him. As he looked about him, and formed a more and more complete idea of
his surroundings, his first stupefaction at finding the reality so
different from the embellished accounts of story-tellers and poets, his
disillusion at being plunged into such rudely excavated mole-burrows,
gave way to fraternal emotion. It was not that he thought of the fifteen
hundred martyrs whose sacred bones had rested there. But how humble,
resigned, yet full of hope had been those who had chosen such a place of
sepulchre! Those low, darksome galleries were but temporary
sleeping-places for the Christians. If they did not burn the bodies of
their dead, as the Pagans did, it was because, like the Jews, they
believed in the resurrection of the body; and it was that lovely idea of
sleep, of tranquil rest after a just life, whilst awaiting the celestial
reward, which imparted such intense peacefulness, such infinite charm, to
the black, subterranean city. Everything there spoke of calm and silent
night; everything there slumbered in rapturous quiescence, patient until
the far-off awakening. What could be more touching than those terra-cotta
tiles, those marble slabs, which bore not even a name--nothing but the
words /In Pace/--at peace. Ah! to be at peace--life's work at last
accomplished; to sleep in peace, to hope in peace for the advent of
heaven! And the peacefulness seemed the more delightful as it was enjoyed
in such deep humility. Doubtless the diggers worked chance-wise and
clumsily; the craftsmen no longer knew how to engrave a name or carve a
palm or a dove. Art had vanished; but all the feebleness and ignorance
were instinct with the youth of a new humanity. Poor and lowly and meek
ones swarmed there, reposing beneath the soil, whilst up above the sun
continued its everlasting task. You found there charity and fraternity
and death; husband and wife often lying together with their offspring at
their feet; the great mass of the unknown submerging the personage, the
bishop, or the martyr; the most touching equality--that springing from
modesty--prevailing amidst all that dust, with compartments ever similar
and slabs destitute of ornament, so that rows and rows of the sleepers
mingled without distinctive sign. The inscriptions seldom ventured on a
word of praise, and then how prudent, how delicate it was: the men were
very worthy, very pious: the women very gentle, very beautiful, very
chaste. A perfume of infancy arose, unlimited human affection spread:
this was death as understood by the primitive Christians--death which hid
itself to await the resurrection, and dreamt no more of the empire of the
world!
And all at once before Pierre's eyes arose a vision of the sumptuous
tombs of the Appian Way, displaying the domineering pride of a whole
civilisation in the sunlight--tombs of vast dimensions, with a profusion
of marbles, grandiloquent inscriptions, and masterpieces of
sculptured-work. Ah! what an extraordinary contrast between that pompous
avenue of death, conducting, like a highway of triumph, to the regal
Eternal City, when compared with the subterranean necropolis of the
Christians, that city of hidden death, so gentle, so beautiful, and so
chaste! Here only quiet slumber, desired and accepted night, resignation
and patience were to be found. Millions of human beings had here laid
themselves to rest in all humility, had slept for centuries, and would
still be sleeping here, lulled by the silence and the gloom, if the
living had not intruded on their desire to remain in oblivion so long as
the trumpets of the Judgment Day did not awaken them. Death had then
spoken of Life: nowhere had there been more intimate and touching life
than in these buried cities of the unknown, lowly dead. And a mighty
breath had formerly come from them--the breath of a new humanity destined
to renew the world. With the advent of meekness, contempt for the flesh,
terror and hatred of nature, relinquishment of terrestrial joys, and a
passion for death, which delivers and opens the portals of Paradise,
another world had begun. And the blood of Augustus, so proud of purpling
in the sunlight, so fired by the passion for sovereign dominion, seemed
for a moment to disappear, as if, indeed, the new world had sucked it up
in the depths of its gloomy sepulchres.
However, the Trappist insisted on showing the ladies the steps of
Diocletian, and began to tell them the legend. "Yes," said he, "it was a
miracle. One day, under that emperor, some soldiers were pursuing several
Christians, who took refuge in these catacombs; and when the soldiers
followed them inside the steps suddenly gave way, and all the persecutors
were hurled to the bottom. The steps remain broken to this day. Come and
see them; they are close by."
But the ladies were quite overcome, so affected by their prolonged
sojourn in the gloom and by the tales of death which the Trappist had
poured into their ears that they insisted on going up again. Moreover,
the candles were coming to an end. They were all dazzled when they found
themselves once more in the sunlight, outside the little hut where
articles of piety and souvenirs were sold. The girl bought a paper
weight, a piece of marble on which was engraved the fish symbolical of
"Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour of Mankind."
