XII. THE ESQUILINE…

XII. THE ESQUILINE

Golden House of Nero--Baths of Titus and Trajan--S. Pietro in Vincoli--Frangipani Tower--House of Lucrezia Borgia--S. Martino al Monte--Sta. Lucia in Selce--Sta. Prassede--Santissimo Redentore--Arch of Gallienus--Trophies of Marius--Sta. Bibiana--Temple of Minerva Medica--S. Eusebio--S. Antonio Abbate--Sta. Maria Maggiore.

The Esquiline, which is the largest of the so-called 'hills of Rome,' is not a distinct hill, but simply a projection of the Campagna. "The Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, and Cœlian stretch out towards the Tiber, like four fingers of a hand, of which the plain whence they detach themselves represents the vast palm. This hand has seized the world."[250]

Varro says that the name Esquiline was derived from the word excultus, because of the ornamental groves which were planted on this hill by Servius Tullius,--such as the Lucus Querquetulanus, Fagutalis, and Esquilinus.[251] The sacred wood of the Argiletum long remained on the lower slope of the hill, where the Via Sta. Maria dei Monti now is.

The Esquiline, which is still unhealthy, must have been so in ancient times, for among its temples were those dedicated to Fever, near Sta. Maria Maggiore--to Juno Mephitis,[252] near a pool which emitted poisonous exhalations--and to Venus Libitina,[253] for the registration of deaths, and arrangement of funerals. As the hill was in the hands of the Sabines, its early divinities were Sabine. Besides those already mentioned, it had an altar of the Sabine sun-god Janus, dedicated together with an altar to Juno by the survivor of the Horatii,[254] and a temple of Juno Lucina, the goddess of birth and light.

"Monte sub Esquilio multis incæduus annis Junonis magnæ nomine lucus erat."

Ovid, Fast. ii. 435.

This hill has two heights. That which is crowned by Santa Maria Maggiore was formerly called Cispius, where Servius Tullius had a palace; that which is occupied by S. Pietro in Vincoli was formerly called Oppius, where Tarquinius Superbus lived. It was in returning to his palace on the former (and not on the latter height, as generally maintained) that Servius Tullius was murdered.

The most important buildings of the Esquiline, in the later republican and in imperial times, were on the slope of the hill behind the Forum, and near the Coliseum, in the fashionable quarter called Carinæ,--the "rich Carinæ,"

"Passimque armenta videbant Romanoque Foro et lautis mugire Carinis."

Virgil, Æn. viii. 361.

of which the principal street probably occupied the site of the present Via del Colosseo. At the entrance of this suburb, where the fine mediæval Torre dei Conti now stands, was the house of Spurius Cassius (Consul B.C. 493), which was confiscated and demolished, and the ground ordained to be always kept vacant, because he was suspected of aiming at regal power. Here, however, or very nearly on this site, the Ædes Telluris, or temple of Tellus, was erected c. B.C. 269,[255]--a building of sufficient importance for the senate, summoned by Antony, to assemble in it. The quarter immediately surrounding this temple acquired the name of In Tellure, which is still retained by several of its modern churches.[256] Near this temple--"in tellure," lived Pompey, in a famous though small historical house, which he adorned on the outside with rostra in memory of his naval victories, and which was painted within to look like a forest with trees and birds, much probably as the chambers are painted which were discovered a few years ago in the villa of Livia.[257] Here Julia, the daughter of Julius Cæsar, and wife of Pompey, died. After the death of Pompey this house was bought by the luxurious Antony. The difference between its two masters is pourtrayed by Cicero, who describes the severe comfort of the house of Pompey contrasted with the voluptuous luxury of its second master, and winds up his oration by exclaiming, "I pity even the roofs and the walls under the change." At a later period the same house was the favourite residence of Antoninus Pius. Hard by, in the Carinæ, the favourite residence of Roman knights, lived the father of Cicero, and hence the young Tullius went to listen in the forum to the orators whom he was one day to surpass.[258] Also in the Carinæ, but nearer the site of the Coliseum, was the magnificent house of the wealthy Vedius Pollio, which he bequeathed to Augustus, who pulled it down, and built the portico of Livia on its site:

"Disce tamen, veniens ætas, ubi Livia nunc est Porticus, immensæ tecta fuisse domûs. Urbis opus domus una fuit; spatiumque tenebat, Quo brevius muris oppida multa tenent. Hæc æquata solo est, nullo sub crimine regni, Sed quia luxuriâ visa nocere suâ. Sustinuit tantas operum subvertere moles, Totque suas heres perdere Cæsar opes."

Ovid, Fast. vi. 639.

At its opposite extremity the Carinæ was united to the unfashionable and plebeian quarter of the Suburra, occupying the valley formed by the convergence of the Esquiline, Quirinal, and Viminal--which is still crowded with a teeming population. In one of the small streets leading from the Vicus Cyprius (between the Esquiline and Viminal) towards the Carinæ, was the Tigellum Sororis, which was extant--repaired at the public expense--till the fifth century. This, "the Sister's Beam," commemorated the well-known story of the last of the Horatii, who, returning from the slaughter of the Curiatii, and being met by his sister, bewailing one of the dead to whom she was betrothed, stabbed her in his anger. He was condemned to death, but at the prayer of his father his crime was expiated by his passing under the yoke of "the Sister's Beam." On one side of the Tigellum Sororis was an altar to Juno Sororis; on the other an altar to Janus Curiatius.[259]

During the empire several poets had their residence on the Esquiline. Virgil lived there, near the gardens of Mæcenas, which covered the slopes between the Esquiline and Viminal. Propertius had a house there, as we learn from himself--

"I, puer, et citus hæc aliqua propone columna Et dominum Esquiliis scribe habitare tuum."

Propert. Eleg. iv. 23.

It is believed, but without certainty, that Horace also lived upon the Esquiline. He was constantly there in the villa of Mæcenas, where he was buried, and which he has described in his poems both in its original state as a desecrated cemetery, and again after his friend had converted it into a beautiful garden.

"Nunc licet Esquiliis habitare salubribus, atque Aggere in aprico spatiari, quo modo tristes Albis informem spectabant ossibus agrum."

Sat. i.

The house of Mæcenas, the great patron of the poets of the Augustan age, probably occupied a site above the Carinæ, where the baths of Titus afterwards were. It was a lofty and magnificent edifice, and is described by Horace, who calls it--

"Fastidiosam desere copiam, et Molem propinquam nubibus arduis: Omitte mirari beatæ Fumum et opes strepitumque Romæ."

Od. iii. 29.

Mæcenas bequeathed his villa to Augustus, and Tiberius at one time resided in it.

Another, though less well-known poet of this age, who lived upon the Esquiline, was Pedo Albinovanus, much extolled by Ovid, who lived at the summit of the Vicus Cyprius (probably the Via Sta. Maria Maggiore), in a little house:

"Illic parva tui domus Pedonis Cælata est aquilæ minore penna."

Martial, x. Ep. 19.

Near this was the Lacus Orphei, a fountain, in the centre of which was a rock, &c., surmounted by a statue of Orpheus with the enchanted beasts around him. The house of Pedo was afterwards inhabited by Pliny. On Septimius, as the furthest slope of the Esquiline towards the Viminal was called, lived Maximus--of whom Martial says:--

"Esquiliis domus est, domus est tibi colle Dianæ, Et tua Patricius culmina Vicus habet: Hinc viduæ Cybeles, illinc sacraria Vestæ, Inde Novum, Veterem prospicis inde Jovem."

Mart. vii. Ep. 72.

Only the northern side of the Esquiline is now inhabited at all; the southern, and by far the larger portion, is clothed with vineyards and gardens, sprinkled over with titanic masses of ruin. On most parts of the hill, one might imagine oneself far away in the country. According to Niebuhr, the dweller amid the vines of the Esquiline, when he descends into the city, still says, "I am going to Rome."

* * * * *

Nero (A.D. 54--68) purchased the site of the villa of Mæcenas, and covered the whole side of the hill towards the Carinæ with the vast buildings of his Golden House, which also swallowed up the Cœlian and a great part of the Palatine; but he did not destroy the buildings which already existed, and "the Golden House was still the old mansion of Augustus and the villa of Mæcenas connected by a long series of columns and arches."[260] Titus (A.D. 79--81) and Trajan (A.D. 98--117) used part of the same site for their baths, and the ruins of all these buildings are now jumbled up together, and the varying whims of antiquaries have constantly changed the names of each fragment that has been discovered.

The more interesting of these ruins are on the southern slope of the Esquiline towards the Coliseum, and are most easily approached from the Via Polveriera. They are shown now as the Baths of Titus, or Camere Esquiline, and occupy a space of about 1150 feet by 850. That the chambers which are now visible were to be seen in the time of Leo X. (1513--22) we learn from Vasari, who says that Raphael and Giovanni da Udine were wont to study there and copy the arabesques to assist their work in the Vatican Loggie. After this, neglect and the falling in of the soil caused these treasures to be lost till 1774, when they were again partially unearthed, but they were only completely brought to view by the French, who began to take the work in hand in 1811, and continued their excavations for three years.

The principal remains, which are now exhibited by the dim torch of a solitary cicerone, are those of nine chambers, extending for 300 feet, and having on the north a kind of corridor, or cryptoporticus, whose vault is covered with paintings of birds, griffins, and flowers, &c. In two of these halls are alcoves for couches, and in one is a cavity for a fountain with a trench round it, like that in the nymphæum of the Palace of the Cæsars. In one of the halls is a group representing Venus attended by two Cupids, with doves hovering over her. Near this a pedestal is shown as that occupied by the Laocoon, though it was really found in the Vigna de Fredis, between the Sette Sale and Sta. Maria Maggiore. A set of thirty engravings, published by Mirri, from drawings taken in 1776, show what the paintings were at that time, but very few now remain perfect. A group of Coriolanus and his mother, represented in Mirri's work, is now inaccessible. All the paintings are Pompeian in character, and for some time were considered the best remains of ancient pictorial art in Rome, but they are inferior to those which have since been discovered on the Latin way and at the Baths of Livia. The chambers which open beyond the nine outer halls are considered to be part of the Golden House. In one of these the Meleager of the Vatican was found. A small chapel, dedicated to Sta. Felicitas and her seven sons (evidently engrafted upon the pagan building in the sixth century), was discovered in 1813. It is like the chapels in the catacombs, and is decorated with the conventional frescoes of the Good Shepherd, Daniel in the lions' den, &c. There are also some faint remains of a fresco of the sainted patrons.

Behind the convent of S. Pietro in Vincoli, in the open vineyards, are other ruins called the Sette Sale, being remains of the reservoirs (in reality nine in number) for the Baths. In these vineyards also are three large circular ruins, adorned on the interior with rows of niches for statues. One of them is partly built into the Polveriera, or powder magazine. These have been referred alternately to the Baths of Titus and those of Trajan.

* * * * *

Immediately behind the forum of Nerva stands the colossal brick tower, known as the Torre dei Conti, and built by Innocent III. (1198--1216) as a retreat for his family, now extinct. Its architect was Marchione d'Arezzo, and it was so much admired by Petrarch that he declared it had "no equal upon earth;" he must have meant in height. Four of the Conti have mounted the papal throne, Innocent III., Gregory IX., Alexander IV., and Innocent XIII. The last-named pope (1721--24) boasted of having "nine uncles, eight brothers, four nephews, and seven great nephews;" yet--a century after--and not a Conti remained.

If we turn to the left close to this, we shall find, in a commanding position, the famous Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, said to have been originally founded in A.D. 109 by Theodora, sister of Hermes, Prefect of Rome, both converts of the then pope, who was the martyr St. Alexander of the basilica in the Campagna. A bolder legend attributes the foundation to St. Peter himself, who is believed to have dedicated this church to his Divine Master. History, however, can assign no earlier foundation than that in 442, by the Empress Eudoxia, wife of Valentinian III., from whom the church takes its name of the Eudoxican Basilica, and who placed there one of the famous chains which now form its great attraction to Roman Catholic pilgrims.

