REMAINS OF OLD ST. PETER’S STILL SURVIVING IN ROME

Most of the remains of Old St. Peter’s are to be found in the crypt of the present church, the greater part of which, called by the Romans the _Grotte Vecchie_, preserves the actual floor of the old church intact. Another piece--a mosaic--belonging to the chapel which John VII. (705-707) built in his short reign to receive the Volto Santo--one of the major relics of the present church--is in the sacristy of S. Maria in Cosmedin. Coarse as it may seem in its present position, it nevertheless represents the most considerable artistic achievement of the age.

in the Porch of St. Peter’s.

_From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_]

The remaining fragments are mostly in the present basilica. Important among them is a part of the mosaic called the Navicella, designed by Giotto in 1298, but restored out of all recognition. It represented St. Peter walking on the waters; and stood over the eastern entrance of the _atrium_ in front of the old basilica. There are also three inscriptions which stood in front of the old basilica--one of which is a grant of indulgences by the strenuous old Pope, Boniface VIII., on the occasion of the first jubilee, 1300; another, six hundred years earlier, records the grant of certain olive gardens for supplying the oil of the cathedral lamps by Gregory II.; and the third--far the most interesting of the three--is that erected by Charlemagne over the tomb of Hadrian I., 772-795, which is thus Englished by Mr. R. W. Seton Watson in his translation of Gregorovius’s _Tombs of the Popes_, published by Archibald Constable & Co., with whose permission I reproduce it.

“Here has Pope Adrian found his rest--the Father of the Church, The ornament of Rome, the immortal writer. For him, to live was God; Piety was his law, his glory, Christ; He was an apostolic shepherd, ready for every good deed. He was noble by birth, and sprung from an ancient race; Yet nobler far by reason of his holy merits. The devout soul of this good Shepherd burned ever and in all places To adorn the temples dedicated to God. He heaped gifts upon the churches, and embued the people with the sacred dogmas; To all he opened the narrow way to Heaven. Generous to the poor, unequalled in piety, and instant in devout prayers for all men, He was the glory of the City and the World; By his doctrines, by his treasures, by the walls he built, He raised thy citadels to honour, O noble Rome! Death has not harmed him, since Death was conquered by the Saviour’s death-- Nay rather, Death has become the gate of a better life. I, Charles, have writ these lines, in tears over my father. O my father, my sweet love, for thee I mourn. O forget me not! My thoughts are ever with thee. Mayst thou abide with Christ in the blissful realms of Heaven! Clergy and People alike loved thee with ardent love; Thou alone wert loved of all, O best of Pontiffs. Most illustrious of men, I link thy name and titles with my own-- I, Charles the King, thou, Adrian the Pope. Ye who may chance to read these lines, say, with devout and suppliant heart, ‘Have pity upon them both, most merciful God!’ May this thy body rest in peace, beloved Father, And may thy gentle soul joy with the saints of God-- Yea, till the last trump shall sound in thine ears. Then rise with Peter, Prince of the Apostles, to behold thy God. Thou wilt hear, I know, thy Judge’s clement voice, ‘Enter thou upon the great joys of thy Lord!’ Then most loving Father, be mindful, I beseech thee, of thy son! And say, ‘Let this my son gain entrance with his father!’ O blessed Father, seek Christ’s heavenly Kingdom, And thence aid with thy prayers thine earthly flock! While yet the ruddy sun shines forth from his flaming chariot, Thy praise, Holy Father, shall never cease on earth.

Pope Adrian, of blessed memory, reigned twenty-three years ten months seventeen days, and died on the seventh of the Kalends of January.”

It is needless to say that Charlemagne did not write it himself, because he could not write. It is generally assigned to the famous English scholar, Alcuin, the most distinguished scholar of the eighth century, who, from being master of the cloister school at York, became the friend of Charlemagne, and made his court a school of culture for the hitherto barbarous Frankish Empire.

The great bronze doors of the central entrance of St. Peter’s, which are only open for grand ceremonies, also belong to the old basilica. They were completed by Antonio Filarete and Simone Ghini in 1445; and, of course, refer to the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul. They are chiefly interesting as portraying several classical buildings which were then perfect, but have since been destroyed, including the so-called tomb of Romulus (Meta Romuli), one of the landmarks on which the erroneous location of St. Peter’s martyrdom was founded. From this, called also, in the Middle Ages, the tomb of Scipio--perhaps in order to connect the great hero of Republican Rome with the chief of the Apostles--were taken the vast blocks of white marble with which Pope Donus paved the _atrium_ of St. Peter’s.

