THE GROTTE VECCHIE. EASTERN SIDE

As you step on to the floor of the old crypt you are overwhelmed with a rush of emotion, for you find yourself standing on the actual floor of the basilica of Constantine. Almost immediately on your left you enter a little three-cornered chapel, which contains the remains of the only woman of less than royal rank who is buried in St. Peter’s--that of Madame Agnes, who was born a Colonna and became by marriage a Caetani, thus uniting two of the most princely families in Rome; for while a Colonna is one of the two Principi Assistenti al Soglio--the Princes in attendance on the throne of the Pope--the Caetani are, since the extinction of the Conti, the premier family of the Roman nobility. Women are only allowed in this chapel on the day after Pentecost. When Misson visited Rome in his celebrated voyage in the reign of Queen Anne this was the only day on which they were allowed into any part of the crypt. The old crypt, which extends the whole length of the nave, is extremely low, only six or seven feet high, covered over by broad, round-barrelled vaults, painted white.

Peter’s. _From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_]

If you walk straight past the Colonna-Caetani chapel to the end, you will pass nearly all the principal tombs which were saved from Old St. Peter’s.

The first that you come to is that of Cardinal Eroli, which bears his effigy and arms. Only the sarcophagus remains here, but other portions of his mausoleum are preserved in the crypt, the most important of which is the relief of Our Saviour in the act of blessing, which is alluded to below. Cardinal Fonseca’s tomb is not important.

Eighty-six Popes were buried in the old basilica, but nearly all their tombs were destroyed by Bramante when he took down the old church in that wild haste. I will allude to them in the order in which you pass them. The Facchinetti Pope (Innocent IX.) only reigned two months, and died in 1591. The Cervini Pope (Marcellus II.), a distinguished diplomatist, died in 1555, after having been keeper of the Vatican Library and one of the Presidents of the Council of Trent. He was Pope only twenty-two days, and is buried in a sarcophagus of the fourth century, decorated with the figure of Our Saviour between St. Peter and St. Paul. Innocent VII., the Migliorati Pope, also had a brief reign, only a couple of years (1404-1406); his ambition was to restore the Roman University founded by Boniface VIII. The sarcophagus of Urban VI., the Prignano Pope (1378-1389), has passed through more vicissitudes than any in the crypt. It was hard that his body should not rest after such a stormy life. His bones are no longer in it; they were emptied out by the workmen who were building the dome when they needed a trough for water. The lions which formerly adorned the sarcophagus now adorn the throne of St. Peter in the chapel of S. Maria della Bocciata in the crypt. Gregorovius, in _The Tombs of the Popes_, done into English by Mr. Seton Watson so admirably, says: “That the tomb of Urban VI., despite its absurd and barbarous inscription, must have been truly magnificent, is proved by the drawings of it made before it was destroyed to make way for the new church.”

Hare, page 526, says: “Next follows the sarcophagus of Urban VI., Bartolommeo Prignano (1378-1389), the sole relic of the magnificent tomb of this cruel Pope, who is credited with having walled up two or three of his Cardinals while at Genoa during the Schism, and is believed to have died of poison. It bears his figure, and, in front, a bas-relief of him receiving the keys from St. Peter.... Its epitaph runs thus:--

‘Here rests the just, wise, and noble prince, Urban VI., a native of Naples. He, full of zeal, gave a safe refuge to the teachers of the faith, That gained for him, noble one, a fatal poison cup at the end of the repast. Great was the schism, but great was his courage in opposing it, And in the presence of this mighty Pope Simony sat dumb. But it is needless to reiterate his praises upon earth, While heaven is shining with his immortal glory.’”

This is the epitaph which Platina stigmatized as “_satis rustico et inepto_”--uncouth and foolish.

