MEMORIES OF THE PANTHEON
If you stand before San Pietro in Montorio and look down from the
spot where St. Peter was crucified, you will see, rounding up in the
low-lying heart of the city, a dome, white, huge, uncrowned, standing
out from the darker buildings round it like an enormous mother-of-pearl
shell, softly iridescent, yet, when storm is in the air, taking on a
grey and deathlike hue. That is the Pantheon, and thus it has stood,
reflecting every mood of the Roman sky, since the days of Hadrian, who
became Emperor in the year 117. Hadrian built the magic dome, but it is
not his name that stands out in the gigantic lettering on the pediment
over the portico. Ninety years before his time, Marcus Agrippa, the
intimate friend and (for his sins!) the son-in-law of Augustus, erected
a magnificent temple close to the Baths which still bear his name in
the Campus Martius, the field of which my brother has told the touching
story in “Ave Roma Immortalis.” Agrippa must have forgotten to properly
propitiate the gods; we moderns should say that he “had no luck,”
for his gorgeous temple was soon struck by lightning and presented a
forlorn appearance when Hadrian, that enthusiastic builder, decided to
restore it.
This he did on his usual princely scale; when he had done with it, the
Pantheon (properly “Pantheum,” “all-holy”) must indeed have dazzled the
eyes of the beholders, for the dome was entirely covered with tiles
of gilt bronze that under the rays of the sun made it seem a second
sun that had come to rest on earth. The gilt tiles were stripped off
in 663 by a greedy little Emperor, Constans II, who took them away to
Syracuse, whence the Saracens successfully looted them a few years
afterwards. So the thing that looks like mother-of-pearl is really
only covered with sheets of lead—but even lead, when the heavens have
looked on it long enough, may become a thing of life and beauty. When
Hadrian had finished his building there was nothing left of Agrippa’s
original one except the portico; but Hadrian, with rare moderation,
left the original founder’s name on that. The Pantheon, which is called
by archæologists “the most perfect pagan monument in Rome,” seems to
have been, in its beginnings, unfortunate, for only sixty-four years
after Hadrian’s death it again stood sadly in need of repair, if we
may believe the magniloquent inscription left on its front by Septimus
Severus and his son, Caracalla, when they had carried out their pious
designs of further restoration.
But it remains Hadrian’s best monument, substantially what he made it,
a vast and perfect round under a vast and perfect dome, a place where
the winds of heaven may sweep down from the central opening—thirty feet
across—overhead, and circle round the wide well of the interior and
rise to the sky again without having encountered the shock of a single
angle on their way. And for more than seventeen hundred and fifty
years the rain has fallen and the sun has shone, and the stars have
looked down on Hadrian’s pavement through the great opening, whence
worshippers now, like the worshippers in his time, could raise their
eyes and thoughts to the vault of heaven above.
But for two hundred years—as if to partly balance the three centuries
of persecution which had preceded them—the Pantheum was closed and
none were permitted to pray there, two hundred years during which the
silence was never broken, and stars and sun and winds had their way in
the stupendous empty fane. It was the Emperor Honorius of inglorious
memory who closed and sealed its bronze doors—the same that guard
it now (and perhaps this and a few other such acts, which showed him
at heart a sincere believer, should be remembered to his attenuated
credit), preferring to have it abandoned altogether rather than used
for the service of idols. And so it stood, a beautiful reproach, from
399 to 609, when our Pope Boniface told the Emperor Phocas that it
was a burning shame not to wash it of pagan stains and consecrate it a
church of the Lord.
Phocas—that blood-stained figure who emerges now and then to surprise
us by some memorable action—said the Pope was right, and gave him
the building to do with it as he liked. And then Boniface carried out
the great plan which must have been simmering in his brain for years.