The Bronze Doors removed from Old St. Peter’s to the present Church. They were made by Filarete and Ghini, and the bottom right panel shows the Tomb of Caius Cestius and Tomb of Romulus at the Duae Metae. _From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_ ]

Inside the Cathedral the bronze statue of St. Peter, whose foot is kissed by the faithful, is of high antiquity. By its style it cannot have been the actual statue, as has been so often asserted, of Jupiter Capitolinus; though it may have been cast from it, as another legend asserts, by S. Leo the Great, 440-461, since it is possibly of the fifth century, as Platner and Bunsen are ready to admit, though it is more like work of the sixth century. Marucchi thinks that Leo may have had the statue made out of gratitude for his repulse of Attila. The statue stood formerly in the oratory of St. Martin, afterwards in the Chapel of SS. Processus and Martinian. Paul V. erected it in its present position. It is supposed to be the statue about which Pope Gregory II. wrote to Leo the Isaurian, who had threatened to destroy it, “That the people would know how to defend it, and that he would not be answerable for the blood that might be shed.”

The bronze grille of the Confessio was given by the great Pope Innocent III., who also ordered the mosaics lining the little chamber behind, which is right over the tomb of St. Peter, and contains the golden casket made by Benvenuto Cellini, used for the consecration of the _pallium_.

The great relics of the church, such as the Volto Santo, or S. Veronica’s Handkerchief; the Lance of S. Longinus, which pierced Our Saviour’s side; the piece of the True Cross; and the Head of St. Andrew, not to mention the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul, were, of course, transferred from the old basilica.

The story of S. Veronica’s Handkerchief is best told by Gregorovius (Hamilton’s Translation), vol. II. p. 198.

“Tiberius, afflicted with incurable leprosy, one day informed the senators that, being beyond the aid of man, he must have recourse to Heaven. He had been told that a divine magician, named Jesus, dwelt in Jerusalem, and he ordered the patrician Volusian immediately to repair thither and implore the renowned physician to accompany him back to the Imperial court. Storms delayed the arrival of the messenger for a whole year; and on reaching Jerusalem, Volusian was met by Pilate with regrets that the Emperor had not sooner made known his desires, as the magician had already been crucified by the Jews. Volusian, unable to execute his commission, thought himself fortunate in obtaining a portrait of Jesus. Veronica, a pious matron, had wiped the face of the Saviour as he passed, overpowered by the weight of the cross, and the Saviour, in return, had allowed the cloth to retain the impress of His features. Volusian conducted Veronica, and with her the portrait, back to Rome, bringing Pilate in chains on board the same vessel. When they arrived in the presence of the Emperor, Tiberius sentenced the ex-governor to lifelong exile in the town of Ameria. The handkerchief he ordered to be brought before him, and hardly had he set eyes on it when he burst into tears, fell on his knees in adoration, and immediately recovered of his leprosy. He heaped wealth upon Veronica, and had the handkerchief set in gold and precious stones, and preserved in his palace. He survived his recovery only nine months--an interval which he spent in constant prayer to the Saviour and in adoration of His portrait.”

* * * * *

Gregorovius adds in a footnote, that the Jesuit Landsberg assures us that the portrait is true to life, and even discovers the print of the blow inflicted by an impious soldier on the face of Christ. He says that the legend is one of a number which bring the Pagan Emperors into Christianity, and attributes to the twelfth century the legend which relates that Tiberius, in consequence of his miraculous cure, ordered Christ to be enrolled among the Gods, but admits that Bishop Orosius, who lived seven centuries earlier and who knew nothing of the Handkerchief, informs us that Tiberius, on the refusal of the Senate to enroll Christ among the Gods, became suddenly transformed from an amiable prince into a cruel tyrant.

Roman Catholic hagiologists recognize that Veronica is a corruption of _Vera Icon_ (the True Likeness), and do not claim that the devout woman was called Veronica. She is said to have lived to be a hundred, and bequeathed the Handkerchief at her death to Pope Clement, the fourth Pope, who was elected 91 A.D. The Popes kept it in their treasury till the time of Boniface IV., at the beginning of the seventh century. He gave it a shrine in the Pantheon, where a chest is still shown with a Latin inscription to this effect: “In this chest the Cloth of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ was brought from Jerusalem to the Emperor Tiberius,” though it obviously has no pretensions to the necessary antiquity. John VII., about a century later, built the chapel for it at St. Peter’s mentioned above. The S. Veronica of the Hagiology is a fifteenth-century saint.