On the afternoon of that same day Pierre decided to visit St. Peter's. He
had as yet only driven across the superb piazza with its obelisk and twin
fountains, encircled by Bernini's colonnades, those four rows of columns
and pilasters which form a girdle of monumental majesty. At the far end
rises the basilica, its facade making it look smaller and heavier than it
really is, but its sovereign dome nevertheless filling the heavens.
Pebbled, deserted inclines stretched out, and steps followed steps, worn
and white, under the burning sun; but at last Pierre reached the door and
went in. It was three o'clock. Broad sheets of light streamed in through
the high square windows, and some ceremony--the vesper service, no
doubt--was beginning in the Capella Clementina on the left. Pierre,
however, heard nothing; he was simply struck by the immensity of the
edifice, as with raised eyes he slowly walked along. At the entrance came
the giant basins for holy water with their boy-angels as chubby as
Cupids; then the nave, vaulted and decorated with sunken coffers; then
the four cyclopean buttress-piers upholding the dome, and then again the
transepts and apsis, each as large as one of our churches. And the proud
pomp, the dazzling, crushing splendour of everything, also astonished
him: he marvelled at the cupola, looking like a planet, resplendent with
the gold and bright colours of its mosaic-work, at the sumptuous
/baldacchino/ of bronze, crowning the high altar raised above the very
tomb of St. Peter, and whence descend the double steps of the Confession,
illumined by seven and eighty lamps, which are always kept burning. And
finally he was lost in astonishment at the extraordinary profusion of
marble, both white and coloured. Oh! those polychromatic marbles,
Bernini's luxurious passion! The splendid pavement reflecting the entire
edifice, the facings of the pilasters with their medallions of popes, the
tiara and the keys borne aloft by chubby angels, the walls covered with
emblems, particularly the dove of Innocent X, the niches with their
colossal statues uncouth in taste, the /loggie/ and their balconies, the
balustrade and double steps of the Confession, the rich altars and yet
richer tombs--all, nave, aisles, transepts, and apsis, were in marble,
resplendent with the wealth of marble; not a nook small as the palm of
one's hand appearing but it showed the insolent opulence of marble. And
the basilica triumphed, beyond discussion, recognised and admired by
every one as the largest and most splendid church in the whole world--the
personification of hugeness and magnificence combined.
Pierre still wandered on, gazing, overcome, as yet not distinguishing
details. He paused for a moment before the bronze statue of St. Peter,
seated in a stiff, hierarchical attitude on a marble pedestal. A few of
the faithful were there kissing the large toe of the Saint's right foot.
Some of them carefully wiped it before applying their lips; others, with
no thought of cleanliness, kissed it, pressed their foreheads to it, and
then kissed it again. Next, Pierre turned into the transept on the left,
where stand the confessionals. Priests are ever stationed there, ready to
confess penitents in every language. Others wait, holding long staves,
with which they lightly tap the heads of kneeling sinners, who thereby
obtain thirty days' indulgence. However, there were few people present,
and inside the small wooden boxes the priests occupied their leisure time
in reading and writing, as if they were at home. Then Pierre again found
himself before the Confession, and gazed with interest at the eighty
lamps, scintillating like stars. The high altar, at which the Pope alone
can officiate, seemed wrapped in the haughty melancholy of solitude under
its gigantic, flowery /baldacchino/, the casting and gilding of which
cost two and twenty thousand pounds. But suddenly Pierre remembered the
ceremony in the Capella Clementina, and felt astonished, for he could
hear nothing of it. As he drew near a faint breath, like the far-away
piping of a flute, was wafted to him. Then the volume of sound slowly
increased, but it was only on reaching the chapel that he recognised an
organ peal. The sunlight here filtered through red curtains drawn before
the windows, and thus the chapel glowed like a furnace whilst resounding
with the grave music. But in that huge pile all became so slight, so
weak, that at sixty paces neither voice nor organ could be distinguished.
