Renovations for the Basilica of the Nativity

The Armenian Altar in the Basilica

of the Nativity in Bethlehem

I see that they are about to undertake a twenty million dollar renovation of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.  The current basilica was built by the Emperor Justinian in 565 to replace the original basilica built by the Emperor Constantine and his mother, Helena, in 327.  The Constantinian Basilica had been destroyed in the Samaritan Revolt of 529.   The Samaritan revolts were a series of rebellions in the late fifth and early sixth centuries against the Byzantine Empire by the Samaritan community in Palestine.  The Samaritans are the descendants of the Jews of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, which separated from the Davidic Monarchy in the southern Kingdom of Judah after the death of Solomon.  They rejected the authority of the Davidic Monarchy and, even more important, the Jerusalem Temple which was allied with the House of David.  They built their own temple on Mount Gerazim, near modern day Nablus in the West Bank.  When the Jews were expelled from the Roman province of Syria-Palestine at the end of the Bar Kokhba  Revolt in 135, the Samaritans were allowed to remain.  As the Roman Empire morphed into the Byzantine Empire, the Samaritans gained a great measure of political autonomy and reached a “golden age.”  Some scholars estimate that the Samaritan population may have reached one million in this time.  (They are less than a thousand today.)  Their temple on Mount Gerazim was rebuilt and the High Priest, Baba Rabbah, established liturgical patterns that are still followed today.  Given this renaissance of Samaritan political and religious power, the Samaritans were used to a certain measure of control over their region, but the Emperor Zeno (ruled 474-491) saw them as a political threat and tried to force them to accept Christianity.  The attempts of the Emperors to reassert control and suppress Samaritan religion and culture in favor of Byzantine Christianity, triggered a series of revolts between 484 and 556.  In the 529 uprising the Basilica of the Nativity was burned to the ground. It was rebuilt by Justinian and that is the structure that still stands.  A fifteen-centuries old building needs some care. 

In 2008 the World Monuments Fund placed the Basilica on the list of the 100 most endangered sites.  Their report read

The present state of the church is worrying. Many roof timbers are rotting, and have not been replaced since the 19th century. The rainwater that seeps into the building not only accelerates the rotting of the wood and damages the structural integrity of the building, but also damages the 12th-century wall mosaics and paintings. The influx of water also means that there is an ever-present chance of an electrical fire. If another earthquake were to occur on the scale of the one of 1834, the result would most likely be catastrophic. ... It is hoped that the listing will encourage its preservation, including getting the three custodians of the church – the Greek Orthodox Church, the Armenian Orthodox Church, and the Franciscan order – to work together, which has not happened for hundreds of years. The Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority would also have to work together to protect it.

It was only in 2012 that the Church was declared to be a world heritage site. Israel had blocked this designation for years and the United States supported the Israeli position that had to do no so much with religious issues as that the Church stands in Palestinian territory and Israel has consistently resisted any action that would recognize Palestinian sovereignty.  Fortunately saner heads prevailed and in a vote of 13-6 (conducted by secret ballot to make it easier to support the designation) UNESCO marked the ancient church as a World Heritage Site. 

If you think working around Israeli intransigence towards the Palestinians is tough, try getting the three Christian Churches who have title to the basilica to agree on a project.  The main nave of the Basilica is controlled by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.  The Armenian Apostolic Church has an altar in the transept north of the main sanctuary.  The Catholic Church has an adjoining Church of Saint Catherine which is an 1881 rebuilding of a Crusader monastic chapter house as well as several outlaying chapels.  Catholics and Armenians share with the Greeks access to the Grotto of the Nativity which is beneath the main sanctuary of Justinian’s basilica. While the complex is divided among the three, the ownership is shared and any decision regarding its repair must be agreed upon by all three groups.  The Greeks have been particularly hostile to Catholics and Armenians over the years—and I have seen this myself—even physically attacking clergy from the other denominations as they go to pray in the Grotto. 

The danger of the church actually falling down is what has persuaded the Greeks to go along with the plan for the restoration.  The main task will be replacing the rotten beams in the roof and this will cost almost two million dollars.  The roof will be further weatherized to prevent future rot.  That is only the beginning of the work however as the entire building needs to be stabilized and this also presents the opportunity for safer electrical wiring to be installed.  The appearance of the church will not be altered in any way.  Funding is coming from the Palestinan Authority as well as from the Holy See, Russia, France, Greece, and Hungary.  Hopefully the effort will improve relations among the three denominations as well.  