"The chains, left in the Mamertine Prisons after St. Peter's confinement there, are said to have been found by the martyr Sta. Balbina, in 126, and by her given to Theodora, another sainted martyr, sister to Hermes, Prefect of Rome, from whom they passed into the hands of St. Alexander, first pope of that name, and were finally deposited by him in the church erected by Theodora, where they have since remained. Such is the legendary, but the historic origin of this basilica cannot be traced higher than about the middle of the fifth century, subsequent to the year 439, when Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, presented to the Empress Eudoxia, wife of Theodosius the younger, two chains, believed to be those of St. Peter, one of which was placed by her in the basilica of the apostles at Constantinople, and the other sent to Rome for her daughter Eudoxia, wife of Valentinian III., who caused this church, hence called Eudoxian, to be erected, as the special shrine of Peter's chains."--Hemans.

One chain had been sent to Rome by Eudoxia the elder, and the other remained at Constantinople, but the Romans could not rest satisfied with the possession of half the relic; and within the walls of this very basilica, Leo I. beheld in a vision the miraculous and mystical uniting of the two chains, since which they have both been exhibited here, and the day of their being soldered together by invisible power, August 1, has been kept sacred in the Latin Church!

The church is at present entered by an ugly atrium, which was the work of Fontana in 1705; but Bacio Pintelli had already done almost all that was possible to destroy the features of the old basilica, under the Cardinal Titular of the church, Giulio della Rovere, the same who, as Pope Julius II., destroyed the old St Peter's and eighty-seven tombs of his predecessors. By Pintelli the present capitals were added to the columns in the nave, and the horizontal architrave above them was exchanged for a series of narrow round-headed arches.

But, in spite of alterations, the interior is still imposing. Two long lines of ancient fluted Doric columns (ten on each side), relics of the Baths of Titus or Trajan, which once covered this site, lead the eye to the high altar, supposed to cover the remains of the seven Maccabean brothers, and to the tribune, which contains an ancient episcopal throne, and is adorned with frescoes by Jacopo Coppi, a Florentine of the sixteenth century, illustrative of the life of St. Peter. Beneath these is the tomb of G. Clovis, a miniature painter of the sixteenth century, and canon of this church.

On the left of the entrance is the tomb of Antonio Pollajuolo, the famous worker in bronze, and his brother Pietro. The fresco above, which is ascribed to Pollajuolo, refers to the translation of the body of St. Sebastian, as "Depulsor Pestilitatis," from the catacombs to this church,--one of the most picturesque stories of the middle ages. The great plague of A.D. 680 was ushered in by an awful vision of the two angels of good and evil, who wandered through the streets by night, side by side, when the one smote upon the door where death was to enter, unless arrested by the other. The people continued to die by hundreds daily. At length a citizen dreamt that the sickness would cease when the body of St. Sebastian should be brought into the city, and when this was done, the pestilence was stayed. In the fresco the whole story is told. In the background the citizen tells his dream to Pope Agatho, who is seated among his cardinals. On the right the angels of good and evil (the bad angel represented as a devil) are making their mysterious visitation, on the left a procession is bringing in the relics, and the foreground is strewn with the corpses of the dead. The general invocation of St. Sebastian in Italy, and the frequent introduction of his figure in art, have their origin in this story.

At the entrance of the left aisle is a fine bas-relief of St. Peter throned, delivering his keys to an angel, who acknowledges his supremacy by receiving them on his knees. This work was executed in 1465, and serves as a monument to the Cardinal de Cusa, Bishop of Brixen, whose incised gravestone lies beneath.

Over the second altar is a most interesting mosaic of 680, representing, in old age, the St. Sebastian whom we are accustomed to see as a beautiful youth, wounded with arrows,--which he survived:--

"A single figure in mosaic exists as an altar-piece in S. Pietro in Vincoli. It is intended for St. Sebastian, who was removed to the church by Pope Agathon, on occasion of the plague in 680, and doubtless executed soon after this date. As a specimen of its kind it is very remarkable. There is no analogy between this figure and the usual youthful type of St. Sebastian which was subsequently adopted. On the contrary, the saint is represented here as an old man with white hair and beard, carrying the crown of martyrdom in his hand, and dressed from head to foot in true Byzantine style. In his countenance there is still some life and dignity. The more careful shadowing also of the drapery shows that, in a work intended to be so much exposed to the gaze of the pious, more pains were bestowed than usual; nevertheless, the figure, upon the whole, is very inanimate; the ground is blue."--Kugler.

The first altar in the right aisle has a picture of St. Augustine by Guercino; then come tombs of Cardinals Margotti and Agucci, from designs of Domenichino, who has introduced a portrait of the former in his monument. At the end of this aisle is the beautiful picture of St. Margaret and the Dragon by Guercino; the saint is inspired, and displaying no sign of fear,--an earthly impulse only appearing in the motion of her hand, which seems pushing back the dragon.

"St. Margaret was daughter of a priest of Antioch named Theodosius, and was brought up as a Christian by her nurse, whose sheep she watched upon the hills, while meditating upon the mysteries of the gospel. The governor of Antioch fell in love with her and wished to marry her, but she refused, and declared herself a Christian. Her friends thereupon deserted her, and the governor tried to subdue her by submitting her to horrible tortures, amid which her faith did not fail. She was then dragged to a dungeon, where Satan, in the form of a terrible dragon, came upon her with his inflamed and hideous mouth wide open, and sought to terrify and confound her; but she held up the cross of the Redeemer, and he fled before it. She finally suffered death by decapitation. Her legend was certainly known in the fifth century: in the fourteenth century she was one of the favourite saints, and was specially invoked by women against the pains of child-birth.

"'Mild Margarete, that was God's maide; Maid Margarete, that was so meeke and milde.'"

See Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, v. I.

Here is the glory of the church--the famous Moses of Michael Angelo, forming part of the decorations of the unfinished monument of Julius II.

"This pope, whom nature had intended for a conqueror, and destiny clothed with the robe of a priest, takes his place by the side of the great warriors of the sixteenth century, by the side of Charles V., of Francis I., of Gonsalvo, of Cortes, of Alba, of Bayard, and of Doria. It is difficult to imagine Julius II. murmuring prayers, or saying mass in pontifical robes, and performing, in the midst of all those unmanly functions and thousand passive forms, the spirit-deadening part which is assigned to the popes, while his soul was on fire with great-hearted designs, and while in the music of the psalms he seemed to hear the thunder of cannon. He wished to be a prince of the Church; and with the political instinct of a prince he founded his state in the midst of the most difficult wars against France, and unhesitatingly conquered and took possession of Bologna, Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, and Urbino....

The greatest pope since Innocent III., and the creator of a new political spirit in the papacy, he wished, as a second Augustus, to glorify himself and his creation. He took up again the projects of Nicholas V. Rome should become his monument. To carry out his designs he found the genius of Bramante and Raphael, and, above all, that of Michael Angelo, who belonged to him like an organ of his being. St. Peter's, of which he laid the foundation-stone, the paintings of the Sistine, the loggie of Bramante, the stanze of Raphael, are memorials of Julius the Second."--Gregorovius, Grabmaler der Papste.

Most of all Julius II. sought immortality in his tomb, for which the original design was absolutely gigantic. Eighteen feet high, and twelve wide, it was intended to contain more than forty statues, which were to include Moses, St. Peter and St. Paul, Rachel and Leah, and chained figures of the Provinces, while those of the Heaven and the Earth were to support the sarcophagus of the pope. This project was cut short by the death of Julius in 1513, when only four of the statues were finished, and eight designed.[261] Of those which were finished, three statues, the Moses, the Rachel, and the Leah, were afterwards used for the existing memorial, which was put together under Paul III. by the Duke of Urbino, heir of Julius II.--in this church of which his uncle had been a cardinal.

"The eye does not know where to rest in this the masterpiece of sculpture since the time of the Greeks. It seems to be as much an incarnation of the genius of Michael Angelo, as a suitable allegory of Pope Julius. Like Moses, he was at once lawgiver, priest, and warrior. The figure is seated in the central niche, with long-flowing beard descending to the waist, with horned head, and deep-sunk eyes, which blaze, as it were, with the light of the burning bush, with a majesty of anger which makes one tremble, as of a passionate being, drunken with fire. All that is positive and all that is negative in him is equally dreadful. If he were to rise up, it seems as if he would shout forth laws which no human intellect could fathom, and which, instead of improving the world, would drive it back into chaos. His voice, like that of the gods of Homer, would thunder forth in tones too awful for the ear of man to support. Yes! there is something infinite which lies in the Moses of Michael Angelo. Nor is his countenance softened by the twilight of sadness, which is stealing from his forehead over his eyes. It is the same deep sadness which clouded the countenance of Michael Angelo himself. But here it is less touching than terrible. The Greeks could not have endured a glance from such a Moses, and the artist would certainly have been blamed, because he had thrown no softening touch over his gigantic picture. That which we have is the archetype of a terrible and quite unapproachable sublimity. This statue might take its place in the cell of a colossal temple, as that of Jupiter Ammon, but the tomb where it is placed is so little suited to it, that regarded even only as its frame it is too small."--Gregorovius.

On either side of the principal figure are niches containing Michael Angelo's statues of Rachel and Leah,--emblematic of active and contemplative life. Those above, of the Prophet and the Sibyl, are by Raphael da Montelupo, his best pupil; on the summit is the Madonna with the Infant Jesus by Scherano da Settignano. The worst figure of the whole is that, by Maso dal Bosco, of the pope himself, who seems quite overwhelmed by the grandeur of his companions, and who lies upon a pitiful sarcophagus, leaning his head upon his hand, and looking down upon the Moses. He is represented with the beard which he was the first pope to reintroduce after an interval of many centuries,--and it is said to have been from his example that Francis I., Charles V., and others, adopted it also.

After all, Julius II. was not buried here, and the tomb is merely commemorative. He rests beneath a plain marble slab near his uncle Sixtus IV., in the chapel of the Sacrament at St. Peter's.

Close to the Moses is the entrance to the chapel in which the chains are preserved, behind a bronze screen--the work of Pollajuolo. They are of unequal size, owing to many fragments of one of them (first whole links, then only filings) having been removed in the course of centuries by various popes and sent to Christian princes who have been esteemed worthy of the favour![262] The longest is about five feet in length. At the end of one of them is a collar, which is said to have encircled the neck of St. Peter. They are exposed on the day of the "station" (the first Monday in Lent) in a reliquary presented by Pius IX., adorned with statuettes of St. Peter and the angel--to whom he is represented as saying, "Ecce nunc scio vere."[263] On the following day a priest gives the chains to be kissed by the pilgrims, and touches their foreheads with them, saying, "By the intercession of the blessed Apostle Peter, may God preserve you from evil. Amen."

"Peter, therefore, was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him. And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the keepers before the door kept the prison. And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison: and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands."--Acts xii. 5--7.

Other relics preserved here are portions of the crosses of St. Peter and St. Andrew, and the body of Sta. Costanza.

The sacristy, opening out of this chapel, contains a number of pictures, including, very appropriately, the Deliverance of St. Peter from Prison, by Domenichino. Here, till a few years ago, was preserved the famous and beautiful small picture, known as the Speranza of Guido. It has lately been sold by the monks to an Englishman, and is replaced by a copy.

In this church Hildebrand was crowned pope as Gregory VII. (1073). Stephen IX. was also proclaimed here in 939. The adjoining convent was built from designs of Giuliano San Gallo. Its courtyard contains a picturesque well (with columns), bearing the arms of Julius II., by Simone Mosca. The arcades were decorated in the present century with frescoes by Pietra Camosci, as a votive offering for his recovery from cholera, to St. Sebastian, "depulsori pestilitatis."

Opposite S. Pietro in Vincoli is a convent of Maronite monks, in whose garden is a tall palm-tree, perhaps the finest in Rome. In the view from the portico of the church it forms a conspicuous feature, and the combination of the old tower, the palm-tree, and the distant capitol, standing out against the golden sky of sunset, is one very familiar to Roman artists.