On entering the basilica Pierre had fancied that it was quite empty and
lifeless. There were, however, some people there, but so few and far
between that their presence was not noticed. A few tourists wandered
about wearily, guide-book in hand. In the grand nave a painter with his
easel was taking a view, as in a public gallery. Then a French seminary
went by, conducted by a prelate who named and explained the tombs. But in
all that space these fifty or a hundred people looked merely like a few
black ants who had lost themselves and were vainly seeking their way. And
Pierre pictured himself in some gigantic gala hall or tremendous
vestibule in an immeasurable palace of reception. The broad sheets of
sunlight streaming through the lofty square windows of plain white glass
illumined the church with blending radiance. There was not a single stool
or chair: nothing but the superb, bare pavement, such as you might find
in a museum, shining mirror-like under the dancing shower of sunrays. Nor
was there a single corner for solitary reflection, a nook of gloom and
mystery, where one might kneel and pray. In lieu thereof the sumptuous,
sovereign dazzlement of broad daylight prevailed upon every side. And, on
thus suddenly finding himself in this deserted opera-house, all aglow
with flaring gold and purple, Pierre could but remember the quivering
gloom of the Gothic cathedrals of France, where dim crowds sob and
supplicate amidst a forest of pillars. In presence of all this ceremonial
majesty--this huge, empty pomp, which was all Body--he recalled with a
pang the emaciate architecture and statuary of the middle ages, which
were all Soul. He vainly sought for some poor, kneeling woman, some
creature swayed by faith or suffering, yielding in a modest half-light to
thoughts of the unknown, and with closed lips holding communion with the
invisible. These he found not: there was but the weary wandering of the
tourists, and the bustle of the prelates conducting the young priests to
the obligatory stations; while the vesper service continued in the
left-hand chapel, nought of it reaching the ears of the visitors save,
perhaps, a confused vibration, as of the peal of a bell penetrating from
outside through the vaults above.
And Pierre then understood that this was the splendid skeleton of a
colossus whence life was departing. To fill it, to animate it with a
soul, all the gorgeous display of great religious ceremonies was needed;
the eighty thousand worshippers which it could hold, the great pontifical
pomps, the festivals of Christmas and Easter, the processions and
/corteges/ displaying all the luxury of the Church amidst operatic
scenery and appointments. And he tried to conjure up a picture of the
past magnificence--the basilica overflowing with an idolatrous multitude,
and the superhuman /cortege/ passing along whilst every head was lowered;
the cross and the sword opening the march, the cardinals going two by
two, like twin divinities, in their rochets of lace and their mantles and
robes of red moire, which train-bearers held up behind them; and at last,
with Jove-like pomp, the Pope, carried on a stage draped with red velvet,
seated in an arm-chair of red velvet and gold, and dressed in white
velvet, with cope of gold, stole of gold, and tiara of gold. The bearers
of the /Sedia gestatoria/* shone bravely in red tunics broidered with
gold. Above the one and only Sovereign Pontiff of the world the
/flabelli/ waved those huge fans of feathers which formerly were waved
before the idols of pagan Rome. And around the seat of triumph what a
dazzling, glorious court there was! The whole pontifical family, the
stream of assistant prelates, the patriarchs, the archbishops, and the
bishops, with vestments and mitres of gold, the /Camerieri segreti
partecipanti/ in violet silk, the /Camerieri partecipanti/ of the cape
and the sword in black velvet Renascence costumes, with ruffs and golden
chains, the whole innumerable ecclesiastical and laical suite, which not
even a hundred pages of the "Gerarchia" can completely enumerate, the
prothonotaries, the chaplains, the prelates of every class and degree,
without mentioning the military household, the gendarmes with their
busbies, the Palatine Guards in blue trousers and black tunics, the Swiss
Guards costumed in red, yellow, and black, with breastplates of silver,
suggesting the men at arms of some drama of the Romantic school, and the
Noble Guards, superb in their high boots, white pigskins, red tunics,
gold lace, epaulets, and helmets! However, since Rome had become the
capital of Italy the doors were no longer thrown wide open; on the rare
occasions when the Pope yet came down to officiate, to show himself as
the supreme representative of the Divinity on earth, the basilica was
filled with chosen ones. To enter it you needed a card of invitation. You
no longer saw the people--a throng of fifty, even eighty, thousand
Christians--flocking to the Church and swarming within it promiscuously;
there was but a select gathering, a congregation of friends convened as
for a private function. Even when, by dint of effort, thousands were
collected together there, they formed but a picked audience invited to
the performance of a monster concert.
* The chair and stage are known by that name.--Trans.
