“_Paul—a Prisoner._”
JUST outside of the Ostian Gate is the pyramid of Caius
Cestius—Tribune, Prætor and Priest, who died thirty years before Christ
was born, and left a fortune to be expended in glorification of himself
and deeds. The monument is one hundred and twenty feet high, nearly
one hundred feet square at the base, built of brick and overlaid with
marble slabs. Modeled after the Egyptian mausoleums, and unaccountably
spared by Goth and Pope, it stands to-day, after the more merciful wear
and tear of twenty centuries, entire, and virtually unharmed. Alexander
VII., when he had the rubbish cleared away from the base, also ordered
a door to be cut in the side. The body, or ashes of Cestius had been
deposited in the centre of the pyramid before its completion, and
hermetically inclosed by the stupendous walls. What was done with the
handful of dust that had been august and a member of the College of
Epulones, appointed to minister by sacrifices to the gods, history does
not relate. The great pile contains one empty chamber contemptible in
dimensions by comparison with the superficies of the exterior. The
walls of this retain signs of frescoes, designed for the delectation of
the dead noble, and such ghostly visitants as were able to penetrate
the marble facing and twenty feet of brick laid with Roman cement. The
custodian of the English burial-ground has the key of Alexander’s door,
and shows the vault for a consideration. Nobody goes to see it a second
time.
The Ostian Gate is now the Porta S. Paolo, and is a modern structure.
Here begins the Via Ostiensis, in St. Paul’s life-time, the
thronged road to Rome’s renowned sea-port. Ostia is now a wretched
fishing-village of less than one hundred inhabitants. Over the
intervening country broods malaria, winter and summer. Conybeare
and Howson have told us in words that read like the narrative of
an eye-witness, how the route looked when, “through the dust and
tumult of that busy throng, the small troop of soldiers”—having Paul
in charge—“threaded their way under the bright sky of an Italian
midsummer.”
The silence and desolation of the Campagna on the February day of our
excursion to Tre Fontane, or Aquas Salvias,—the Tyburn of the Romans
under the Emperors, were as depressing as the seen shadow of Death.
The sunlight brought out warm umber tints upon the gray sides of the
pyramid. Children, ragged and happy, rolled in the dust and basked in
the sun before the mean houses on the wayside. Women in short, russet
skirts, blue or red bodices, with gay handkerchiefs, folded square,
laid upon the top of the head and hanging down the back of the neck,
nursed brown babies and spun flax in open doors, or sitting flat upon
the ground. Men drank and smoked in and about the wine-shops, talking
with such vehemence of gesticulation as would frighten those who did
not know that the subject of debate was no more important than the
price of macaroni, or the effect of yesterday’s rain upon the growing
artichokes.
But, from the moment our short procession of three carriages emerged
from the city-gate and took the road to Ostia, the most mercurial
spirit amongst us felt the weight as of a remembered sorrow. We
had seen the opening in the floor of the lower chapel of S. Pietro
in Montorio, where S. Peter’s cross had stood, and the golden sand
in which the foot of it was imbedded; groped down the steps of the
Mamertine Prison, and felt our way by torchlight around the confines
of the cell in which both of the Great Apostles, it is said, perhaps
truly, were incarcerated up to the day of their martyrdom. We had
surveyed the magnificence, without parallel even in Rome, of the
Basilica of St Paul’s Without the Walls; the very sepulchre of St Paul,
the ostensible reason for this affluence of ecclesiastical grandeur,
and believed exactly as much and as little as we pleased of what
the Church told us of localities, and authorities in support of the
authenticity of these. But the evidence that St. Paul was beheaded near
Rome, in Via Ostiensis, was irrefragable. There was no ground for cavil
in the statement, sustained by venerable traditions, that he perished
at Tre Fontane.
Half-way between the Gate of St. Paul and the Basilica, is a squalid
chapel, the entrance rather lower than the street, with an indifferent
bas-relief over the door, of two men locked in one another’s arms.
Here—according to the apocryphal epistle of St. Dionysius the
Areopagite to Timothy—Peter and Paul, who, Jerome states, were executed
upon the same day, parted. Besides the bas-relief, the tablet over the
lintel records their farewell words:
“And Paul said unto Peter,—‘Peace be with thee, Foundation of the
Church, Shepherd of the Flock of Christ!’”
“And Peter said unto Paul,—‘Go in peace, Preacher of Good Tidings, and
Guide of the Salvation of the Just!’”
