Another Roman Church Worth Searching Out

 I have had any number of comments from readers about my posting on the ancient Church of San Stefano Rotondo in Rome—a site easily overlooked by most visitors to the Holy City but one that is well worth the visit.  And so let me do another posting about an even more overlooked—and equally interesting—ancient Church not far from San Stefano, SS Quatro Coronati.  The title of the Church, translated into English, means: the Four Crowned Saints and refers to four unnamed martyr-saints.  Pope Miltiades in the early fourth century ascribed the names Claudius, Nicostratus, Simpronianus and Castorius to these four saints, but he had somehow amalgamated them to four of the five Pannonian stonemasons martyred during the persecution of Diocletian. (The fifth is Simplicius.)  To confuse the issue even further, in the crypt of the church of the SS Quatro Coronati are the bodies of the martyr Saints Secundus, Severianus, Carpoforus, and Victorinus, martyrs from the suburbican See of Rome, Albano, who were put to death at an unspecified time and about whom nothing other than their names are known.  So we have quite a collection of saints associated with this ancient church on the Caelian hill.

I have always liked this church because while it stands in the middle of the city of Rome, as you approach it you would swear you were walking down a country lane.  Tall grasses and wildflowers block out any view beyond the Caelian itself, birds sing and at the end of the alley you see what looks more like a ruined gatehouse than a basilica.  Passing through the gatehouse you enter the first of two external courtyards.  It was typical of the ancient Roman Churches to have a courtyard separating it from the street beyond—Santa Praessede in Rome is an excellent surviving example of this—but the second courtyard is, I believe unique.  Actually, the second courtyard was originally part of the nave of the basilica of SS Quatro Coronati, but when the church was rebuilt by Paschal II after having been burned by the Norman troops of Robert Guiscard during the 1084 sack of Rome.  The resultant basilica is quite small and compact.  The choir and presbyterium are screened off by a grille marking the cloister of the Augustinian nuns whose conventual church this has been since the mid sixteenth century.  Standing in the courtyards you could easily be in the 12^th century, totally removed from the modern world and surrounded by a complex of patinaed medieval structures that exude peace and tranquility.  Inside the basilica there are some 16^th century frescoes of no particular interest, but if you explore a bit you can find a lovely cloister in the cosmatesque style of the high Middle Ages.  And if you are really lucky you might hit the church while the nuns are singing the noonday office.  All in all it is a wonderful wormhole into medieval Rome. 

A Favorite Church

One of my favorite churches in Rome, probably for its uniqueness of design, is San Stefano Rotondo located on the Caelian hill, not far from such other wonderful old Churches as San Gregorio Magno and SS Giovanni e Paulo.  The Church is entirely in the round, being built in imitation of the Anastasis, the circular aula over the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  Pope Leo the Great authorized the foundation of the Church but it was only built twenty years later or so by Pope Simplicius between 468 an 483, making it one of the oldest churches in Rome and unlike many of the more prominent churches has been little altered over the years.  The church was built at the behest of the Valerian family—one of the most ancient and noble Roman families—who owned much of the Caelian Hill.  Saint Melania the Elder was a member of this family and she had made frequent pilgrimages to Jerusalem and in fact had died there.  This may have influenced the choice of a circular plan for the Church.

Twice in its history the Church had attracted the notice of papal patrons who poured considerable wealth into its embellishment.  John I and Felix IV decorated the church with marble and mosaics in the sixth century and Innocent II reinforced the fabric of the building in the twelfth century.   Through most of its history, however, the church was quite neglected, even to the point of being at times roofless.  In 1454 Nicholas V took the church from the Canons of the Lateran who had permitted it to become almost ruinous and gave it to the Hermits of Saint Paul, a Hungarian Order of Mendicant Friars and this began an association that continues today of San Stefano Rotondo with the Hungarian nation.  Hungarian Jesuits took over the Church from the Pauline Hermits in 1579 and under the Jesuits the church received its most notable decorations that last until today.  It was the time of the great Jesuit missions and Jesuits in their spreading of the Gospel were being put to death in the Protestant nations of Europe, among the native Americans and First Nations of what is today the United States and Canada, in Japan, Korea, and many other places around the globe.  Ignatius’ Society of Jesus was being baptized in its own blood.  It was important to inculcate in the Order’s novices the spirit of Martyrdom.  The church was under the patronage of Saint Stephen—the first martyr—and what could be more fitting than to encourage a spirituality rooted in willingness to shed one’s blood for Christ.  Under the aegis of Pope Gregory XIII, artists Antonio Tempesta and Niccolo Circignani carried out a series of 34 murals depicting the martyrdoms of various saints in the first centuries of the Church’s history.  They are remarkably grisly: a real house of horrors.  Charles Dickens described it thus

Charles Dickens may have put it best, writing of his visit of the "hideous paintings" that cover the walls. He wrote,

…such a panorama of horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper. Grey-bearded men being boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up small with hatchets: women having their breasts torn with iron pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws broken, their bodies stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the stake, or crackled up and melted in the fire: these are among the mildest subjects.

