Magic is supposed to be a means of communication with beings of another
world. It is scarcely a metaphor to say that Saint Peter's is that. It
is the mere truth and no more, and you can feel that it is if you will
stand, with half-closed eyes, against one of the great pillars, just
within hearing of the voices that sing solemn music in the chapel of the
choir, and make yourself a day-dream of the people that go up the nave
by seeing them a little indistinctly. If you will but remember how much
humanity is like humanity in all ages, you can see the old life again as
it was a hundred years--two, three, five, ten hundred years before that.
If you are fortunate, just then, a score of German seminary students may
pass you, in their scarlet cloth gowns, marching two and two in order,
till they wheel by the right and go down upon their knees with military
precision before the gate of the Chapel of the Sacrament. Or if it be
the day and hour, a procession crosses the church, with lights and song
and rich vestments, and a canopy over the Sacred Host, which the
Cardinal Archpriest himself is carrying reverently before him with
upraised hands hidden under the cope, while the censers swing high to
right and left. Or the singers from the choir go by, in violet silk and
lace, hurrying along the inner south aisle to the door of the sacristy,
where heavy yellow cherubs support marble draperies under the monument
of Pius the Eighth. If you stand by your pillar a little while,
something will surely happen to help your dream, and sweep you back a
century or two.
And if not, and if you have a little imagination of your own which can
stir itself without help from outside, you can call up the figures of
those that lie dead below, and of those who in ages gone have walked the
dim aisles of the ancient church. Up the long nave comes Pelagius,
Justinian's pope, with Narses by his side, to swear by holy cross and
sacred gospel that he has not slain Vigilius, Pope before him: and this
Narses, smooth-faced, passionless, thoughtful, is the conqueror of the
Goths, and having conquered them, he would not suffer that a hair of the
remnant of them should be hurt, because he had given his word.
High-handed Henry the Fifth, claiming power over the Church, being
refused full coronation by Pope Paschal till he yields, seizes Pope and
College of Cardinals then and there, and imprisons them till he has
starved them to submission, and half requites the Church for Gregory's
humiliation of the father whom he himself thrust from the throne--of
that Henry whom the strong Hildebrand made to do penance barefoot on the
snow in the courtyard of Matilda's Castle at Canossa. And Matilda
herself, the Great Countess, the once all beautiful, betrayed in love,
the half sainted, the all romantic, rises before you from her tomb
below, in straight, rich robes and flowing golden hair, and once more
makes gift of all her vast possessions to the Church of Rome. Nicholas
Rienzi strides by, strange compound of heroism, vanity and high poetry,
calling himself in one breath the people's tribune, and Augustus, and an
emperor's son. There is a rush of armed men shouting furiously in
Spanish, 'Carne! Sangre! Bourbon!' There is a clanging of steel, a
breaking down of gates, and the Constable of Bourbon's horde pours in,
irresistible, ravaging all, while he himself lies stark and stiff
outside, pierced by Bernardino Passeri's short bolt, and Clement
trembles in Sant' Angelo. Christina of Sweden, Monaldeschi's murder red
upon her soul, comes next, fawning for forgiveness, to die in due time
over there in the Corsini palace by the Tiber.
A man may call up half the world's history in half an hour in such a
place, toward evening, when the golden light streams through the Holy
Dove in the apse. And, in imagination, to those who have seen the great
pageants within our memory, the individual figures grow smaller as the
magnificence of the display increases out of all proportion, until the
church fills again with the vast throngs that witnessed the jubilees of
Leo the Thirteenth in recent years, and fifty thousand voices send up a
rending cheer while the most splendid procession of these late days goes
by.