Back to Anglican History: Foundations IV

The installation of Justin Welby as the

105 Archbishop of Canterbury, March

21, 1213

I was happily working away on the history of the Anglican Church/ Communion when Pope Benedict dropped the bombshell of his resignation—the first papal resignation in more than five centuries—and of course immediately switched topics.  I still have a lot I want to write on the subject of papal transitions and issues concerning Pope Francis, but I also want to refocus on the subject of the Anglican Communion and its history as I believe that is important for us as a case study about papal authority.  It will be particularly important for us to note the schism that developed between the Papacy and the Church of England in the third decade of the sixteenth century and to see that schism in its context.  I think the subsequent development from schism to genuine Protestantism of the English Church will also be interesting as will be the recovery of a Catholic identity in the nineteenth century.  
But let me first recap our story.  You can go back to the entries of February 8, 9, and 10^th for the details of the story, but we had barely begun.  To summarize, Christianity came to Britain with the Romans no later than the second century of the Christian era and probably even at the end of the first.  The Roman towns and settlements undoubtedly had small Christian settlements.  Three British bishops were present at the Council of Arles in 314.  The British Church was also represented at the Councils of Sardica (modern day Sofia in Bulgaria) in 347 and the Council of Rimini in 359.  Christianity was well established in England by the accession of Constantine to the Imperial title in 312—and indeed, Constantine had strong ties to Britain—his father, Constantius had served in the military administration there as one of the imperial tetrarchs, or co-emperors and died at Eboracum, modern York.  When the Empire began to implode at the beginning of the fifth century, however, Rome began bringing its legions home to defend the capital and the withdrawal of Roman troops left Britain vulnerable to invasion.   Romans were  no sooner off scene than Germanic peoples, Angles, Saxons and Jutes, began to migrate and settle, pushing the native British Population further and further back into the west.  As the these Germanic settlers were not Christians but pagans, the mass of the Christian population was relocated to what is today Wales in the west and Cornwall in the south-west.   Nevertheless, small Christian communities endured in what had been the Roman towns.
The invaders themselves gradually were Christianized—in great part through the efforts of Irish monk missionaries who started schools and centers of learning in the Scotland and the various Saxon kingdoms.  Faith had come to Ireland not from Patrick and Rome as is commonly thought, but with monastic settlements that seem to have come from Egypt and Syria.  The Irish Church had some very distinct characteristics that differentiated it from the western style Catholicism associated with the Roman Church. 
The Irish and English Churches of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries were in no way subject to Papal or Roman authority.  Rome, at the time, made no claims to any sort of universal jurisdiction.   Let me repeat what I had written in one of those earlier blogs
Of course the English Church—that is the Anglican Church for Ecclesia Anglicana means simply that, the English Church—was in communion with the Roman Church but it was in no way absorbed into it. While it held the Roman Church and its Bishop (the Pope) in honor, it had its own distinct rites and ceremonies, it chose its own bishops, it held its own synods and councils and it formulated its own canons. At the time of Bede, it was its own Church in full and free communion with universal Christendom represented by the five great Patriarchial Sees of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem. As a Western Church it had its strongest ties to the See of Rome, the Western Patriarchate but like the other Churches maintained its autonomy.
That relationship will begin to change with the coming of missionaries from Rome under the monk-bishop Augustine of Canterbury.  That is for our next blog. 

 

