THE CRYPT OF ST. PETER’S

In theory, anyone can obtain permission to visit the crypt of St. Peter’s nowadays. Still, to get the permission involves a good deal of delay and difficulty. For first you must catch the Pope’s Maggiordomo at the Vatican, and obtain his permission, and then you have to get the further permission of another Monsignor at the Secretariat of the Reverenda Fabbrica di S. Pietro, in the Via di Aracœli, more than a mile off; and they are both at home only at rather inconvenient hours. If you are short of time it is an economy to take a ticket for a lecture on the Crypt of St. Peter’s. A lecturer is allowed to stay longer in the crypt than a person with an ordinary _permesso_; when you are with a lecturer you do not waste time in hunting out the principal objects yourself; you are taken straight to them: and there is so much to see that there is not a minute to spare. The heads of various colleges for priests also give lectures, but not often in English, and admission to them is a favour. Unless you are a privileged person you are only allowed to remain in the crypt for half an hour.

There are several entrances to the crypt; that by which the public are now admitted is at the foot of the pier in which the precious relic of S. Veronica’s handkerchief is kept. In the time of Misson, who visited St. Peter’s in the reign of Queen Anne, the public were admitted through the Confessio itself. He says: “Under this altar (_i.e._ the High Altar) there is a pair of stairs which leads to the chapel where St. Peter’s body is pretended to be kept, and to the other Holy Places in the vaults of this church.

“At the entry to these grottoes I observed a Bull engraved with marble (_huc mulieribus ingredi non licet, nisi unico die Lunae post Pentecosten_), by which women are forbidden to enter the place, save only on Whit Monday, on which day it is declared unlawful for any man to come there; and whosoever shall act contrary to either of these prohibitions is anathema. These places are dark, and the sexton told us that the order was occasioned by a certain amorous adventure. There is an Indulgence of seven years for every step of the stairs that lead to St. Peter’s Chapel, granted to such as descend them with due devotion.”

THE GROTTE NUOVE. NORTH SIDE

NOTE.--It was inevitable that, in the writing of this chapter, I should constantly have to refer to Gregorovius’s _Tombs of the Popes_ and _History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages_. In the former I have always used the translation by R. W. Seton Watson, of Ayton, published by Archibald Constable & Co., and in the latter the translation by Annie Hamilton, published by George Bell & Sons. You do not know Rome till you have read Gregorovius.

If tradition may be respected, the invisible tomb of St. Peter, on which the whole mighty edifice rests, was erected by Linus and Anacletus, the second and third Popes, less than a hundred years after the birth of Christ, not far from the spot where the Apostle was crucified in the Gardens of Nero. His tomb was erected as the law ordained, on one of the roads which led up to the city gate--the Via Cornelia. About two centuries after, in 306 A.D., according to a not very easily verifiable tradition, Constantine the Great, who was not at all great in the opinion of scientific historians, erected round the Apostle’s tomb the great basilica which was to be St. Peter’s, and the centre of Christendom for more than a thousand years. This we now speak of as Old St. Peter’s. The tomb, as was usual with the tombs of martyrs in basilicas, was a good deal below the level of the church; stairs led down to it. But at an early period, to protect the body of the Apostle from the risk of being carried off by the barbarians, who waxed bolder and bolder in their assaults on Rome, the tomb was walled over.

About the year 1450, in the reign of Nicholas V., it began to be rumoured that the church was dangerous, probably because Nicholas, who was the first of the Popes to appreciate the treasures of antiquity which the Papal See had inherited, was making a careful survey of his inheritance. Nicholas was such a keen lover of antiquities that much pressure must have been brought to bear upon him before he consented to the rebuilding of St. Peter’s. When he had given his consent, plans were obtained from two great Florentines, Leon Battista Alberti and Bernardo Rossellino, brother of Antonio, the heavenly sculptor: and Nicholas began to build a new cathedral round the old. Not much was done to it after his time until the accession of Julius II. Julius II. was a great monarch, if an indifferent priest; he suffered from megalomania as badly as Caracalla or Diocletian. Their gigantic baths may well have inspired him with the idea of the New St. Peter’s, which he entrusted to Bramante as architect. The old building was torn down in such haste that no care was taken to preserve the ancient monuments. It is to be hoped for the sake of art that Bramante yielded to _force majeure_. The Romans nicknamed him “_il Rovinante_.” The scanty remains of the tombs of the eighty-six Popes who were buried in the old basilica show the ruthless haste with which the work of demolition was carried out.