It was in the Chapel of the Sacrament that the body of the good Pope
Pius the Ninth was laid in state for several days. That was a strange
and solemn sight, too. The gates of the church were all shut but one,
and that was only a little opened, so that the people passed in one by
one from the great wedge-shaped crowd outside--a crowd that began at the
foot of the broad steps in the Piazza, and struggled upward all the
afternoon, closer and closer toward the single entrance. For in the
morning only the Roman nobles and the prelates and high ecclesiastics
were admitted, by another way. Within the church the thin stream of men
and women passed quickly between a double file of Italian soldiers. That
was the first and last time since 1870 that Italian troops were under
arms within the consecrated precincts. It was still winter, and the
afternoon light was dim, and it seemed a long way to the chapel. The
good man lay low, with his slippered feet between the bars of the closed
gate. The people paused as they passed, and most of them kissed the
embroidered cross, and looked at the still features, before they went
on. It was dim, but the six tall waxen torches threw a warm light on the
quiet face, and the white robes reflected it around. There were three
torches on each side, too, and there were three Noble Guards in full
dress, motionless, with drawn swords, as though on parade. But no one
looked at them. Only the marble face, with its kind, far-away smile,
fixed itself in each man's eyes, and its memory remained with each when
he had gone away. It was very solemn and simple, and there were no other
lights in the church save the little lamps about the Confession and
before the altars. The long, thin stream of people went on swiftly and
out by the sacristy all the short afternoon till it was night, and the
rest of the unsatisfied crowd was left outside as the single gate was
closed.
Few saw the scene which followed, when the good Pope's body had lain
four days in state, and was then placed in its coffin at night, to be
hoisted high and swung noiselessly into the temporary tomb above the
small door on the east side--that is, to the left--of the Chapel of the
Choir. It was for a long time the custom that each pope should lie there
until his successor died, when his body was removed to the monument
prepared for it in the mean time, and the Pope just dead was laid in the
same place.
The church was almost dark, and only in the Chapel of the Choir and in
that of the Holy Sacrament, which are opposite each other, a number of
big wax candles shed a yellow light. In the niche over the door a mason
was still at work, with a tallow dip, clearly visible below. The triple
coffin stood before the altar in the Chapel of the Choir. Opposite,
where the body still lay, the Noble Guards and the Swiss Guards, in
their breastplates, kept watch with drawn swords and halberds.
The Noble Guards carried the bier on their shoulders in solemn
procession, with chanting choir, robed bishop, and tramping soldiers,
round by the Confession and across the church, and lifted the body into
the coffin. The Pope had been very much beloved by all who were near
him, and more than one grey-haired prelate shed tears of genuine grief
that night.
In the coffin, in accordance with an ancient custom, a bag was placed
containing ninety-three medals, one of gold, one of silver and one of
bronze, for each of the thirty-one years which Pope Pius had reigned;
and a history of the pontificate, written on parchment, was also
deposited at the feet of the body.
When the leaden coffin was soldered, six seals were placed upon it, five
by cardinals, and one by the archivist. During the ceremony the
Protonotary Apostolic, the Chancellor of the Apostolic Chamber and the
Notary of the Chapter of Saint Peter's were busy, pen in hand, writing
down the detailed protocol of the proceedings.
The last absolution was pronounced, and the coffin in its outer case of
elm was slowly moved out and raised in slings, and gently swung into the
niche. The masons bricked up the opening in the presence of cardinals
and guards, and long before midnight the marble slab, carved to
represent the side of a sarcophagus, was in its place, with its simple
inscription, 'Pius IX, P.M.'
From time immemorial the well containing the marble staircase which
leads down to the tomb of Saint Peter has been called the 'Confession.'
The word, I believe, is properly applied to the altar-rail, from the
ancient practice of repeating there the general confession immediately
before receiving the Communion, a custom now slightly modified. But I
may be wrong in giving this derivation. At all events, a marble
balustrade follows the horseshoe shape of the well, and upon it are
placed ninety-five gilded lamps, which burn perpetually. There is said
to be no special significance in the number, and they produce very
little effect by daylight.
But on the eve of Saint Peter's Day, and perhaps at some other seasons,
the Pope has been known to come down to the church by the secret
staircase leading into the Chapel of the Sacrament, to pray at the
Apostle's tomb. On such occasions a few great candlesticks with wax
torches were placed on the floor of the church, two and two, between the
Chapel and the Confession. The Pope, attended only by a few chamberlains
and Noble Guards, and dressed in his customary white cassock, passed
swiftly along in the dim light, and descended the steps to the gilded
gate beneath the high altar. A marble pope kneels there too, Pius the
Sixth, of the Braschi family, his stone draperies less white than Pope
Leo's cassock, his marble face scarcely whiter than the living Pontiff's
alabaster features.
Those are sights which few have been privileged to see. There is a sort
of centralization of mystery, if one may couple such words, in the
private pilgrimage of the head of the Church to the tomb of the chief
Apostle by night, on the eve of the day which tradition has kept from
the earliest times as the anniversary of Saint Peter's martyrdom. The
whole Catholic world, if it might, would follow Leo the Thirteenth down
those marble steps, and two hundred million voices would repeat the
prayer he says alone.