Nicholas III., who died in 1280, the Orsini Pope, was the rebuilder of the Vatican and the chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum at the top of the Scala Santa as it now is. Julius III., died 1555, the del Monte Pope, who has a plain altar tomb bearing only his name, was the founder of the charming Villa Papa Giulio near the Ponte Molle, which is now the Etruscan Museum. He was notorious for his nepotism; he created no less than five of his family Cardinals. The tomb of Paul II., the Barbo Pope, who died in 1471, formed part of one of the most remarkable monuments of the Middle Ages. His noble mausoleum was the masterpiece of Mino da Fiesole; the glorious fragments of it which remain in the crypt have already been described. If he was vain and luxurious, he was also noted for his love of art and antiquities and the prestige of the Papacy. In his Palazzo di Venezia he made a magnificent collection of classical and mediæval antiquities. When he died, his relative, Marco Barbo, Patriarch of Aquileia, commissioned Mino da Fiesole to execute his famous monument, which included, according to Père Dufresne, besides the sarcophagus, statues of the Evangelists, the theological virtues, and four Biblical scenes: the Creation of Woman, the Original Sin, the Resurrection of Our Lord, and the Last Judgment. Paul II., for whom Mino da Fiesole carved one of the most beautiful tombs of all time, rests in a comparatively low sarcophagus with a very long inscription on it, flanked with two rather charming little angels. The recumbent figure on the top entirely overwhelms the tomb: it shows a very tall and handsome man with statuesque features. He is reputed to have been the handsomest of all the Popes, and a malicious tradition relates that his Cardinals had great difficulty in preventing him taking the name of Formosus, the Beautiful, as his new name when he was elected Pope. “But,” says Gregorovius (_Tombs of the Popes_, Seton Watson’s Translation), “the Cardinals pointed out to him that the assumption of such a title would seem a mere idle allusion to his handsome figure. Men mocked at his vanity, because he loved nothing better than to show himself in processions, where he towered above the heads of other men. He decked himself out like a conceited woman before he went to attend the solemn functions of the Church. He squandered vast sums upon the adornment of his person. He had sapphires, chrysolites, smaragdi, diamonds, and pearls sent to him from all parts of the world, that he might adorn his mitre, and then displayed himself in it before the populace as the handsomest of all the Popes. Nicholas V. had collected manuscripts for his library with the passion of a humanist and an antiquary; Paul II., with equal zeal, collected antique gems, medals, statues, and works of art of every kind.”

The Mausoleum of Boniface VIII. in Old St. Peter’s.

_From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_]

The Mausoleum of Paul II. in Old St. Peter’s, from which the Mino da Fiesole sculptures in the Crypt were taken.

_From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_]

Paul II. was buried in this sarcophagus against his own wishes, for he had had the gigantic sarcophagus of S. Constantia, the daughter of Constantine the Great, one of the two finest pieces of porphyry in the world, removed from the church at S. Costanza (a still uninjured building, erected by Constantine himself in the grounds of S. Agnese fuori le Murà) to his palace of San Marco (now the Palazzo di Venezia), and ordered that he should be buried in it.