The temple, built for the seven deities of the seven planets, was to
become the shrine of the bodies of the Saints and be consecrated to
the one True God, under the title of “St. Mary of the Martyrs.” Under
that perfect dome of exactly equal height and diameter (142 feet)
he would finally lay to rest all the sacred remains which were still
buried in the Catacombs all round the city. But there was much to do
first. The rich architectural disposition of the interior required no
alteration beyond the erection of a High Altar; the great window to
the sky Boniface would not close; when dust and rubbish were cleared
away the material preparations were over, but the tremendous ceremony
of purification and consecration had yet to be accomplished. For these
the illustrious predecessors of Boniface had been inspired to draw up
a ceremonial of such profound meaning and glorious diction as remains
matchless in the annals of the Liturgy.
We can only see it now with the eyes of the spirit, but, even while
trying to do that, we must not let the magnificence of the external
function make us forget that which the Church so lovingly and
repeatedly impresses upon us—first, that there is but one Sanctuary
_worthy_ of the Most High, His Throne and dwelling in the inaccessible
light of the Fixed Heaven, round which all universes that the human
mind can grasp revolve, like starry spindrift round a living sun; and,
secondly, that the home God has built for Himself on earth and loves
with the most passionate tenderness is the heart of the Christian,
where He will abide for time and eternity if it do not cast Him out.
The chief object of ecclesiastical architecture is to symbolize the
grandeur of the union between the soul and its Creator; as such, and as
the storehouse and dispensary of graces, the banqueting-hall where He
feeds us with Himself, the arsenal where He arms us for the combat and
trains us for His soldiers, where, in His surpassing love and mercy, He
deigns to remain in the adorable Eucharist, the consecrated Church is
the crown of human production, and rightly do we strain every nerve to
make it rich and noble and fair.
When that is done, and all that men can give has been lavished on
beautifying and enriching it, it has to be cleansed from every blemish
of earthy contact before it can be offered to the service of God. When
we wander through the Cathedrals of the world, Westminster Abbey,
Strasburg, Notre Dame, Milan, asking ourselves how mere men ever
attained to the production of such beauty and grandeur, do we ever stop
to think that those towering walls were washed from vault to pavement,
within and without, with holy oil, on the day of consecration?
The Cathedral was the symbol of the soul, and every act and prayer of
the ceremonial depicted for our fore-fathers—so well instructed in the
truths we first take for granted and then forget—the processes by which
God confers on us the gift of immortality. On the eve of the great day
all left the building, the new doors were closed, no step sounded on
the pavement, no voice might break the stillness of the place. It was
a dead thing waiting for life, as the soul that is not united to God
waits, under its inherited burden of sinfulness, for regeneration.
Outside the precincts a great tent has been erected, and here, all
through the night, the Bishop and his assistants have been praying the
prayers of David the great penitent. All night long the penitential
psalms have been going up, beseeching the Lord to wash away the sins
of His people, His exiles on earth who are waiting without the camp
and entreating Him to take them into grace and bring them to their
Father’s home. With the first faint light of dawn the prayers cease,
the supplicants arise, and the Bishop puts on his vestments, one by one
and with a special prayer for each, because he thus figures the Son of
God putting on the garment of our humanity. And because Christ, as man,
prayed to His Father and ours, the Bishop comes forth from the tent and
prostrates himself before the steps of the church in fervent prayer,
with all his clergy kneeling around him.
Now the natural soul is cold and blind, and closed to Grace; so the
church stands, unlighted and with fast-closed doors. And because the
Spirit of God is all gentleness and mercy, and condescends to most
patient stratagems to capture the heart He covets, the Bishop goes
three times round the great building, praying and knocking softly at
its doors, while the clergy follow him and pray too, as the angels pray
for us. At last the first barrier falls; the doors open, reluctantly
as it were. The Bishop crosses the threshold saying, “Peace eternal to
this House, in the Name of the Eternal.” The procession passes within,
the shadows swallowing up the gold and crimson of the vestments that
had been sparkling in the sun.
A strange sight the empty church presents now. On the pavement two
broad paths of ashes traverse its entire length and breadth, in the
form of a Greek cross. The assistants stand in silent groups while
the Bishop, slowly moving down from the apse to the entrance, and then
across from one transept to the other, traces in the ashes the Latin
and Greek alphabets with his crozier. Why? Because the first need of
the soul is instruction. “How shall they know except they first be
taught?” And since God will not take possession of a soul without its
own concurrence and consent, it must know Him before it receives Him.