At the west end of the right aisle, in the chapel of the Pietà, are several most ancient objects. The first is the white marble column called the Colonna Santa, one of the twelve which ornamented the Confessio of the old basilica. It is said, writes the Rev. H. W. Pullen, to have been brought from the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem; and to be the one against which the Saviour leaned when He disputed with the Doctors. It is highly ornamented with wreaths and spiral flutings, and is enclosed in a pyramidal cage of ironwork. The marble well-mouth which surrounds the base was added by Cardinal Orsini in 1438.

On the opposite side of the chapel is a sarcophagus of the same century as the famous sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, which is one of the chief glories of the crypt. It belonged to Anicius Probus, who was also Prefect of Rome, and was a member of the Anicii, the greatest family in Rome at that period. This sarcophagus was formerly used as a pedestal for the baptismal font, and came from the mortuary chapel, called the Templum Probi, which stood on the site of the present Sacristy.

The monument of the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, who was the chief founder of the temporal power of the Popes, is on the pier just by the next chapel--that of S. Sebastian. It belongs, however, not to the date of her death in 1115, but to that of the removal of her remains from Mantua to St. Peter’s in 1635 by Urban VIII. It is the work of Bernini. In the next chapel, that of the Holy Sacrament, through which the Pope enters St. Peter’s from the Vatican, is the gorgeous mediæval tomb of Sixtus IV., executed by Antonio Pollaiuolo in 1493, which, in spite of its rather decadent and quite irreverent character, is one of the finest bronze monuments in Italy. A little plain slab beside it marks the tomb of the ambitious Julius II., the real founder of the New St. Peter’s. The tomb of Sixtus, who built the Sistine Chapel, though rich and beautiful, is neither elegant nor good art. The two spiral columns of Tyrian marble in this chapel are like that in the chapel of the Pietà, from the Confessio of Old St. Peter’s. In the next chapel, the Cappella Gregoriana, is an ancient image of the Madonna di Soccorso, dating from 1118, which was in Old St. Peter’s. Opposite the left aisle of the tribune is the Madonna della Colonna, consisting of a picture of the Madonna and Child, painted on a column of Porta Santa marble. I leave for fuller treatment below one of the earliest and most precious monuments preserved in the Cathedral,--the ancient Chair of St. Peter, which is kept either in the costly but hopelessly baroque monument, erected to receive it by Alexander VII., or else, as some say, in a safe in the wall behind. In any case it occupies the centre of the tribune wall. The Cappella Clementina, near the entrance to the Sacristy, contains whatever remains there are, after so many removals, of the body of St. Gregory the Great. On a pier opposite the place where the body of the late Pope is always laid, until its new monument is ready, between the Chapel of the Presentation and the Choir of the Canons, is the tomb of Innocent VIII., erected in 1492, which is really the finest mediæval monument in St. Peter’s. Like that of Sixtus IV., it is by Antonio Pollaiuolo. But his brother, Pietro, collaborated in this monument, which is in far better taste. It was Innocent VIII. who built the villa in the Vatican gardens which is now the Sculpture Museum. Gregorovius, translated by Mr. Seton Watson, is perhaps a little too hard on this sculpture. “Like the Tomb of Sixtus, it is paltry and full of affectation. The Pope lies upon a bronze sarcophagus, resting on the pier. Above the tomb he is represented once more, as in life, enthroned and raising his right hand in blessing, while he holds in his left the Holy Lance which came as a present from the Sultan Bajazet. On either side the niches of the pillars are filled with theological and moral virtues--Faith, Love and Hope, Justice, Courage, Moderation, and Wisdom. The inscription acclaims Innocent as the unwearied preserver of peace in Italy, and as the glory of the new world which was discovered in his reign.”

Sacrament. This is the Chapel where the dead Pope lies in state.]