Mausoleum, now in the Grotte Nuove of St. Peter’s Crypt.]

With the building of the New and the demolition of the Old St. Peter’s we are not much further concerned here, for we have arrived at the point at which we can understand the plan of the celebrated _Grotte Vaticane_--the _Grotte Vecchie e Nuove_, the old and new crypts of St. Peter’s. The old crypt is, roughly speaking, Old St. Peter’s to the height of six or seven feet from the pavement, for Bramante, with a sublime impertinence borrowed from the ancient Romans (Did not Augustus build his house on the top of the mansion of the silver-tongued Hortensius?), made the old basilica the foundation for his new church as far as it would serve. But it was not broad enough for the vast Greek cross which formed the ground plan of his design, so he had to extend the foundations right and left, and he made them in the form of crypts to ensure dryness, since St. Peter’s is very little above the level of the Tiber. These form the New Crypts. You enter by the pier of S. Veronica, where Julius II. laid the foundation of the New S. Peter’s. At the bottom of the steps galleries lead right and left; it is usual to take the right-hand passage, but much better to take the left, for the left brings you almost directly to the chapel of the tomb of St. Peter. Of the tomb itself you see nothing, because it is walled over with masonry; the obstruction is now much thicker than it was when erected to baffle the barbarians if they tried to find St. Peter’s body. In the year 1602 or 1603, when they were making the foundations for the new church, the vault over the tomb gave way and the workmen saw it below them. It was easy to recognize, because on it lay the old richly chased cross of pure gold, one hundred and fifty pounds in weight, deposited there by the pious hands of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, who founded the original church. As mentioned above, the Pope, Clement VIII., was summoned hastily, and came with Cardinals Bellarmin and Antoniano. His first idea, very wisely, was to clear away the obstacles which prevented so blessed an object being seen now that the advance of civilization made it impossible to contemplate any risk of the profanation of the shrine. He found himself confronted by a superstition of unknown antiquity--the universal belief at Rome that anyone who touched St. Peter’s tomb would be struck dead. Yielding to this, after making a careful examination, he ordered the aperture to be closed, and a thick layer of masonry to be built over it.

Père Dufresne, the chief authority on the Vatican Crypt, says: “The tomb of the Apostle occupies almost the centre of the space surrounded by the new crypt. When approached from the cathedral above, just inside the double bronze door which faces the statue of Pius VI., is a little oblong chamber in an apse. In the floor of this chamber is a hollow in which are laid the pallia before they are sent to the Archbishops. The paving of the chamber has always been very rich. The _Liber Pontificalis_ speaks of the silver plates of which it was formed; at the present time it is made of gilt bronze. The chasings represent a raying cross surrounded by the tiara, the keys, and a dove. One of the squares made by the arms of the cross, the upper one on the right, is the door which covers the opening of the cavity. In the time of St. Gregory the Great the respect inspired by the Apostle’s tomb was so profound that people hardly dared approach it to pray or make the necessary repairs. Not allowing himself to be stopped by tradition so disquieting, Père Grisar made a detailed examination of the tomb, his report having been summarized as follows: The cavity is made in masonry at the depth of little over a foot; it communicates with a chamber, of which the ceiling is formed by a slab of marble; this is filled with the débris thrown into it by the order of Clement VIII., when, in constructing the present basilica, the sarcophagus of St. Peter is believed to have been seen. A long rod of iron thrust into the débris did not penetrate more than half a yard. The slab of marble is pierced by a square hole corresponding to the opening in the cavity above. It has sagged; it is broken in two parts which sink towards the middle, the sides being secured with the masonry; the opening is not of perfect regularity: only one angle has its edges square, the others having been damaged. All these details are difficult to explain on the basis of accident; one is compelled to think that violence has been used--for example, on the part of the Saracens, when in 846 they occupied the Vatican basilica for several days. However, this violence was manifestly without success, since the slab is still fastened to the walls to which it was originally fixed.”

Behind the chamber of the pallia there is a chapel to which one has access through the crypts: this occupies the exact position of the ancient oratory called,

“Ad Caput Beati Petri.”