Knowledge brings the desire for purification from sin, original or
actual; and now the church, the symbol of the soul, must be purified.
The Bishop mingles wine with water, to denote the Humanity and the
Divinity of Christ; to these he adds ashes to commemorate His death,
and salt as an emblem of His resurrection; the mystic flood is poured
in waves over the altar, and thence all down the pavement of the
church, while hundreds of acolytes scale the ladders placed against
the walls and the mystic liquid runs down them in glistening sheets
to mingle with the mimic ripples on the floor. Let it run. When it has
drained away the holy oil flows golden and fragrant over the carved and
gleaming walls, and pious hands are applying it to the exterior of the
building—sometimes even to its roof—in copious floods.
Now indeed the church is ready for its destiny, even as the Christian
emerges from Baptism ready for his God. The chants swell louder and
sweeter, the Alleluia rings out triumphantly from a thousand hearts,
the incense sends up its first perfumed spirals to hang among the
fretted arches of the deep vault; the sub-deacons approach the Pontiff
and offer for his blessing the rich vessels and vestments which are the
wedding presents of the Faithful to the new-born Bride of Christ—the
House is ready for the Master and His guests.
The guests are waiting still in the exiles’ tent, with Knights
and Prelates for their Guard of Honour. Such nobility could not be
entertained save in a spotless mansion. Their names? Oh, they had
many—Greek and Latin and Persian and Armenian—besides the “wonderful
new names” that had been given them in heaven, for these guests were
Holy Martyrs, and their relics were to be placed in the stone of
the High Altar, because the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass must always
be offered on them to-day, even as when the fervent yet trembling
Christian knelt before their tombs in the catacombs, and the doomed
priest asked the Lord to accept the sacrifice in honour of those whom
perhaps he had laid there an hour before.
Oh, the adorable continuity of the Church! In my eyrie in the Rockies,
one of the loneliest spots on earth, there came to my door quite
unexpectedly one summer evening—it was June 28—a missionary priest,
very tired. He had driven some hundred and fifty miles to get to us;
his game little horses, his buggy, his coat—everything about him was
covered with dust, but his eyes beamed with benevolence as he said,
“I have come to say Mass for you.” We could have kissed his feet. The
next morning, very early, in the sitting-room that was a bower of wild
flowers, my son and I knelt and watched him prepare the altar. From
his worn portmanteau the first thing he drew out was a square of white
alabaster of which the centre had been removed, replaced, and sealed
with a cross sunk into the stone. Very reverently he slipped it under
the white linen “corporal,” lighted the blessed candles on either
side—and began “Introibo ad altare Dei.”
[Illustration: ROME. THE PANTHEON.]
The alabaster square contained relics of the Martyrs;—and our humble
home-made altar was, through them, His friends, as worthy of Him who
was about to descend upon it as the High Altar of St. Peter’s on that
morning of his Feast in Rome.
When St. Boniface cleansed and consecrated the Pantheon, he showed, in
the name he gave it, that it was to be the shrine of many valiant ones,
a shrine of which, more truly than of any of our battlefields, it could
be said:
“On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards, with solemn round,
The Bivouac of the Dead!”
But one almost doubts whether the Pontiff himself appreciated the
magnitude of the task he had undertaken. In person he went through
the many catacombs, for he was resolved that no smallest, humblest
hero of the Lord should miss his share of the final triumph. He had
had great cars prepared, decked with all possible richness, to convey
the precious remains, which had so long held the outposts of the city,
to the Pantheon in its very heart; but when he had gone through all
the dark, intricate passages of the underground cemeteries, tapping
at the walls and examining every atom of surface that might conceal
a once-proscribed tomb, I think his artificers must have had to build
more chariots for the returning army than they had expected, for it was
very great.