The tall machicolated Tower on the right was once a fortress of the Frangipani family, who obtained their glorious surname of "bread-breakers" from the generosity which they showed in the distribution of food to the poor during a famine in the thirteenth century. The tower is now used as a belfry to the adjoining Church of S. Francesco di Paola, being the only mediæval fortress tower applied to this purpose. The adjoining building is known as the House of Lucrezia Borgia, and the balcony over the gateway on the other side is pointed out as that in which she used to stand meditating on her crimes. Here Cæsar Borgia and his unhappy brother, the Duke of Gandia, supped with Lucrezia and their mother Vanozza, the evening before the murder of the duke, of which Cæsar was accused by popular belief. It is worth while to descend under the low-browed arch from the church piazza, and look back upon this lofty house, with its steep, dark, winding staircase,--a most picturesque bit of street architecture, which looks better the further you descend. The Via S. Francesco di Paola is considered by Ampère[264] to have been the place where the house of the Horatii and the Tigellum Sororis once stood.

Following the narrow lane behind S. Pietro, we reach, on the left, S. Martino al Monte, the great church of the Carmelites, which, though of uninviting exterior, is of the highest interest. It was built in A.D. 500 by S. Symmachus, and dedicated to the saints Sylvestro and Martino, on the site of an older church founded by St. Sylvester in the time of Constantine. After repeated alterations, it was modernised in 1650 by P. Filippini, General of the Carmelites. The nave is separated from the aisles by twenty-four ancient Corinthian columns. The aisles are painted with landscapes by Gaspar Poussin, having figures introduced by his brother Nicholas. The roof is an addition by S. Carlo Borromeo.

The pillars of different marbles are magnificent, and the effect of the raised choir, with winding staircases to the crypt below, is highly picturesque. On the walls are frescoes by Cavaluccio (ob. 1795), who is buried in the left aisle. The collection of incised gravestones deserves attention, they comprise those of a knight in mail armour of 1349; Cardinal Diomede Caraffa, with a curious epitaph; and various generals and remarkable monks of the Carmelite Order. Beneath the high altar rest the bodies of Popes Sergius, Sylvester, Martin I., Fabian, Stephen I., Soter, Ciriacus, Anastasius, and Innocent I., with several saints not papal, removed hither from the catacombs. In the curious crypt, part of the Baths of Titus, the early Council of Sylvester and Constantine was held, as represented in the fresco in the left aisle of the upper church. The back of the ancient chair of Sylvester still remains, green with age and damp. In the chapel on the left, where St. Sylvester used to celebrate mass, is an ancient mosaic of the Madonna. In front of the papal chair is the grand sepulchral figure of a Carmelite, who was General of the Order in the time of Sta. Teresa. An urn contains the intestines of the "Beato," Cardinal Giuseppe-Maria de Tommasis, who died in 1713. His body is preserved beneath an altar in the left aisle of the upper church, and is dressed in his cardinal's robes.

"In 1650 was reopened, beneath SS. Martino e Sylvestro, the long-forgotten oratory formed (according to Anastasius) by Sylvester among the halls of Trajan's Thermæ--or, more probably, in an antique palace adjacent to those imperial baths--and called by Christian writers 'Titulus Equitii,' from the name of a Roman priest then proprietor of the ground. Now a gloomy, time-worn, and sepulchral subterranean, this structure is in form an extensive quadrangle, under a high-hung vault, divided into four aisles by massive square piers; the central bay of one aisle adorned with a large red cross, painted as if studded with gems; and ranged round this, four books, each within a nimbus, earliest symbolism to represent the Evangelists. Among the much-faded and dim-seen frescoes on these dusky walls, are figures of the Saviour between SS. Peter and Paul, besides other saints, each crowned by a large nimbus."--Hemans' Ancient Sacred Art.

Here is preserved a mitre, probably the most ancient extant, and said to be that of St. Sylvester, who lived in the fourth century, and who was the first Latin bishop to wear the mitre originally worn by the priests of pagan temples. This ancient mitre is so low as to rise only just above the crown of the head.

This church was dedicated to St. Martin, the holy Bishop of Tours, within a hundred years after his death, showing the very early veneration with which that saint was regarded.

Leaving S. Martino by the other door, near the tribune, we emerge at the top of the steep street called Sta. Lucia in Selci, which is the same with that described by Martial in going to visit the younger Pliny as--

"Altum vincere tramitem Suburræ." Lib. x. Ep. 19, 5.

And again--

"Alto Suburrani vincenda est semita clivi." Lib. v. Ep. 23, 5.

Here is a whole group of convents. In the hollow is the convent of S. Francesco di Paola, with several others. Just above (in the Via Quattro Cantone) is the convent of the Oratorians, or S. Filippo Neri. At this point also are two mediæval towers, one enclosed within the convent walls of Sta. Lucia in Selci, the other on the opposite side of the street, supposed by some to be the tower of Mecænas, celebrated by Horace. On the left of the street is the house of Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), whose residence here is commemorated by an inscription.

Mounting the street we soon reach, on the right, the picturesque tenth century west gate (a high narrow arch upon Ionic columns, modernized and plastered over under the Sardinian government) of the Church of Sta. Prassede, which leads into the atrium of the church. This is seldom open, but we can enter by a door in the north aisle.

Sta. Prassede was sister of Sta. Pudenziana, and daughter of Pudens and his wife Claudia, with whom St. Paul lodged, and who were among his first converts (see Ch. X., Sta. Pudenziana). She gave shelter in her house to a number of persecuted Christians, twenty-three of whom were discovered and martyred in her presence. She then buried their bodies in the catacombs of her grandmother, Sta. Priscilla, but, collecting their blood in a sponge, placed it in a well in her own house, where she was afterwards buried herself. An oratory is said to have been erected on the site by Pius I., A.D. 160, and was certainly in existence in A.D. 499, when it is mentioned in the acts of a Council. In A.D. 822 the original church was destroyed, and the present church erected by Pascal I., of whose time are the low tower, the porch, the terra-cotta cornices, and the mosaics. During the absence of the popes at Avignon, Sta. Prassede was one of the many churches which fell almost into ruin, and it has since suffered terribly from injudicious modernisations, first in the fifteenth century from Rosellini, under Nicholas V., and afterwards under S. Carlo Borromeo in 1564.

The interior is a basilica, the nave being separated from the aisles by sixteen granite columns, many of which have been boxed up in hideous stucco pilasters, decorated with frescoes of apostles; but their Corinthian capitals are visible, carved with figures of birds (the eagle, cock, and dove) in strong relief against the acanthus leaves. The nave is divided into four compartments by arches rising from the square pilasters; the roof is coffered.

In the right aisle is the entrance to the famous chapel, called, from its unusual and mysterious splendour, the Orto del Paradiso--originally dedicated to S. Zeno, then to the Virgin, with the invocation "Libera nos a pœnis inferi," and finally to the great relic which it contains. Females are never allowed to enter this shrine except upon Sundays in Lent, but can see the relic through a grating. Males are admitted by the door which is flanked by two columns of rare black and white marble, supporting a richly-sculptured marble cornice, above which are two lines of mosaic heads in circlets--in the outer, the Saviour and the twelve apostles; in the inner, the Virgin between St. Stephen and St. Laurence, with eight female saints; at the angles St. Pudens and St. Pastor. In the interior of the chapel four granite columns support a lofty groined vault, which, together with the upper part of the walls, is entirely covered with mosaic figures, which stand out distinctly from a gold ground.

"Here are SS. Peter and Paul before a throne, on which is the cross, but no seated figure; the former apostle holding a single gold key,[265] the latter a scroll; St. John the Evangelist, with a richly-bound volume; SS. James and Andrew, the two daughters of Pudens, and St. Agnes, all in rich vestments, and holding crowns; the Virgin Mary (a veiled matronly figure), and St. John the Baptist standing beside her; under the arch of a window, another half-figure of Mary, with three other females, all having the nimbus, one crowned, one with a square halo to indicate a person still living; above these, the Divine Lamb on a hill, from which the four rivers issue, with stags drinking of their waters; above the altar, the Saviour, between four other saints,--figures in part barbarously sacrificed to a modern tabernacle that conceals them. On the vault a colossal half-figure of the Saviour, youthful but severe in aspect, with cruciform nimbus, appears in a large circular halo supported by four archangels, solemn forms in long white vestments, that stand finely distinct in the dim light. Within a niche over the altar is another mosaic of the Virgin and Child, with the two daughters of Pudens, in which Rumohr (Italienische Forsch.) observes ruder execution, indicating origin later than the ninth century."--Hemans' Ancient Christian Art.

The relic preserved here (one of the principal objects of pilgrimage in Rome) is the column to which our Saviour is reputed to have been bound, said to have been given by the Saracens to Giovanni Colonna, cardinal of this church, and legate of the crusade, because, when he had fallen into their hands and was about to be put to death, he was rescued by a marvellous intervention of celestial light. Its being of the rarest blood jasper is a reason against its authenticity; the peculiarity of its formation having even given rise to the mineralogical term, "Granito della Colonna." A disk of porphyry in the pavement marks the grave of forty martyrs collected by Paschal I. The mother of that pope is also buried here, and the inscription commemorating her observes an ancient ecclesiastical usage in allowing her the title of "episcopa:" "Ubi utique benignissimæ suæ genitricis, scilicet Dominæ Theodoræ, Episcopæ corpus quiescit." In this chapel Paschal I. saw the spirit of his nephew dragged to heaven by an angel, through the little window, while he was saying a mass for his soul.

The high altar covers the entrance to a small crypt, in which are two ancient sarcophagi, containing the remains of the sainted sisters Prassede and Pudenziana. An altar here, richly decorated with mosaic, is shown as that which existed in the house of Prassede. Above is a fresco, referred to the twelfth century, representing the Madonna between the sainted sisters. At the end of the left aisle is a large slab of granite (nero-bianco), upon which Sta. Prassede is said to have slept, and above it a picture of her asleep. In the centre of the nave is the well where she collected the blood, with a hideous statue of her squeezing it out of a sponge.

The chapel at the end of the left aisle is that of S. Carlo Borromeo, who was cardinal of this church, and contains his episcopal throne (a wooden chair) and a table, at which, like St. Gregory, he used to feed and wait upon twelve poor men daily. The pictures in this chapel, by Louis Stern, represent S. Carlo in prayer, and in ecstasy before the Sacrament. In the cloister is an old orange-tree which was planted by him, but is still flourishing.

Opposite the side entrance of the Orto del Paradiso is the tomb of Cardinal Cetive (1474), with his sleeping figure and statuettes of SS. Peter and Paul, Sta. Prassede, and Sta. Pudenziana. This will recall Browning's quaint forcible poem of 'The Bishop who orders his tomb at Saint Praxed's church.'

"Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace.

* * * * *

And there how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!"

Other tombs of interest are those of Cardinal Ancherus, assassinated in 1286 outside the Porta S. Giovanni, and of Monsignor Santoni, a bust, said to have been executed by Bernini when only ten years old.

Two pictures in side chapels are interesting in a Vallombrosan church, as connected with saints of that order,--one representing S. Pietro Aldobrandini passing through the furnace at Settimo; and another the martyrdom of Cardinal Beccaria, put to death at Florence (whither he was sent by Alexander IV. to make peace between the Guelfs and Ghibellines)--and consigned to hell by Dante.

----"Quel di Beccaria Di cui segò Fiorenza la gorgiera."

Inferno, xxxii.

Steps of magnificent rosso-antico lead to the tribune, which is covered with mosaics of A.D. 817-824. Those on the arch represent the heavenly Jerusalem; within is the Saviour with a cruciform halo--the hand of the first person of the Trinity holding a crown over his head--and St. Peter and St. Paul bringing in the sainted sisters of the church; on the right, Pope Paschal I.,[266] with a model of his church; on the left, St. Zeno (?). Above these figures, is the Adoration of the spotless Lamb, and beneath their feet the Jordan; below all is the Lamb again, with the twelve sheep issuing from the mystic cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and verses recording the work of Paschal I.

"The arrangement of saints at Sta. Prassede (817) is altogether different from that at Ravenna, but equally striking. Over the grand arch which separates the choir from the nave is a mosaic, representing the New Jerusalem, as described in the Revelations. It is a walled enclosure, with a gate at each end, guarded by angels. Within is seen the Saviour of the World, holding in his hand the orb of sovereignty, and a company of blessed seated on thrones: outside, the noble army of martyrs is seen approaching, conducted and received by angels. They are all arrayed in white, and carry crowns in their hands. Lower down, on each side, a host of martyrs press forward with palms and crowns, to do homage to the Lamb, throned in the midst. None of the martyrs are distinguished by name, except those to whom the church is dedicated--Sta. Prassede and her sister Pudenziana."--Mrs. Jameson.

