A CHURCH PILGRIMAGE
Church’s Pilgrimage on the Feast of the Apostles—The Seven
Commemorative Churches—The Byzantine Basilica of St. Paul—The
Apostle’s Tomb—Ostian Way, the Saddest of All Roads—The Tideless
Sea—Call of the Unknown, Gorgeous East—Santa Pudentiana, the Site
of St. Paul’s First Abiding Place in Rome—Christianity in Early
Rome—Priest Pastor’s Story of the Pudens Family—Holy Relics—Story
of the Crime of the Vico Scellerato—The Last of the Roman Kings.
From things of the recent past let us turn for a moment to follow a
pilgrimage which the Church makes during the seven days following the
Feast of the Apostles in June and in the course of which she draws our
attention to the seven spots in the Eternal City most closely connected
with their glorious end. These spots had been for long centuries points
of attraction to the Christians who flocked Rome-wards from all over
the world at that time of year, but it was not till 1743 that Benedict
XIV, Prospero Lambertini of Bologna (and the fifth Pontiff born in that
city of learning), laid down the order in which the seven sanctuaries
should be publicly honoured.[10]
In a bull dated April 1, 1743, Benedict decreed that the various
corporations of the hierarchy should take it in turn to honour the
Octave of SS. Peter and Paul by proceeding in state to the Church
designated for the day when a pontifical Mass was to be celebrated,
with the assistance of the whole body of the Pope’s Chair. These seven
Churches are so bound up with the last days of our great Fathers in
the Faith that in passing from one to another it is possible to realise
very vividly the scenes of the tremendous drama enacted in the year of
grace 67 during the last days of Heaven’s patience with the tyranny of
Nero.
Taking them in their order we will leave the Pope, according to his
wish, to say his Mass in St. Peter’s on the 30th of June, and follow
the Apostolic Vicars, his “Assistants of the Throne,” as they go in
state to the Basilica of St. Paul without the Walls. Once that long
road skirting the river was the most crowded of the approaches to the
city, but that was before the Tiber, having gorged itself to congestion
with silt and plunder, had turned aside to find another outlet, when
the galleys could still be rowed up within sight of Rome and tumble out
their freight of grain or marble or wild beasts on the quays that are
deserted to-day. The Ostian Way is the saddest of all roads now; few
ever pass over it; there is but one habitation between the city gate
and the Basilica, nearly two miles distant. The river rolls, yellow
and sullen, to the sea, through flat lowland, reeking with malaria from
the swamps, where the fierce black buffaloes still wander at will, and
vehemently resent the intrusion of a stranger on their domain.
The Basilica to which the Vicars Apostolic of Benedict XIV went in
state was not the one which pilgrims visit now; in the early days it
was the centre of a thriving little town outside the town, the suburb
of Joannopolis, so called from Pope John VII, who founded and fortified
it as a stronghold for the defence of Rome on the side towards the
sea. Built in the time of Constantine, added to through the centuries,
ever more beautified and never defaced, those who saw it tell us that
it was a perfect specimen of the Byzantine Basilica, nobly severe,
making the impression of vast undisturbed spaces for worship, yet in
reality a treasure-house of riches and art. Its mysterious destruction
by fire, scarcely to be accounted for in an erection all of marble
and stone, took place on the 15th of July, 1823, on the last night
of the life of Pius VII, the Pontiff upon whom Napoleon had laid
sacrilegious hands and kept in captivity over five years—a captivity
that in years, months, and days was precise in duration with his own
after-imprisonment at Saint Helena. Dates are curious things!
While Pius VII lay on his deathbed on that night of the 15th of July
(the anniversary of his signing of the Concordat, twenty-two years
earlier), he was greatly distressed by a dream which roused him again
and again from torpor to enquire of his attendants whether some great
calamity had not fallen on Rome. With the dawn came the news of the
burning of the Basilica, but it was kept from him, and he passed away
that day, without learning the truth of that which the clairvoyance of
approaching dissolution had cloudily revealed to him.
Some fragments were saved and incorporated in the new Church which
at once rose to replace the ancient one, of which the Sovereigns of
England were, until the Reformation, proud to call themselves the
titular protectors. The minute description of the original Basilica,
left us by Cardinal Wiseman and others who had seen it, shows how, in
all respects save one, the new one falls short of the earlier beauty
and majesty; but the tomb of St. Paul, the heart of the whole, remains
to us intact, far below the level where fire or storm can rend it,
and the very emptiness and bareness of the great Church above seem to
enhance the awe inspired by that great sarcophagus in the crypt—raised
high from the ground of the deep vault, as on an altar throne, so as
to be above the depredations of the Tiber even in the river’s most
uncontrollable outbreaks.