We were in no mood to make this one of the stations of our pious
journey. Nor did we stop at the Basilica, the dingy outside of which
offers no promise of the superb interior. Beyond the church spread
the sad-colored Campagna, irresponsive to the sunshine, unbroken save
by leafless coppices and undulations where the surface rolled into
hillocks that caught no light, and into hollows of deeper gloom. A
few peasants’ huts upon the edge of a common, and mounds of shapeless
ruins, are all the signs of human habitation, past or present. It is
unutterably mournful—this “wilderness that moans at the gates” of
the seven-hilled city. The sun was oppressive in the unshaded road,
although the sky was filmy, and the horses moved sluggishly. Ours was
a funeral cortége, following the figure loving fancies set before
us in the lonely highway. An old man, enfeebled by imprisonment, by
“weariness and painfulness, by watchings often, by hunger and thirst,
by fastings often, by cold and nakedness,” yet pressing forward, ready
and joyful to be offered. We had read, last night, in anticipation of
this pilgrimage, his farewell letter to his adopted son; noted, as
we had not in previous perusals, his confident expectation of this
event; and the yearning of the great, tender heart over this dearest of
earthly friends,—his desire to see him once more before his departure
breaking in upon his clearest views of Heaven and the Risen Lord. It
was the backward glance of a father from the top of the hill that will
hide the group of watching children from his eyes.
“Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which
the Lord—the righteous Judge—shall give me at that day.”
(This was after he had been brought before Nero the first time,
where—“no man stood with me, but all men forsook me.”)
“And not unto me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing.
“Do thy diligence to come _shortly_ unto me!”
And, again:—“The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will
preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom. To whom be glory forever and
ever! AMEN!
“Do thy diligence to come to me _before winter_!”
He had not thought his end so near, then. The likelihood is that he
was hurried to the judgment the second time, and sentence speedily
pronounced. He may have been still bewildered by this haste when he
walked with his escort, along the road to Ostia. It was June, and
the sun beat fiercely upon his head. After the cool twilight of the
dungeon, the air must have scorched like furnace-vapors. He would be
very weary before the three miles beyond the gates were accomplished,
unless the rapturous certainty that he would, that very day, stand
face-to-face with Him who also suffered without the gate, lightened the
burden of heavy limbs and fainting flesh.
A high wall, rising abruptly from barren fields, incloses three
churches, a small monastery, a flower and kitchen-garden, and some rows
of thrifty Eucalyptus trees. Thus much we saw, through the grating of
the gate, while awaiting the answer to our ring. A monk admitted us.
The Convent was made over to the Order of La Trappe in 1868. Twelve
brethren, by the help of Eucalyptus and the saints, live here, defying
isolation and malaria. Their rules are strict, enjoining many fastings
and prayers. They wear sandals instead of shoes, and have, therefore,
the shuffling gait inseparably connected, in our minds, with pietistic
pretension. A man in loose slippers recalls the impression to this
day. The habit of the order is brown cloth, and is worn day and night,
without change, for three years, when it is laid aside—or drops off of
its own weight and threadbareness—for a new one. Our monk had donned
his—we estimated, charitably—just two years and eleven months anterior
to our acquaintance with him, and eaten onions three times every day.
He was a social brother, alert and garrulous, and shortly grew more
gallant to the young ladies of our party than became his asceticism
and his paucity of front teeth. He stared open-mouthed—consequently,
disagreeably—at our refusal to enter the church nearest the gate.
“It is the church of Santa Maria Scala Cœli!” he represented,
earnestly. “Twelve thousand Christian martyrs, who built the Thermæ of
Diocletian, slumber beneath it. Holy St. Bernard had here a dream of
angels carrying souls up a ladder from purgatory to heaven.”
“Very interesting!” we acknowledged, suavely. “But our time is short!”
The brother regretted. “But messieurs and mesdames will not pass the
second door! The church of Saints Vincenzo and Anastasia. Very antique,
founded in 625. One sees there, still, frescoes celebrating the deaths
of these holy men, by cooking upon a gridiron and by strangling.
Mesdemoiselles will enjoy looking upon these.”
Unmoved by his tempting lures, we passed on to the third, last,
and evidently, in his opinion, the least attractive of the three
edifices—San Paolo alle tre Fontane. He followed, discontented, but
always obsequious.
The vestibule walls are adorned with bas-reliefs of St. Paul’s
execution in the presence of Roman guards. The pavement of the church
is a large and fine mosaic, found in the ruins of ancient Ostia.
The subject is the Four Seasons, and the monk, checking us when we
would have trodden upon it, threw himself into a studied transport of
admiration. There was not another mosaic like it in Italy. Contemplate
the brilliant dyes! the graceful contour of the figures! Artists from
all lands flocked to the Abbey delle tre Fontane, entreating permission
from the Superior to copy it.