Nicholas V., the Parentucelli Pope, who died in 1455, the little plain scholar from Sarzana, was the first of all the Popes to appreciate the antiquities of ancient Rome. For the revival of literature and art his was the most glorious reign of the brilliant fifteenth century. His death-bed speech, quoted by Père Dufresne, is an index to the character of the Scholar-Pope who founded the Vatican Library: “I found the Holy Church desolated with wars and choked with debts; I have reformed it and made it strong; I have delivered it from schism; I have reconquered its cities and castles; I have not only freed it from its debts, but I have raised for its defence splendid fortresses, such as those of Gualdo, Assisi, Fabriano, Civita-Castellana, Narni, Orvieto, Spoleto, and Viterbo. I have embellished it by raising imposing monuments, upon which I have lavished all the resources of art, aided by the glitter of gold and jewels. I have enriched it with books and tapestries, vases of gold and silver and magnificent ornaments, destined for Religion. And though I have amassed all these treasures I have not to reproach myself with cupidity or simony, or love of presents, or avarice; on the contrary, I have shown in every respect a noble liberality, both in building and in my numerous purchases of books, and in the impetus I have given to the copying of Greek and Latin manuscripts, and in pensions granted to learned men. That I have been able to do all this I owe to the favour of the Divine Creator and the state of peace which the Church has enjoyed uninterruptedly during my Pontificate.” Of Nicholas V., Gregorovius (_Tombs of the Popes_, Seton Watson’s Translation) says: “With Nicholas V., Thomas of Sarzana (1447-1455), the most liberal of all promoters of knowledge, the humanism of the century actually mounted the Papal throne.... Nicholas V., during whose reign Byzantium fell into the power of the Turks, rescued the treasures of classic literature by transporting them from thence to Rome, gave a fresh impulse to Greek studies, and gathered round him such men as Poggio Bracciolini, Gregory of Trebizond, Nicola Perotto, Lorenzo Valla, Theodore of Gaza, and Cardinal Bessarion. In the last year of his Pontificate the art of printing made its appearance in Rome, where it was hospitably received by the noble family of the Massimi.

“It was the same Pope who founded the Vatican Library, by despatching agents into every country, charged with the purchase of manuscripts. Lastly, he conceived the project--worthy of the Flavian Emperors--of enlarging the Vatican Palace into a Papal City, an Apostolic Palatine Hill, and of converting St. Peter’s into the mightiest temple of the world. The realization of this scheme was reserved for the daring mind of Julius II. But the latter, though he inherited his colossal ideas from Nicholas V., had no respect for the monument of so honourable a predecessor. He allowed it to perish during the demolition of the ancient church, and thus only a few remnants have been preserved in the Grotte Vaticane--statues of the Apostles Matthew, James, and John, figures of angels and other fragments.”

The founder of the noble study of archæology rests in a beautiful altar tomb, though not equal to that of Boniface VIII., which stands nearly opposite to it. At the very end of the aisle is the finest perfect tomb in the crypt--that of the great Pope, Boniface VIII. (died 1303), the last of the great Pontiffs like Gregory VII., Alexander III., and Innocent III., who tried to rule the world. This, too, is an altar tomb by the incomparable Arnolfo di Lapo,[11] with a recumbent portrait figure which has hardly a superior anywhere, and an exquisitely carved pall. The face shows superb strength, and the draperies of the tomb are beautiful. It is the best tomb of the period in Rome in attitude and in effect, down to the smallest detail, such as the jewellery in his tiara. A shapely chapel rose over it, of which fragments (including a portion of the ciborium) are preserved close by. One bears the arms of the Caetani, the premier family of the Italian nobility, to which this Pope belonged.

The legend that he had died mad, biting his hands and arms, is disproved by the condition of his body, which was discovered in the time of Paul V. when the new Cathedral was being built. More than three hundred years after his death, the body was found quite perfect, with only the nose and lips decayed. It was opened again in 1835, but only the skeleton remained in full Pontifical costume. The inscription on his coffin recorded the state of preservation when the body was examined in 1835. Boniface was the Pope who canonized St. Louis and instituted the Jubilee to take place every hundred years: he was a great patron of art and literature. Boniface was the lifelong enemy of the Colonna; his motto might have been “_Delenda est Columna_.”[12] In his anxiety to root them out, he destroyed the glorious old town of Palestrina and its great Temple of Fortune, which had survived in an almost perfect state from ancient times--the finest temple in all Italy. The Colonna bided their time, and when Philip le Bel of France sent an army into Italy, they made a dash at the grand old man of Anagni, who had fortified himself in his native city. The citizens were sullen and offered no resistance; then Sciarra Colonna, the fiercest of the clan, subjected the captive Pope to the humiliation of a mock crucifixion between two thieves. Boniface maintained his courage unshaken: he had refused to fly or to disguise himself. “If I die,” he said, “I will die a Pope.” The citizens rallied to him; a truce was patched up; but the shock had been too much for the old man, and soon brought down his grey hairs to the grave. Dante alluded to the incident in the twentieth canto of his _Purgatory_.