There, as far as human foresight can discern, the holy, weary relics
will lie till the Judgment Day, resting after all the travel and
shipwrecks, the cold and hunger and strifes of life, and from the
hurried journeys on which they were carried hither and thither, in
search of safety from profanation, after death. There is a loneliness
of grandeur about the character and mission of St. Paul which, in
these ends of time, have come to surround his grave also, and they suit
it well. Often in my girlhood I traversed that desolate road between
the city and the sea, and all the vitality of youth could not avert
the shudder of cold and solitude that came over me in doing so, no
matter how numerous and gay my companions might be. We used to drive
out to Ostia in the spring, when the sea calls so alluringly to its
lovers, and spend long hours under the pines that fringe the beach.
The Tiber abandoned the old port long ago and twists itself into the
Mediterranean a couple of miles north of its original outlet. In April
the stretch of low rolling ground near Castel Fusano is all one field
of wild jonquils that fill the air with perfume, and beyond them there
is nothing but the long forsaken beach and the regular beat of the
tideless sea. I stood there one day on a little rock as far out as I
dared to go, with the waves breaking round my feet, and the west wind
singing in my ears—singing strange songs of far lands that were already
beckoning me away from my Roman home. The sun had sunk towards them,
leaving the sky a dome of green and citron, delicate and dim; the sea
was sullen grey on the hither side, and floating opal in the west; and
when at last I was called back to land, the pines leaned together and
whispered dark things about the destinies of mortal maids who ventured
to listen to the call of the Unknown.
And how it calls me yet—the Unknown that has just flicked its
fringes in my eyes, wafted a ghost of its scent in my nostrils! There
are two of us—I and my first-born—to whom Mother Asia still cries
heart-breakingly through all the stress and all the staleness of
life in the ready-made places. We began our life there together, the
baby who opened his eyes in the white heat of an Asiatic summer, and
I, who had passed from girlhood to motherhood at his coming; we two
knew it, the air of the great plains that reach from Pechili to the
Tundras, from Peking to Lake Oo-nor—and the Altai—the padding of the
camels’ feet in the dust—the smell of camphor and sandal-wood, and
tea-brick—the touch of Siberian sable and silver fox, lighter than
my kiss on his cheek, warmer than my arms around his body—the clang
of the hammer on the bronze, the damp sweetness of the temple courts,
the gleam of rough gold and the blue of the turquoise—the melancholy
eternal splendour of the heart of Asia, the dear raw strength of it
all, uncannily perfumed and terrifyingly sacred, as the scent let loose
from some regal, balm-stuffed tomb! And we go back to Asia and follow
the caravans starting for Nijni Novgorod, and talk with the merchants,
and rest in our own fairy temple among the white pines of the western
hills—for whole nights together sometimes—and the next day return to
our places in the cheap civilised world as if nothing had happened—and
we never tell anybody where we have been!
But we must continue to follow another and more important pilgrimage.
On the 1st of July, the “Apostolic Pronotaries” celebrate the Divine
Mysteries in the Church of Santa Pudentiana, the sanctuary which stands
upon the site of the house where St. Paul lived during his first stay
in Rome from 41 to 50 A.D. It was the property of Pudens, the same,
apparently, whom St. Paul mentions in his second Epistle to Timothy,
together with Eubulus and Linus (afterwards Pope) and Claudia. Pudens
was a wealthy Senator who eagerly embraced the Christian Faith and
brought all his family and household into the Fold. What power they had
for good, those masters of huge households, in the Rome of the First
Century of our era! Doubtless, Pudens, like many others of whom it is
consoling to read even in that age of gross selfishness and cruelty,
had ever been a just man and merciful to his slaves; but what must have
been the rejoicing of the poor bondsmen when he summoned them to listen
to the Apostle and learn that Christ died for all, that He had bought
for each one of them, as fully as for the greatest potentate on earth,
an eternity of happiness in which they would be compensated for all
the privations and sorrows of life! Think what that doctrine meant to
the unfortunate creatures for whom not only life itself with no hope
or intimation of a beyond, but every alleviation of their wretched lot,
depended on the whim of an owner, who, if reasonable and kind himself,
might at any moment sell or present them to another, of the most cruel
and savage character! Even to those of them who did not at once embrace
Christianity the master’s altered convictions must have brought intense
relief and comfort, and, to those who did, it must have been like the
rising of a sun of warmth in darkest, coldest night.