Many and solemn scenes have been acted out by night in the vast gloom of
the enormous church, and if events do not actually leave an essence of
themselves in places, as some have believed, yet the knowledge that they
have happened where we stand and recall them has a mysterious power to
thrill the heart.
Opposite the Chapel of the Sacrament is the Chapel of the Choir. Saint
Peter's is a cathedral, and is managed by a chapter of Canons, each of
whom has his seat in the choir, and his vote in the disposal of the
cathedral's income, which is considerable. The chapter maintains the
Choir of Saint Peter's, a body of musicians quite independent of the
so-called 'Pope's Choir,' which is properly termed the 'Choir of the
Sixtine Chapel,' and which is paid by the Pope. There are some radical
differences between the two. By a very ancient and inviolable
regulation, the so-called 'musico,' or artificial soprano, is never
allowed to sing in the Chapel of the Choir, where the soprano singers
are without exception men who sing in falsetto, though they speak in a
deep voice. On great occasions the Choir of the Sixtine joins in the
music in the body of the church, but never in the Chapel, and always
behind a lattice.
Secondly, no musical instruments are ever used in the Sixtine. In the
Chapel of the Choir, on the contrary, there are two large organs. The
one on the west side is employed on all ordinary occasions; it is over
two hundred years old, and is tuned about two tones below the modern
pitch. It is so worn out that an organ-builder is in attendance during
every service, to make repairs at a moment's notice. The bellows leak,
the stops stick, some notes have a chronic tendency to cipher, and the
pedal trackers unhook themselves unexpectedly. But the Canons would
certainly not think of building a new organ.
Should they ever do so, and tune the instrument to the modern pitch, the
consternation of the singers would be great; for the music is all
written for the existing organ, and could not be performed two notes
higher, not to mention the confusion that would arise where all the
music is sung at sight by singers accustomed to an unusual pitch. This
is a fact not generally known, but worthy of notice. The music sung in
Saint Peter's, and, indeed, in most Roman churches, is never rehearsed
nor practised. The music itself is entirely in manuscript, and is the
property of the choir master, or, as is the case in Saint Peter's, of
the Chapter, and there is no copyright in it beyond this fact of actual
possession, protected by the simple plan of never allowing any musician
to have his part in his hands except while he is actually performing it.
In the course of a year the same piece may be sung several times, and
the old choristers may become acquainted with a good deal of music in
this way, but never otherwise. Mozart is reported to have learned
Allegri's Miserere by ear, and to have written it down from memory. The
other famous Misereres, which are now published, were pirated in a
similar way. The choir master of that day was very unpopular. Some of
the leading singers who had sung the Misereres during many years in
succession, and had thus learned their several parts, met and put
together what they knew into a whole, which was at once published, to
the no small annoyance and discomfiture of their enemy. But much good
music is quite beyond the reach of the public--Palestrina's best
motetts, airs by Alessandro Stradella, the famous hymn of Raimondi, in
short a great musical library, an 'archivio' as the Romans call such a
collection, all of which is practically lost to the world.
It is wonderful that under such circumstances the choir of Saint Peter's
should obtain even such creditable results. At a moment's notice an
organist and about a hundred singers are called upon to execute a florid
piece of music which many have never seen nor heard; the accompaniment
is played at sight from a mere figured bass, on a tumble-down instrument
two hundred years old, and the singers, both the soloists and the
chorus, sing from thumbed bits of manuscript parts written in
old-fashioned characters on paper often green with age. No one has ever
denied the extraordinary musical facility of Italians, but if the
outside world knew how Italian church music is performed it would be
very much astonished.
It is no wonder that such music is sometimes bad. But sometimes it is
very good; for there are splendid voices among the singers, and the
Maestro Renzi, the chief organist, is a man of real talent as well as of
amazing facility. His modernizing influence is counter-balanced by that
of the old choir master, Maestro Meluzzi, a first-rate musician, who
would not for his life change a hair of the old-fashioned traditions.
Yet there are moments, on certain days, when the effect of the great old
organ, with the rich voices blending in some good harmony, is very
solemn and stirring. The outward persuasive force of religion lies
largely in its music, and the religions that have no songs make few
proselytes.