We broke the thread impatiently from the reel. We were here to see
where St. Paul was beheaded.
“_Vraiment?_” politely, smothering his chagrin. “But, certainly! Upon
that block in the corner!”
It was a pillar, not a block, and marble, not wooden. An imposition so
bare-faced did not pass unchallenged. We argued that the pillar was
modern in workmanship, and too clean. No blood-stains disfigured its
whiteness.
“There _had_ been blood-stains without doubt. Beyond question, also,
the kisses and tears of the faithful had erased them.”
But it was absurd, unheard of, to talk of decapitation upon a stone
block, waiving objections to the height and shape of this. The axe, in
severing the head, would be spoiled utterly by contact with the hard
surface beneath.
“So I should have said, Monsieur. It is the dictate of _le bon sens_,
Madame! But me—I am here to repeat what the Church instructs me to say.
When I arrive at this so holy place, I find the pillar here, as you see
it—protected by an iron rail from destruction at the hands and lips of
devotees. I am told, ‘It is the pillar on which was cut off the head
of St. Paul the Blessed Martyr.’ Who am I, a poor lay-brother, that I
should doubt the decree of the Church?”
Seeing absolution in our faces after this frank confession, he entered,
with interest, upon the history of the three fountains enclosed in as
many marble altars, ranged at one side of the church. In the front
of each is an opening large enough to admit the hand, arm, and a
drinking-cup kept ready for dipping. Above each aperture is a head of
Paul in bas-relief. In the first, the eyes are open, the features
instinct with life. The second portrays the relaxed lineaments of a
dying man, the third, the rigidity of death in closed eyelids and
sunken cheeks. Keeping close to the letter of the lesson he had been
taught, our unsavory cicerone related that the Apostle’s head made
three bounds upon the earth after its separation from the body, and
that at each touch a fountain had burst forth. To establish the truth
of the miracle to unbelievers in all ages, no less than to kindle the
enthusiasm of true worshippers at this shrine, the water of the first
spring is still warm; of the second, tepid; of the third, ice-cold.
“Will Mademoiselle,” turning to the young girl near him, and grimacing
in what was meant to be a fascinating fashion—“Will Mademoiselle
vouchsafe to taste the healing waters? For that they are a veritable
catholicon is attested by many cures. Or, is it that Mademoiselle is
never ill? Her blooming cheeks would say, ‘No.’ Ah, then, so much the
better! A draught of the miraculous fountains—accompanied, of course,
by an ‘Ave Maria,’ is efficacious in procuring a husband. May he be _un
bon Catholique_!”
But one of the company tasted the waters, and she affirmed roundly—in
English, for our benefit, in French for the friar’s—that the
temperature of all three was the same.
“That is because you have not faith!” chuckled the lay-brother,
throwing what was left in the cup upon the Four Seasons. “The Catholic
husband will cure all that!”
His cackling laugh was odious, his torrent of talk wearisome. We
hurried to escape them by quitting the church and proffering the
gate-fee, a franc for each person. At sight of the money, he ceased
laughing and began to whine. The fees were the property of the Convent.
For himself, he had no perquisites save such as he earned from the
sale of Eucalyptus syrup. Unlocking the door of a store-house, he
showed us shelves crowded with bottles of the elixir, prepared by the
brethren, and used freely by them in the sickly season. Formerly, we
were informed, no one could live here even in winter. The place was a
miasmatic swamp, the churches and abbey were almost in ruins. But the
monks of La Trappe enjoyed in an extraordinary degree (the whine rising
into a sanctimonious sing-song) the favor of Our Lady and the saints.
They stayed here, the year around, encouraged by His Holiness the Pope
in the cultivation of the Eucalyptus, chiefly, that the elixir might be
bestowed upon the contadini who ventured to live in the pestilential
district, and charitable _forestieri_, (foreigners) unused to the
climate. We assured him, coldly, that we would not buy medicine we did
not need, and satisfied his benevolent intentions us-ward, by paying
him for some flowers and pieces of marble we brought away as souvenirs.
We left him standing in the gateway, grinning at the young ladies, and
breathing so hard that we imagined we smelt garlic and sour wine a
hundred yards down the road.
“A filthy cur!” uttered Caput, and nobody said him nay.
Even the demon of malaria might scorn such prey.
We were told by those qualified by long residence in Italy to speak
advisedly concerning these matters, that, while the priesthood of that
country comprises many men eminent for learning, the mass of minor
ecclesiastics, especially in the country, are ignorant and vulgar
beyond our powers of credence. For ages, the monastic orders have
been a swarm of caterpillars, battening upon the fat of the land, and
blighting, while they devoured. To the King, who let the light into
their nests, clearing out many, and leaving in the nest only those who
were too infirm to begin a work, so unfamiliar to them all, as earning
their livelihood—the thanks of civilization and philanthropy are due.