While Pope Gelasius II. was celebrating mass in this church, he was attacked by armed bands of the inimical houses of Leone and Frangipani, and was only rescued by the assistance of his nephew Gaetano, after a conflict of some hours. Hence in 1630, Moriandi, abbot of Sta. Prassede, was suddenly carried off and put to fearful tortures, which resulted in his death, ostensibly on account of irregularities in his convent, but really because he had been heard to speak against Urban VIII.[267]

In the sacristy is preserved a fine picture by Giulio Romano of the Flagellation--especially appropriate in the church of the Colonna.

Hence the curious campanile of the old church (built 1110) may be entered, and a loggia whence the great relics of the church are exhibited at Easter, including: portions of the crown of thorns, of the sponge, of the Virgin's hair, and a miniature portrait of our Saviour which is said to have belonged to St. Peter and to have been left by him with the daughters of Pudens.

The Monastery attached to the church, founded by Paschal I., was first occupied by Basilian, but since 1198 has belonged to Vallombrosan monks. Nothing remains of the mosaic-covered chapel of St. Agnes, built by the founder within its walls.

Where the Via Sta. Prassede crosses the road leading from Sta. Maria Maggiore to the Lateran, is the modern gothic church of Il Santissimo Redentore, built by Father Douglas within the last few years.

A little beyond this, attached to the Church of S. Vito, from which it has sometimes been named, is the Arch of Gallienus (supposed to occupy the site of the Esquiline gate in the wall of Servius), dedicated to Gallienus (A.D. 253--260) and his Empress Salonina, by Marcus Aurelius Victor, evidently a court-flatterer of the period, who was prefect of Rome, and possessed gardens on this spot. It is of very inferior execution; the original plan had three arches; only that in the centre remains, but traces of another may be seen on the side next the church. Gallienus was a cruel and self-indulgent emperor, who excited the indignation of the Romans by leaving his old father, Valerian, to die a captive in the hands of the Persians, so that the inscription, "Clementissimo principi cuius invicta virtus sola pietate superata est," is singularly false, even for the time.

"Il arrivait à Gallien de faire tuer trois ou quatre mille soldats en un jour, et il écrivait des lettres comme celle-ci, adressée à un de ses généraux: 'Tu n'auras pas fait assez pour moi, si tu ne mets à mort que des hommes armés, car le sort de la guerre aurait pu les faire périr. Il faut tuer quiconque a eu une intention mauvaise, quiconque a mal parlé de moi. Déchire, tue, extermine: lacera, occide, concide.' Entré dans Byzance en promettant leur pardon aux troupes qui avaient combattu contre lui, il les fit égorger, et les soldats ravagèrent la ville au point qu'il n'y resta pas un habitant. Voilà pour la clémence. Tandis que Valérien, son père, était prisonnier du roi des Perses Sapor, qui pour monter à cheval se servait du dos du vieil empereur comme d'un marchepied, en attendant qu'il le fit empailler, l'indigne fils de Valérien vivait au sein des plus honteuses voluptés, et ne tentait pas un seul effort pour le délivrer. Voilà pour la vaillance et la piété."--Ampère, Emp. ii. 334.

Close to this Gallienus had ordered a statue of himself to be erected, which was to be double the height of the colossus of Nero, but it was unfinished at the time of his death, and destroyed by his successor. From the centre of the arch hung, from the thirteenth century, the chain and keys of the gates of Viterbo, removed at the same time as the great bell of the Capitol. These interesting memorials of middle-age warfare were taken down in 1825.

Passing under the arch we enter upon the Via Maggiore, the main artery leading to Santa Croce. On the left is the humble convent of the Monache Polacche, where the long-suffering Madre Makrena, the sole survivor of the terrible persecution of the nuns of Minsk, has lived in the closest retirement since her escape in 1845.

The story of the cruel sufferings of the Polish-Basilian nuns of Minsk reminds one of the worst persecutions of the early Christians, under Nero and Diocletian. Makrena Miaczylslawska was abbess of a convent of thirty-eight nuns, whom the apostate bishop Siemasko first tried to compel to the Greek faith in the summer of 1838. Their refusal led to their being driven, laden with chains, to Witepsk, in Siberia, where they were forced to hard labour, many of them being beaten to death, one roasted alive in a hot stove, and another having her brains beaten out with a stake by the abbess of the Czernice (apostate nuns), on their persisting in their refusal to change their religion. In 1840 the surviving nuns were removed to Polock, where they were forced to work at building a palace for the bishop Siemasko, and where nine of them perished by a falling scaffold, and many others expired under the heavy weights they were compelled to carry, or under the lash. In 1842 their tortures were increased tenfold, eight of the sisters having their eyes torn out, and others being trodden to death. In 1843 those who still survived were removed to Miadzioly, where the "protopope Skrykin" said that he would "drown them like puppies," and where they were dragged by boats through the shallows of the half-frozen Dwina, up to their necks in water, till many died of the cold. In the spring of 1845, Makrena, with the only three nuns who survived with the use of their limbs (Eusebia Wawrzecka, Clotilda Konarska, and Irene Pomarnacka,) scaled the walls of their prison, while the priests and nuns who guarded them were lying drunk after an orgie, and, after wandering for three months in the forests of Lithuania, made good their escape. The nuns remained in Vienna; the abbess, after a series of extraordinary adventures, arrived in Rome, where she was at first lodged in the convent of the Trinità de' Monti. The story of the nuns of Minsk was taken down from her dictation at the same time by a number of eminent ecclesiastics, authorized by the pope, and the authenticity of her statements verified; after which she retired into complete seclusion in the Polish convent on the Esquiline, where she has long filled the humble office of portress. Her legs are eaten into the bone by the chains she wore in her prison life. The story of the persecution at Minsk may be read in "Le Récit de Makrena Miaczylslawska," published at Paris, by Lecoffre, in 1846; in a paper by Charles Dickens, in the "Household Words," for May, 1854; and in "Pictures of Christian Heroism," 1855.

Nearly opposite this convent is the picturesque ruin of a nymphæum, probably of the time of Septimius Severus, erroneously called The Trophies of Marius, from the trophies, now on the terrace in front of the Capitol, which were found here.

Beyond this, on the right, is the entrance of the Villa Palombara, occupying a great part of the site of the Baths of Titus.

"This villa once belonged to Queen Christina of Sweden, who has left upon the little doorway exactly opposite the ruin called the Trophies of Marius, a curious record of her credulity. It consists of a collection of unintelligible words, signs, and triangles, given her by some alchymist, as the rule to make gold, and which, no doubt, he had found successful, having obtained from her, and probably from many other votaries, abundance of that precious metal in exchange for it. But as she could make nothing of it, she caused it to be inscribed here, in case any passenger, wiser than herself, should be able to develope the mystic signs of this golden secret."--Eaton's Rome.

Though the existing ruin is misnamed, the trophies erected in honour of the victories which Marius gained over the Cimbri were really set up near this; and, curiously enough, on this site also Marius was defeated at the "Forum Esquilinum" by Sylla, who suddenly descended upon Rome from Nola with six legions, and entering by the Porta Esquilina, met his adversary here, and forced him to fly to Ostia.

Behind the Trophies of Marius a lane branches off on the left to the desolate Church of Sta. Bibiana.

In the time of Julian the Apostate, there dwelt in Rome a Christian unity, consisting of Flavian, his wife Dalfrosa, and his two daughters, Bibiana and Demetria. All these died for their faith. Flavian was exiled, and died of starvation; Dalfrosa was beheaded; the sisters were imprisoned (A.D. 362) and scourged, and Demetria died at once under the torture. Bibiana glorified God by longer sufferings. Apronius, the prefect of the city, astonished by her beauty, conceived a guilty passion for her, and placed her under the care of one of his creatures named Rufina, who was gradually to bend her to his will. But Bibiana repelled his proposals with horror, and her firmness excited him to such fury, that he commanded her to be bound to a column, and scourged to compliance. "The order was executed with all imaginable cruelty, rivers of blood flowed from each wound, and morsels of flesh were torn away, till even the most barbarous spectators were stricken with horror. The saint alone continued immoveable, with her eyes fixed upon heaven, and her countenance radiant with celestial peace,--until her body being torn to pieces, her soul escaped to her heavenly bridegroom, to receive the double crown of virginity and martyrdom."[268]

After the death of Bibiana, her body was exposed to dogs for three days in the Forum Boarium, but remained unmolested; after which it was stolen at night by John the priest, who buried it here.

The church, founded in the fifth century by Olympia, a Roman matron, was modernised by Bernini for Urban VIII., and has no external appearance of antiquity. The interior is adorned with frescoes; those on the right are by Agostino Ciampelli, those on the left are considered by Lanzi as the best works of Pietro da Cortona. They pourtray in detail the story of the saint:--

1. Bibiana refuses to sacrifice to idols. 2. The death of Demetria. 3. Bibiana is scourged at the column. 4. The body of Bibiana is watched over by a dog. 5. Olympia founds the church, which is dedicated by Pope Simplicius.

The statue of the saint at the high altar is considered the masterpiece of Bernini. It is dignified and graceful, and would hardly be recognised as his work.

"This statue is one of his earliest works; and it is said that when Bernini, in advanced life, returned from France, he uttered, on seeing it, an involuntary expression of admiration. 'But,' added he, 'had I always worked in this style, I should have been a beggar.' This would lead us to conclude, that his own taste led him to prefer simplicity and truth, but that he was obliged to conform to the corrupted predilection of the age."--Eaton's Rome.

The remains of the saint are preserved beneath the altar, in a splendid sarcophagus of oriental alabaster, adorned with a leopard's head. A column of rosso-antico is shown as that to which Sta. Bibiana was bound during her flagellation. The fête of the martyred sisters is observed with great solemnity on December 2.

"Il est touchant de voir, le jour de la fête, le Chapitre entier de la grande et somptueuse basilique de Sainte-Marie-Majeure venir processionellement à cette modeste église et célébrer de solennelles et pompeuses cérémonies en l'honneur de ces deux vierges et leur mère: C'est que si ces trois femmes étaient faibles et ignorées selon le monde, elles sont devenues par leur foi, fortes et sublimes; et l'Église ne croit pouvoir trop faire pour glorifier une pareille grandeur."--Impressions d'une Catholique à Rome.

On or near this site were the Horti Lamiani, in which the Emperor Caligula was hastily buried after his assassination, A.D. 41, though his remains were shortly afterwards disinterred by his sisters and burnt. These gardens were probably the property of Ælius Lamia, to whom Horace addressed one of his odes.[269] At an earlier period Elius Tubero lived here, celebrated for his virtue, his poverty, and his little house, where sixteen members of the Elian Gens dwelt harmoniously together.[270] He married the daughter of L. Emilius Paulus, "who," says Plutarch, "though the daughter of one who had twice been consul and twice triumphed, did not blush for the poverty of her husband, but admired the virtue which had made him poor."

On the other side of the Trophies of Marius, the Via Porta Maggiore leads to the gate of that name (see Ch. XIII.). Approached by a gate on the left of this road, most desolate, until the making of the railway amid its vineyards and gardens, and crowned with lentiscus and other shrubs, is the picturesque ruin generally called the Temple of Minerva Medica, from a false impression that the Giustiniani Minerva, now in the Vatican, had been found here.[271] It is now generally decided to be a remnant of the bath built by Augustus in honour of his grandsons Caius and Lucius Cæsar (sons of Agrippa and Julia). It is a decagon, with a vaulted brick roof, and nine niches for statues; those of Æsculapius, Antinous, Hercules, Adonis, Pomona, and (the Farnese) Faun, have been found on the site.

Near this is a curious Columbarium of the Arruntia Family, and a brick-lined hollow, supposed to be part of the Naumachia which Dion Cassius says that Augustus constructed "in the grove of Caius and Lucius."

Just where the lane turns off to Sta. Bibiana is the entrance to the courtyard of the Church and Monastery of S. Eusebio, built upon the site of the house of the saint, a priest of noble family, martyred by starvation under Constantius, A.D. 357. His body rests under the high altar, with that of St. Orosus, a Spanish priest, who suffered at the same time. The ceiling of the church is painted by Mengs, and represents the apotheosis of the patron saint. The campanile dates from 1220. In this convent (which was conceded to the Jesuits in 1825 by Leo XII.) English clergymen about to join the Roman Catholic Church frequently "make a retreat" before their reception; Archdeacon Wilberforce is one of many converts who have been received here.