The altar in San Stefano Rotondo is placed dead center in the circle on an axis that runs from northwest to the south east, giving the presider a choice of which position to face.  Of course when the Church is full, the congregants surround the priest on all sides.  It is one of the peculiarities of the ancient churches of Rome that they were not built facing east but face every direction of the compass. 

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. 

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. 

 

To these popes we owe Chateauneuf du Pape

I am not a big enthusiast for red wine, but I do like Chateauneuf du Pape, a great full-bodied red from the Rhone valley. (My taste, alas, cannot be satisfied cheaply.) Did you ever wonder how a French wine can be called after a castle of the pope? Probably not, but I am pedantic enough to tell you anyway.

I mentioned in an earlier blog (January 16) that the popes have not lived that long at the Vatican but at various other residences in Rome. I particularly mentioned the Lateran palace which was their official residence from the time of Constantine in the fourth century until the early fourteenth century when they abandoned Rome altogether. (note, I said "official," they often lived elsewhere as we shall see.) Rome was not a great place to live in the Middle Ages. Its population had shrunk from the two million or so at the time of Augustus to anywhere twenty thousand or eighty thousand at various times in the Middle Ages. The city was unhealthy—the Tiber and swamps were a breeding ground for malaria. The forum was in ruins; the great buildings of the empire had been ravaged for building materials or collapsed into rubble from earthquakes. The noble families lived in bricked up temples and amphitheatres which they had fortified against rival families and gangs fought in the streets of the city while cows grazed in the forum. The tenth and eleventh centuries saw popes spending a lot of time up in France and Germany; the twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw them taking their ease in charming hill towns of Lazio, Umbria and Tuscany. It was at one of these towns, Anagni in Lazio, that Boniface VIII was attacked by Guillaume de Nogaret, the lieutenant of Philip the Fair of France—one of nastiest people God every made. (Philip was “fair” as in handsome; not as in just.) The pope was not only physically assaulted but held captive without food or water for several days. He died within the month. His successor, Benedict XI, reigned only eight months, dying suddenly at Perugia in Umbria. There is a possibility that he was poisoned by Nogaret whome he had excommunicated for his assault on Boniface. Benedict was succeeded by a Frenchman, Raymond Bertrand de Got, who took the name and number Clement V. Clement had no ties to Italy and no desire to live there and he moved the papal court first to Poitiers and then four years later to Carpentras. Clement died in 1314 and the papacy sat vacant for two years. King Philip assembled twenty-three cardinals for a conclave at Lyons in 1315 and they elected one of the more intriguing—and good—popes, Jacques Duèze who took the name John XXII. Duèze came from humble origins; his father had been a shoemaker. He was a bright fellow, however. He had studied medicine at Montpellier and law at Paris. He also had no ties to Italy and no desire to go there—he settled the papacy at Avignon where it would remain almost sixty years. We will do some blogs—someday—on John XXII as he is a very interesting and often overlooked pope, but for today let’s begin to take a look at the effect that the Avignon had on the papacy and the papacy had on Avignon.
In the first place we think of Avignon as being in France—and so it is today. It is a delightful place—well worth a visit (about three hours from Paris on the high-speed trains). But at this point in history it lay across the Rhone river from the southernmost boundary of the domains of the French King. In other words, it wasn’t in what was France in the fourteenth century. And culturally, even today, it has a more Mediterranean, even a somewhat Italian flavor to it. Avignon’s political status is difficult for us today to comprehend. As I said, It was not part of the domain of the Kingdom of France, but was territory of the Kingdom of Arles or as it is sometimes called the Second Kingdom of Burgundy which, in turn, was a fief of the Holy Roman Empire. Thus it lay outside the authority of the King of France and in the nominal power of the Emperor. ("Nominal" is the operative word.) The Emperor gave this fief to the Counts of Provence who were of the House of Anjou. In addition to being counts of Provence, the House of Anjou were Kings of Naples—the title was King of Sicily—but after the “Sicilian Vespers” of 1282 (the Sicilian Vespers was an uprising not a Church Service) their Kingdom was confined to the lower part of the Italian peninsula. The House of Anjou had been named to the Throne of Naples (aka Sicily) by Pope Clement IV in 1266—which meant that the Kings of Sicily (who were the same people who served as Counts of Anjou--times were tough and they had to work two jobs) owed the Pope a big favor. Consequently when the popes said that they would like to set up shop in Avignon, the Counts-of-Anjou-Kings-of-Sicily more or less had to say: "mi casa, su casa." After John XXIII, five more popes made Avignon their residence, serving both as Bishop of Avignon and Bishop of Rome. In 1348 the Clement VI bought Avignon from Joan of Naples, countess of Provence, for 80,000 florins (a little over 12 million USD in today's currency). Finally in 1377 Gregory XI was persuaded to return to Rome. We will talk more about that in some future blog, but there will be more to say about Avignon first Meanwhile, pour yourself a glass of Chateauneuf du Pape and toast the French popes,