At last, however, all was ready. It was May 13, A.D. 609, and a
glorious morning, when the converging processions set forth, met, and
entered the city in triumph. The Pontiff in his splendid vestments
led the procession, swelled as it went along by all the inhabitants
of Rome. Long, serried ranks of prelates, priests, and monks followed
him, carrying tall lighted tapers that gleamed but faintly in the Roman
sun; the air was sweet with fragrances that grew stronger as the convoy
passed along the flower-strewn streets, and the perfume of hundreds of
censers swung up on the bright air. Rome was poor then, but the Romans
had still found blue and crimson tapestries to hang from the windows,
and every portico and window was crowded with eager onlookers who, as
the procession approached, took up the roar of welcome with which the
city greeted its dead.
But I think a hush fell when the dead came into sight at the turn of
the street or the entrance of the square, and the enormous cars moved
nearer, their dear terrible burden piled high above the sides, and
covered with silks and flowers through which here and there showed just
enough of a coffin’s outline to wring the heart and let loose a rain of
tears. “Twenty-seven great cars filled with the bones of the Martyrs
did Boniface the Pope bring to the Pantheum now consecrated to the
service of God and the honour of the Blessed Virgin.”
Truly may that splendid temple, open to the sky, claim its title
of “St. Mary of the Martyrs,” and rightly did the Pontiff and his
followers, as they brought them in, raise the triumphal shout, “The
Saints shall rejoice in their beds! Arise, ye friends of God, and enter
into the glory He has prepared for His elect!”
After all these great names it seems strange to have to record a
very humble one, that of a poor working-man, in connection with the
Pantheon, but I can never pass the famous church without remembering
a certain Giovanni Borgi whose memory was held in great benediction in
Rome in my young days.
During the preceding century the city was really in a fairly peaceful
and prosperous condition, but the many institutions of charity
which flourished under Gregory XVI and Pius IX had not reached the
point where they could provide night refuges for its many waifs and
vagrants. There were numbers of poor boys—street Arabs, as we should
call them—who wandered about in the daytime, earning a little here
and there, but subsisting chiefly on charity and having no fixed
dwelling-place of any kind. To these the broad steps and portico of the
Pantheon offered at least shelter from the weather, and they used to
gather there in crowds after dark, and sleep—as boys can sleep—on the
stones.
Now there was in Rome, towards 1780 or thereabouts, a poor mason
called Giovanni Borgi. He belonged to the “opera di San Pietro”—that
is, he was one of the workmen engaged for life by the administration
of St. Peter’s for the maintenance and repair of the Basilica, the
Vatican Palace and its many dependent buildings. The “opera” was a
close corporation and included artisans of every necessary craft, from
mosaic workers to bricklayers, plumbers, and carpenters. Of course
the privileges were largely hereditary, the Italian traditions of
Guilds leading the son to follow the trade or profession of his father
whenever possible, but high character and a blameless record were also
indispensable qualifications for every appointment.
Giovanni Borgi, though poor and almost illiterate, had worked all his
life in the holy places and was regarded by his fellows as very nearly
a saint. While he worked he prayed, and when working hours were over he
went regularly to the great Hospital of Santo Spirito in the “Borgo”
and sat up late into the night nursing the sick and comforting the
dying. The only reproach ever addressed to him was that he sometimes
got sleepy over his work the morning after some unusually long vigil
by the bedside of some sufferer who had entreated him to remain with
him. Everybody loved the queer little man, and he loved all the world
but himself. To this person he never gave a thought. Heaven had made
him short and stumpy—but he could walk as well as the youngest; he had
but one eye—but its sight was perfect; a funny bald head—but somebody
had given him an old wig to cover it with; what was there to complain
about? So, being empty of itself, his heart had room for others, and he
took his fellow-beings’ wants and sufferings very seriously.
One evening, before going to the hospital, he was accompanying a
religious procession through the streets, when he noticed the dark
forms of a little crowd of sleepers on the steps of the Pantheon.
Coming nearer, he found that they were boys of various ages, ragged
and forlorn, huddled together for warmth, and sound asleep. A little
farther on, under the tables where fowls were sold in the daytime,
more of these waifs had taken refuge. The sight grieved the good mason
deeply. He could not pass on and leave them thus. Rousing some of them,
he asked many questions and learnt that not one of them had a home or
a guardian. Orphans, runaway boys from the hill villages, waifs of
one sort and another—here was one of those collections of abandoned
children who would later become criminals unless some kind hand were
stretched out to save them. Giovanni did not hesitate for a moment. He
bade the little crowd follow him to his lodging. There was one of those
great ground-floor rooms only used for storing properties or cattle—no
Roman will sleep near the ground if he can help it, for fear of
fever—and in this barn-like place Giovanni bestowed his ragged guests
after giving them whatever he could beg or buy for their supper.