The Foundation of the Anglican Church II

Plan of a Christian Church from

the Roman Period found at

Silchester, England. A curious

feature of this church is that it faces

west rather than east as was the more

normal practice

  In speaking of the Ecclesia Anglicana or the English Church, one of the things of which we need to be precise is the term “English.”  When you see the Latin word for English—Anglicana (Anglicanus, a, um), you can see why.  Anglicanus and its English derivative “English” refer to the Angles—a Germanic people who, along with two other Germanic peoples, the Saxons and the Jutes, began to migrate to the British Isle in the fifth century.  In other words there were no English (Angli, Angles) in England until sometime between 400-500 AD.  We usually refer to the people who lived in the southern half of the Island before the Anglo-Saxon migrations (or, some would say, invasions) as the Britons.  (The northern half of the Island populated by the Scoti and the Picts.) Thus when we talk about the Church in Britain in this period of Roman domination we would not refer to it as the Ecclesia Anglicana or the English Church.  But there were no “Roman Catholics” in Britain at this period either.  There were simply the Romano-British Christian communities.  There were bishops at what is today London, York and Lincoln. Other cities and towns such as Colchester, Bath, Carlisle or Verulamium, which flourished in the Roman period probably had their Christian communities as well, each with its own bishop.  Certainly by the beginning of the fifth century (400 AD) the predominant religion in Britain would have been Christianity.  And as Britain was part of the Roman Empire, Christians there would have been aware of the Church of Rome and its Bishop.  They almost certainly would have included the name of the Bishop of Rome in the diptychs signifying that they were in communion with the Church and the bishop of Rome.  But they weren’t “under” the bishop of Rome in any sense. 
Let me digress for a moment to tell you about the diptychs as this is an important feature—and a feature we still follow today—for the unity of the Church.  The diptychs were two panels hinged together on which were written the names of the living for whom prayers were offered on the one side, and the names of the dead to be commemorated in the prayers on the other.  On the side of the living would be included the names of the prominent bishops and Churches of Christendom.  The priest or deacon would read out these names during the prayers so that hearing the names of the leading bishops, a travelling Christian would know they were in a catholic (note the small “c”) and not some breakaway sect or heretical faction.  Today, at Mass, we include the name of the Pope and the local Bishop in the Eucharistic Prayer.  Thus when I am at Mass away from home, and I hear the Pope’s name I know I am in a Catholic Church and not an Episcopalian or a Lutheran Church where the Liturgy is very much the same.  (Don’t be smug. I know devout Catholics who have been to Episcopal or Lutheran Eucharists and not known they were in the wrong pew.  This can be particularly tricky if there is a language barrier.)   
While these Churches in Britain were in communion with the Roman Church they were in no way “under” the Roman Church or its Bishop, whom we may now refer to as “the Pope.”  (It would not be precise historically to call the bishop of Rome “the Pope” before Leo the Great, (pope 440-461) or certainly before the Constantinian settlement, c. 315. But that is another subject entirely.)  Each of these Churches would have elected its own bishop in the traditional way—an assembly of the laity along with the clergy—with the election confirmed by the bishops of the surrounding communities.  That bishop, once elected, would have governed the local Church without reference to outside authority other than that of any council of the bishops of his region that might be held, or an Ecumenical Council called by the Emperor. 
The coming of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in the fifth century uprooted but did not destroy these British Christian communities.  At the beginning of the fifth century, Roman troops were called home from the far-flung corners of the Empire to protect the city of Rome from the various invaders that threatened it.  Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410, threatened by Attila in 452, sacked again by the Vandals in 455, and finally sacked once more by the Ostrogoths in 546.  (We won’t deal here with later sacks.)  Once the Roman troops had withdrawn, these Germanic tribes saw room for expansion in the rich and fertile British Island.  As they moved in, the native British population shifted more and more to the west and to what is now Wales to escape them.  The Germanic peoples were pagans of the old Germanic religion with Wotan and his buddies from the Ring of the Nibelung.  In places like York and London and Eboracum (York) Christianity held on by a thread but the centers of Christianity shifted to the west and south west and to Wales with the surviving Briton population.  This was the Britain of Arthur and we know little about it with any certainty, but at the very time Christianity was most vulnerable, reinforcements to the faith came from the west in the Celtic missions. And that is for next time.

