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The Shrine of St. Peter and its Setting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

J. M. C. Toynbee
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Extract

This brief and summary survey of a large and complicated problem falls into three main parts: (I) Prolegomena, or general considerations; (2) remarks on the topography and history of the Vatican zone in ancient times; (3) an account of the pre-Constantinian shrine of St. Peter beneath the high altar of the Vatican Basilica.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1-2 , November 1953 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright ©J. M. C. Toynbee 1953. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

* This paper is an expanded version of the Jane Ellen Harrison Memorial Lecture delivered at Newnham College, Cambridge, 2nd May, 1953.

The fact that my study of the subject is partly based on first-hand acquaintance with the Vatican excavations is owing to the kindness and generosity of the responsible authorities on the occasion of my visit to Rome in March and April, 1953. In the first place, I am deeply indebted to two of the excavators, Professor Engelbert Kirschbaum, S.J., and Professor Enrico Josi, who not only each conducted me personally to the visible remains of St. Peter's shrine and of the structures in its immediate vicinity, so that I was able to traverse the ground twice, but also both consented to discuss with me privately a number of questions arising out of the publication of their work. In the second place, I am extremely grateful to the Administrator of St. Peter's, Monsignore Principe, and to his assistant, Ingegnere Vacchini, who gave me unlimited access to the pagan necropolis (see below, pp. 3 ff.) and every facility for making a detailed record of its contents in situ.

The Editorial Committee also wishes to acknowledge an anonymous gift towards the cost of the publication of this paper with its numerous illustrations.

1 ‘Founder’ only in the general sense of being one of the Apostolic leaders and martyrs-in-chief of the early Roman Church, since it is clear from Romans 15, 20–2, that St. Paul did not literally found the first Christian community in the imperial capital. Whether the ‘other man’, on whose foundations St. Paul would not build, was St. Peter, we have, of course, no means of knowing. St. Peter would not appear to have been in Rome at the time when St. Paul was writing his Epistle, since no salutation was sent to him in the final chapter. But he could have already been in the city at some earlier date and then have left it, returning there again later.

la Cullmann's German book has also appeared in French and English versions.

2 e.g. E. Josi, ‘Gli scavi nelle Sacre Grotte Vaticane’ (Il Vaticano nel 1944, 1944); The Times 27th February, 1946; Illustrated London News 7th September, 1946; Life 27th March, 1950 (American edition), 19th April, 1950 (international edition); Bull. Com. LXX, 1942, 95 ff. (Ferrua, A.)Google Scholar; Wort und Wahrheit, July, 1949, 481 ff. (H. Speier): Vermächtnis der antiken Kunst, 1950, 199 ff. (H. Speier); AA LVI, 1941, 524 ff. (Fuhrmann, H.)Google Scholar; AJA LI, 1947, 284 f. (Welles, C. Bradford)Google Scholar. Two fine series of coloured postcards are available for purchase at the exit from the Sacre Grotte.

2a For a useful assemblage of parallels to these scenes drawn from early-Christian literature and art see O. Perler, Die Mosaiken der Juliergruft im Vatikan, 1953.

3 That the necropolis was still a ‘going concern’ for pagans and Christians alike, at the time of the building of Old St. Peter's is attested by (1) the generally very good state of the pagan wall-paintings, stuccos, mosaics, and carved sarcophagi, except in cases where they had been unavoidably damaged by the church-builders; (2) the good quality and sumptuous character of the probably third-century Christian vault- and wall-mosaics in mausoleum M; and (3) by the presence (for what it is worth) of a Constantinian coin in an urn in mausoleum T.

3a Carcopino suggests (o.c. 132) that the year 333 marked the conclusion, not the beginning, of the process of filling in the Vatican mausolea and he dates the foundation of Old St. Peter's to 322.

4 There can be no doubt that by the middle of the fifth century the actual tomb of St. Peter was believed to be under the Vatican Basilica, since in 451 the remains of the Emperor Theodosius II were moved from Constantinople to the Vatican Hill, to a mausoleum ad Apostolum Petrum (Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, 1895, 200 ff.).

4a It would not have troubled such persons that their handiwork (intended, not to edify others, but to invoke spiritual aid from the unseen objects of their veneration) would soon be invisible to human eyes. Similar practices are found to-day in such Catholic shrines of Our Lady as those at Lourdes and Walsingham, where sealed, written petitions, destined to be burnt in a few days' time, are left by pilgrims.