And as Pierre strolled among the bright, crude marbles in that cold if
gorgeous museum, the feeling grew upon him that he was in some pagan
temple raised to the deity of Light and Pomp. The larger temples of
ancient Rome were certainly similar piles, upheld by the same precious
columns, with walls covered with the same polychromatic marbles and
vaulted ceilings having the same gilded panels. And his feeling was
destined to become yet more acute after his visits to the other
basilicas, which could but reveal the truth to him. First one found the
Christian Church quietly, audaciously quartering itself in a pagan
church, as, for instance, San Lorenzo in Miranda installed in the temple
of Antoninus and Faustina, and retaining the latter's rare porticus in
/cipollino/ marble and its handsome white marble entablature. Then there
was the Christian Church springing from the ruins of the destroyed pagan
edifice, as, for example, San Clemente, beneath which centuries of
contrary beliefs are stratified: a very ancient edifice of the time of
the kings or the republic, then another of the days of the empire
identified as a temple of Mithras, and next a basilica of the primitive
faith. Then, too, there was the Christian Church, typified by that of
Saint Agnes-beyond-the-walls which had been built on exactly the same
pattern as the Roman secular basilica--that Tribunal and Exchange which
accompanied every Forum. And, in particular, there was the Christian
Church erected with material stolen from the demolished pagan temples. To
this testified the sixteen superb columns of that same Saint Agnes,
columns of various marbles filched from various gods; the one and twenty
columns of Santa Maria in Trastevere, columns of all sorts of orders torn
from a temple of Isis and Serapis, who even now are represented on their
capitals; also the six and thirty white marble Ionic columns of Santa
Maria Maggiore derived from the temple of Juno Lucina; and the two and
twenty columns of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, these varying in substance,
size, and workmanship, and certain of them said to have been stolen from
Jove himself, from the famous temple of Jupiter Capitolinus which rose
upon the sacred summit. In addition, the temples of the opulent Imperial
period seemed to resuscitate in our times at San Giovanni in Laterano and
San Paolo-fuori-le-mura. Was not that Basilica of San Giovanni--"the
Mother and Head of all the churches of the city and the earth"--like the
abode of honour of some pagan divinity whose splendid kingdom was of this
world? It boasted five naves, parted by four rows of columns; it was a
profusion of bas-reliefs, friezes, and entablatures, and its twelve
colossal statues of the Apostles looked like subordinate deities lining
the approach to the master of the gods! And did not San Paolo, lately
completed, its new marbles shimmering like mirrors, recall the abode of
the Olympian immortals, typical temple as it was with its majestic
colonnade, its flat, gilt-panelled ceiling, its marble pavement
incomparably beautiful both in substance and workmanship, its violet
columns with white bases and capitals, and its white entablature with
violet frieze: everywhere, indeed, you found, the mingling of those two
colours so divinely carnal in their harmony. And there, as at St.
Peter's, not one patch of gloom, not one nook of mystery where one might
peer into the invisible, could be found! And, withal, St. Peter's
remained the monster, the colossus, larger than the largest of all
others, an extravagant testimony of what the mad passion for the huge can
achieve when human pride, by dint of spending millions, dreams of lodging
the divinity in an over-vast, over-opulent palace of stone, where in
truth that pride itself, and not the divinity, triumphs!
And to think that after long centuries that gala colossus had been the
outcome of the fervour of primitive faith! You found there a blossoming
of that ancient sap, peculiar to the soil of Rome, which in all ages has
thrown up preposterous edifices, of exaggerated hugeness and dazzling and
ruinous luxury. It would seem as if the absolute masters successively
ruling the city brought that passion for cyclopean building with them,
derived it from the soil in which they grew, for they transmitted it one
to the other, without a pause, from civilisation to civilisation, however
diverse and contrary their minds. It has all been, so to say, a
continuous blossoming of human vanity, a passionate desire to set one's
name on an imperishable wall, and, after being master of the world, to
leave behind one an indestructible trace, a tangible proof of one's
passing glory, an eternal edifice of bronze and marble fit to attest that
glory until the end of time. At the bottom the spirit of conquest, the
proud ambition to dominate the world, subsists; and when all has
crumbled, and a new society has sprung up from the ruins of its
predecessor, men have erred in imagining it to be cured of the sin of
pride, steeped in humility once more, for it has had the old blood in its
veins, and has yielded to the same insolent madness as its ancestors, a
prey to all the violence of its heredity directly it has become great and
strong. Among the illustrious popes there has not been one that did not
seek to build, did not revert to the traditions of the Caesars,
eternising their reigns in stone and raising temples for resting-places,
so as to rank among the gods. Ever the same passion for terrestrial
immortality has burst forth: it has been a battle as to who should leave
the highest, most substantial, most gorgeous monument; and so acute has
been the disease that those who, for lack of means and opportunity, have
been unable to build, and have been forced to content themselves with
repairing, have, nevertheless, desired to bequeath the memory of their
modest achievements to subsequent generations by commemorative marble
slabs engraved with pompous inscriptions! These slabs are to be seen on
every side: not a wall has ever been strengthened but some pope has
stamped it with his arms, not a ruin has been restored, not a palace
repaired, not a fountain cleaned, but the reigning pope has signed the
work with his Roman and pagan title of "Pontifex Maximus." It is a
haunting passion, a form of involuntary debauchery, the fated florescence
of that compost of ruins, that dust of edifices whence new edifices are
ever arising. And given the perversion with which the old Roman soil
almost immediately tarnished the doctrines of Jesus, that resolute
passion for domination and that desire for terrestrial glory which
wrought the triumph of Catholicism in scorn of the humble and pure, the
fraternal and simple ones of the primitive Church, one may well ask
whether Rome has ever been Christian at all!