We get a beautiful glimpse into the home life of Christians in those
days in the detailed story of the family of Pudens, left us by the
Priest, Pastor, the brother of Pius I. The friend and host of St.
Paul, having mightily aided the cause of the Faith, was rewarded, it
is believed, with the crown of martyrdom, under Nero, but his son,
also named Pudens, and heir to his virtues as well as his estates,
vigorously continued the good work begun by the father, and brought
up his two daughters, Praxedis and Pudentiana, in the love of God from
their earliest years. Of the manner of his end I have found no record,
though we may be sure it was a happy one; we know that by the time
Pudentiana was sixteen, she and her sister were orphans, the possessors
of great riches, and that they had vowed themselves to the service of
God and His poor.
It was the privilege of wealthy Christians to provide fitting places
for the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries and for the assembling
of catechumens for instruction, whenever a lull in the tempests of
fast-succeeding persecutions made it safe for them to pray and teach
elsewhere than in the Catacombs. Pudentiana, although the younger of
the two sisters and scarcely more than a child when she died, seems to
have been of a most valiant spirit, the one to direct and organise,
while the gentle Praxedis, destined to survive her for some years,
supported and aided her in all things. These two rich girls, in the
flower of their youth, gave all their time to prayer and praise, to
charity and penance. “They desired,” says Pastor, “to have a baptistery
in their house, to which the blessed Pius not only consented, but drew
the plan of the fountain for it with his own hand. Then, calling in
their slaves, both from town and country, the two virgins gave liberty
to those who were Christians, and urged belief in the Faith on those
who had not yet received it. By the advice of the blessed Pius, the
affranchisement was declared, with all the ancient usages, in the
oratory founded by Pudens; then, at the festival of Easter, ninety-six
neophytes were baptised; so that thenceforth assemblies were constantly
held in the said oratory, which resounded with hymns of praise night
and day. Many pagans gladly came thither to find the faith and receive
baptism.
“Meanwhile the Emperor Antoninus, being informed of what was taking
place, issued an edict commanding all Christians to dwell apart in
their own houses, without mixing with the rest of the people; also
forbidding them to go to the public shops or to frequent the baths.
Praxedis and Pudentiana then gathered into their own house those
whom they had led to the faith, and sheltered and nourished them for
many days, all watching and praying. The blessed Bishop Pius himself
frequently visited us with joy, and often offered the Sacrifice for us
to the Saviour.
“Then Pudentiana went to God. Her sister and I wrapped her in perfumes
and kept her concealed in the oratory. Then, at the end of twenty-eight
days, we carried her to the cemetery of Priscilla, and laid her near
her father, Pudens.
“Eleven months after, Novatus[11] died in his turn. He bequeathed
all his goods to Praxedis, and she then begged of St. Pius to erect
a Church in the baths of Novatus, which were no longer used and where
there was a large and spacious hall. The Bishop made the dedication in
the name of the blessed virgin Praxedis herself, and in the same place
he consecrated a baptistery.
“But at the end of two years a great persecution was declared against
the Christians, and many received the crown of martyrdom. Praxedis
concealed a great number of them in her oratory and nourished them
with the food of this world and the Word of God. But the Emperor
Antoninus, having learnt that these meetings took place in the oratory
of Praxedis, caused it to be searched, and many Christians were taken,
especially the Priest Simetrius and twenty-two others, and the blessed
Praxedis collected their bodies by night, and buried them in the
cemetery of Priscilla on the seventh day of the Kalends of June. Then
the virgin of the Saviour, worn out with sorrow, only asked for death.