So harshly had our experiences in the church jarred upon the mood in
which we had approached it, that we could not, as it were, get back
to St. Paul that day. We deferred the pilgrimage to his supposed tomb
until we were in better tune.
Tradition—“the elder sister of history”—asserts that as devout men
carried Stephen to his burial, Paul’s friends and converts, including
persons of influence in the city, even some attachés of the Imperial
household, took charge of _his_ remains. It is interesting to note the
names of certain disciples, who were, we know, of that faithful band.
Clement, of Rome, whose writings and whose Basilica remain with us unto
the present day; Claudia, a British Princess, a Christian convert, and
the _protégée_ of an Emperor; Pudens, her husband, whose daughter and
hers was the foundress of the primitive Cathedral of Rome.
This church—I digress to state—is now joined to a convent in Via
Quatro Fontane. It occupies the site of the house of the daughters
of Pudens—Prudentia and Praxedes. Or—what is more likely,—it was
an enlargement of the family chapel—or “Basilica.” The repute of
these sisters, the children of the noble pair who were Paul’s
fellow-laborers, has descended to us by more trustworthy channels
than those through which church-legends are generally transmitted. In
the early persecutions their house was a refuge for the fugitive, a
hospital for the wounded and dying,—a sacred _morgue_ for bodies cast
forth from torture-chamber and scaffold, to be eaten of dogs and crows.
In one of the chapels of the old church is a mosaic of these sisters of
mercy, pressing sponges soaked in martyrs’ blood into a golden urn.
Another depicts them in the presence of their enthroned Lord, and,
standing near, Paul and Peter. The women hold between them the martyr’s
crown, earned for themselves by fidelity to the Faith and friends of
their parents.
One of Paul’s disciples was a Roman matron named Lucina, who—to return
to our tradition—gained possession of the Apostle’s lifeless body, and
buried it in her own catacomb or vineyard in the vicinity of the Ostian
Gate. Eusebius says the catacomb was shown in his day; Chrysostom, that
“the grave of St. Paul is well known.”
“St. Cyprian”—writes Macduff—“is the interpreter, in a single sentence,
of the sentiment of the faithful in those ages: ‘_To the bodies of
those who depart by the outlet of a glorious death, let a more zealous
watchfulness be given._’ Can we believe that those who by means of rude
sarcophagi and inscriptions in the vaults of the Catacombs, took such
pains to mark the dormitory of their sainted dead, would omit rearing a
befitting memorial in the case of their illustrious spiritual chief?”
From the same catacomb have been unearthed inscriptions belonging to
the Pauline era. The story was so thoroughly believed in the reign of
Constantine that he built the original Basilica of St. Paul’s above
this catacomb, and placed the bones of Paul, or relics supposed to be
his, within the crypt. Since that date, this church has had them in
ward.
With these credentials fresh in our memories, we took advantage of
a very mild morning whose influences somewhat tempered the chill
of aisles and chapels, to make a prolonged examination of _San
Paolo-fuori-le-mura_—St. Paul’s-beyond-the-Wall. The outside is, as I
have intimated, tamely ugly. He who passes it by will remember it as
the least comely of the hundred unsightly churches in and about the
city. From the moment one enters the immense nave,—stands between the
columns of yellowish alabaster, presented by Mehemet Ali, which are
the prelude to a double rank of eighty monoliths of polished granite,
cut from the Simplon,—to his exit, the spectacle is one of bewildering
magnificence. Macduff likens the floor to a “sea of glass,” nor is the
figure overstrained. The illusion is heightened by the reflection upon
the highly-polished surface of the brilliant tints of the series of
mosaic medallions, each the portrait of a pope, set in the upper part
of the wall and girdling, in a sweep of splendor, nave and transept.
The blending and shimmer of the gorgeous colors upon the marble
mirror are like the tremulous motion of a lake just touched by the
breeze. The costliest marbles, such as we are used to see wrought into
small ornaments for the homes of the wealthy, are here employed with
lavishness that makes tales of oriental luxury altogether credible,
and the Arabian Nights plausible. Alabaster, malachite, rosso and
verde-antique are wrought into columns and altars, and each chapel has
its especial treasure of sculpture and painting. The pictures in the
Chapel of St. Stephen, representing the trial and death of the martyr,
would, by themselves, make the church noteworthy.