Turning towards Sta. Maria Maggiore, on the left is a Cross on a pedestal formed by a cannon reversed, and inscribed "In hoc signo vinces,"--a memorial of the absolution given by Clement VIII. in 1595 to Henry IV. of France on his being received into the Roman Catholic Church.

Opposite this is a peculiar round arched doorway--unique in Rome--forming the entrance to the Church of S. Antonio Abbate, said to occupy the site of a temple of Diana. The church is decorated with very coarsely-executed frescoes of the life of the saint,--his birth, his confirmation by a bishop who predicted his future saintship, and his temptation by the devil in various forms.

"S. Antonio, called 'the patriarch of monks,' became a hermit in his twentieth year, and lived alone in the Egyptian desert till his fifty-fifth year, when he founded his monastery of Phaim, where he died at the age of 105, having passed his life in perpetual prayer, and often tasting no food for three days at a time. In the desert Satan was permitted to assault him in a visible manner, to terrify him with dismal noises; and once he so grievously beat him that he lay almost dead, covered with bruises and wounds. At other times the fiends attacked him with terrible clamours, and a variety of spectres, in hideous shapes of the most frightful wild beasts, which they assumed to dismay and terrify him; till a ray of heavenly light breaking in upon him, chased them away, and caused him to cry out, 'Where wast thou, my Lord and Master? Why wast thou not with me?' And a voice answered, 'Anthony, I was here the whole time; I stood by thee, and beheld thy combat: and because thou hast manfully withstood thy enemies I will always protect thee, and will render thy name famous throughout the earth.'"--Butler's Lives of the Saints.

"Surely the imagery painted on the inner walls of Egyptian tombs, and probably believed by Anthony and his compeers to be connected with devil-worship, explains his visions. In the 'Words of the Elders' a monk complains of being troubled with 'pictures, old and new.' Probably, again, the pain which Anthony felt was the agony of a fever, and the visions which he saw its delirium."--Kingsley's Hermits.

In the chapel of S. Antonio is a very ancient mosaic, representing a tiger tearing a bull.

"Le tigre en mosaïque conservé dans l'église de St. Antoine, patron des animaux, est, selon toute apparence, le portrait d'un acteur renommé."--Ampère, Hist. Rom. iv. 28.

Hither, on the week following the feast of St. Anthony (January 17), horses, mules, and cows are brought to be blest as a preservative against accidents for the year to come. On the 23rd, the horses of the pope, Prince Borghese, and other Roman grandees (about 2½ P.M.) are sent for this purpose. All the animals are sprinkled with holy water by a priest, who receives a gift in proportion to the wealth of their master, and recites over each group the formula,--

"Per intercessionem beati Antonii Abbatis, hæc animalia liberantur a malis, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen!"

"Les bergers romains faisaient la lustration de leurs taureaux; ils purifiaient leurs brebis à la fête de Pales (pour écarter d'eux toute influence funeste), comme ils les font encore asperger d'eau bénite à la fête de Saint Antoine."--Ampère, Hist. Rom. ii. 329.[272]

"'Long live St. Anthony,' writes Mabillon (in the 17th century) as he describes the horses, asses, and mules, all going on the saint's festival to be sprinkled with holy water, and receive the benediction of a reverend father. 'All would go to ruin,' say the Romans, 'if this act of piety were omitted.' So nobody escapes paying toll on this occasion, not even Nostro Signore himself."--Stephens' French Benedictines.

"S. Antonio Abbate is the patron of the four-footed creation, and his feast is a saturnalia for the usually hard-worked beasts and for their attendants and drivers. Gentlefolks must be content on this day to stay at home or go on foot, for there are not wanting solemn tales of how the unbelievers who had obliged their coachmen to drive out on this day have been punished by great misfortunes. The church of S. Antonio stands in a large piazza, usually looking like a desert; but to-day it was enlivened by a varied throng: horses and mules, with tails and manes splendidly interlaced with ribbons, are brought to a small chapel standing somewhat apart from the church, where a priest armed with a large asperge plentifully besprinkles the animals with the holy water which is placed before him in tubs and pails, sometimes apparently with a sly wish to excite them to gambols. Devout coachmen bring larger or smaller wax-tapers, and their masters send alms and gifts, in order to secure to their valuable and useful animals a year's exemption from disease and accident. Horned cattle and donkeys, equally precious and serviceable to their owners, have their share in the blessing."--Goethe, Romische Briefe.

"At the blessing of the animals, an adventure happened, which afforded us some amusement. A countryman, having got a blessing on his beast, putting his whole trust in its power, set off from the church door at a grand gallop, and had scarcely cleared a hundred yards before the ungainly animal tumbled down with him, and over its head he rolled into the dirt. He soon got up, however, and shook himself, and so did the horse, without either seeming to be much the worse. The priest seemed not a whit out of countenance at this; and some of the standers-by exclaimed, with laudable steadfastness of faith, 'That but for the blessing, they might have broken their necks.'"--Eaton's Rome.

"Un postilion Italien, qui voyait mourir son cheval, priait pour lui, et s'écriait: O, Sant' Antonio, abbiate pietà dell' anima sua!"--Madame de Staël.

"The hog was the representative of the demon of sensuality and gluttony, which Anthony is supposed to have vanquished by the exercise of piety and by the divine aid. The ancient custom of placing in all his effigies a black pig at his feet, or under his feet, gave rise to the superstition, that this unclean animal was especially dedicated to him and under his protection. The monks of the Order of St. Anthony kept herds of consecrated pigs, which were allowed to feed at the public charge, and which it was a profanation to steal or kill; hence the proverb about the fatness of a 'Tantony pig.'"--Jameson's Sacred Art, p. 750.

We now enter the Piazza of Sta. Maria Maggiore, in front of which stands a beautiful Corinthian column, now called Colonna della Vergine. This is the last remaining column of the Basilica of Constantine, and is forty-seven feet high without its base and capital. It was brought hither by Paul V. in 1613. The figure of the Virgin on the top is by Bertelot.

The Basilica of Sta. Maria Maggiore, frequently named from its founder the Liberian Basilica, was founded A.D. 352, by Pope Liberius, and John,[273] a Roman patrician, to commemorate a miraculous fall of snow, which covered this spot of ground and no other, on the 5th of August, when the Virgin appearing in a vision, showed them that she had thus appropriated the site of a new temple.[274] This legend is commemorated every year on the 5th of August, the festa of La Madonna della Neve, when, during a solemn high mass in the Borghese chapel, showers of white rose-leaves are thrown down constantly through two holes in the ceiling, "like a leafy mist between the priests and worshippers."

This church, in spite of many alterations, is in some respects internally the most beautiful and harmonious building in Rome, and retains much of the character which it received when rebuilt between 432 and 440, by Sixtus III., who dedicated it to Sta. Maria Mater Dei, and established it as one of the four patriarchal basilicas, whence it is provided with the "porta santa," only opened by the pope, with great solemnity, four times in a century.

The west front was added under Benedict XIV. (Lambertini) in 1741, by Ferdinando Fuga, destroying a portico of the time of Eugenius III., of which the only remnant is an architrave, inserted into which is an inscription, quoted by its defenders in proof of the existence of Mariolatry in the twelfth century:--

"Tertius Eugenius Romanus Papa benignus Obtulit hoc munus, Virgo Maria, tibi, Quæ Mater Christi fieri merito meruisti, Salva perpetua Virginitate tibi. Es Via, Vita, Salus, totius Gloria Mundi, Da veniam culpis, Virginitatis Honos."

In this portico is a statue of Philip IV. of Spain by Lucenti. In the upper story are preserved the mosaics which once decorated the old façade, some of them representing the miracle which led to the foundation of the church.

"To 1300 belong the mosaics on the upper part of the façade of Sta. Maria Maggiore (now inserted in the loggia), in which, in two rows, framed in architectural decorations, may be seen Christ in the act of benediction, and several saints above, and the legend of the founding of the church below--both well-arranged compositions. An inscription gives the name of the otherwise unknown master, 'Philippus Rusuti.' This work was formerly attributed to the Florentine mosaicist Gaddo Gaddi, who died 1312."--Kugler.

Five doors, if we include the walled-up Porta Santa, lead into the magnificent nave (280 feet long, 60 broad), lined by an avenue of white marble columns, surmounted by a frieze of mosaic pictures from the Old Testament, of A.D. 440--unbroken, except where six of the subjects have been cut away to make room for arches in front of the two great side chapels. The mosaics increase in splendour as they approach the tribune, in front of which is a grand baldacchino by Fuga, erected by Benedict XIV., supported by four porphyry columns wreathed with gilt leaves, and surmounted by four marble angels by Pietro Bracci. The pavement is of the most glorious opus-alexandrinum, and its crimson and violet hues temper the white and gold on the walls. The flat roof (by Sangallo), panelled and carved, is gilt with the first gold brought to Spain from South America, and presented to Alexander VI. by Ferdinand and Isabella.

"The mosaics above the chancel arch are valuable for the illustration of Christian doctrine: the throne of the Lamb as described in the Apocalypse, SS. Peter and Paul beside it (the earliest instance of their being thus represented); and the four symbols of the Evangelists above; the Annunciation; the Angel appearing to Zacharias; the Massacre of the Innocents; the Presentation in the Temple; the Adoration of the Magi; Herod receiving the head of St. John the Baptist; and, below these groups, a flock of sheep, type of the faithful, issuing from the mystic cities, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. We see here one curious example of the nimbus, round the head of Herod, as a symbol of power, apart from sanctity. In certain details these mosaics have been altered, with a view to adapting them to modern devotional bias, in a manner that deserves reprobation; but Ciampini (Monumenta Vetera) shows us in engraving what the originals were before this alteration, effected under Benedict XIV. In the group of the Adoration the child alone occupied the throne, while opposite (in the original work) was seated, on another chair, an elderly person in a long blue mantle veiling the head--concluded by Ciampini to be the senior among the Magi; the two others, younger, and both in the usual Oriental dress, with trousers and Phrygian caps, being seen to approach at the same side, whilst the mother stood beside the throne of the child,--her figure recognisable from its resemblance to others in scenes where she appears in the same series. As this group is now before us, the erect figure is left out; the seated one is converted into that of Mary, with a halo round the head, though in the original even such attribute (alike given to the Saviour and to all the angels introduced) is not assigned to her."--Hemans' Ancient Christian Art.

The vault of the tribune is covered with mosaics by Jacopo da Turrita, the same who executed those at the Lateran basilica.

"A general affinity with the style of Cimabue is observable in some mosaics executed by contemporary artists. Those in Sta. Maria Maggiore are inscribed with the name of Jacobus Torriti, and executed between 1287 and 1292. They are surpassed by no contemporary work in dignity, grace, and decorative beauty of arrangement. In a blue, gold-starred circle is seen Christ enthroned with the Virgin; on each side are adoring angels, kneeling and flying, on a gold ground, with St. Peter and St. Paul, the two St. Johns, St. Francis, and St. Anthony (the same in size and position as at St. J. Lateran), advancing devoutly along. The upper part is filled with graceful vine-branches, with symbolical animals among them. Below is Jordan, with small river gods, boats, and figures of men and animals. Further below are scenes from the life of Christ in animated arrangement. The group in the centre of the circle, of Christ enthroned with the Virgin, is especially fine: while the Saviour is placing the crown on His mother's head, she lifts up her hands with the expression both of admiration and of modest remonstrance.[275] The forms are very pure and noble; the execution careful, and very different from the Roman mosaics of the twelfth century."--Kugler.

In front of and beneath the high altar Pius IX. has lately been preparing his own monument, by constructing a splendid chamber approached by staircases, and lined with the most precious alabaster and marbles.

On the right of the western entrance is the tomb of the Rospigliosi pope, Clement IX. (1667--69), the work of Ercole Ferrata, a pupil of Bernini. His body rests before the high altar, surrounded by a number of the members of his family. Left of the entrance is the tomb of Nicholas IV., Masci (1288-92), erected to his memory three hundred years after his death by Sixtus V. while still a cardinal. He is represented giving benediction, between two allegorical figures of Justice and Religion,--a fine work of Leonardo da Sarzana.