One may add that the little apse which faces the statue of Pius VI. down in the _Confessio_, has a thirteenth-century mosaic of Our Lord and a seventeenth-century mosaic of St. Peter and St. Paul; the former was erected by the great Pope Innocent III., who also gave the beautiful bronze grille. Formerly the Pope left a censer in the cavity every year, and when the old one was taken out distributed its contents among the pious people who wished to have mementoes of the Apostle, and objects which they brought with them were sometimes permitted to be lowered into the cavity so that they might be blessed by touching the tomb of the Apostle. The bronze door was given by the Pamfili Pope, Innocent X., whose portrait by Velasquez in the Doria Gallery is one of the finest portraits in the world. The altar in the crypt was erected by Clement VIII., the last person who saw the tomb of St. Peter.

The sarcophagus is under the Papal altar, and instead of corresponding to the exact centre of the basilica, it is a little to the right, which goes to prove that the architect of the Constantinian basilica had to take into account a more ancient monument with which he could not interfere.

The altar is almost over the Tomb.]

The altar of Clement VIII. in the Chapel of the Tomb in the crypt has the same ornamentation as the floor of the little chamber above, the reversed raying cross flanked by tiaras and keys on each side, though I do not remember that the dove is here: but other emblems are introduced, such as lilies and a sword, laid obliquely over the cross. Above the altar is a mosaic of St. Peter and St. Paul, the remainder of the lunette on each side being filled up with gilt plaster reliefs of their respective executions. The carpet in front of the altar has woven upon it the inscription, “_Principi Apost_”; though none of the details are good, the effect is rather rich, as you come upon it through the sixteenth-century arch which admits you into the chapel. The chapel is in the form of a reversed cross to commemorate the Apostle’s humility in praying to be crucified head downwards, because he, who denied His Lord, was not worthy of the honour of crucifixion--crucifixion which with the Romans was reserved for the worst criminals, like our hanging. The chapel has a poor seventeenth-century stucco roof, with panels representing various miracles; its entrance is exactly opposite the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. The altar is approached by three steps, and two _prie-dieux_ stand in front of it. Pilgrims and others with special claims are occasionally permitted to hold services here.

But when you leave this place, so infinitely holy by its associations, you pass at once into the kingdom of art. You find yourself in a narrow gallery brilliantly lit by electricity, with the panels of Matteo Pollaiuolo’s Confessio on one hand, and the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus and the fragments of Paul II.’s tomb on the other. The memorial sculpture of ancient Rome bequeathed nothing superior to the reliefs on that sarcophagus; the bas-reliefs on the tomb of the Venetian Pope are the masterpieces of Mino da Fiesole--the Raffaelle of the sculptors of the Middle Ages. Matteo Pollaiuolo is not to be confused with the far better known Antonio and Pietro; he is not even mentioned in the great five-volume _Dizionario Biografico Universale_. His work is hardly known outside of St. Peter’s. At his best, in his low reliefs, he approaches Mino, but much of his work is very inferior. His Confessio, several feet high and many feet long (the most important, as being the largest of the complete monuments preserved in the crypt), once encircled the approach to the Apostle’s tomb in the old basilica. It deals with the trials and the martyrdoms of St. Peter and St. Paul, but makes no attempt to reproduce their traditional portraits. The St. Paul of the late Roman frescoes and the Byzantine mosaics has a narrow egg-shaped face, with a very high forehead and a parrot nose, and is quite bald. The St. Paul of Pollaiuolo has a snub nose, a broad face, and bushy hair and beard. But his St. Peter is reasonably near to the Byzantine portrait, which represents the chief of the Apostles as a man with bluff features, a red face, and thick curly white hair and beard. Two of the best panels are those which represent their executions. In the one St. Paul kneels bound before Nero, while a soldier prepares to strike off his head; in the other, St. Peter is being crucified head downwards. Both have beautiful backgrounds in very low relief. The horsemen and trumpet-blowers behind the former are most delicately carved; while the silhouette of a woman’s head, and the two heralds blowing horns under an oak tree in the latter, are even finer. Indeed, that woman’s profile might well become a favourite subject for reproduction.

The sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (numbered 231), opposite to the entrance to this chapel, is considered the finest Christian Roman sarcophagus which has come down to us. It is of great beauty, though the figures are not very well proportioned, the heads being too large. It is, in fact, low art, but the grouping and draperies have no little spirit and charm. It is curiously Roman: there is not a particle of Greek feeling about it. It is the more human for that: the Greeks idealized; the Romans were realistic. The Greeks have left us many exquisite sculptures, but hardly any real portraits. Roman portrait busts, on the other hand, are almost innumerable.

St. Peter’s Crypt.]

For the moment I will not mention the sculpture on the top of the sarcophagus shown in the smaller reproduction; it does not belong to it, but the exquisite cornice at the top of the large reproduction is shown to belong to it by the inscription even if it were not proved by its homogeneity. It is supported by delightful little sculptured shafts with very ornate capitals. The first tableau shows the sacrifice of Abraham, with Isaac bound on one side and the ram on the other; the angel touching Abraham’s shoulder stands behind Isaac. In the second tableau St. Peter is denying Christ. In the third, Our Lord is seated between two figures, who may be St. Peter and St. Paul. In the fourth, He is being led away to prison between two Roman soldiers. It should be noticed that Our Lord is represented as a young and beardless man. In the fifth tableau, Pilate is washing his hands. The upper range of tableaux is divided from the lower by a truly remarkable device. Over each of the lower tableaux is a very ornate and debased arch, and the triangle over the capital of each of the four centre columns contains an allegorical representation of a miracle. Two of them are Old Testament miracles; two of them belong to the New Testament, not reckoning the representation of the Baptism of Christ. Two remarkable features have to be noticed in these allegorical sculptures. All the miracles, those of the Old Testament as well as the New, are performed by Our Lord; and all the figures are allegorized as sheep or lambs instead of being human. In the baptism John is a sheep and Our Lord a lamb. The scenes represent respectively the passage of the Red Sea; the water bursting from the rock at the touch of Moses’ rod; the Multiplication of the Loaves; the Baptism of Our Lord; and the Resurrection of Lazarus.

The lower range of tableaux represent Job’s wife offering her husband a loaf at the end of a stick; Adam and Eve and the serpent in Paradise; Jesus riding on the ass into Jerusalem; Daniel between two lions in the lions’ den; and St. Peter bound, being led away to prison.

Above the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus may be seen two monuments in the form of a pyramid and a globe, surmounted by a cross; they had, of course, no connection with it. They formerly decorated the top of the ciborium erected by Innocent VIII. for the Volto Santo--_i.e._ the handkerchief of S. Veronica on which the features of Our Lord were impressed, which is one of the most precious relics preserved at St. Peter’s. The little cross is, however, modern; it replaced a bronze crucifix carried off by Innocent XI. The ends of the sarcophagus are, as works of art, superior to the front; their subjects are taken from real life, and represent the four seasons. The genii amid the grapes, the olives, and the corn, are executed with great spirit. The sarcophagus exhibits the naïve touch so often found in sculptures of the Middle Ages: Job’s wife is holding her nose; John the Baptist is represented as a sheep with a paw on the lamb’s head.

There are comparatively few Early Christian remains in the crypt which go back to the days of the Roman Empire.

Far the most notable of these is this tomb of Junius Bassus. It is of the fourth century A.D., and is a noble sarcophagus in the finest state of preservation; it is, I think, the only tomb of Early Christian times which still contains the bones of the original occupant. The other early sarcophagi--such as that which still contains the bones of Hadrian IV., and those which once contained the bones of Pius II. and Pius III.--are Early Christian sarcophagi used a second time. There are many examples of them in Rome, and even pagan sarcophagi were often used in the same way; the emblems sometimes being converted and sometimes not. In Sicily I have seen a sarcophagus which had been used three times: first, for a Greek pagan, then for a Christian martyr, and then for a Norman Marquis of Geracé, who expected contact with the bones of the Saint to help him to a resurrection with the just, as the bones of Elisha brought the body of the dead man to life when they touched him.

Junius Bassus was Prefect of Rome, A.D. 359. The pious author, and the only author who has written about the whole of the crypt of St. Peter’s--a priest of S. Sulpice at Paris--calls him “the illustrious personage.” But though twenty-one of his name come into Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography_, he is not one of them. During his prefecture he was converted, as one is informed by an inscription engraved on his sarcophagus, and he died the same year. His inscription runs: IVN . BASSVS . V . C . QVI VIXIT ANNIS . XLII MEN . II . IN IPSA PRAEFECTVRA VRBI NEOFITVS IIT AD DEVM . VIII . KAL . SEPT EVSEBIO ET YPATIO COSS.

