MEMORIES OF THE PANTHEON
The Pantheon—Hadrian’s Best Monument—Long Idle—Consecrated as St.
Mary of the Martyrs—The Cathedral, the Symbol of the Soul—Its
Purification—Continuity of the Church—A Priest’s Visit—The
Alabaster Square—Procession of the Martyrs’ Relics—Giovanni Borgi,
the Workman—Italian Guilds—Giovanni’s Selflessness—His Rescue of
the Forsaken Children—Care of Them—Crusade in Behalf of All the
Waifs of Rome—His Work of Love—Giovanni’s Successor, Later Pius IX.
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 Septimius
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 tide of “St. Mary of the Martyrs.” Under
that perfect dome of exactly equal height and diameter (one hundred and
forty-two 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 symbolise 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 forefathers—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 the 28th of June—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 blest candles on either
side—and began “Introibo ad altare Dei.”
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 the 13th of May, Anno
Domini 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 triumphant 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 workingman, 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
further 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 evildoers, 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 the 28th of June, 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
laïcisation 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 organisation 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.