Her tears and her prayers reached to Heaven, and fifty-four days after
her brethren had suffered she passed to God. And I, Pastor the Priest,
have buried her body near that of her father, Pudens.”[12]
There is nothing that could be added to the Priest Pastor’s story. It
is so complete, so loving, and so illuminating in the gentle charity
with which it tells us that “Pudentiana passed to God.” Not a word of
her cruel death—we know of that from other sources, no complaints about
the rampant hatred which made it necessary to conceal her body for four
weeks before it could be laid beside that of her father in the holy
ground of the Appian Way. All is told without a spark of rancour or an
exclamation of grief—yet when Pastor buried Praxedis beside her sister,
the loving circle to which he had ministered in their house was broken
up, every member of the family was dead, as well as most of the friends
they gathered there; the home had been raided and desecrated, and he
was a marked man, holding himself in readiness for his end.
What strikes one particularly in all the stories of this time is
the resolute veneration with which the Christians, in spite of
all prohibitions, collected the bodies of their slain comrades and
succeeded in burying them in holy ground. The bodies of Pudentiana and
Praxedis were finally restored to their home, already consecrated as a
church, and there we can behold at this day the phials in which they
gathered up the blood of the martyrs. It was the zeal of the valiant
Pudentiana in this work of love which drew down upon her the wrath of
the persecutors and hastened her own death. A hundred years later the
noble Cecilia, with her husband and his brother, suffered for the same
cause, and what thousands had been immolated for it between! Nothing
could daunt the Christian spirit in this regard, and it cannot but
enhance the preciousness of our holy relics to reflect that so many of
our forbears in the Faith preserved them for us at the price of their
own lives.
There are some startling juxtapositions in the topography of old Rome.
But a stone’s throw from the venerable Church of St. Pudentiana is
a spot which, when I was a child, was still regarded by the Romans
as cursed, still known to us as the Vico Scellerato, though I do not
find the name on the modern lists of Roman streets. It was there that
was enacted the last scene of one of the ugliest tragedies in the
records of humanity, a story of crime so appalling that it has survived
twenty-five centuries of oblivion, and is still told, with shudders of
horror, among the poor people of that quarter of the city, even as the
memory of the good Queen Tanaquil is still venerated for her virtue
and wisdom. In these times, when so much instructive old material has
been swept away to make room for the fads and futilities of modern
education, it seems worth while to place the tale on record again.
It opens (as did the history of Hipparchus) with a Greek, one Lucumo,
who drifted to Italy in the days of Ancus Martius. Lucumo was the son
of a native of Corinth, and, on landing in Italy, settled at a town
in the heart of Etruria, called Tarquinii. Doubtless he found friends
and countrymen there, for the Greeks were ever a roving people and,
to judge by the Greek influence so visible in Etruscan Art, must very
early have brought their love of beauty and skill in labour thither.
Tarquinii was a walled city, five miles in circumference, as can
still be seen from the remains near Corneto Tarquinii, the town which
has replaced it. But it was not stirring enough for the venturesome
Lucumo, and, moved perhaps by some such mysterious power as that which,
centuries later, whispered in Alaric’s ear, “Penetrabis ad Urbem,”
travelled southwards and came to Rome, bringing with him his beautiful
Greek wife, Tanaquil, and all his goods, which appear to have been of
great value. It was quite a caravan, therefore, which approached the
northern gate of the city, and one can fancy the hum of excited talk
among children and dependents as they paused to gaze at it.
At that moment a great eagle, flapping along in search of a Campagna
lambkin for its brood in the Sabines, hovered above the travellers for
a moment, its dark wings spread motionless against the blue; then it
darted down, and, snatching the cap from the head of Lucumo, soared
away with it, while all gazed up in awe and consternation, wondering
what the marvel might portend. In an instant another followed. The
eagle, after wheeling aloft, swooped down once more and replaced the
covering on the leader’s head, then flew away and was no more seen. “It
is a happy omen!” cried Tanaquil to her husband, “of this great city
thou shalt one day be King!”
He found a warm welcome in Rome and so endeared himself to the
inhabitants by his generosity and wisdom that when Ancus, the reigning
King, died, they chose Lucumo to replace him. The new King did much to
embellish and fortify the city, and Tanaquil, while sharing his state
and councils, became the model of all Roman matrons, spinning and
weaving the wool for the garments of her family, and clinging in all
her ways to the old simple, frugal ideals; her distaff and spindle, and
her woollen girdle, were preserved for many centuries, and ranked in
importance with the “palladium” and other venerated insignia of Rome’s
power.
