level, the pope can be easily surrounded by aides and bodyguards while he is gotten to safety or medical attention as needed.  The Sedia Gestatoria might be glamorous but I don’t think it is a good idea.  However, I don’t get a vote in these things so we will see.
      As I check out sedia gestatoria, there is debate on how long the portable throne has been used.  It has certainly been around for at least six hundred years and some sources say a thousand.  Indeed some say that it is simply an adaptation of the custom of carrying Roman consuls through the streets of Rome on their chairs of office hoisted onto the shoulders of captive peoples.  Indeed, it seems to have been a common practice in the later years of the Roman Empire when Christianity was the State Religion, that not only the Pope but many bishops were carried shoulder high to their being consecrated and/or installed in their cathedrals.  Ennodius Magnus, a sixth century bishop of Pavia, specifically mentions the custom of carrying the Pope in a chair elevated on the shoulders of bearers, presumably minor clerics of the pontifical household, but it is not clear whether this was a usual practice or specifically connected with his enthronement in the Lateran Basilica.  In the context of Ennodius’ claim, some sources such as the old Catholic Encyclopedia (1917) mention the “cathedra Petri”—and ancient chair said to be the “cathedra” (bishop’s chair) of Saint Peter kept enshrined in Bernini’s magnificent tribune above the Altar of the Chair in the apse of Saint Peter’s Basilica as proof.  The chair in question, a lovely construction of wood and ivory panels, has rings through which the bearing poles could be, and probably were inserted.  The problem is that the chair has, subsequent to the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia, been dated to a gift from the emperor Charles the Bald to Pope John VIII.  For some years the original chair was on display in the Treasury of Saint Peter’s though it is now returned to Bernini’s supersized reliquary and a copy of it put on display.  The chair does indeed have rings affixed to the side and so the custom of carrying the pope on a portable throne can be dated at least back to the ninth century but reasonably could be a continuation of even more ancient practice.    What I am trying to get information on are the flabella—the large ostrich plumed fans which were carried for centuries alongside the pope as he rode on the sedia gestatoria.  I remember that they were originally a gift from the Sultan of Egypt to a pope, but I cannot find dating for the gift.  I will keep searching. 

How the Vatican came to be the Pope's home

When the papacy left Avignon and returned to Rome in 1377 the papal court found the old Lateran palace which had been the official papal residence adjoining the pope’s cathedral, the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, in such ruin that it was not habitable so they took up residence in a warren of buildings adjoining the basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican. You may remember from earlier blogs (January 17 and 18) that Constantine had built basilicas over the tombs of the Apostle Paul (on the Via Ostia) and the Apostle Peter (on the Vatican hill) and that the popes kept a residence at the Vatican for those occasions when they were presiding at ceremonies in that church so that they did not have to journey from the Lateran to the Vatican or return to the Lateran the same day. Innocent III had modernized (well, "modern" for the thirteenth century) the buildings to the north of the basilica and it was here that the popes settled. Well, some of the popes settled, others preferred a variety of palaces around Rome. Paul II Barbo, for example, had rebuilt the residence of the Cardinal Priest of the Basilica of Saint Mark just north of the Capitoline Hill and made it into a splendid renaissance palace. When he was elected pope in 1474, he preferred to remain in his Palazzo Venezia than live in the Vatican and so it served as a papal residence for a number of years, (It also later served as Mussolini’s official headquarters.) Allesandro Farnese, a man who owed his cardinal’s hat to his sister (the so-called Giulia Bella –beautiful Giulia) being the mistress of Pope Alexander VI Borgia, built a magnificent palace –to my mind the most beautiful building in Rome—called the Palazzo Farnese and when he was elected Paul III he too opted to live in this palace even though it was still undergoing its “finishing touches.” This doesn’t mean that the Vatican Palace was being neglected Nicholas V (1447-1455) did a substantial renovation of the older buildings and Alexander VI Borgia constructed new apartments for himself during his reign (1492-1503). Nicholas V’s private chapel was frescoed by Fra Angelico with scenes of the lives of Saints Stephen and Laurence and is—to my mind—the most exquisitely beautiful room in the Vatican Palace—or at least those parts of the palace that we mere mortals get to see. It is a small room that can hold probably no more than ten or twelve people, but the aforementioned frescoes are windows into another world. The Borgia apartment, on the other hand, is a heavy construction—massive and powerful and today houses the Paul VI collection of contemporary (20th century) art. Alexander VI Borgia’s successor, Julius II, despised Alexander and would not live in his apartments so he had apartments of his own constructed directly over them and decorated by Raphael. Like the Borgia apartments, they are today part of the Vatican Museums.
Julius’s uncle, Sixtus IV, (pope 1471-1484) had built the Sistine (named after Sixtus) Chapel between 1473 and 1482. This chapel was built on the site of and to replace an earlier Cappella maggiore (Greater Chapel) which was used for the semi-public papal ceremonies. It apparently was built to the same dimensions of this earlier chapel 134’ by 44’—said to be the dimensions of the temple of Solomon. It would be Julius who would see the decoration of the chapel however, hiring Michelangelo to paint the vault.
Although Paul III Farnese preferred his family palace, he did not ignore his official residence and had the architect Antonio Sangallo the younger—who at the time was serving as the architect of the new Saint Peter’s Basilica that was being built— build the greast reception room—the Sala Regia—and the Pauline chapel in the Vatican Palace. Sangallo also built the Scala Regia to connect the papal apartments with St. Peter’s Basilica. This staircase would later be restored into today’s majestic staircase by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini. (You really do need to go and see all this beauty for yourself.) in the last of the sixteenth century Gregory XIII (reigned 1572-1585) and his successor, Sixtus V (reigned 1585-1590 and one of my favorite popes) built the block of the palace overlooking Saint Peter’s Square where the actual papal apartments are located. This is ironic in as that Gregory had another building project which would result in those apartments sitting empty most nights for several centuries. But more on that in a few weeks. Enough of papal residences. I want to get back to Anti-Catholicism in America, the building of the Vatican Basilica, and those troublesome American nuns that the Vatican wants to “investigate.” Maybe somebody needs to investigate the Vatican. Hmmm.

Today's image is the Diaconal Ordination of Saint Laurence by Fra Angelico, Chapel of Nicholas V