"It is well to know that this pope, a mere upstart from the dust, sought to support himself through the mighty family of Colonna, by raising them too high. His friend, the Cardinal Giacomo Colonna, contributed with him to the renewal of the mosaics which are in the tribune of Sta. Maria Maggiore, and one can see their two figures there to this day. It was in this reign that Ptolemais, the last possession of the Christians in Asia, fell into the hands of the Mohammedans; thus ended the era of the Crusades."--Gregorovius.

Behind this tomb, near the walled-up Porta Santa, is a good tomb of two bishops, brothers, of the fifteenth century, and in the same aisle are many other monuments of the sixteenth century, some of them fine in their way.

Nearly on a line with the baldacchino is the entrance of the Borghese Chapel, built by Flaminio Ponzio for Paul V. in 1608, gorgeous with precious marbles and alabasters. Over its altar is preserved one of the pictures attributed to St. Luke (and announced to be such in a papal bull attached to the walls!), much revered from the belief that it stayed the plague which decimated the city during the reign of Pelagius II., and that (after its intercession had been sought by a procession by order of Innocent VIII.) it brought about the overthrow of the Moorish dominion in Spain.

"On conserve à Sainte Marie Majeure une des images de la Madonne peintes par St. Luc, et plusieurs fois on a trouvé les anges chantant les litanies autour de ce tableau."--Stendhal.

The "Scheme of decorations in this gorgeous chapel is so remarkable, as testifying to the development which the theological idea of the Virgin, as the Sposa or personified Church, had attained in the time of Paul V.--the same pope who in 1615 promulgated the famous bull relative to the Immaculate Conception"--that the insertion of the whole passage of Mrs. Jameson on this subject will not be considered too much.

"First, and elevated above all, we have the 'Madonna della Concezione,' 'Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception,' in a glory of light, sustained and surrounded by angels, having the crescent under her feet, according to the approved treatment. Beneath, round the dome, we read in conspicuous letters the text from the Revelation:--SIGNUM. MAGNUM. APPARAVIT. IN. CŒLO. MULIER. AMICTA. SOLE. ET. LUNA. SUB. PEDIBUS. EJUS. ET. IN. CAPITE. EJUS. CORONA. STELLARUM. DUODECIM. Lower down is a second inscription expressing the dedication. MARIÆ. CHRISTI. MATRI. SEMPER. VIRGINI. PAULUS. QUINTUS. P.M. The decorations beneath the cornice consist of eighteen large frescoes, and six statues in marble, above life size. We have the subjects arranged in the following order:--

"1. The four great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, in their usual place in the four pendatives of the dome.

"2. Two large frescoes. In the first the Vision of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Heretics bitten by Serpents. In the second, St. John Damascene and S. Ildefonso miraculously rewarded for defending the majesty of the Virgin.

"3. A large fresco, representing the four Doctors of the Church who had especially written in honour of the Virgin: viz., Irenæus and Cyprian, Ignatius and Theophilus, grouped two and two.

"4. St. Luke, who painted the Virgin, and whose gospel contains the best account of her.

"5. As spiritual conquerors in the name of the Virgin, St. Dominic and St. Francis, each attended by two companions of his Order.

"6. As military conquerors in the name of the Virgin, the Emperor Heraclius, and Narses, the general against the Arians.

"7. A group of three female figures, representing the three famous saintly princesses, who in marriage preserved their virginity, Pulcheria, Edeltruda (our famous Queen Ethelreda), and Cunegunda.

"8. A group of three learned Bishops, who had especially defended the immaculate purity of the Virgin, St. Cyril, St. Anselm, and St. Denis (?).

"9. The miserable ends of those who were opposed to the honour of the Virgin. 1. The death of Julian the Apostate, very oddly represented; he lies on an altar, transfixed by an arrow, as a victim; St. Mercurius in the air. 2. The death of Leo IV., who destroyed the effigies of the Virgin. 3. The death of Constantine IV., also a famous iconoclast.

"The statues which are placed in niches are--

"1--2. St. Joseph, as the nominal husband, and St. John the Evangelist, as the nominal son, of the Virgin; the latter, also, as prophet and poet, with reference to the passage in the Revelation, xii. i.

"3--4. Aaron, as priestly ancestor (because his wand blossomed), and David, as kingly ancestor, of the Virgin.

"5--6. St. Dionysius the Areopagite, who was present at the death of the Virgin, and St. Bernard, who composed the famous 'Salve Regina' in her honour.

"Such is this grand systematic scheme of decoration, which, to those who regard it cursorily, is merely a sumptuous confusion of colours and forms, or at best a 'fine example of the Guido school and Bernini.' It is altogether a very complete and magnificent specimen of the prevalent style of art, and a very comprehensive and suggestive expression of the prevalent tendency of thought in the Roman Catholic Church from the beginning of the seventeenth century. In no description of this chapel have I seen the names and subjects accurately given: the style of art belongs to the decadence, and the taste being worse than questionable, the prevailing doctrinal idea has been neglected, or never understood."--Legends of the Madonna, lxxi.

On the right is the tomb of Clement VIII. (1592--1605), the Florentine Ippolito Aldobrandini, the builder of the new palace of the Vatican, and the cruel torturer and executioner of the Cenci. He is represented in the act of benediction. The bas-reliefs on his monument commemorate the principal events of his reign,--the conclusion of peace between France and Spain, and the taking of Ferrara, which he seized from the heirs of Alphonso II.

On the left is the tomb of Paul V. (1605-1621), Camillo Borghese,--in whose reign St. Peter's was finished, as every traveller learns from the gigantic inscription over its portico,--who founded the great Borghese family, and left to his nephew, Cardinal Scipio Borghese, a fortune which enabled him to buy the Borghese Palace and to build the Borghese Villa.

"It is a truly herculean figure, with a grandly developed head, while in his thick neck, pride, violence, and sensuality seem to be united. He is the first pope who wore the beard of a cavalier, like that of Henry IV., which recalls the Thirty-years' War, which he lived through; as far as the battle of the White Mountain. In this round, domineering, pride-swollen countenance, appears the violent, imperious spirit of Paul, which aimed at an absolute power. Who does not remember his famous quarrel with Venice, and the rôle which his far superior adversary Paolo Sarpi played with such invincible courage? The bas-reliefs of his tomb represent the reception given by the pope to the envoys of Congo and Japan, the building of the citadel of Ferrara, the sending of auxiliary troops to Hungary to the assistance of Rudolph II., and the canonization of Sta. Francesca Romana and S. Carlo Borromeo."--Gregorovius.

The frescoes in the cupola are by Cigoli; those around the altar by the Cav. D'Arpino; those above the tombs and on the arches by Guido, except the Madonna, which is by Lanfranco. The late beloved Princess Borghese, née Lady Gwendoline Talbot, was buried in front of the altar, all Rome following her to the grave.

The funeral of Princess Borghese proved the feeling with which she was regarded. Her body lay upon a car which was drawn by forty young Romans, and was followed by all the poor of Rome, the procession swelling like a river in every street and piazza it passed through, while from all the windows as it passed flowers were showered down. In funeral ceremonies of great personages at Rome an ancient custom is observed by which, when the body is lowered into the grave, a chamberlain, coming out to the church door, announces to the coachman, who is waiting with the family carriage, that his master or mistress has no longer need of his services; and the coachman thereupon breaks his staff of office and drives mournfully away. When this formality was fulfilled at the funeral of Princess Borghese, the whole of the vast crowd waiting outside the basilica broke into tears and sobs, and kneeling by a common impulse, prayed aloud for the soul of their benefactress.

The chapel has been lately the scene of a miraculous story, with reference to a visionary appearance of the Princess Borghese, which has obtained great credit among the people, by whom she is already looked upon as a saint.

The first chapel in the right aisle is that of the Patrizi family, and close by is the sepulchral stone of their noble ancestor, Giovanni Patricino, whose bones were found beneath the high altar, and deposited here in 1700. A little further is the chapel of the Santa Croce, with ten porphyry columns. Then comes the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, built by Fontana for Sixtus V. while still Cardinal of Montalto. Gregory XIII., who was then on the throne, visited this gorgeous chapel when it was nearly completed, and immediately decided that one who could build such a splendid temple was sufficiently rich, and suppressed the cardinal's pension. Fontana advanced a thousand scudi for the completion of the work, and had the delicacy never to allow the cardinal to imagine that he was indebted to him. The chapel, restored 1870, is adorned with statues by Giobattista Pozzo, Cesare Nebbia, and others. Under the altar is a presepio--one of the best works of Bernini, and opposite to it, in the confession, a beautiful statue of S. Gaetano (founder of the Theatines, who died 1547[276]), with two little children. On the right is the splendid tomb of Pius V., Michaele Ghislieri (1566--72), the barefooted, bareheaded Dominican monk of Sta. Sabina, who in his short six years' reign beheld amongst other events the victory of Lepanto, the fall of the Huguenots in France, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew, events which were celebrated at Rome with fêtes and thanksgivings. The figure of the pope, a monk wasted to a skeleton (by Leonardo de Sarzana), sits in the central niche, between statues of St. Dominic and St. Peter Martyr. A number of bas-reliefs by different sculptors represent the events of his life. Some are by the Flemish artists Nicolas d'Arras and Egidius.

On the left, is the tomb of Sixtus V. (1585-90), Felice Perretti, who as a boy kept his father's pigs at Montalto; who as a young man was a Franciscan monk preaching in the Apostoli, and attracting crowds by his eloquence; and who then rose to be bishop of Fermo, soon after to be cardinal, and was lastly raised to the papal throne, which he occupied only five years, a time which sufficed for the prince of the Church who loved building the most, to renew Rome entirely.

"If anything can still the spectator to silence, and awaken him to great recollections, it is the monument of this astonishing man, who, as child, herded swine, and as an old man commanded people and kings, and who filled Rome with so many works, that from every side his name, like an echo, rings in the traveller's ear. We never cease to be amazed at the wonderful luck which raised Napoleon from the dust to the throne of the world, as if it were a romance or a fairy story. But if in the history of kings these astonishing changes are extraordinary accidents, they seem quite natural in the history of the popes, they belong to the very essence of Christendom, which does not appeal to the person, but to the spirit; and while the one history is full of ordinary men, who, without the prerogative of their crown, would have sunk into eternal oblivion, the other is rich in great men, who, placed in a different sphere, would have been equally worthy of renown."--Gregorovius.

In a little chapel on the left of the entrance of this--which is as it were a transept of the church--is a fine picture of St. Jerome by Spagnuoletto, and in the chapel opposite a sarcophagus of two early Christian consuls, richly wrought in the Roman imperial style, but with Christian subjects,--Daniel in the den of lions, Zaccheus in the sycamore-tree, Martha at the raising of Lazarus, &c.

At the east end of the right aisle, near the door, is perhaps the finest gothic monument in Rome,--the tomb of Cardinal Gonsalvi, bishop of Albano, c. 1299.

"A recumbent statue, in pontifical vestments, rests on a sarcophagus, and two angels draw aside curtains as if to show us the dead; in the background is a mosaic of Mary enthroned, with the Child, the apostle Matthias, St. Jerome, and a smaller kneeling figure of Gonsalvi, in pontifical robes; at the apex is a tabernacle with cusped arch, and below the epitaph 'Hoc opus fecit Joannes Magister Cosmæ civis Romanus,' the artist's record of himself. In the hands of St. Matthias and St. Jerome are scrolls; on that held by the apostle, the words, 'Me tenet ara prior'; on St. Jerome's,'Recubo presepis ad antrum', these epigraphs confirming the tradition that the bodies of St. Matthias and St. Jerome repose in this church, while indicating the sites of their tombs. Popular regards have distinguished this tomb; no doubt in intended honour to the Blessed Virgin, lamps are kept ever burning, and vases of flowers ranged, before her mosaic image."--Hemans' Mediæval Christian Art.

At the west end of the right aisle is the entrance of the Baptistery, which has a vast porphyry vase as a font. Hence we reach the Sacristy, in the inner chamber of which are some exceedingly beautiful bas-reliefs by Mino da Fiesole.