I do not think he went to the hospital at all that night. I fancy
he sat long in the brick-floored room, staring at the three wicks of
the “lucerna” and begging Heaven to show him what to do next. In the
morning he had to let his flock out, promising them some supper if they
would come back at nightfall, and exhorting them to be good meanwhile.
The poor little creatures needed no second invitation and turned up
faithfully, their numbers swelled by others to whom they had spoken
of their good luck. Giovanni saw that he would soon have a community
on his hands, and went to tell some priests, who were his friends,
that he must be helped to teach and govern as well as to maintain the
forsaken children. For their food—breakfast and supper—he begged, and
the kind-hearted neighbours responded generously. His first care was to
teach them the catechism, sitting among them in the evening and getting
them to talk about themselves; he also taught them what little he knew
of reading and writing; but it hurt him sorely to turn them out to face
all the temptations of the streets during the daytime.
Very soon the priests and some other charitable persons raised money
to rent a part of an old palace, somewhat in ill repair, but providing
luxurious quarters in comparison to the church steps and the fowl
market. The priests offered to devote their evenings to teaching the
boys, and found their efforts well rewarded, for the waifs, under
the kind, firm rule of old Giovanni, were eager to make the best
of their wonderful new advantages. He very soon solved the question
of occupation during the daytime by placing them out in a number of
workshops, where they could learn useful trades and earn something
towards their own maintenance. He sent them out in the morning, giving
each a loaf of bread to take with him for dinner; then he went to his
own work at St. Peter’s. During the dinner hour he would rush round
from one workshop to another to see that his “children” were behaving
themselves and that none had played truant. Then in the evening he
would go and fetch those of whose steadfastness he had any doubts, and
by nightfall the whole big family was safely housed in the corner of
the old Palazzo.
Whatever they had earned during the day had to be rendered up to “Tata
Giovanni” (Daddy John), as they had come to call him, and very dearly
they came to love their queer, kind protector. Old people used to
describe his taking them all out to Villa Borghese on holidays, and
said it was wonderful to see the old fellow flying round, playing ball
with the rest, his wig all awry and his mighty laugh showing how happy
he was with his children.
His good work had found friends and supporters from the beginning,
and being brought to the notice of Pius VI, the pontiff bought the
Palazzo Ruggia as a permanent home for it, and constituted himself its
chief protector. Thus encouraged, Tata Giovanni started on a crusade
which had for its object nothing less than the reclamation of all the
good-for-nothing boys in Rome! He used to seek them out and follow them
up, and if persuasion proved unavailing the dogged old man would seize
them by the arm and march them off to his “Asilo” without more ado.
Vagrancy, mendicancy, gambling roused his ire to such an extent that
his name became a terror to all youthful evil-doers, and they would fly
at the mere mention of it.
Life at the Asilo was conducted on lines of military precision. The
youngsters rose early, heard Mass, got a good breakfast, and marched
away to their work, where, as I have said, their guardian looked in on
some of them—and they never knew which it would be—during the course of
the day. When the Ave Maria rang they all came home, and as they passed
into the house, Tata Giovanni stood at the door with a bag in his hand,
and into this they had to drop their earnings—not a baiocco was to be
spent on the way or kept back!
Then came the lessons, followed by the rosary, and supper, this last
the crown of the day for the tired, healthy young people. The old
ideals still found many followers in those days, and it was not at all
unusual to see some great Cardinal “gird himself with a towel” and
trot humbly a score of times between the kitchen and the refectory
to wait on the boys. There were a hundred of them by this time, and
great was Daddy John’s preoccupation as to their morals. Long inured to
shortening his hours of sleep, he would pace the dormitories all night
long to see that all was as it should be, only sleeping himself for a
short hour in the morning; and certainly Heaven blessed his efforts,
for as years went on, and his waifs grew old enough to go out into the
world on their own account and others took their places, not one that I
ever heard of brought discredit on his education.