In the Baptistery close by is the font, a magnificent piece of porphyry which is wrongly claimed to have been the cover of the sarcophagus of the Emperor Otto II., who died in 983. It is also claimed to have been the lid of the sarcophagus in which Hadrian was buried in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo; but it is now considered to have formed part of the sarcophagus of the famous, or infamous, Crescentius, who was put to death by Otto III. in 996. Crescentius, calling himself Consul or Senator of Rome, on the plea of freeing the Romans from the usurpations of Pope and Emperor, and giving them local self-government, seized the power himself. Otto, who was sixteen, had him executed in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo and subjected his dead body to all manner of ignominy and contempt. But _the wonder of the world_, as his own generation calls him, says Bryce in his _Holy Roman Empire_, died childless on the threshold of manhood; the victim, if we may trust the story of the times, of the revenge of Stephania, the widow of Crescentius, who ensnared him by her beauty, and killed him with lingering poison. Otto III. was not, as one guide-book states, buried in the crypt of St. Peter’s; he is buried in the choir of the Cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle, where Charlemagne lies.

The Sacristy contains some remains of Old St. Peter’s, such as the three panels from the _Confessio_ of Old St. Peter’s which were painted by Giotto on both sides for Cardinal Stefaneschi. The frescoes, by Melozzo da Forli, are not, of course, from Old St. Peter’s, but from the church of SS. Apostoli. In the Treasury of the Sacristy is the celebrated Vatican Cross which bears the name of the Emperor Justin II., 565-578, for whom it was made; the wooden panelling, representing Our Lord sitting between St. Peter and St. Paul, cannot, as Marucchi, the de Rossi of the day, points out, have been presented by Constantine the Great, as the legend on it claims, for it is clearly a work of the ninth century; and the Slavonic inscription upon it has now been deciphered, and declares it to have been presented to the tomb of St. Peter’s by S. Cyril and S. Methodius: Cyril was the church name adopted by a noble Roman of Thessalonica, named Constantine.

Of the famous relic of the Volto Santo, Marucchi says that, although it is certainly very ancient, there is no mention of it before Bernard of Soracte in the eleventh century. He adds that the reproductions of it are all imaginary; on the original you can only see a few faint traces.

I suppose that the most of the general public imagine that the chair of St. Peter is the chair in which his statue sits in the nave of his cathedral for the faithful to kiss his foot, as the faithful have kissed the foot of this venerable image for twelve hundred years. This is not the chair of St. Peter. Only once in a hundred years do human eyes behold the chair which tradition claims to have been used by the Apostle in the meetings of the Earliest Church. Popular tradition believes it to be enclosed in the bronze chair, weighing, with its accessories, a hundred and nine tons, constructed at a cost of £24,000 by Bernini, for the rich Chigi Pope, Alexander VII. (1655-1667), a miracle of bad taste, one of the most vulgar monuments in the cathedral, which stands in the centre of the tribunal at the east end. It is not there, but in a cupboard behind, high up in the wall, locked with three separate keys, each kept by a different functionary. I append the description given of it by the chief ecclesiastical antiquary of Rome, Professor Marucchi, _Éléments d’Archéologie Chrétienne_. Professor Marucchi had the information from Signor de Rossi, one of the most famous of all Italian antiquaries, who was permitted by Pius IX. to examine the precious relic.

the 6th Century.]

“The chair of St. Peter is the most important relic of the Apostle after his tomb. Several ancient testimonies make allusion to this monument. Thus we have the words of St. Optatus of Milevum, ‘_Numquid potest dicere in Cathedra Petri? quam nescio si vel oculis novit, et ad cujus memoriam non accedit quasi schismaticus._’ And for the seventh century at least we have the directions of the Itineraries. ‘There also near the same road (the Cornelian) is the seat of the Apostles.’ We do not know where this chair was originally. I have shown in a recent study entitled ‘_Sedes ubi prius sedit S. Petrus_’ that we have reasons to place it in the catacomb of S. Priscilla, from which it might have been transported to the Vatican in the seventh century. It has been supposed that it is the same seat which served St. Peter in the House of Pudens, the magisterial chair of Pudens; it is an idea given for the first time in the seventeenth century by Febeo. Altogether imaginary things have also been said on the other side. It has been pretended, for example, that this chair was pagan. Lady Morgan has even affirmed that the inscription carved on it is Arabic, and contains a profession of the Mahometan faith. Signor de Rossi was able to study it at his leisure in 1867, when Pius IX. had it taken out of the monument constructed to receive it by Alexander VII. and had it exhibited in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament. It is agreed that the actual chair is not in the form of the ancient curule chairs; it is Byzantine, and seems to have been made towards the end of the sixth century. Four or five little pieces much eaten away are let into it--doubtless all that remains of the primitive chair. The decorations are of ivory and classic in character. They represent the Labours of Hercules. They would not have been allowed if the chair had been original, or even if it had dated back to the third or fourth century A.D. In the sixth they could no longer have had any pagan significance. I have discovered no trace elsewhere of the Arabic inscription.”