5 The isolated finds of tombs at Δ, Ε, and Θ, shown on the plan (fig. 4, p. 5) as lying on the same alignment, indicate that the necropolis stretched far to the east of the area systematically excavated.

5a According to Carcopino (o.c. 143 ff.) the road running to the south of the necropolis was the Via Aurelia Nova, while the Via Cornelia ran across the Vatican Hill to the north of it. Cf. Kirschbaum, , Gregorianum, XXIX, 1948, 544 ffGoogle Scholar.

6 A second, and slightly smaller, circular tomb once stood just to the west of that which became the church of Sant' Andrea. Its original date we do not yet know; but in the early-fifth century it served for the burial of Maria, wife of Honorius, of Honorius himself, and of Theodosius II (Lanciani, l.c.); and it became the church of Santa Petronilla in 757. It was pulled down before Sant' Andrea, in the sixteenth century.

7 In view of the lie of the ground, an east-west long-axis for the circus is, on the whole, more probable than a north–south one. A straight wall, running north–south, of first-century date, found just to the south-east of the Piazza San Pietro in 1949 (Report 1, 17, n. 3), gave rise to the belief, quoted in The Times of 4th August, 1950, that the circus of Nero had, in fact, been discovered. But the connection of this wall with the circus is as yet unproven.

7a Unless we assume, with Zucchetti (o.c. 524), that the original tip of this obelisk was snapped off and a new tip worked by a later hand. This obelisk is, in fact, slightly shorter than the other major obelisks in Rome.

7b Still less acceptable is Carcopino's theory (o.c. 151 ff.) that post-fourth-century Christians had access to mausoleum M and, failing to recognize as Christus-Helios the charioteer in its vault-mosaic, identified this tiny tomb as a pagan temple of Apollo. How deeply the idea of Christus-Helios had bitten into Christian consciousness and iconography can be gauged from Perler (o.c.) (cf. p. 6, n. 2a).

8 The engraving was possibly made as a souvenir of the moving of the obelisk; or else as a form of prospectus for Domenico Fontana's book, Del trasporto dell'obelisco vaticano, published in 1590. I have not found this engraving in any copy known to me of Fontanas actual work; although T. Ashby, reproducing it in his edition of Etienne du Pérac's Topographical Study in Rome in 1581 (1916), states that its source was Fontana's book, for which Bonifacio di Sebenico did, in fact, make the illustrations.

9 From the immense body of literature which has gathered round this site the following items may be mentioned here: P. Styger, ‘Il monumento apostolico della Via Appia’ (Diss. d. Pont. Accad. Rom. d. Arch. 1918); A. Prandi, ‘Ipotesi e studi sulla “Memoria Apostolorum in Catacumbas”’ (Roma, Sept.–Dec, 1943); Tolotti, F., ‘Ricerche intorno alla Memoria Apostolorum’ (Riv. d. Arch. Crist, XXII, 1946 Google Scholar; XXIII–XXIV, 1947–8); G. Belvederi, Le tombe apostoliche nell' età paleo cristiana, 1948; F. Tolotti, Memorie degli Apostoli in Catacumbas: rilievo critico della Memoria e della Basilica Apostolorum di iii miglio della Via Appia, 1953. Other recent studies are quoted below in the text of this paper.

9a Carcopino's recent arguments (o.c. 185 ff., 282) in favour of the translation-theory have not, to my mind, succeeded in removing the difficulties inherent in it (cf. below, p. 26, n. 13a)).

10 For the view that the 29th June was chosen as the feast-day of the two Apostolic founders of the Roman Church, as having been the feast-day of Rome's traditional founder, Romulus-Quirinus, see Cullmann, o.c. 143.

10a H. Stern, Le Calendrier de 354 (1953) appeared too late to be used.

11 For the dangers sometimes attendant on dating by a single tile-stamp see the Domitianic tile-stamp said to have been found in the Catacombs under San Sebastiano on the Via Appia, displayed there on the wall of one of the galleries, and proffered by the guides as evidence that this Christian cemetery dates from as early as the latter part of the first century, which is manifestly out of the question. The tile must have been ‘lifted’ from elsewhere, possibly from one of the first-century columbaria (P. Styger, Il monumento apostolico a San Sebastiano sulla Via Appia [not dated], 12 ff., figs. 7, 8) in the vicinity.