Rethinking God VI

Blessed John Henry Newman

champion of listening to the

faithful

A major player in in the debate over the divinity of Christ was a priest from Alexandria in Egypt by the name of Arius. Arius lived at the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth.  Trying to preserve the traditional view on the Unity of God—that God is One—Arius would not ascribe full divinity of Christ.  As I posted yesterday, the received Tradition from Judaism: “ Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One,” the prayer known as the Shema Yisrael  taken from Deuteronomy 6:4, created a huge problem for Christians in the first six centuries as they tried to reconcile the Unity of God with the Divinity of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  The idea of the Father being God, the Son being God and the Holy Spirit being God sounded too much like three gods to a lot of people.  Arianism acknowledged that Christ shares in Divinity but to a lesser degree than the Father.  While still an Anglican before his becoming a Catholic in 1845, Blessed John Henry Newman had written a study of Arius and history published under the title: The Arians of the Fourth Century.  Arius was opposed by Saint Athanasius, the secretary to Arius’ bishop, Alexander, but according to Newman the majority of bishops in the Church had accepted the Arian theology.  It was only at the Council of Nicea that the bishops—at the urging of Athanasius, defined that Christ is consubstantial (one in being) with the Father—that is, that Christ shares fully in the same Divine Nature as the Father.  Incidentally only 318 bishops out of the 1800 Constantine had invited came to the Council—a very small minority.)  While the majority of bishops had originally agreed with Arius, the laity and the lower clergy—the faithful—had held to faith in Christ’s divinity. Newman always remembered this and years later as a Catholic wrote his famous essay “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine.” Newman argued—with quite a bit of opposition in his day—that the magisterium needs to pay close attention to the faith of the People of God. The laity are not merely to be instructed by the pastors of the Church but the pastors must remember that the Faith of the Church is that which is held in the hearts of the Faithful and therefore those who teach need to be in tune with the faithful.  This is something to pay attention to today.  Too many think that it is up to the Bishops to teach and the faithful to listen but if the bishops are teaching something other than that which is in the faith held by the people, the bishops are not teaching the faith of the Church.  The faith of the Church is no more and no less than the faith put into the hearts of the People of God by the Holy Spirit.  There are those in the Church today who are upset that the faithful are not listening to the bishops when they teach but maybe we should be more concerned that the bishops have not been listening to the faithful before they teach.    

Holy Week VI

The Floor Plan of the
Constantinian Basilica

If you go to Rome, just a bit east of Saint Peter’s you will see an ancient “castle” topped with the statue of a an angel sheathing his sword.  Though fortified into a castle in the Middle Ages, the core building is actually Hadrian’s Tomb—the tomb of the Roman Emperor Hadrian—the same guy who built Hadrian’s Wall in  Britain to keep the Scots and the Picts out of Roman England.  Hadrian was Emperor from 117 until 138 AD, or as we historians prefer to say, CE.  Hadrian visited Jerusalem and saw the city and the ruins of the temple which had been destroyed in the rebellion of 66-73 CE.  Hadrian hated Judaism (and the Jewish People) and determined to obliterate their connection to the land which he renamed Syria Palestina (it had been known as Judea).  He rebuilt Jerusalem and renamed it Aelia Capitolina.  One of his particular acts of impiety was to build a temple dedicated to the goddess Venus over what was venerated as the Tomb of Christ.  The Jews were sent into exile causing the diaspora, and while some remained both Jews and Christians were banned from the city that had held the Temple and where Christ died and was raised.  

The Greek Orthodox altar
at the site of Calvary

    All this changed when Constantine became Emperor.  Christians were the favored religion and it was Constantine who in 325-26 ordered that a Christian church be built on the site of the Tomb of Christ and the nearby hill of Golgotha, the traditional site of the crucifixion.  Calvary is derived from
      Calvaria, the Latin rendering of the name Golgotha.  The two sites,  are close enough to be included in the same complex. Constantine’s basilica was built in the traditional style of a Roman basilica though facing west. (Saint Peter’s in Rome and Saint John Lateran are also Constantinian Basilicas facing west.  Saint Paul’s outside the Walls today faces east, but the original Constantinian basilica faced west.  As far as I can determine, the fifth Constantinan church, the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem faces east.) 

      The Constantinian Basilica was built to the east of Christ’s tomb and to the north of the rock of Calvary.  Calvary was covered by a chapel just to the left of the apse of the Basilica and behind the apse was an open courtyard.  On the far side of the courtyard was a round shrine area or rotunda over the tomb of Christ called the anastasis. 

       It is debatable how much of the tomb of Christ remained even in Constantine’s time but supposedly Constantine had the hillside around the tomb cut away and the tomb itself enclosed in a marble aedicule or small building standing within the domed circular rotunda.   Much of the Good Friday service was held in the open courtyard when the remaining piece of what was believed to be the Cross of Christ was brought down from the shrine at Calvary into the courtyard for veneration.  Today in the Catholic Good Friday service the veneration of the Cross—now usually a plain wooden cross without the figure of Christ—is one of the principle parts of Liturgy.  

