THE ORIGIN OF THE VATICAN

The Vatican is not one of the seven hills of Rome, and, as Mr. Dyer points out in the _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography_, it was even less a part of the city than the Janiculum; it was not included in the walls of Aurelian. The origin of the name itself is uncertain. One theory is that it was derived from _Vates_, a seer or prophet, because the Romans gained possession of it from the Etruscans through an oracular response--_Vatum responso expulsis Etruscis_; another from _Vaticinia_, which means prophecies or oracles. Mr. Dyer, a very great authority, has even less confidence in Niebuhr’s assumption that there was an ancient Etruscan city there called Vatica or Vaticum. The flat ground round it was called the _Campus Vaticanus_; and it was here that the great dictator Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus had his farm of four acres, the Prata Quinctia, which have impressed their name on that portion of the city.

As it is the first legend connected with this famous site, I will quote the passage from Livy which tells how the envoys found Cincinnatus when they went to tell him that he had been chosen Dictator in the crisis of the war with the Sabines. “They sent for the consul Nautius, yet not supposing him capable of affording them sufficient protection, resolved that a Dictator should be chosen to extricate them from this distress, and Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus was accordingly appointed with unanimous approbation. Here they may receive instruction who despise every quality that men can boast, in comparison with riches; and who think that those who possess them can alone have merit, and to such alone honours and distinctions belong. Lucius Quintius, the now sole hope of the people, and of the Empire of Rome, cultivated a farm of four acres on the other side of the Tiber, at this time called the Quintian meadows, opposite to the very spot where the duck-pond stands. There he was found by the deputies, either leaning on a stake, in a ditch which he was making, or ploughing; in some work of husbandry he was certainly employed. After mutual salutations, and wishes on the part of the commissioners ‘that it might be happy both to him and the commonwealth,’ he was requested to ‘put on his gown, and hear a message from the senate.’ Surprised, and asking if ‘all was well?’ he bade his wife, Racilia, bring out his gown quickly from the cottage. When he had put it on, after wiping the sweat and dust from his brow, he came forward, when the deputies congratulated him, and saluted him Dictator; requested his presence in the city, and informed him of the alarming situation of the army. A vessel had been prepared for Quintius by order of government, and on his landing on the other side, he was received by his three sons, who came out to meet him; then by his other relations and friends, and afterwards by the greater part of the patricians. Surrounded by this numerous attendance, and the lictors marching before him, he was conducted to his residence.” After he conquered the Æquians, and on the sixteenth day, Cincinnatus resigned the Dictatorship, which he had received for the term of six months.

Dyer points out that there were no buildings in this quarter before the time of the Emperors; and that almost the only one of any note in all antiquity was a sepulchre--the tomb of Hadrian.

The second important mention we get of the hill is that of Caligula building a Circus here for racing in the gardens of his mother Agrippina. The Circus in which St. Peter was crucified should be called the Circus of Caligula, and not that of Nero, who merely adopted it; though its ruins in the Middle Ages were called the Palace of Nero.

Tacitus tells us in his history that the district was noted for its unhealthy air; while Cicero says that its soil was unfruitful; and Martial execrated its wine in an epigram: “_Vaticana bibis, bibis venenum_” (“If you drink Vatican wine you drink poison”).

At this point we must go to Lanciani, who informs us that two roads issued from the bridge called indifferently Vaticanus, Neronianus, or Triumphalis, which spanned the river between S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini and the hospital of Santo Spirito. The Via Triumphalis, which corresponds to the modern Strada di Monte Mario, and the Via Cornelia, led to the woodlands west of the city between the Via Aurelia Nova and the Via Triumphalis.