The image today is the Palace of the Popes, Avignon

The origins of the Vatican

We Catholics think of St Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican as if Jesus had given the architectural plans to Peter when he said: “Upon this rock I will build my Church—ok, Peter, this is what it is to look like—don’t forget to give Michelangelo a call, he's expecting to hear from you. Ane remember, marble, I like marble--it's hard and thick, like your head.” Of course, that basilica we see today wasn’t the “Church” Jesus was talking about (if he was even talking about a “Church” at all—a very complex question). If Peter ever came back and saw today what stands over the place he died and was buried, he would scratch his head and then have to ask for a docent to show him around and explain a lot of things to him. I hope Jesus would be as patient were he to decide to pay a visit. One of the jokes in the Vatican concerns precisely that. Vatican automobiles bear their own license plates—the Vatican is a sovereign state and issues its own passports, stamps, and license plates. The Vatican plates are marked SCV—Stato Cittá Vaticana—Vatican City State, but the local wags remark that SCV stands for Si Christus videsset—the Latin for “If Christ ever saw this.”
In any event while the Vatican today is just at the edge of the “heart of Rome” the so called “centro storico” (“historic center”)—in the days of Peter and for long after it was mostly open fields, orchards, gardens, and cemeteries. (The dead could not, by law, be buried within the city.) The emperors Caligula and Nero (not two of history’s nicest guys) built a large amphitheater or “circus” there and it was in this theater where Peter was martyred and then buried in a cemetery just across the road. A monument was built over his grave about a century after his death and at the end of the second century a Roman presbyter, Gaius, mentions Peter’s grave beneath this monument or, as it is called, a “trophy.” I will do some future postings on the grave of Peter as it is a very interesting—though not undisputed—topic. In any event, when Constantine was building his positive relationship with the Christian population of his empire, he built a church over the tomb of the apostle, using the basilica (royal hall) floor plan that he and the clergy were finding adapted itself so well to Christian public worship. He built a similar shrine over the tomb of the Apostle Paul on the Via Ostia, marking the site of Paul’s tomb and not far from the traditional site of his martyrdom, also outside the ancient city.
Today you can walk from the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, the site of the ancient palace given to the Church by Constantine for the pope, to the Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican in just under an hour. In the late imperial period and the Middle Ages, it was not nearly so convenient. Streets were narrow and windy for a cavalcade to pass, there was no very direct itinerary, and the bridge crossing the Tiber (the ancient ponte Sant’Angelo still leading to the Castle of the name required somewhat of a detoured route. With the relative amount of pomp that accompanied a pope it would have taken the better part of morning, at least, to make the journey. Thus Constantine, or perhaps the popes themselves, built a somewhat more modest (more modest than the Lateran Palace) residence for the pope near the Vatican Basilica for the occasions when they were officiating at services there. They could come over from the city to the basilica the day before and spend the night on site—most religious services beginning early in the morning or even involving a vigil through the previous night. In the seventh and eighth centuries a small village called the “borgo” (related to our word borough, meaning a “village”) grew up near the basilica. In 849 Pope Leo IV fortified the area with the famous Leonine Wall that connects the Vatican to the Castle Sant’Angelo (remember it from Angels and Demons? If not, not to worry, most of that book should be forgotten, Dan Brown never respected his readers enough to do any research on Roman geography, history, costuming, etc. ). Of course Leo fortified the basilica and ancient borgo after Saracen pirates sacked the Vatican Basilica in 846. This “Leonine city” inside the wall (which needs to be distinguished from the modern Borgo which is outside the wall) is interesting in itself and perhaps I will get around to doing an article on it someday. )
Well we can wrap this up pretty simply. The ancient basilica stood there from 325 when Constantine built it until the very end of the fifteenth century when it was decided to tear it down and build the “new St. Peter’s” the one you see now. Actually Constantine’s basilica stood there well into the sixteenth century as it was gradually dismantled as the new one rose above it and around it (the new is considerably larger than the old). When the popes came back from Avignon in 1377, they found that the Lateran was in hopeless disrepair and so established themselves in the papal residence adjoining the Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican, though they did not stay there very long. Various popes live in various Roman palaces throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries until Gregory XIII build the Quirinale in 1583. We have already done one posting on the Quirinale concerning conclaves there and we will do more in the near future.

Today's image is the Constantinian Basilica which stood in the Vatican from Constantine's construction in 325 until the sixteenth century when it was replaced by "New" Saint Peter's.