“I in Alagna see the _fleur-de-lys_, Christ, in His Vicar, captive to the foe. Him once again as mocked and scorned I see, I see once more the vinegar and gall, And slain between two robbers hangeth He.”

_Purgatory_, Canto XX., 86-90.

Upon which Dean Plumtre gives the following note: “The mockery and scorn, the wormwood and the gall, of the Crucifixion were reproduced by this new Pilate when he gave Boniface into the hands of his enemies of the House of Colonna.”

We know the features of the great and turbulent and worldly Pope as well as any in the long line of the successors of St. Peter; for we have not only the noble effigy on his tomb, but two erect contemporary portraits representing him in his pride and prime. He sits still enthroned in a stately esedra below the roof of his Cathedral of Anagni. And in the Lateran we have a portrait of him by Giotto himself, between two Cardinals, proclaiming the first Jubilee.

Gregorovius, in his _Tombs of the Popes_ (Seton Watson’s Translation), sums up Boniface VIII. thus: “He stood at the death-bed of the thirteenth century, and saw the fourteenth born; he is one of the great representatives of the age of Dante. The mighty poet once appeared before him as Florentine Ambassador; and in the first Jubilee year of Rome, Giovanni Villani conceived the plan of his chronicle, the greatest triumph of Italian historical genius. It was in the year 1300 that Boniface proclaimed this festival, and we are still reminded of it to-day by a precious memorial,--a picture of Giotto, which is preserved under glass in the right aisle of the Lateran. It represents Boniface standing between two Cardinals, in the act of announcing the Year of Jubilee. This Pope was daring enough to renew once more the mighty struggle between Church and State. In the Bull _Unum Sanctum_, in which he laid claim to an over-lordship above all Kings and countries, he rashly bade defiance to the forces of nationality hitherto latent, but invincible when once awakened. In excommunicating Philip the Fair, King of France, he raised up an enemy who eventually worked his ruin.”

Following in immediate succession to the tomb of Boniface come four others of the highest interest. The first is that which should have contained the bones of the gifted Pius II., who died 1464, the most accomplished of all the Popes, that Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini of Siena, whose career fills the walls of the Library of Siena Cathedral with that series of frescoes by Pinturicchio which has no equal for beauty and brightness. The tomb in which his bones were to have been laid is a sarcophagus of the age of the foundation of the old basilica. The carvings, which are rather coarsely executed, according to Dufresne, represent various Biblical subjects. In the centre is Our Lord on a little hill from which pour four rivers. At His feet are miniature figures in the act of prayer, without doubt the deceased persons for whom the sarcophagus was originally intended; at the side are the Delivery of Our Lord, and Our Lord before Pilate. This sarcophagus was found during the rebuilding in the foundations of the older church. “Æneas Sylvius,” says Gregorovius, in _The Tombs of the Popes_ (Seton Watson’s Translation), “was the son of a poor nobleman of the family of Piccolomini in Siena, which owed its greatness to his genius. His brilliant talents alike as poet, courtier, and man of the world, rapidly transformed him from a literary adventurer into a man of wide fame and popularity. In early life he was Secretary to the Anti-Pope Felix V., and ambassador to the Emperor Frederick III., who solemnly invested him with the poet’s laurel crown, and whose history Æneas wrote. At the Council of Basel he eloquently championed the rights of General Councils as opposed to those of the Roman Pontiffs, but afterwards seceded to the party of Eugenius IV., and laid the final foundations of his good fortune as Secretary to three successive Popes, while Calixtus III. raised him to the rank of Cardinal. When eventually he succeeded the latter on the Papal throne he renounced all the traditions of his past life. During an all too brief reign the cause that lay nearest to his heart was the destruction of the Turkish power. His ardent desire was to place himself at the head of a crusading army, and he died with his weapon already in his hand, full of warlike enthusiasm, amid the din of arming hosts assembled at the seaport of Ancona.”