One of the greatest of the Christmas ceremonies is the procession at 5 A.M., in honour of the great relic of the church--the Santa Culla--i.e., the cradle in which our Saviour was carried into Egypt, not, as is frequently imagined, the manger, which is allowed to have been of stone, and of which a single stone only is supposed to have found its way to Rome, and to be preserved in the altar of the Blessed Sacrament. The "Santa Culla" is preserved in a magnificent reliquary, six feet high, adorned with bas-reliefs and statuettes in silver. On the afternoon of Christmas eve the public can visit the relic at an altar in a little chapel near the sacristy. On the afternoon of Christmas Day it is also exposed, but upon the high altar, where it is less easily seen.

"Le Seigneur Jésus a voulu naître dans une étable; mais les hommes ont apporté précieusement le petit berceau qui a reçu le salut du monde, dans la reine des cités, et ils l'ont enchâssé dans l'or.

"C'est bien ici que nous devons accourir avec joie et redire ce chant triomphant de l'Église: Adeste, fideles, læti triumphantes; venite, venite in Bethleem."--Une Chrétienne à Rome.

Among the many other relics preserved here are two little bags of the brains of St. Thomas à Becket.

It was in this church that Pope St. Martin I. was celebrating mass in the seventh century, when a guard sent by the Exarch Olympius appeared on the threshold with orders to seize and put him to death. At the sight of the pontiff the soldier was stricken with blindness, a miracle which led to the conversion of Olympius and many other persons.

Platina, the historian of the popes, was buried here, with the epitaph: "Quisquis es, si pius, Platynam et sua ne vexes, anguste jacent et soli volunt esse."

Sta. Maria Maggiore was the scene of the seizure of Hildebrand by Cencius:

"On Christmas Eve, 1075, the city of Rome was visited by a dreadful tempest. Darkness brooded over the land, and the trembling spectators believed that the day of final judgment was about to dawn. In this war of the elements, however, two processions were seen advancing to the Church of Sta. Maria Maggiore. At the head of one was the aged Hildebrand, conducting a few priests to worship at the shrine of the Virgo Deipara. The other was preceded by Cencius, a Roman noble. At each pause in the tempest might be heard the hallelujahs of the worshippers, or the voice of the pontiff, pouring out benedictions on the little flock which knelt before him--when Cencius grasped his person, and some yet more daring ruffian inflicted a wound on his forehead. Bound with cords, stripped of his sacred vestments, beaten, and subjected to the basest indignities, the venerable minister of Christ was carried to a fortified mansion within the walls of the city, again to be removed at daybreak to exile or death. Women were there, with women's sympathy and kindly offices, but they were rudely put aside; and a drawn sword was already aimed at the pontiff's bosom, when the cries of a fierce multitude, threatening to burn or batter down the house, arrested the aim of the assassin. An arrow, discharged from below, reached and slew him. The walls rocked beneath the strokes of the maddened populace, and Cencius, falling at his prisoner's feet, became himself a suppliant for pardon and for life.... In profound silence, and with undisturbed serenity, Hildebrand had thus far submitted to these atrocious indignities. The occasional raising of his eyes towards heaven alone indicated his consciousness of them. But to the supplication of his prostrate enemy he returned an instant and a calm assurance of forgiveness. He rescued Cencius from the exasperated besiegers, dismissed him in safety and in peace, and returned, amidst the acclamations of the whole Roman people, to complete the interrupted solemnities of Sta. Maria Maggiore."--Stephens' Lectures on Eccles. Hist.

Leaving the church by the door behind the tribune, we find ourselves at the top of the steep slope of the Esquiline and in front of an Obelisk erected here by Fontana for Sixtus V.,--brought from Egypt by Claudius, and one of two which were used to guard the entrance to the mausoleum of Augustus. The inscriptions on three of its sides are worth notice:--"Christi Dei in æternum viventis cunabula lætissime colo, qui mortui sepulchro Augusti tristis serviebam."--"Quem Augustus de vergine nasciturum vivens adoravit, sed deinceps dominum dici noluit, adoro."--"Christus per invictam crucem populo pacem præbeat, qui Augusti pace in præsepe nasci voluit."

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XIII. THE BASILICAS OF THE LATERAN, SANTA CROCE, AND S. LORENZO

Via S. Giovanni--The Obelisk and Baptistery--Basilica and Cloisters--Mosaic of the Triclinium--Santa Scala--Palace of the Lateran--Villa Massimo Arsole--SS. Pietro e Marcellino--Villa Wolkonski--(Porta Furba--Tombs of the Via Latina--Basilica of S. Stefano)--Santa Croce in Gerusalemme--Amphitheatrum Castrense--Porta Maggiore--(Tomb of Sta. Helena--Torre dei Schiavi--Cervaletto--Cerbara)--Porta and Basilica of S. Lorenzo--Catacomb of S. Hippolytus.

Behind the Coliseum the Via S. Giovanni ascends the slope of the Esquiline. In mediæval times this road was always avoided by the popes, on account (as most authorities state) of the scandal attaching to the more than doubtful legend of Joan, the famous papessa, who is said to have horrified her attendants by giving birth to a child on this spot, during a procession from the Lateran, and to have died of shame and terror immediately afterwards. Joan is stated to have been educated at Athens, to have skilfully obtained her election to the papal throne, disguised as a man, between the reign of Leo IV. and that of Benedict III. (855), and to have taken the name of John VIII. In the cathedral of Siena the heads of all the popes in terra-cotta (down to Alexander III.) decorate the frieze above the arches of the nave, and among them was that of Pope Joan, inscribed "Johannes VIII. Femina de Anglia," till 1600, when it was changed into a head of Pope Zacharias by the Grand Duke, at the request of Pope Clement VIII.

On the left of this street is S. Clemente (described Ch. VII.). On the right, a long wall flooded by a cascade of Banksia roses in spring, and a villa inlaid with terra-cotta ornaments, are those of the favourite residence of the well-known Marchese Campana, the learned archæologist of Etruria, and the chief benefactor of the Etruscan museum at the Vatican, cruelly imprisoned and exiled by the papal government in 1858, upon an accusation of having tampered with the revenues of Monte di Pietà.

Beyond the turn of the road leading to S. Stefano Rotondo (Ch. VII.), bas-reliefs of Our Saviour's Head (from the Acheirotopeton in the Sancta Sanctorum) between two candelabra--upon the different buildings, announce the property of the Lateran chapter.

The Piazza di San Giovanni is surrounded by a remarkable group of buildings. In front are the Baptistery and Basilica of the Lateran. On the right is a Hospital for women, capable of containing 600 patients; on the left, beyond the modern palace, are seen the buildings which enclose the Santa Scala, and some broken arches of the Aqua Marcia. In the centre of the piazza is the Obelisk of the Lateran, 150 feet high, the oldest object in Rome, being referred by translators of hieroglyphics to the year 1740 B.C., when it was raised in memory of the Pharaoh Thothmes IV. It was brought, from the temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, to Alexandria by Constantine, and removed thence by his son Constantius to Rome, where it was used, together with the obelisk now in the Piazza del Popolo, to ornament the Circus Maximus. Hence it was moved to its present site in 1588, by Fontana, for Sixtus V. The obelisk was then broken into three pieces, and in order to piece them together, some part had to be cut off, but it is still the tallest in the city. One of the inscriptions on the basement is false, as it narrates that Constantine received at the Lateran the baptism which he did not receive till he was dying at Nicomedia.

An octagon building of mean and miserable exterior is that of the Baptistery of the Lateran, sometimes called S. Giovanni in Fonte, built, not by Constantine, to whom it is falsely ascribed, but by Sixtus III. (430-40). Of his time are the two porphyry columns at the entrance on the side nearest the church, and the eight which form a colonnade round the interior, supporting a cornice from which rise the eight small columns of white marble, which sustain the dome. In the centre is the font of green basalt in which Rienzi bathed on the night of August 1, 1347, before his public appearance as a knight, when he summoned Clement VI. and other sovereigns of Europe to appear before him for judgment. The cupola is decorated with scenes from the life of John the Baptist by Andrea Sacchi. On the walls are frescoes pourtraying the life of Constantine by Gimignano, Carlo Maratta, and Andrea Camassei.

On the right is the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, built by Pope Hilary (461-67). Between two serpentine columns is a figure of St. John Baptist by L. Valadico after Donatello.

On the left is the Chapel of St. John the Evangelist, also built by Hilary, who presented its bronze doors (said to have once belonged to the Baths of Caracalla) in remembrance of his delivery from the fury of fanatical monks at the Second Council of Ephesus, where he appeared as the legate of Leo I.,--a fact commemorated by the inscription: "Liberatori suo B. Joanni Evangelistæ Hilarius Episcopus famulus Christi." The vault is covered with mosaics representing the Spotless Lamb in Paradise. Here is a statue of St. John by Landini.

Close by is the entrance to the Oratory of S. Venanzio,[277] built in 640 by John IV., and dedicated to St. Venantius, from a filial feeling to his father, who bore the same name. Nothing, however, remains of this time but the mosaics. Those in the apse represent the Saviour in the act of benediction with angels, and below him the Virgin (an aged woman) in adoration,[278] with St. Peter and St. John Baptist, St. Paul and St. John the Evangelist, St. Venantius and St. Domnus--and another figure unnamed, probably John IV., holding the model of a church. Outside the chancel arch are eight saints, with their names (Palmianus, Julius, Asterius, Anastasius, Maurus, Septimius, Antiochianus, Cajanus), the symbols of the evangelists, and the cities Bethlehem and Jerusalem; also the verses:--

"Martyribus Christi Domini pia vota Johannes Reddidit antistes sanctificante Deo. Ac sacri fontis simile fulgente metallo, Providus instanter hoc copulavit opus: Quo quisque gradiens et Christum pronus adorans, Effusasque preces impetrat ille suas."

The next chapel, called the Capella Borgia, and used as the burial-place of that family, was once an open portico, but this character was destroyed by the building up of the intercolumniations. On its façade are a number of fragments of ancient friezes, &c. Over the inner door is a bas-relief of the Crucifixion, of 1494.

The piteous modernization of this ancient group of chapels is chiefly due to the folly of Urban VIII. The baptistery is used on Easter Eve for the ceremony of adult baptism, the recipients being called Jews.

The Lateran derives its name from a rich patrician family, whose estates were confiscated by Nero, when their head, Plautius Lateranus, was put to death for taking part in the conspiracy of Piso.[279] It afterwards became an imperial residence, and a portion of it being given by Maximianus to his daughter Fausta, second wife of Constantine, received the name of "Domus Faustæ." It was this which was given by Constantine to Pope Melchiades in 312,--a donation which was confirmed to St. Sylvester, in whose reign the first basilica was built here, and consecrated on November 9, 324, Constantine having laboured with his own hands at the work. This basilica was overthrown by an earthquake in 896, but was rebuilt by Sergius III. (904--11), being then dedicated to St. John the Baptist. This second basilica, whose glories are alluded to by Dante,--

----"Quando Laterano Alle cose mortale andò di sopra."

Paradiso, xxxi.

was of the greatest interest, but was almost entirely destroyed by fire in 1308. It was rebuilt, only to be again burnt down in 1360, when it remained for four years in utter ruin, in which state it was seen and mourned over by Petrarch. The fourth restoration of the basilica was due to Urban V. (1362-70), but it has since undergone a series of mutilations and modernizations, which have deplorably injured it. The west front still retains the inscription "Sacrosancta Lateranensis ecclesia, Omnium urbis et orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput;" the Chapter of the Lateran still takes precedence even over that of St. Peter's; and every newly elected pope comes hither for his coronation.

"St. J. Lateran est regardé comme le siége du patriarchal romain. À St. Pierre le pape est souverain pontife. À St. J. Lateran il est évêque de Rome. Quand le pape est élu, il vient à St. J. Lateran prendre possession de son siége comme évêque de Rome."--A. Du Pays.