St. Peter’s, and Hadrian’s Circus to his Tomb, now the Castle of Sant’ Angelo. _From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_]

reconstructed by G. Fontana. _From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_]

When the Apostles came to Rome, in the reign of Nero, the topography of the Vatican district, which was crossed by the Via Cornelia, was, says Lanciani, as follows:

“On the left of the road was a circus, begun by Caligula, and finished by Nero; on the right, a line of tombs built against the clay cliffs of the Vatican. The Circus was the scene of the first sufferings of the Christians, described by Tacitus in the well-known passage of the _Annals_, XV. 45. Some of the Christians were covered with the skins of wild beasts, so that savage dogs might tear them to pieces; others were besmeared with tar and tallow, and burnt at the stake; others were crucified (_crucibus adfixi_); while Nero, in the attire of a vulgar _Auriga_, ran his races round the goals. This took place 65 A.D. Two years later the leader of the Christians shared the same fate in the same place. He was affixed to a cross like the others, and we know exactly where. A tradition current in Rome from time immemorial says that St. Peter was executed _inter duas metas_ (between the two metae).”

_Inter duas metas_ is considered by scientific historians to signify the spot marked by a square stone just outside the Sacristy of St. Peter’s. It was formerly marked by the obelisk,[3] which now stands in the Piazza of St. Peter’s, and was removed to its present position for Sixtus V. by the architect Fontana in 1586.

This obelisk, says Lanciani, is the only relic left of the famous Gardens of Agrippina, the mother of Caligula. It is a monolith of red granite, brought over from Heliopolis, and is the only one which has not been thrown down since the fall of the Empire. It is first called the _guglia_, or needle, in a Bull of Leo IX., 1053, who also calls it the tomb of Julius Cæsar, thinking that the bronze globe at the top held his ashes.

Leo XIII. allowed a tablet to be put up on the wall close by, declaring this to be the scene of the execution; but he had not reckoned on the clamour that would be provoked. There was a tradition a few centuries old that it had taken place on the spot marked by the Tempietto of Bramante, in the cloister of the Church of S. Pietro in Montorio on the hill called the Janiculum in the time of Lars Porsena of Clusium, and now called the Passeggiata Margherita, and by other names. The monks of S. Pietro in Montorio make a respectable income out of selling dust from the sacred spot, and did not relish the idea of losing it. S. Pietro in Montorio is under the protection of Spain; and the Spanish Ambassador to the Vatican was instructed to demand the removal of the obnoxious tablet. The Pope yielded, but scientific opinion has been too strong, and the Vatican is soon to make a pronouncement on the subject. The whole controversy hangs upon the words, “_Inter duas metas_.” St. Peter is recorded to have been buried _inter duas metas_: common sense would apply the words to the two goals of Nero’s Circus in which he was executed; but the contention of the monks of S. Pietro in Montorio can best be understood from Professor Marucchi’s lucid summarization, which I here translate: “According to the Apocryphal Acts of St. Peter, which may date as far back as the third or fourth century, St. Peter was crucified ‘near the Palace of Nero--near the Obelisk of Nero,’ and tradition adds, ‘_Inter duas metas_.’ Now there was no obelisk on the Janiculum, but there was a celebrated obelisk in the Gardens of Nero, not far from the Temple of Apollo, and exactly between the two metae of the Circus. Later on it was pretended that the two metae must be looked for in the two pyramids called the tombs of Romulus and Remus; one was by the Porta S. Paolo (this was what we now call the pyramid of Caius Cestius), the other, which was destroyed in the time of Alexander VI., stood near S. Maria Traspontina.

“According to the _Liber Pontificalis_, St. Peter was buried in the place of his martyrdom, that is to say, at the Vatican. It was there, as we know from other authorities, that the first victims of Nero were buried in the year 64 A.D. Monsignor Lugari pretends that the Janiculum was the place especially set apart for crucifixion.”

It is in vain that the partisans of the Janiculum seek a proof in the direction _near the Naumachia_; for, though it is true that there was a Naumachia at the foot of the Janiculum, there was another actually in the Gardens of Nero. Marucchi says that the tradition in favour of S. Pietro in Montorio was due to scholars who misinterpreted documents, and that up to the fourteenth century there was no important tradition of St. Peter here.[4]