One day, as she was crossing the court of the palace, the Queen saw
some of her servants gathered in a group, staring at some object on
the steps leading into the atrium. On approaching she beheld a young
boy of great beauty—Servius Tullius by name—whom she had taken into
her service, lying asleep on the step, while a crown of lambent flame
played above his unconscious head. The servants were terrified, but
Tanaquil, versed in all the Etrurian lore of omen, at once perceived
that he was to be a favourite of the gods. She told her husband that
the boy was destined to great glory, and Lucumo, ever heedful of her
wise counsels, henceforth treated him as a son and educated him with
the greatest care.
Lucumo, whom the Romans by this time called Lucius, had sons of his
own, but the succession, still purely elective, was coveted by the
two sons of his predecessor Ancus. Filled with jealousy of the young
Servius, whose election as his own successor they feared that Lucius
would procure, they laid a trap for the latter by requesting a private
audience with him. When they found themselves alone with the King, now
an aged man—he had reigned forty years—they basely murdered him and
rushed out into the city to tell the people he had died suddenly, and
to sway the populace to make them Kings in his place.
But so great was the mourning for good King Lucius when his death was
announced, that the people gave themselves up to their grief and put
the matter of the election aside. And Tanaquil, the wise woman, caused
it to be proclaimed, in an hour or two, that Lucius was merely stunned
and not dead at all, and that until his recovery should be complete he
desired that Servius should fill his place. Great was the rejoicing
in Rome, and with much alacrity the people put themselves under the
orders of the young Servius, who himself in all things obeyed the noble
Tanaquil. So, for many days, the government was carried on, and when
the people had become accustomed to regarding Servius as their ruler,
Tanaquil told them that her beloved husband had at last succumbed to
his wounds, and that Servius Tullius would in all things follow his
good example if they would elect him as King.
This they gladly did, and he reigned over them in peace and honour
for many years; but, alas! the bright portent of his youth no longer
hovered over his destiny, and dark days were at hand for him and for
Rome. He had two daughters, both called Tullia—the elder good and pure
as Tanaquil, who had now passed away, and the younger with a heart full
of evil and cruelty. These two girls their father had given in marriage
to the two sons of his benefactor Lucius, in hope of securing peace
to the kingdom by thus uniting the families. The two sons of Lucius
presented the same violent contrasts of character as the daughters of
Servius; one was a sinner, the other a saint; and marriage mismated
them, giving the elder Tullia to proud, wicked Lucius Tarquinius, and
her black-hearted younger sister to the good Aruns. The consequences
were soon all too apparent. Lucius fell in love with his brother’s
wife; she responded to his passion; they two conspired to murder their
lawful spouses, carried out their bloodthirsty plot, and then turned
their attention to the removal of the aged Servius from their path to
the throne.
Servius, sprung from the people, had made many enemies among the
nobles by restraining their oppressions, and by championing the
poorer classes, and the wicked Lucius found no difficulty in drawing
discontented men into a plot to kill the King. They waited craftily
till the height of the harvest season, when the able-bodied workingmen
were all busy in the fields outside the city; then, gathering in force
in the Forum, they installed Lucius in the seat from which Servius was
accustomed to judge the causes that were brought before him. Servius
was at once warned of that which was taking place, and hurried on
foot from the royal residence on the so-called Cispian Hill; in haste
to reach the Forum and quell the insurrection, he took the short-cut
through what is now the Via Urbana. At the end of this street he was
met by a band of assassins who hewed him down and left him in his
blood, lying right across the road.
Meanwhile his daughter Tullia had left her own home (now marked by
the Church of St. Peter of the Chains) and bade her charioteer drive
at full speed to her father’s house, of which it was arranged that
she should take possession while the slayers were despatching him. On
reaching the Via Urbana the driver, aghast, pulled up his horses.
“We can go no further on this road, Lady!” he said, pointing to the
body of the murdered King.
“Drive on!” she commanded.
“I cannot—without crushing the King’s body,” he protested.
“Drive on!” she cried, frantic to reach her goal, and the trembling
man obeyed. The wheels bit deep into the yet warm flesh, and dripped
and spattered her father’s blood all along the road which the daughter
followed to reach the stolen throne. And from that day on through all
the ages the thoroughfare was called the Vico Scellerato—the atrocious
road!
Tullia’s son grew up to be “False Sextus,” whose crime forced chaste
Lucrece to take her own life. Then the people rose against the tyrants
and drove them out, to die despised and in exile and never another
“King” ruled in Rome till it opened its dishonoured gates to Victor
Emmanuel in 1870.