      The Constantinian basilica stood until the year 614 when it was destroyed by fire during the Persian invasion.  The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius rebuilt it in 630.  The city fell to the Arabs in 636, but the Caliph, ‘Umar, showed great respect to the Christian population and their shrine and the Church remained undisturbed for almost four centuries until the “Mad Caliph,” Al Hakim, ordered the Church and the tomb of Christ razed to the ground in 1009.  Al Hamkim’s son, Ali az-zahir, permitted the rebuilding which was financed by the Greek Emperor and Patriarch in Constantinople even though the shrine was no longer under his control, but the project remained mostly unfinished when the Crusaders arrived and captured the city from the Turks in 1099.  It was during the Crusader era that today’s main church to the east of the Tomb was rebuilt and the entire complex, church, Tomb, and Calvary united under one roof.  At this time, the orientation of the basilica was changed so in the current basilica, the principle altar and the nave, which are entrusted to the Greek Orthodox, face to east and away from the Tomb.    

      Except for a brief period in the middle of the thirteenth century, Jerusalem was under Muslim Rule from 1187 until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.  Through most of this period the Church remained in the hands of the Latin (Catholic) Christians, but from the sixteenth century onwards when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire the Church was more frequently entrusted to the Greek Orthodox.  In 1853 the Sultan, pressured by the French, issued a Status Quo, in this case a settlement which spelled out precisely which parts of the Church and at what times of day were under the control of the Greek Orthodox, the Roman Catholics, and the Armenian Church.  The Copts were given some minor rights.  Quarrels and even fights still break out among the clergy and faithful when any altering of the Status Quo is perceived, sometimes be it as small an issue as how many times the priest swings the censer in a particular place or what melody is used for a chant.  The Church is in needs of serious repairs but as agreement among the various religious bodies is almost impossible to reach, the repairs go undone. The Dome over the Sepulcher was repaired in the 1990’s, but there is need for much further restoration.

       In the 19^th century a British adventurer, Charles George Gordan, developed an alternate site for Protestant to worship.  It is called “The Garden Tomb” or “Gordan’s Calvary.”  While historians and archeologists reject it as a possibility for the site of Christ’s death and resurrection, it “looks” far more like what we think Calvary and the Sepulcher should look.  If you really want to just go and have a place to sit and quietly read the gospels and give thought to Christ’s saving death and Resurrection, I suggest the Garden Tomb rather than the shabby and noisy Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  

The History of St. Peter's: a dream not realized

The alleged dalmatic of Charlemagne

I want to go back to the construction of Saint Peter’s Basilica—we left off in February—the 23^rd to be exact—and how it developed from Constantine’s basilica—originally built c. 325—to today’s basilica, built between 1502 and 1612. 

You may recall—and you can check the archives in January and February for more information—how Constantine surrounded the entire necropolis (pre-Christian) cemetery in which Peter had been buried with a retaining wall and buried it as the foundation for the large basilica he constructed over the tomb.   I did a number of blog entries (January 17, 18, February 21, 21) on Constantine’s basilica and then the February 23^rd entry on the modifications by Gregory the Great.  It was in this basilica—as remodeled by Gregory the Great—that Charlemagne was crowned Imperator Romanorum on Christmas Day 800.   In the Treasury Museum of the Vatican Basilica (which is not part of the Vatican Museums but is found adjacent to the sacristy, on the left (as you face the altar) aisle of the basilica, just before the transept) you can see a tunicle which he supposedly had worn for the coronation.  In fact it is a 11^th century dalmatic from Byzantium, but as my old friend, Dot Pittman (+God rest her), used to say: don’t let the truth spoil a good story.    What is more authentic is a disk of red Egyptian porphyry set into the pavement of the current basilica, just inside the main doors.  That stone, which stood before the high altar in the old basilica, is the stone on which Charlemagne knelt to be crowned by Pope Leo III and for centuries served as the “coronation stone” for later emperors.  