He has the great authority of Lanciani to support him, who tells us that for many years after the peace of Constantine, the exact spot of St. Peter’s execution was marked by a chapel, called the Chapel of the Crucifixion; that the meaning of the name and its origin, as well as the topographical details connected with the event, were lost in the darkness of the Middle Ages; that the memorial chapel lost its identity, and was believed to belong to Him who was crucified--that is, to Christ Himself; and that it disappeared seven or eight centuries ago, about the time when the words _inter duas metas_, by which the spot was so exactly located, lost their proper interpretation and began to be applied to the tomb of pyramidal shape for which the Latin word also is _meta_--the meta of Remus being that which we now call the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, and the meta of Romulus, a pyramidal tower which once stood near the Church of S. Maria Traspontina. There is a curious monumental evidence of this on the stone screens (preserved in the crypt) of the Confessio of Old St. Peter’s, which Matteo Pollaiuolo executed for Pope Sixtus IV. in the middle of the fifteenth century. Père Dufresne, in his _Les Cryptes Vaticanes_, says, “The Apostle was put to death, according to ancient documents, _inter duas metas_. Abandoning the natural interpretation, one would see in these _metae_, namely, that they are those of the Circus of Nero; it was believed at the end of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance that they were the Pyramid of Caius Cestius and a sort of tower constructed near S. Maria Traspontina. These two monuments are represented in the panel of the martyrdom of St. Peter on each side of the cross. The relatively modern tradition to which they refer has no lack of partisans, but it is otherwise difficult to sustain.” Dufresne adds that there is the same confusion on the old Bronze Doors of St. Peter’s with regard to St. Peter’s martyrdom. These were made in 1445, by Filarete and Simone Ghini, for Eugenius IV., whose reign was about forty years earlier than that of Sixtus IV.

Lanciani goes on to show how the line of the Via Cornelia can be traced by the classical tombs discovered at various times along its borders; and gives a very clear plan showing how the Via Cornelia, in passing along the north edge of the Circus of Nero and Caligula, cut right through Old St. Peter’s east and west, intersecting the Confessio just at the south of St. Peter’s tomb. It must, in fact, have intersected the site occupied by the chapel of St. Peter’s tomb in the crypt to-day. The old tombs destroyed by the Emperor Elagabalus, in fact, were on the site of the nave of Old St. Peter’s, and were rediscovered in the time of Paul V. scattered all round the tomb of St. Peter. We need not here enter into the disputed question whether Linus, the second of the Popes, was buried near St. Peter, though Lanciani accepts the evidence. “It seems hardly possible for anyone to doubt that St. Peter was buried here by Linus and Anacletus, successively second and third Popes.” Even Mr. Bernard W. Henderson, in his great _Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero_, published by Methuen & Co., allows that he was executed on this spot; for he says that “the Church of S. Pietro crowns the site of his martyrdom, as, in Catholic belief, it enshrines, not the memory alone, but also his holy relics. Tradition--and in this respect it is absolutely worthy of all credence--never varies in choosing Rome as the city where he ended his life by his triumphant death. Thither he had come but a few months perhaps before his end. Thence he had written his great Catholic Epistle, bearing undismayed witness to the peril which threatened all the Christians.” Mr. Henderson’s opinion is of great value, because he can be most iconoclastic. A few pages earlier he is ruthless in disposing of the idea that St. Peter went to Rome in 42 A.D. “Saint Peter, who vanishes from the Scripture records between the years 42 and 51 A.D., going, says St. Luke simply, ‘to another place,’ is held to have proceeded from Jerusalem to Rome, there to have preached the Gospel and founded the Roman Church some fifteen years before his greater colleague St. Paul addressed his epistle to that Church. None of these traditions can be accepted as even probabilities.”

One thing must be remembered: that there is no inherent improbability in the tomb having survived. The Romans spared the tombs even of Carthage, and, as Lanciani says, the privileges which the Roman law allowed the sepulchres, even of criminals, made it possible for the Christians to keep these graves in good order with impunity. Of the successive buildings which grew up round the tomb of the Apostle I shall speak in another chapter.

The Crucifixion of St. Peter--by Giotto--now in the Sacristy of St. Peter’s. The earliest known work of art in which the Tomb of Romulus and the Tomb of Caius Cestius are shown as the Duae Metae. _From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_ ]