Nothing, perhaps, is more striking, as one becomes better acquainted
with Saint Peter's, than the constant variety of detail. The vast
building produces at first sight an impression of harmony, and there
appears to be a remarkable uniformity of style in all the objects one
sees. There are no oil-paintings to speak of in the church, and but few
frescoes. The great altar-pieces are almost exclusively fine mosaic
copies of famous pictures which are preserved elsewhere. Of these
reproductions the best is generally considered to be that of Guercino's
'Saint Petronilla,' at the end of the right aisle of the tribune.
Debrosses praises these mosaic altar-pieces extravagantly, and even
expresses the opinion that they are probably superior in point of colour
to the originals from which they are copied. In execution they are
certainly wonderful, and many a stranger looks at them and passes on,
believing them to be oil-paintings. They possess the quality of being
imperishable and beyond all influence of climate or dampness, and they
are masterpieces of mechanical workmanship. But many will think them
hard and unsympathetic in outline, and decidedly crude in colour. Much
wit has been manufactured by the critics at the expense of Guido Reni's
'Michael,' for instance, and as many sharp things could be said about a
good many other works of the same kind in the church. Yet, on the whole,
they do not destroy the general harmony. Big as they are, when they are
seen from a little distance they sink into mere insignificant patches of
colour, all but lost in the deep richness of the whole.
As for the statues and monuments, between the 'Pieta' of Michelangelo
and Bracci's horrible tomb of Benedict the Fourteenth, there is the step
which, according to Tom Paine, separates the sublime from the
ridiculous. That very witty saying has in it only just the small
ingredient of truth without which wit remains mere humour. Between the
ridiculous and the sublime there may sometimes be, indeed, but one step
in the execution; but there is always the enormous moral distance which
separates real feeling from affectation--the gulf which divides, for
instance, Bracci's group from Michelangelo's.
[Illustration: PIETA OF MICHELANGELO]
The 'Pieta' is one of the great sculptor's early works. It is badly
placed. It is dwarfed by the heavy architecture above and around it. It
is insulted by a pair of hideous bronze cherubs. There is a manifest
improbability in the relative size of the figure of Christ and that of
the Blessed Virgin. Yet in spite of all, it is one of the most beautiful
and touching groups in the whole world, and by many degrees the best
work of art in the great church. Michelangelo was a man of the strongest
dramatic instinct even in early youth, and when he laid his hand to the
marble and cut his 'Pieta' he was in deep sympathy with the supreme
drama of man's history. He found in the stone, once and for all time,
the grief of the human mother for her son, not comforted by
foreknowledge of resurrection, nor lightened by prescience of near
glory. He discovered in the marble, by one effort, the divinity of
death's rest after torture, and taught the eye to see that the
dissolution of this dying body is the birth of the soul that cannot die.
In the dead Christ there are two men manifest to sight. 'The first man
is of earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.'
In the small chapel stands a strangely wrought column, enclosed in an
iron cage. The Romans now call it the Colonna Santa, the holy pillar,
and it is said to be the one against which Christ leaned when teaching
in the temple at Jerusalem. A great modern authority believes it to be
of Roman workmanship, and of the third century; but those who have lived
in the East will see much that is oriental in the fantastic ornamented
carving. It matters little. In actual fact, whatever be its origin, this
is the column known in the Middle Age as the 'Colonna degli Spiritati,'
or column of those possessed by evil spirits, and it was customary to
bind to it such unlucky individuals as fell under the suspicion of
'possession' in order to exorcise the spirit with prayers and holy
water. Aretino has made a witty scene about this in the 'Cortegiana,'
where one of the Vatican servants cheats a poor fisherman, and then
hands him over to the sacristan of Saint Peter's to be cured of an
imaginary possession by a ceremonious exorcism. Such proceedings must
have been common enough in those days when witchcraft and demonology
were elements with which rulers and lawgivers had to count at every
turn.