Giotto's Navicella

Saint Peter’s has never been the papal cathedral (although it has often functioned as such) which is the basilica of Saint John Lateran.  In the Middle Ages, the papal residence was the Patriarchatum, or patriarchial palace adjoining the Lateran.  The medieval palace has long disappeared, begin replaced by the much smaller palace built by Sixtus V which stands on the site today. (The original palace was much larger, covering much of today’s Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano.)  In the Middle Ages the popes would go to St. Peter’s several times a year for various religious festivals but they normally used the Lateran basilica for services.  Consequently the Vatican basilica was not always kept in good repair.  There were various additions and restorations over the years.  In the opening decade of the fourteenth century the Italian artist Giotto was commissioned to do a mosaic of Peter walking on the Sea with Christ.  It is called the Navicella (the Italian word for a small ship), while it has been so over-restored throughout the seven centuries of its existence that Giotto’s original work has all but disappeared, it is still visible in the atrium of the current basilica.  Similarly Eugene IV commissioned from Florentine artists, Antonio Filarete, a set of bronze doors for the old basilica which were finished in 1445.  They are incorporated into the new basilica as the central entrance to the basilica and can also be viewed from the atrium.  (However, be sure to view the back side of the doors, almost without decoration, from within the basilica and note at the base the line of figures dancing across the lower panel, representing Filarete and his workmen.)  There were a number of tombs in Old St. Peter’s that are still extent.  The only one in the current basilica is that of Innocent VIII which is located in the south aisle.  The tomb of Sixtus IV (d. 1484) long stood in the chapel of the choir both in the old and new basilicas, but was moved in the twentieth century to what is now the Museum of the Treasury. It is amazing how many papal tombs and monuments were destroyed during the demolition of the old basilica and the construction of the current one.  When the popes returned from Avignon in 1378 they found the Vatican Basilica near collapse.  Various plans were advanced to stabilize it but little was actually done.  Eugene IV commissioned the above mentioned doors by Filarette, but that was more decorative.  One of the original Renaissance-men, Leon Battista Alberti—architect, poet, musician, linguist, philosopher, and priest—visited Rome and at the request of Nicholas V inspected the Vatican Basilica and declared that the walls were so far out of plumb that the basilica was in imminent danger of collapse.  Nicholas called Bernardo de Matteo Rossellino to draw up  plans for a new basilica.  It was to follow the general lines of Constantine’s original church but to be much larger. Like Constantine’s church it was to be a five aisled basilica, rectangular nave with a tribune-sanctuary at the west end.  (Remember that St. Peter’s was built facing, not east but west.)   The plan of Nicholas and Rossellino called for it to be lengthened from the original 400 feet to 640 and widened from 200 feet to 320.  Engineering advances from the time of Constantine not only enabled the doubling of size but also insertion of large windows in the upper clerestory story which would flood the main nave with light.  The papal altar, positioned over the tomb of the Apostle, would stand at the juncture of nave and tribune.  Behind the altar, in the apse would be the papal throne and seats of the senior officials of the papal court.  The project was begun earnestly—a new west end and apse  

Old St Peter's--Raphael's Room of the Fire in the Borgo

was begun running parallel to the existing Constantinian building but further to the west of the old church.  One hundred and forty three feet of what was to be the west end of the projected new basilica was built to the height of seven and thickness of twenty-two feet, but with the death of Nicholas the project came to a halt.  Callistus III, the new pope, had other issues that captured his attention—most notably the expansion of the Turks into Europe after the fall of Constantinople and it would be another half-century before the problem of St. Peter’s would effectively be addressed.          

Gregory the Great and the rearrangment of Saint Peter's Basilica.

When Gregory the Great (Gregory I –Gregory VII is also referred to as Gregory the Great just to make a historian’s life difficult) became pope in 590, he determined a renovation of the shrine over the tomb of the Apostle.  He raised the floor level of the Apse four and a half feet and built two flights of stairs to either side of and perpendicular to a level space just before the altar—much like the arrangement of the altar seen here at Santa Maria in Trastevere.  He located his Episcopal chair (since this church was (and is) not a cathedral the chair is technically not the pope’s cathedra) in the traditional spot, against the wall of the apse and directly behind the altar.  In addition to raising the level of the apse and placing his chair and benches for the clergy in what was the traditional Roman position lining the wall of the apse, Gregory wanted to have an altar for the celebration of the Eucharist.  You may remember that in Constantine’s basilica, the marble and porphyry monument encasing the trophy of Gaius —the brick plastered “red wall” that had been built over the tomb of Peter c. 150 AD —which took the traditional place of the altar as the focal point of the basilica.  In raising the level of the floor of the apse almost five feet, Constantine’s monument was all but buried; enough remained above the floor level to become the altar of the basilica.  Thus the altar contained within itself the ancient monument over Peter’s grave. 