Gregorovius, vol. i. p. 98 (Hamilton’s Translation), says:--

“Bishop Damasus placed in the Baptistery the chair which tradition, from the second century onwards, had alleged to have been the actual chair and seat of Peter. This remarkable seat, the most ancient throne in the world, first occupied by simple, unpretending bishops, then by ambitious Popes, ruling nations and peoples, still survives.... It is in reality an ancient sedan chair (_Sedia Gestatoria_), to the now worm-eaten oak of which additions have from time to time been made in acacia wood.”

After taking the same view of the ornamentation as Marucchi, he adds:--

“Beyond doubt this celebrated chair, if not belonging to Apostolic times, is of very great antiquity, though the suggestion that it may be the _Sedia Curulis_ of the Senator Pudens is altogether untrustworthy.”

The most important remains of Old St. Peter’s are to be seen in the crypt, most of which, as I have said, formed part of the old basilica. The most remarkable exception is the so-called tomb of the Apostle to which I have devoted much space in Chapter VII. You can see nothing of the tomb; all you see is the decadent altar which Clement VIII., who did see the tomb (the only person, except two of his Cardinals and a few of his workmen, who had seen it for nearly eight hundred years), erected between it and the eyes of future generations. There is nothing in the Chapel of the Tomb to detain you one moment, except the infinite sanctity of the spot which was the second cradle of Christianity. But the crypts abound in fragments of the grand old basilica, which was for more than a thousand years to Christendom what the Temple of Jerusalem was to the Jews. Right at the threshold of the Chapel of the Tomb is the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, the young prefect of Rome who embraced Christianity, and died in his year of grace, fifteen hundred and fifty years ago, the one Christian sarcophagus in St. Peter’s, if not in Rome, which still holds the bones that were laid in it by the mourners.

for the Confessio of Old St. Peter’s, now in the Grotte Nuove of St. Peter’s Crypt.]

And all round this side of the tomb, occupying perhaps almost the identical spot they occupied in Old St. Peter’s, are the panels made to ornament the Confessio by Matteo Pollaiuolo for Pope Sixtus IV. These tell the story of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul; for the old basilica was dedicated to both saints.

On the opposite side of the semicircular passage which constitutes this boundary of the new crypt, are precious fragments of the High Altar which Sixtus IV. erected over the _Confessio_; twelve quaintly carved Apostles from the _atelier_ of Giovanni Dalmata, carved with the mediæval suggestiveness the Japanese use in portraying their sages.

Between the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus and the entrance to the old crypt are the gems of Old St. Peter’s, the masterpieces of Mino da Fiesole carved to decorate the magnificent tomb of the superb Venetian Pope, Paul II., including the exquisite representations of Faith, Charity, and the Original Sin.

Beyond that in the old crypt lie the tombs of the Colonna-Caetani Princess and all the Popes who were buried in Old St. Peter’s except Gregory V., and one of the Borgias (seemingly Calixtus III. rather than the terrible Alexander VI.), whose uses we are beginning to discover. Young Otto’s tomb close by, though it may hold the bones of one who was the first figure in the world nearly a thousand years ago, has no value for us; it is as clumsy as a plaster whale. The mosaics of the old church, saved in the old crypt, are mostly of the coarsest kind; but there is the stone, if its identity can be established, on which the bodies of the martyrs St. Peter and St. Paul were divided; and the tombstone of Charlotte of Cyprus, who succeeded to the kingdom of the Lusignans in 1458, just too late to be associated with the immortal discovery of printing in the Thirty-One-Line and Thirty-Line Indulgences of Pope Nicholas V. Here, too, is the epitaph of Amory de Montfort, the weakling son of Simon de Montfort, who was once dictator of England. He gave up the heritage of the Counts of Toulouse to France; he was taken prisoner by the Saracens in the Holy Land; but he warred mightily against the Albigenses, the defenceless heretics on his own lands, making us feel how good was that day at Evesham when the tall young Prince of England, who was to be the conqueror of Scotland and Wales, and to establish the manner of institutions under which all the civilized world was to come in the fulness of time, struck down his father’s haughty and rebellious subjects, the party of Montfort. The next inscription is almost the most interesting heirloom we have in the crypt of the Old St. Peter’s, the celebrated copy, carved in marble, of the donation of the Countess Matilda.