Pius III., his nephew, who died in 1503, and was the last Pope buried in Old St. Peter’s (for his successor was Julius II., who demolished the old basilica), had chosen for his tomb a magnificent sarcophagus of the fifth century, not sculptured like his uncle’s, but of majestic solidity and simplicity. He reigned only twenty-six days, but few Popes ever accomplished so much in a month. His body rested here for a hundred years, then his remains, and those of his uncle, Pius II., were transferred to the pretentious tombs in the Church of S. Andrea della Valle. It was hard that Æneas Sylvius, the humanist, should be the prey of vulgarity.

But there was appropriateness in the transference, for the head of St. Andrew was brought from Byzantium to Rome by Thomas Palæologus during the reign of Pius II., and received with ceremonies of extraordinary fervour and splendour. [Illustration: The Tomb of Hadrian IV., the only English Pope, behind; the Tomb of the Borgia Popes, Calixtus III. and Alexander VI., in front. The effigy is that of Calixtus III.]

The next tomb has special interest for the English, for it is that of Hadrian IV., who died in 1159, the only Englishman who ever sat on the throne of St. Peter. He was born Nicholas Breakspear, of poor parents, at St. Albans. He showed the courage and capacity of his race, for he put down the disturbances caused by Arnold of Brescia with a firm hand, and adhered to his refusal to crown the great Frederick Barbarossa until the Emperor had done homage to him by holding his stirrup like King Pepin the Short. He was the first of the score of Popes who held Court at Orvieto, and Orvieto is full of grand old Romanesque houses of his day. He is buried in a gigantic sarcophagus of red Egyptian granite, majestic in its simplicity, which must have been the coffin of an ancient Roman, as is shown by the skulls of oxen which are carved upon it. The sole inscription is “Hadrianus Papa IV.” Not so very far from his tomb, but in the centre aisle, is that attributed to the extraordinary Alexander VI. (died 1503), the wicked Borgia Pope, whose crimes to secure the aggrandizement of his children, Lucrezia and Cesare, fill so many pages of history and fiction. If one may trust the kneeling portrait in those exquisite Borgia Apartments which he employed Pinturicchio to fresco, he was a splendid specimen of manhood, physically. But that portrait does not tally with the pious face of the recumbent effigy on the tomb which he is supposed to have occupied. Perhaps this belonged to the uncle who paved the way for his greatness, Calixtus III. (died 1458). Gregorovius, in _The Tombs of the Popes_ (Seton Watson’s Translation), says: “The Borgia Pope has no monument, not even a grave.... The sarcophagus in the Vatican crypt, which is shown as that of Alexander, also belongs to his uncle, Calixtus III., whose full-length figure lies above.... Throughout life he was favoured by a boundless fortune. Nature had endowed him with a majestic presence and a lively understanding. The motives of his fearful crimes are to be found, not so much in his ambition, as in his sensuality and love for his bastard children. His reign brought with it universal ruin; it was the curse of Italy, which he delivered over to the mercy of French and Spanish armies, and the curse of the Church, in whose eyes his Pontificate must remain an eternal disgrace. And, indeed, a dreadful Nemesis was at hand. The voice of Savonarola, it is true, was stifled in the flames of the stake; but Luther still lived, and no succeeding Pope has ever availed to undo his mighty work.”