A passage below the floor of the apse and following its curve gave access to a recessed chapel directly beneath Gregory’s main altar and in this chapel it was possible to have access to the tomb of the apostle by lowering pieces of cloth to the tomb below and then withdrawing the cloth to keep as a relic.  Although Constantine’s basilica itself is gone—and Gregory’s apse with it—one can still walk this curved passageway today in the “grottoes” beneath the current Saint Peter’s and there enter the chapel, now called the Clementine Chapel after Pope Clement VIII who refurbished it at the very end of the sixteenth century.  Behind the altar there is a grille and through the grille one can see the marble and porphyry monument that Constantine had erected over the tomb of the apostle which served as the altar in Gregory’s day and which lies directly beneath the current papal altar of the new basilica; the altar was consecrated by Clement VIII June 5, 1594.  Until about ten years ago this passage was regularly open to pilgrims, but the series of chapels that line the ancient apse are now usually open only early in the morning when they are used for the dozens of masses visiting priests and Vatican regulars use to say mass.  The chapels have proved too difficult to protect in this age subject to terrorist threats and so they are sealed during the day.     

Gregory was not the only pope to make changes in the basilica.  Over the centuries there was a constant need for repair and addition to the basilica as well as for decoration.  In fact, popes often paid more attention to the decoration than to the maintenance of the fabric which is one of the reasons the basilica eventually would have to come down and be replaced in the sixteenth century.  The rich décor along with immense quantities of gold and silver votive offerings adorned with gems sometimes serve to tempt foes to sack the basilica.  Honorius I (pope 625-638) took the tiles from the Basilica of Maxentius (a secular building, not a worship site) in the Forum to re-roof St. Peters.  In 846 Saracen pirates sacked the basilica and took many valuable items with them.  Gregory IV (827-844) rebuilt the Atrium—the spacious colonnaded courtyard in front of the basilica proper.   In the middle of the eleventh century the building, at that point seven centuries old, was in danger of collapsing and a succession of popes, though largely unsuccessful in raising funds to carry out the work as properly as it should have been done, did what they could to strengthen the structure of the building.  Remember, however, that this was not the principal church of Rome at the time.  The Pope’s Cathedral was (and still is) the Basilica of Saint John Lateran and it was at the Lateran—not the Vatican—where the pope resided and normally carried out ceremonies. 

One ceremony that was carried out in Constantine’s Basilica of Saint Peter was the coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas day in the year 800.  Charlemagne’s family—the Pepinid dynasty—were the traditional protectors of the papacy. In fact they owed their legitimacy to the papacy as they had been “mayors of the palace” to the legitimate kings of the Franks—the Merovingian dynasty—and when the Merovingians proved too weak to protect France, much less the papacy, the Pepinids sought and received the papal blessing to overthrow the Merovingians and replace them.  As the Merovingians had been descended from Clovis—for whose baptismal and coronation anointings the Holy Spirit herself had supposedly sent from heaven a holy oil it would take at least a papal benediction to authorize a new dynasty on the throne.  When Pope Leo III had been threatened with being deposed by his clergy for various immoralities, Charlemagne came to Rome to adjucate the case himself.   When Leo proved his innocence to Charlemange’s satisfaction he then crowned Charlemagne emperor of a revived Roman Empire.  The idea did not catch on at once; the empire would more or less fall apart when upon his death Charlemagne divided his realms among his three sons. However his great great great grandson, Otto of Bavaria would revive it—but that leads us in another direction.  When receiving his crown, Charlemagne knelt on a circle of porphyry about 5 feet in diameter that was set before the altar of the basilica.  Porphyry was (and is) an exceptionally precious stone and its use was reserved for the emperor.  During the central Middle Ages it became a tradition that the emperors would kneel on this stone when being crowned in Rome.  That same stone can be found in the floor of today's basilica just inside the central doors leading from the modern atriun into the basilica proper.

Taking a Look at Constantine's Basilica in the Vatican

Today is the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter--a feast that celebrates the apostle's ministry at Rome and it is a fortunate coincidence that we are looking at the basilica that Constantine built over the tomb of the Apostle two and a half centuries after Peter's martyrdom.  Constantine’s Basilica no longer stands. It was demolished over the course of the sixteenth century to make way for the current St Peter's Basilica.  There are few representations of the original church—one of the more notable is in the Basilica of San Martino ai Monte in Rome.  This fresco was painted sometime probably in the 14^th century when the basilica was approximately a thousand years old and had been considerably altered from Constantine’s day.  Notice the tabernacle (the canopy) over the altar with its tall pointed super-structure. While such tabernacles were all but universal in Roman churches, I haven’t come across the description of this one, but it roughly corresponds--not in detail but in general idea--to the still standing tabernacle of the basilica of Saint John Lateran by Arnolfo di Cambio .  We know this is a fresco of the Vatican Basilica because of the pigna (the large bronze pinecone) which stood in the center of the open courtyard in front of the medieval basilica.  It now stands in a courtyard of the part of hte Vatican palace used as the museum. 