Leave the column and its legend in the lonely chapel, with the exquisite
'Pieta'; wander hither and thither, and note the enormous contrasts
between good and bad work which meet you at every turn. Up in the right
aisle of the tribune you will come upon what is known as Canova's
masterpiece, the tomb of Clement the Thirteenth, the Rezzonico pope, as
strange a mixture of styles and ideas as any in the world, and yet a
genuine expression of the artistic feeling of that day. The grave Pope
prays solemnly above; on the right a lovely heathen genius of Death
leans on a torch; on the left rises a female figure of Religion, one of
the most abominably bad statues in the world; below, a brace of
improbable lions, extravagantly praised by people who do not understand
leonine anatomy, recall Canova's humble origin and his first attempt at
modelling. For the sculptor began life as a waiter in a 'canova di
vino,' or wine shop, whence his name; and it was when a high dignitary
stopped to breakfast at the little wayside inn that the lad modelled a
lion in butter to grace the primitive table. The thing attracted the
rich traveller's attention, and the boy's fortune was made. The Pope is
impressive, the Death is gentle and tender, the Religion, with her crown
of gilded spikes for rays, and her clumsy cross, is a vision of bad
taste, and the sleepy lions, when separated from what has been written
about them, excite no interest. Yet somehow, from a distance, the
monument gets harmony out of its surroundings.
[Illustration: TOMB OF CLEMENT THE THIRTEENTH]
One of the best tombs in the basilica is that of Sixtus the Fourth, the
first pope of the Rovere family, in the Chapel of the Sacrament. The
bronze figure, lying low on a sarcophagus placed out on upon the floor,
has a quiet manly dignity about it which one cannot forget. But in the
same tomb lies a greater man of the same name, Julius the Second, for
whom Michelangelo made his 'Moses' in the Church of San Pietro in
Vincoli--a man who did more than any other, perhaps, to make the great
basilica what it is, and who, by a chain of mistakes, got no tomb of his
own. He who solemnly laid the foundations of the present church, and
lived to see the four main piers completed, with their arches, has only
a little slab in the pavement to recall his memory. The protector and
friend of Bramante, of Michelangelo and of Raphael,--of the great
architect, the great sculptor and the great painter,--has not so much as
the least work of any of the three to mark his place of rest. Perhaps he
needed nothing but his name.
After all, his bones have been allowed to rest in peace, which is more
than can be said of all that have been buried within the area of the
church. Urban the Sixth had no such good fortune. He so much surprised
the cardinals, as soon as they had elected him, by his vigorous moral
reforms that they hastily retired to Anagni and elected an antipope of
milder manners and less sensitive conscience. He lived to triumph over
his enemies. In Piacenza he was besieged by King Charles of Naples. He
excommunicated him, tortured seven cardinals whom he caught in the
conspiracy and put five of them to death; overcame and slew Charles,
refused him burial and had his body exposed to the derision of the
crowd. The chronicler says that 'Italy, Germany, England, Hungary,
Bohemia, Poland, Sicily and Portugal were obedient to the Lord Pope
Urban the Sixth.' He died peacefully, and was buried in Saint Peter's in
a marble sarcophagus.
But when Sixtus the Fifth, who also surprised the cardinals greatly, was
in a fit of haste to finish the dome, the masons, wanting a receptacle
for water, laid hands on Urban's stone coffin, pitched his bones into a
corner, and used the sarcophagus as they pleased, leaving it to serve as
a water-tank for many years afterwards.
In extending the foundations of the church, Paul the Third came upon the
bodies of Maria and Hermania, the two wives of Honorius, the Emperor who
'disestablished' paganism in favour of Christianity. They were sisters,
daughters of Stilicho, and had been buried in their imperial robes, with
many rich objects and feminine trinkets; and they were found intact, as
they had been buried, in the month of February, 1543. Forty pounds of
fine gold were taken from their robes alone, says Baracconi, without
counting all the jewels and trinkets, among which was a very beautiful
lamp, besides a great number of precious stones. The Pope melted down
the gold for the expenses of the building, and set the gems in a tiara,
where, if they could be identified, they certainly exist today--the very
stones worn by empresses of ancient Rome.
Then, as if in retribution, the Pope's own tomb was moved from its
place. Despoiled of two of the four statues which adorned it, the
monument is now in the tribune, and is still one of the best in the
church. A strange and tragic tale is told of it. A Spanish student, it
is said, fell madly in love with the splendid statue of Paul's
sister-in-law, Julia Farnese. He succeeded in hiding himself in the
basilica when it was closed at night, threw himself in a frenzy upon the
marble and was found stone dead beside it in the morning. The ugly
draperies of painted metal which now hide much of the statue owe their
origin to this circumstance. Classical scholars will remember that a
somewhat similar tale is told by Pliny of the Venus of Praxiteles in
Cnidus.