The bones of both of them lie in the church of the Spaniards, S. Maria di Montserrato. So universally was Alexander VI. execrated, that no monument was erected over them until the late Pope’s time, when there was an ebullition of Spanish _amour propre_, which partly took the shape of monumentalizing the notorious Borgia, partly of insisting on the removal of the tablet which showed the real place where St. Peter was executed; because it injured the other Spanish church of S. Pietro in Montorio, to have doubts cast on the spot under the Tempietto of Bramante, where, without any proper authority, the monks maintained the execution to have taken place. Both the Borgia Popes were buried, until 1610, in the Chapel of S. Maria delle Febbri. In a line with this tomb is that of the great young Emperor, Otto II., an enormous plaster erection, which one might almost call a tumulus, painted to resemble porphyry; it is about twelve feet long and four feet high, and is said to contain an ancient sarcophagus, for which the present font of St. Peter’s is wrongly supposed to have formed the cover. It really belonged to the tomb of the famous Crescentius, Prefect of Rome, alluded to below. But Klaczko says: “Stranger still were the destinies of the tomb of the Emperor Otho II. The ancient sarcophagus which held the mortal remains of the young monarch until 1609--the year when the last part of the old basilica was torn down--was afterwards changed into a fountain to adorn the Cortile of the Quirinale Palace; and its superb lid, a colossal mass of red porphyry, now inverted, is the baptismal font of St. Peter’s, in the first chapel on the left of the entrance. Let it be noted that this same porphyry lid came from Hadrian’s mausoleum, and had probably sheltered the ashes of that Ultra-Pagan Prince!”

Between the two at the end of the central aisle is the tomb of Raymond Zacosta, the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John of Malta. Close by the tomb of Otto is that of Gregory V., who was made Pope at the age of twenty-three by his cousin, the Emperor Otto III. He died after a brief reign, made strong by the opposition of the famous Crescentius and the Anti-Pope John XVI. He is buried in a costly sarcophagus of the fifth century.

Gregorovius, in his _Tombs of the Popes_ (Seton Watson’s Translation), says: “Not far from the grave of Otto stands the sarcophagus of the first Pope of German origin--Gregory V.--Bruno (996-999). It was erected by his cousin Otto III. With him the Dark Ages came to an end, and the era of the Hildebrandine reforms begins to dawn. A fortunate accident has preserved his coffin and its inscription; and its time-worn characters, in barbarous Latin, make the past live once more before us. It was an age full of glory for the German nation, but dismal enough in the history of the Eternal City. On April 29, 998, the Castle of Sant’ Angelo fell into the power of the young Emperor, and with it Crescentius, the forerunner of Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi. For this daring Roman, sprung from a noble Latian family, was the first in the long series of patriots who sought to free the city of their fathers from the tyranny alike of Pope and German Emperor. He had succeeded in expelling Gregory V., but Otto III. ere long restored his favourite to power; and the luckless champion of liberty was beheaded in Sant’ Angelo, and his corpse hurled with savage insults from the battlements.”

Gregory V. died young, like his kinsmen the Ottos, after a troubled reign of less than two years and a half; he was only twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Otto III., who had loved him with youthful enthusiasm, and had received from his hands the Imperial Crown, had the dead Pope interred close to Gregory the Great in a white marble sarcophagus, covered with rudely executed reliefs representing scenes from Scripture.

“He who rests here, of noble eyes and countenance, Was once called Gregory, fifth of the name. His early name was Bruno, of the royal Frankish race, The son of Otto and of Judith his spouse. A German in speech, he was brought up in the city of Worms; He yet mounted the Apostolic Throne, when young in years. He reigned two years and almost eight months, Dying when February had numbered thrice six days. Generous to the poor, each Sunday he gave out vestments among them. Careful to observe the Apostolic number.”

(Translated by R. W. Seton Watson in Gregorovius’s _Tombs of the Popes_.)

All epitaphs and epigraphs make stiff reading for a book which aims at interesting the ordinary mortal; so I shall pass them by with the less important pieces of sculpture and fragments of mosaics.