Surrounded by this inconceivable wealth of splendor, rises a
_baldacchino_ surmounted by a dome, supported by four pillars of red
alabaster, also the gift of the Turkish Pacha. An angel stands at each
corner of the canopy. Within this miniature temple is another, and
an older, being the altar-canopy, saved from the fire that, in 1823,
destroyed the greater portion of the ancient building. Under this,
again, is the marble altar—crimson and emerald—enshrining it is said,
the bones of St. Paul. The inscription runs along the four sides of
the baldacchino:
“TU ES VAS ELECTIONIS.
SANCTE PAULE APOSTOLE.
PRÆDICATOR VERITATIS.
IN UNIVERSO MUNDO.”
A railing, inclosing an area of perhaps a dozen yards, prevents too
close an approach to the altar.
“You must first have a _permesso_ from the Pope, or, at least, from
a Cardinal,” said a passing verger to whom we communicated our
desire to go in. Discovering, upon trial, that the gate was not
locked, we felt strongly inclined to make an independent sally, but
were withheld by a principle to which we endeavored to be uniformly
true,—namely,—obedience to law, and what the usages of the time and
place decreed to be order. A priest, belonging, we guessed from his
dress, to a higher order than most of those we had encountered in our
tour of the building, knelt on the low step surrounding the railing,
and while my companions strolled on, I loitered near the forbidden
gate, one eye upon him who prayed at the shrine of “Sancte Paule
Apostole.” When he arose, I accosted him, having had leisure in which
to study a diplomatic address. I chanced to have in the pocket of
my cloak a box of Roman pearls and other trinkets I had bought that
forenoon. Producing this, as a prefatory measure, and beginning with
the conventional, “_Pardon, Monsieur!_” I informed him in the best
French at my command, that I was a stranger and an American—facts he
must have gleaned before I had dropped three words;—that, although not
a Roman Catholic, I desired to lay these trifles upon the tomb of St.
Paul. Not out of custom or superstition, but as I might pick a flower
from, or touch, in greeting, the grave of a friend.
He had a noble, gentle face and hearkened kindly to my petition.
“I comprehend!” he said, taking the beads from my hand, and, beckoning
up a sacristan, motioned him to open the gate.
“You can enter, Madame!” he continued, with a courteous inclination of
the head.
I followed the two; stood by while they bent the knee to the altar-step
and made the sign of the cross. The superior priest turned to me.
“You know, do you not, that Timothy is buried here, also,” touching a
tablet upon which was cut one word—“TIMOTHEI.”
“I hope so!” answered I, wistfully.
Was it wrong to hold lovingly the desire—almost the belief—that the
“beloved son” had taken alarm at the import and tone of the second
epistle from “Paul the Aged,” and come long enough before winter to
brighten his last days? “It is possible,” students and professors of
Church History concede to those who crave this rounding of a “finished”
life. It seemed almost sure, with Paul’s name above us and Timothy’s
under my hand.
My new friend smiled. “_We_ believe it. Timothy’s body was brought to
Rome after his martyrdom—he outlived his master many years—and interred
beside him in the Catacomb of St. Lucina.”
“I know the legend,” I said; “it is very beautiful.”
“It is customary,” the priest went on to say, “to lay chaplets upon the
shrine. But you are an American,” another grave smile. “Would you like
to look into the tomb?”
He opened a grating in the front of the altar. By leaning forward, I
fancied I saw a dark object in the deep recess.
“The sarcophagus is of silver. A cross of gold lies upon it. Then,
there is an outer case.”
He knelt, reached the hand holding the beads as far through the opening
as his arm would go, and arose.
“They have touched the coffin of St. Paul!” simply and solemnly.
While they lay over his fingers he crossed the beads, murmured some
rapid words.
“My blessing will not hurt them, or you!” restoring them to me with the
gentle seriousness that marked his demeanor throughout the little scene.
I thanked him earnestly. Whether he were sincere, or acting a
well-conned part, his behavior to me was the perfection of high-toned
courtesy, I said that he had done me a kindness, and I meant it.
“It is nothing!” was the rejoinder. “It is I who am grateful for the
opportunity to render a stranger, and an American, even so slight a
service.”
Some of our party made merry over my adventure; affected to see in my
appreciation of the increased value of my blest baubles, deflection
from the path of Protestantism rectilinear and undefiled. I think
all were slightly scandalized when, turning in their walk across the
nave, they saw the tableau within the sacred rail; myself, between two
priests, and bending toward the open tomb of St. Paul.
To me it is a pleasing and interesting reminiscence, even if the story
of Paul’s and Timothy’s tenancy of the crypt be a monkish figment. And
this I am loath to admit.