The sick at the hospital were not forgotten amid all these new labours
and responsibilities; Tata Giovanni (no one ever called him anything
else) went to them whenever he could, and when he could not he would
send some of the older boys in his place, thus teaching them the lesson
which had been the moral of his whole life—that no one must live for
himself alone, and that the poorest and most ignorant can always find
some sufferer to cheer and console. He died at last, the good, humble
old workman, fifteen years after he had strayed from the procession to
inspect the ragged sleepers on the steps of the Pantheon. He passed
away on June 28, 1798. The whole city mourned for him, and his boys
were broken-hearted. His work of love had become a public institution,
and, incorporated with another of the same kind, lived till a few years
ago, when it was swept aside and swallowed up with hundreds of other
beneficent foundations in the “indiscriminate brigandage” of Rome’s
latest rulers.
Several years after Tata Giovanni’s death a young gentleman of noble
birth, who came from Sinigaglia, was appointed the director of the
Asilo. It was not a distinguished appointment by any means; of course
no salary was attached to the position—it was not till the recent
laicization of charity that any but unpaid volunteers attended to the
wants of the poor in the Eternal City. That made no difference to this
handsome young man, for he came of a wealthy family, but his father,
who had had great ambitions for his son, was by no means pleased to
see him buried in an orphan asylum. The young man himself was suffering
under great despondency. He desired with all his heart to be a priest,
but his health was so bad that the Bishop did not think it wise to
ordain him. As a child he had suffered a severe shock from falling
into the water and narrowly escaping drowning, and ever since his
early youth he had suffered from sharp attacks of epilepsy, terrible
in themselves and yet more terrible in the constant dread that hung
over their victim, who never knew when he might be struck down by the
fearful visitation.
Very gladly did Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti of Sinigaglia accept the
charge of the Asilo which he had already constantly visited as a helper
and instructor. And here, for four years, he who was to become Pius
IX lived with the orphans, subsisted on their rough fare and devoted
all his powers to making forsaken lads into good Christians and useful
citizens. Workshops were now installed in the Asilo itself, and the
higher arts went hand in hand with humble trades, each boy’s talent and
inclinations being carefully observed and consulted.
Many good artists and good workmen were given to the world by the
orphanage which had such humble beginnings, but for many of us
its chief interest lies in its connection with the Pope, to whom
it furnished the first opportunity of developing those gifts of
organization and command that later served humanity so well. Here he
waited, a humble postulant on the threshold of the priesthood; here
he prayed, as we know, those fervent, almost heart-broken prayers that
God would remove the infirmity which darkened his life and barred his
way to the Altar; it was to his little room in the Asilo that he was
brought back one night, apparently dying, having been struck down by
one of those fearful attacks in the street. From here he used to go,
day after day, to one or another of the city’s holy places to pray
for relief or resignation; from here he started on the pilgrimage to
Loreto, where the first light broke across the darkness and he received
the divine assurance that his prayers were heard, that the affliction
was about to pass away.
It was, finally, in the little Church of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami
(St. Joseph of the Carpenters) close to the Orphanage of Tata Giovanni,
that he said his first Mass, on Easter Sunday, April 11, 1819. It was
a very quiet affair, only a few near relations and his beloved orphans
assisting at it. His uncle Paulinus, who was a Canon of St. Peter’s
and who had been his tutor in sacred studies, stood beside him all
through, for the Pope had only consented to the young man’s ordination
on condition that he would never celebrate the Holy Mysteries unless
accompanied by another priest. This command the Pontiff rescinded soon
afterwards at Father Mastai’s earnest request. He felt assured that
his malady would trouble him no more, and Pius VII, in reply, said,
“I also believe that, my son.” From that moment, during his long and
eventful life, Giovanni Maria Mastai never suffered from any recurrence
of the attacks which had, to outward seeming, saddened so many years
of his life, but in reality had preserved and prepared him for his true
vocation.