Many people will recognize a strange coincidence, if not an intention or an omen, in the fact that the _præcordia_ of Pius IX. repose in the left aisle close to the tombs--enormous and hideous arks of painted plaster--which contain the bones of the last three Stuarts,--James, the Old Pretender, Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, and Henry, Cardinal of York. These unhappy and luckless Princes rest here and not beneath the elegant monument, by Canova, which George IV. had the good grace to erect to their memory on the first pier of the nave of St. Peter’s.

to the last three Stuarts, erected by George IV. when Prince Regent.]

As I have mentioned, had James seen fit to change his religion for the Crown of Britain, he would have reigned longer than any of our Sovereigns, not even excepting Queen Victoria. For James II. died in 1701, and James III. just lived into 1766. But though few in the history of the world have given up so much for their faith, he can hardly be canonized; Rome knows him too well. For he spent the last half-century of what Chambers calls his “fainéant, dissolute, prayerful life” there. Charles Edward was born at Rome in 1720, and died there in 1788. His youth was chivalrous and splendid, but for the last forty years of his life he was a miserable drunkard.

Henry, created by his father Duke of York, and by Benedict XIV., Cardinal, was the best of the three. He was much loved at Frascati, where he was Bishop, and celebrated for his charity. While he enjoyed the revenues of the two rich abbeys bestowed upon him through the favour of the French Court he was wealthy. When Charles Edward died, in 1788, he had a medal struck, bearing this legend in Latin: “Henry IX., King of England, by the Grace of God, but not by the will of men.”

He lost his income from France by the French Revolution, but relieved the necessities of Pius VI. by selling his family jewels. In the last years of his life, George IV., then Prince Regent, and he, exchanged various amenities. George gave him a pension of £4000 a year, and when he died, an old, old man, in 1807, he bequeathed to George the Crown jewels, carried off by his grandfather from England a hundred and nineteen years before--a record in the annals of longevity. In 1819 the Prince Regent commissioned Canova to erect the famous monument. Charles Edward was buried first at Frascati, where the Cardinal lived, but his remains were translated to St. Peter’s. It is down in the crypt that the adherents of the lost cause, the protesting subjects of the fallen Stuarts, come to lay their white roses; not on the tomb of him who sacrificed so much and so long, but on that of the graceless, graceful Charles Edward.

The Cardinal of York--was there ever a more beautiful title?--was Arch-Priest of St. Peter’s for fifty-six years.

Near the Stuart tombs is that of another nomad, who gave up a throne for the Roman Catholic religion, Christina of Sweden, the daughter of the champion of the Protestants in the Thirty Years’ War. She bequeathed to the Vatican the splendid library her father had acquired by the capture of Prague and other cities.

Almost in a line with the tombs of the Stuarts, let into the opposite pier, is a porphyry slab, on which tradition declares that Pope S. Silvester, in 319, divided the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul to give part to each of the two basilicas of the Vatican and the Ostian Way. But Professor Marucchi, the antiquary to the Holy See, rejects the tradition. Next to it is another marble slab, called the accursed stone, on which many martyrs are said to have suffered.

It was transferred from a church outside the Leonine city to the Old St. Peter’s, where it was placed by the side of the Chapel of the Volto Santo. Near here also are a fine fragment of the pavement of the basilica of Constantine (proving that the floor of the crypt was the floor of Old St. Peter’s), and the famous marble copy of the donation of the Countess Matilda, giving all her dominions to the Papacy. She made the formal gift to a Legate of Pascal II. in 1120, and this marble copy was erected close to the tomb of St. Peter. The Countess is buried in St. Peter’s, on the right side opposite the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament. It was the support of Matilda that enabled Gregory VII. to humiliate the Emperor Henry IV. at Canossa. The Castle of Canossa belonged to her.

In the floor close by is the tomb of Charlotte, Queen of Cyprus and Jerusalem, who was dethroned in 1458, and came to implore the Pope’s aid in recovering her crown. Pius II. had the good sense to recognize the impossibility, and gave her a pension and a palace instead. There are still in the Vatican Library books presented to her.