While the original basilica no longer stands, we can have an idea of what it looked like by looking at features of several other churches that in various particulars resembled Constantine’s shrine over the tomb of the apostle.   

This next  picture is of the Basilica of Saint Paul fuori le mura (outside the walls) the Constantinian Basilica constructed over the tomb of the Apostle Paul.  Unfortuantley a fire early in the nineteenth century all but destroyed the ancient basilica and this is a 19^th century building but built on Constantine’s original plan.  Like Constantine’s Saint Peter’s it is a five aisled basilica with a transverse on the far end from the middle of which extends an apse.  while slightly larger than Old St. Peter's, the proportions are roughly the same.   We see here only the central aisle, the two aisles that flank it on either side are barely visible but the immense width not only makes the flanking aisles a necessity to support the roof, it also gives a spacious feel to the entire nave.

At  the far end of the nave, just before the transverse crossing at the far end, stood a "triumphal arch" on the idea of the arches the emperors had built to mark their victories.   The triumphal arch separating the nave from the apse of the basilica of Santa Praessede in Rome, pictured to the right,  is somewhat typical of such an arch that stood at the head of the aula or nave of the Constantinian Basilica of Saint Peter, separating it from the transverse and the apse beyond.   In the center one can see the Paschal Lamb on the Book of Seven Seals mentioned in the Book of Revelation.  On either side stand the winged figures representing the four evangelists.  Beyond them haloed figures of the apostles and beneath the evangelists and apostles one sees the elders of the Book of Revelation with their golden crowns.   

The ancient basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere also has a triumphal arch—in fact it has two of them.  The forward one has mosaics of the renaissance period, but the one in front of the apse has a central roundel with a cross and the alpha and omega representing Christ.  On either side of the roundel one can see angels and below them the prophets.  The arch at St. Paul outside the walls which can be seen in the picture of that church illustrating the five aisled nave has a central roundel with Christ in his humanity and the evangelists, two on either side of him.  beneath them are a host of saints in adoration.  Because of the consistency of theme, we can presume that the arch in St. Peter’s was decorated with a depiction of Christ in the center and probably with the evangelists and apostles somewhere in the design.  Of course, remember that in history the word "presume" is a very weak word; while the central figure being Christ is all but certain, we do not know the remainder of the design with any certainty.   

In almost all of the ancient and early medieval churches of Rome the altar is crowned with a tabernacle.  American Catholics think of the tabernacle as being the repository for the Eucharist left over from mass and reserved for the communion of the sick and dying, but classically the tabernacle is the stone canopy over the altar.  Technically a tabernacle is a tented structure.  Before the Council of Trent these stone canopies were hung with draperies that could be closed to conceal the altar—and indeed conceal the mass itself—and this was traditionally done in penitential seasons.  In times of interdict or mourning the altars were ordered to be “veiled” which meant the drapes were to be closed.  In most of the Eastern Rites there was either an icon screen or a curtain hung between the area around the altar and the congregation.  If it is a curtain it is closed for certain portions of the liturgy and/or during certain seasons of the year—again usually penitential times.  If there is a screen as in the Byzantine and several other rites, then the doors in the screen are left open on major feasts and closed at other times—and with a drape behind the doors at the most solemn times.  These drapes suspended from the tabernacle performed the same function.  The liturgical reforms of the sixteenth century Council of Trent did away with them.  Above we have pictures of the tabernacles of two old churches—on the left San Giorgio in Velabro  (7^th century) and on the right Santa Maria in Trastevere (4^th century).  Old Saint Peter’s also had a tabernacle, though we don’t quite know its design.  In the drawing below it appears as a rather boxy affair with arches beneath the arched canopy rising from the four columns and beneath the round chandelier suspended from the architraves.  Personally I doubt it was this boxed as most tabernacles that survive are more open affairs.  The next episode will be the changes that Gregory the Great made in the Basilica.