The important words are those which tell that he lived forty-two years and two months, and went to his God a neophyte while he was holding office as Praefectus Urbi.

Next to the tomb of Junius Bassus comes a series of panels from the masterpiece of Mino da Fiesole, the huge and gloriously beautiful Mausoleum of Paul II., the brilliant Venetian Pope who built the great Palazzo di Venezia. It is to be hoped that the municipality of Venice will show their appreciation of the honour done their city by the present Pope (who was Patriarch of Venice before his elevation to the Papacy), by undertaking the re-erection of the tomb of Paul II. in one of the chapels of the New St. Peter’s, where it would be shown off to perfection. A great number of its pieces have been preserved, and the men who restored the exterior of St. Mark’s could be trusted to insert the missing parts to the complete satisfaction of art lovers. The most beautiful of the figures is that of Faith, numbered 215, holding a chalice, and a cross now broken. One could not easily conceive a face of more heavenly beauty; but Charity, numbered 219, with an infant on her knees, is hardly less exquisite. Besides the beautiful single figures there are groups, one of which represents the Resurrection of Our Saviour, numbered 217, and another, the Last Judgment, numbered 218, where Our Lord, seated between St. Peter and St. Paul, and the other Apostles, raises His right hand to pronounce sentence. At His feet stands St. Michael, with sword and scales, waiting to deliver judgment. Two angels are sounding the Last Trump to summon the dead from their tombs. On the right of Our Saviour are the innocent; on His left the guilty are conducted to Eternal Fire by a demon. As fine as anything from the tomb is the exquisite panel of the Temptation in the Garden of Eden, numbered 209, in which the figures of Adam and Eve have disappeared, though one can trace their outlines; but the serpent twined round the tree has the head of a lovely human being. The group, numbered 205, of God the Father borne up on a cloak surrounded by cherub-like angels, is, with the exception of the central figure, so inferior that Mino obviously must have left its execution to his pupils; this is acknowledged to be the case. The Creation of Woman, on the other hand, numbered 208, is considered to be the work of Mino himself, though it is not at all equal in beauty to the statue of Faith, or the group of the Temptation in the Garden of Eden. In any case, if this is the work of Mino, it is possible that the figure of the Eternal Father in number 205 is also from his hand. The statues of St. Luke and St. John the Evangelist, numbered 212 and 213, are also assigned to this tomb. The figure of Hope, numbered 216, which had wings to fly to Heaven, and also belongs to the tomb, is not so beautiful as the Faith or Charity, though it is a noble piece of work: it is not by Mino da Fiesole, but by Giovanni Dalmata. Père Dufresne says that the group representing the Resurrection of Our Lord, numbered 217, belongs also to the tomb of Paul II., and not, as a modern inscription states, to that of Calixtus III. This group has much more of the charm of Mino da Fiesole than the Last Judgment, numbered 218, but experts pronounce it to be the work of a little-known sculptor, named Argenti. Père Dufresne points out that Mary being represented in the attitude of weeping in the adjoining mosaic is remarkable, as originally she was not represented in this attitude.

Paul II.’s Mausoleum, now in the Grotte Nuove of St. Peter’s Crypt.]

The piece of sculpture, numbered 214, which Dufresne assigned to this tomb, is now considered to be a part of the ciborium erected by Innocent VIII. for the Holy Lance. It is pronounced to be the work of Bramante and the celebrated sculptor, Paolo Romano, who has such beautiful works in the Church of S. Maria in Trastevere. The exquisite alto-relievo in marble which came from the ancient chapel of St. Blaise, numbered 204, one of the most beautiful objects in the crypts, is also from the _atelier_ of Paolo Romano. The bas-reliefs, numbered 206 and 207, belonging to the tomb of Cardinal Eroli, are by Giovanni Dalmata. I mention this because there are not many opportunities of studying this sculptor. The statues of the Apostles, numbered 220, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 233, 234, 236, 237, and 238, which are considered very fine, all came from the ciborium erected at the back of the tomb of St. Peter by Sixtus IV.