Few women have ever played so great a part in the world as the Countess of Tuscany, who founded the temporal power of the Popes by supporting them with all her forces during her life, and bequeathing her dominions to the Holy See when she died. If she had held her hand, even Gregory VII., the mighty Pontiff who had been Hildebrand, must have gone down before the violence of the Emperor Henry IV., who did penance to him at Canossa. But for her, the Popes would have been no more than patriarchs, with no force but those of sanctity and righteousness--moral powers, awed by violence, maintained by a willingness for martyrdom.

The Tabernacle of the Holy Lance in Old St. Peter’s. From the Fresco in the Crypt.

_From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_ ]

The Tabernacle of the Volto Santo in Old St. Peter’s. From the Fresco in the Crypt.

_From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_]

In the south arm of the new crypt, close by other precious memorials of the old church, fragments, for example, of the ciborium in which Innocent VIII. enclosed the prize of his life, the Holy Lance sent to him by the Turkish Sultan, are the mosaics from young Otto’s tomb, bas-reliefs of exquisite beauty from the Gardens of Nero, in whose Circus St. Peter was martyred; and sketches of the old church itself and of its various shrines, by those who had seen them in their glory. The finest of the inscriptions here tells us that Pope Saint Damasus drained the Vatican Hill to provide the water for his Baptistery; his drain is still perfect under the courtyard of the palace which bears his name beneath the windows of the Pope. Here, too, are the inscriptions of the first four Leos, all saints, and a portrait in mosaic of John VII., executed in his lifetime, and another panel of the mosaics which made his chapel of the Volto Santo the most famous building of his time. Here, above all, is the beautiful throne of the Avignon Pope, Benedict XII., who adopted the triple crown to show the threefold nature of the sovereignty of the Popes. His image is there, strong, phlegmatic, almost Egyptian in its massive strength. There is no throne in all Rome as beautiful and majestic as his. On it is seated an old, old statue of St. Peter a Roman Consul presented with the Apostle’s head and hands. Here is even the great stone cross which stood upon the façade of the elder church; and the exquisite bust of the eighth Boniface, by Arnolfo himself. The statues of the Apostles come from the tomb of Nicholas V., the founder of the greatness of the Vatican.

And they all, as it were, lead up to that most holy image of the Virgin, who stood in the portico of the old church, and when she was struck on the cheek with a stone, bled like a human being. The stones where the blood fell are here too, protected by iron bars, for the lips and fingers of the faithful, if not the blood-drops themselves, had worn the spots into holes which threatened to consume the entire stones.

Truly Old St. Peter’s is in the crypt. When we have permission to wander there we are surrounded by the faith, as well as the monuments, of the Middle Ages.

Vaticano.”_

_A._ Pilone (Pier) and Cappella (Chapel) of S. Veronica; it is here that visitors descend into the Crypt. _B._ Southern Corridor of the Grotte Nuove leading to the Cappella di S. Maria della Bocciata. _C._ Cappella del Salvatorino. _D._ Cappella di S. Maria della Bocciata. _E._ South Corridor leading into the Confessio. _F._ Cappella di S. Maria detta delle Partorienti. _G._ Southern Corridor leading to the Grotte Vecchie. _H._ Pilone e Cappella di S. Andrea (Pier and Chapel of St. Andrew). _J._ The Colonna-Caetani Chapel. _I_, _K_, _L_. The three Naves of the Grotte Vecchie. _M._ The Pier and Chapel of S. Longinus. _N._ The North Corridor of the Grotte Nuove, leading to the Grotte Vecchie. _O._ The North Corridor of the Grotte Nuove, leading to the Confessio of St. Peter’s. _P._ The portion of the North Corridor of the Grotte Nuove which contains the masterpieces of Mino da Fiesole. _Q._ Pier and Chapel of St. Helena. _R._ Portion of the North Corridor, the Grotte Nuove, which contains the northern portion of the Confessio of Matteo Pollaiuolo. _S._ The Chapel of the Tomb of St. Peter, with the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus opposite its entrance. _T._ The portion of the South Corridor of the Grotte Nuove which contains the southern part of the Confessio of Matteo Pollaiuolo. ]