11a Carcopino (o.c. 176), assuming that γ is of first-century date, suggests that it was already in situ when the central space became a place of burial (or cenotaph ?); and on this assumption this may well have been the case.

11b This point is ignored by Carcopino (o.c. 178–9), who believes that the central space in P never extended over the area covered by the Red Wall and clivus.

12 It is, of course, possible that, if St. Peter had been temporarily buried by the Via Appia immediately after his martyrdom, his relics might have been brought to the Vatican in a casket and placed in the eastern portion of the central space in ‘Campo P’ enclosed by graves γ and Θ. In that case the body would never have been laid out at full length in P; and the Red Wall, in passing over the western portion of the central space, would not have disturbed the burial. Or the bones of the body in P might have been gathered up into a casket at the time of the building of the Red Wall (see above, p. 18). Such a casket containing the bones might, then, actually have been looted by Goths or Saracens, on the assumption that rich treasure was stored within it. But such a supposition would leave us without an explanation of the bones centrally placed in cavity O and of the fact that no story of the looting of the Petrine relics ever got abroad in Christendom. For a short, documented account of fifth- and sixth-century raids on the Vatican Basilica by heretics and infidels see Carcopino, o.c. 102–5.

13 It also appears to me very improbable that Mass was said at an open-air altar, right in the middle of a pagan cemetery, as early as c. 170, even if we allow for the fact that ‘Campo P’ was discreetly tucked away among the mausolea and had no direct entrance from the Via Cornelia. It was quite another thing to offer Mass over the tomb of a martyr in a covered catacomb or in a specifically Christian cemetery in the third or fourth century. Moreover, Constantine would hardly have broken with a tradition, one- and-a-half centuries old, of offering Mass immediately above St. Peter's bones had such a tradition existed; and excavation, combined with literary evidence, has shown that there was no altar at the shrine itself in Constantine's day (see below, p. 26 and n. 14).

13a See Addendum on p. 26.

14 Liber Pontificalis (ed. Duchesne 1, 312): ‘fecit (sc. Gregory) ut super corpus beati Petri missas celebrarentur.’ Like the Constantinian churches of the Nativity and Holy Sepulchre, the Vatican Basilica was originally, first and foremost, a shrine to house a holy place, which occupied the most honourable position in the building. For the suggestion that the first high altar of Old St. Peter's was in the centre of the nave see JRS XLII, 1952, 22 Google Scholar. As regards the apse-mosaic of the Constantinian Basilica, the restoration given here (pl. IV, 2) is based on a copy of it made c. 1590 by order of Clement VIII, who had the mosaic destroyed in 1592. That copy would appear to be the earliest pictorial record of the mosaic, shown in detail, which exists. It was attested as authentic by the Apostolic Notary and it naturally shows the mosaic as it was after its restoration in the early-thirteenth century by Innocent III. Innocent introduced his own portrait to the left of the Agnus Dei in the lower register, balanced by a figure of Ecclesia Romana to the right of the Agnus Dei, and substituted for the old inscription below the picture a new inscription of his own. Both the principal figures—those of Our Lord and of St. Peter and St. Paul—and the accessory details are genuinely antique in character, as shown in Clement's copy, and it would seem that Innocent's restorer adhered more or less faithfully to the original fourth-century design. Innocent was restoring an earlier, seventh-century, renovation by Severinus in 640; and if the thirteenth-century restoration has a genuinely antique look, presumably the seventh-century renovation was equally authentic. The conclusion appears to be that we have preserved for us a copy of the apse-mosaic substantially as it was when first put up by Constantine or Constans. Through some oversight, the artist, who used Clement's copy for the reconstruction which he drew for the Vatican Report, was not instructed to omit Innocent's interpolations into the fourth-century mosaic.

15 Most of the plans and plates which illustrate this paper are taken from the Report: others are from Vatican photographs; and all are reproduced here by kind permission of the Vatican authorities. Fig. 3 is taken from Barnes, A. S., The Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, 1933, Oxford University Press, 162.Google Scholar The book from which Plate 11, 1 is taken (see n. 8) was printed by the Roxburghe Club. Fig. 2 is taken from Vermächtnis der antiken Kunst (Heidelberg, 1950), 215 Google Scholar.