And whilst Pierre was for the second time walking round the huge
basilica, admiring the tombs of the popes, truth, like a sudden
illumination, burst upon him and filled him with its glow. Ah! those
tombs! Yonder in the full sunlight, in the rosy Campagna, on either side
of the Appian Way--that triumphal approach to Rome, conducting the
stranger to the august Palatine with its crown of circling palaces--there
arose the gigantic tombs of the powerful and wealthy, tombs of
unparalleled artistic splendour, perpetuating in marble the pride and
pomp of a strong race that had mastered the world. Then, near at hand,
beneath the sod, in the shrouding night of wretched mole-holes, other
tombs were hidden--the tombs of the lowly, the poor, and the
suffering--tombs destitute of art or display, but whose very humility
proclaimed that a breath of affection and resignation had passed by, that
One had come preaching love and fraternity, the relinquishment of the
wealth of the earth for the everlasting joys of a future life, and
committing to the soil the good seed of His Gospel, sowing the new
humanity which was to transform the olden world. And, behold, from that
seed, buried in the soil for centuries, behold, from those humble,
unobtrusive tombs, where martyrs slept their last and gentle sleep whilst
waiting for the glorious call, yet other tombs had sprung, tombs as
gigantic and as pompous as the ancient, destroyed sepulchres of the
idolaters, tombs uprearing their marbles among a pagan-temple-like
splendour, proclaiming the same superhuman pride, the same mad passion
for universal sovereignty. At the time of the Renascence Rome became
pagan once more; the old imperial blood frothed up and swept Christianity
away with the greatest onslaught ever directed against it. Ah! those
tombs of the popes at St. Peter's, with their impudent, insolent
glorification of the departed, their sumptuous, carnal hugeness, defying
death and setting immortality upon this earth. There are giant popes of
bronze, allegorical figures and angels of equivocal character wearing the
beauty of lovely girls, of passion-compelling women with the thighs and
the breasts of pagan goddesses! Paul III is seated on a high pedestal,
Justice and Prudence are almost prostrate at his feet. Urban VIII is
between Prudence and Religion, Innocent XI between Religion and Justice,
Innocent XII between Justice and Charity, Gregory XIII between Religion
and Strength. Attended by Prudence and Justice, Alexander VII appears
kneeling, with Charity and Truth before him, and a skeleton rises up
displaying an empty hour-glass. Clement XIII, also on his knees, triumphs
above a monumental sarcophagus, against which leans Religion bearing the
Cross; while the Genius of Death, his elbow resting on the right-hand
corner, has two huge, superb lions, emblems of omnipotence, beneath him.
Bronze bespeaks the eternity of the figures, white marble describes
opulent flesh, and coloured marble winds around in rich draperies,
deifying the monuments under the bright, golden glow of nave and aisles.
And Pierre passed from one tomb to the other on his way through the
magnificent, deserted, sunlit basilica. Yes, these tombs, so imperial in
their ostentation, were meet companions for those of the Appian Way.
Assuredly it was Rome, the soil of Rome, that soil where pride and
domination sprouted like the herbage of the fields that had transformed
the humble Christianity of primitive times, the religion of fraternity,
justice, and hope into what it now was: victorious Catholicism, allied to
the rich and powerful, a huge implement of government, prepared for the
conquest of every nation. The popes had awoke as Caesars. Remote heredity
had acted, the blood of Augustus had bubbled forth afresh, flowing
through their veins and firing their minds with immeasurable ambition. As
yet none but Augustus had held the empire of the world, had been both
emperor and pontiff, master of the body and the soul. And thence had come
the eternal dream of the popes in despair at only holding the spiritual
power, and obstinately refusing to yield in temporal matters, clinging
for ever to the ancient hope that their dream might at last be realised,
and the Vatican become another Palatine, whence they might reign with
absolute despotism over all the conquered nations.
VI