The west end of the basilica is in part a remnant of the building of the tenth century, and has two quaint towers (rebuilt by Sixtus IV.) at the end of the transept, and a rich frieze of terra-cotta. The church is entered from the transept by a portico, ending in a gloomy chapel which contains a statue of Henry IV., by Niccolo Cordieri. The transept--rich in colour from its basement of varied marbles, and its upper frescoes of the legendary history of Constantine--is by far the finest part of the basilica, which, as a whole, is infinitely inferior to Sta. Maria Maggiore. The nave, consisting of five aisles, is of grand proportions, but has been hideously modernized under Borromini, who has enclosed all its ancient columns, except two near the tribune, in tawdry plaster piers, in front of which are huge statues of the apostles; the roof is gilt and gaudy, the tabernacle ugly and ill-proportioned,--only the ancient pavement of opus-alexandrinum is fine. Confessionals for different languages are placed here as in St. Peter's. The Tabernacle was erected by Urban V. in the fourteenth century. Four granite columns support a gothic canopy, decorated at its angles with canopied statuettes. Between these, on either side, are three much restored frescoes by Berni da Siena, those in central panels representing the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, the Coronation of the Virgin, and the Saviour as a shepherd (very beautifully treated) feeding his flock with corn. The skulls of SS. Peter and Paul are said to be preserved here. The altar encloses the greater part of the famous wooden table, saved at great risk of life from the conflagration of 1308, upon which St. Peter is supposed to have celebrated mass in the house of Pudens.[280] The steps of the altar (at the top of which the pope is installed) have an allegorical enamelled border with emblems of an asp, a dragon, a lion, and basilisk, in allusion to Psalm xci.

In the confession, in front of the altar, is the bronze tomb of Martin V., Oddone Colonna (1417--24), the wise and just pope who was elected at the Council of Constance to put an end to the schism which had long divided the papacy, and which had almost reduced the capital of the Church to ruins. A bronze slab bears his figure, in low-relief, and is a fine work of Antonio Filarete, author of the bronze doors at St. Peter's. It bears the appropriate surname which was given to this justly-loved pope--"Temporum suorum felicitas."

The tribune is of the time of Nicholas IV. (1287--1292). Above the arch is a grand mosaic head of the Saviour, attributed to the time of Constantine, and evidently of the fourth century,--of great interest on this spot, as commemorating the vision of the Redeemer, who is said to have appeared here on the day of the consecration of the church by Sylvester and Constantine, looking down upon the people, and solemnly hallowing the work with his visible presence. The head, which is grand and sad in expression, is surrounded by six-winged seraphim. Below is an ornamented cross, above which hovers a dove--from whose beak, running down the cross, flow the waters which supply the four rivers of Paradise. The disciples, as harts (panting for the water-brooks) and sheep, flock to drink of the waters of life. In the distance is the New Jerusalem, within which the Phœnix, the bird of eternity, is seated upon the tree of Life, guarded by an angel with a two-edged sword. Beside the cross stand, on the left, the Virgin with her hand resting on the head of the kneeling pope, Nicholas IV.; St. Peter with a scroll inscribed, "Tu es Christus filius Dei vivi;" St. Paul with a scroll inscribed, "Salvatorem expectamus Dominum Jesum." On the right St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, St. Andrew (all with their names). Between the first and second of these figures are others, on a smaller scale, of St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua. All these persons are represented as walking in a flowery Paradise, in which the souls of the blessed are besporting, and in front of which flows the Jordan. Below, between the windows, are figures of prophets, and (very small) of two Franciscans, who were the artists of the lower portion of the mosaic, as is shown by the inscriptions, "Jacobus Turriti, pictor, hoc opus fecit;"--"Fra Jacobus de Camerino socius magistri."

Behind the tribune, is all that remains internally of the architecture of the tenth century, in the vaulted passage called "Portico Leonino," from its founder, Leo I. It is supported on low marble and granite columns with Ionic and Corinthian capitals. Here are collected a variety of relics of the ancient basilica. On either side of the entrance are mosaic tablets, which relate to the building of the church. Then, on the right, is a curious kneeling statue of Pope Nicholas IV., Masci (1287--92). On the left, in the centre, is an altar, above which is an ancient crucifix, and on either side tenth century statues of SS. Peter and Paul.

On the right is the entrance to the sacristy (whose inner bronze doors date from 1196), which contains an Annunciation by Sebastian del Piombo, and a sketch by Raphael for the Madonna, called "Della Casa d'Alba," now at St. Petersburg; also an ancient bas-relief, which represents the old and humble basilica of Pope Sergius. On the left, at the end of the passage, is a very handsome cinquecento ciborium, and near it the "Tabula Magna Lateranensis," containing the list of relics belonging to the church.

Near this, opening from the transept, is the Capella del Coro, with handsome wooden stallwork. It contains a portrait of Martin V., by Scipione Gaetani.

The altar of the Sacrament, which closes the transept, has four fluted bronze columns, said to have been brought from Jerusalem by Titus, and to be hollow and filled with earth from Palestine.[281] The last chapel in the left aisle is the Corsini Chapel, erected in 1729 in honour of St. Andrea Corsini, from designs of Alessandro Galilei. It is in the form of a Greek cross, and ranks next to the Borghese Chapel in the richness of its marble decoration. The mosaic altar-piece, representing S. Andrea Corsini, is a copy from Guido. The founder of the chapel, Clement XII., Lorenzo Corsini (1730--40), is buried in a splendid porphyry sarcophagus which he plundered from the Pantheon. Above it is a bronze statue of the pope.[282] Opposite is the tomb of Cardinal Neri Corsini, with a number of statues of the Bernini school.

Beneath the chapel is a vault lined with sarcophagi of the Corsini. Its altar is surmounted by a magnificent Pietà--in whose beautiful and impressive figures it is difficult to recognise a work of the usually coarse and theatrical artist Bernini.

Of the many tombs of mediæval popes which formerly existed in this basilica,[283] none remain, except the memorial slab and epitaph of Sylvester II., Gerbert (999--1003). This pope is said (by the chronicler Martin Polonus de Corenza) to have been a kind of magician, who obtained first the archbishopric of Rheims, then that of Ravenna, and then the papacy, by the aid of the devil, to whom, in return, he promised to belong after death. When he ascended the throne, he asked the devil how long he could reign, and the devil, as is his custom, answered by a double-entendre, "If you never enter Jerusalem, you will reign a long time." He occupied the throne for four years, one month, and ten days, when, one day, as he was officiating in the basilica of Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme, he saw that he had passed the fatal threshold, and that his death was impending. Overwhelmed with repentance, he confessed his backslidings before the people, and exhorted them to lay aside pride, to resist the temptations of the devil, and to lead a good life. After this he begged of his attendants to cut his body in pieces after he was dead, as he deserved, and to place it on a common cart, and bury it wherever the horses stopped of their own accord. Then was manifested the will of the Divine Providence, that repentant sinners should learn that their God preserves for them a place of pardon even in this life,--for the horses went of their own accord to St. John Lateran, where he was buried. "Since then," says Platina, "the rattling of his bones, and the sweat, or rather the damp, with which his tomb becomes covered, has always been the infallible sign and forerunner of the death of a pope"!

Against the second pillar of the right aisle, counting from the west door, is a very interesting fresco of Giotto, originally one of many paintings executed by him for the loggia of the adjoining papal palace, whence the benediction and "plenary indulgence" were given in the jubilee year. It represents Boniface VIII. (Benedetto Gaetani, 1294--1303), the founder of the jubilee, between two priests.

"On y voit Boniface annonçant au peuple le jubilé. Le portrait du pape doit être ressemblant. J'ai reconnu dans cette physiognomie, où il y a plus de finesse que de force, la statue que j'avais vue couchée sur le tombeau de ce pape, dans les souterrains du Vatican."--Ampère, Voyage Dantesque.

Opening from this aisle are several chapels. The second is that of the newly established and rich family of Torlonia, which contains a marble Pietà, by Tenerani, and some handsome modern monuments. The third is that of the Massimi (designed by Giacomo della Porta), which has, as an altar-piece, the Crucifixion by Sermoneta. Beyond this, in the right aisle, are several remarkable tombs of cardinals, among which is the tomb of Cardinal Guissano, who died in 1287. The painters Cav. d'Arpino and Andrea Sacchi are buried in this church.

Entered from the last chapel in the left aisle (by a door which the sacristan will open) is the beautiful twelfth century Cloister of the Monastery, surrounded by low arches supported on exquisite inlaid and twisted columns, above which is a lovely frieze of coloured marbles. The court thus enclosed is a garden of roses; in the centre is a well (adorned with crosses) of the tenth century, called the "Well of the Woman of Samaria." In the cloister is a collection of architectural and traditional relics, including a beautiful old white marble throne, inlaid with mosaics, a candelabrum resting on a lion, and several other exquisitely wrought details from the old basilica; also a porphyry slab upon which the soldiers are said to have cast lots for the seamless robe; columns which were rent by the earthquake of the Crucifixion; a slab, resting on pillars, shown as a measure of the height of Our Saviour,[284] and a smaller slab, also on pillars, of which it is said that it was once an altar, at which the officiating priest doubted of the Real Presence, when the wafer fell from his hand through the stone, leaving a round hole which still remains.

Five General Councils have been held at the Lateran, viz.:--

I.--March 19, 1123, under Calixtus II., with regard to the Investiture.

II.--April 18, 1139, under Innocent II., to condemn the doctrines of Arnold of Brescia and Peter de Bruys, and to oppose the anti-pope Anacletus II.

III.--March 5, 1179, under Alexander III., to condemn the doctrines of Waldenses and Albigenses, and to end the schism caused by Frederick Barbarossa.

IV.--Nov. 11, 1215, at which 400 bishops assembled under Innocent III., to condemn the Albigenses, and the heresies of the Abbot Joachim.

V.--May 3, 1512, under Julius II. and Leo X., at which the Pragmatic Sanction was abolished, and a Concordat concluded between the Pope and Francis I. for the destruction of the liberties of the Gallican Church.

It is in the basilica of the Lateran that the Church places the first meeting between St. Francis and St Dominic.

"Une nuit, pendant que Dominique dormait, il lui sembla voir Jésus-Christ se préparant à exterminer les superbes, les voluptueux, les avares, lorsque tout-à-coup la Vierge l'apaisa en lui présentant deux hommes: l'un d'eux lui-même; quant à l'autre, il ne le connaissait pas; mais le lendemain, la première personne qu'il aperçut, en entrant au Latran, fut l'inconnu qui lui était apparu en songe. Il était couvert de haillons et priait avec ferveur. Dominique se précipita dans ses bras, et l'embrassant avec effusion: 'Tu es mon compagnon,' lui dit-il; 'nous courons la même carrière, demeurons ensemble, et aucun ennemi ne prévaudra contre nous.' Et, à partir de ce moment, dit la légende, ils n'eurent plus qu'un cœur et qu'une âme dans le Seigneur. Ce pauvre, ce mendiant, était saint François d'Assise."--Gournerie, Rome Chrétienne.

Issuing from the west door of the basilica, we find ourselves in a wide portico, one of whose five doors is a Porta Santa. At the end, is appropriately placed an ancient marble statue of Constantine, who is in the dress of a Roman warrior, bearing the labarum, or standard of the cross, which is here represented as a lance surmounted by the monogram of Christ. From this portico we look down upon one of the most beautiful and characteristic views in Rome. On one side are the Alban Hills, blue in morning, or purple in evening light, sprinkled with white villages of historic interest--Albano, Rocca di Papa, Marino, Frescati, Colonna; on the other side are the Sabine Mountains, tipped with snow; in the middle distance the long, golden-hued lines of aqueducts stretch away over the plain, till they are lost in the pink haze, and nearer still are the desolate basilica of Santa Croce, the fruit gardens of the Villa Wolkonski, interspersed with rugged fragments of massive brickwork, and the glorious old walls of the city itself. The road at our feet is the Via Appia Nuova, which leads to Naples, and which immediately passes through the modern gate of Rome, known as the Porta San Giovanni (built in the sixteenth century by Gregory XIII.). Nearer to us, on the right, is an ancient gateway, the finest on the Aurelian wall, bricked up by Ladislaus, king of Naples, in 1408. By this gate, known as the Porta Asinaria, from the family of the Asinarii, Belisarius entered Rome in 505, and Totila, through the treachery of the Isaurian Guard, in 546. Here also, in 1084, Henry IV. entered Rome against Hildebrand with his anti-pope Guibert; and, a few years after, the name of the gate itself was changed to Porta Perusta, in consequence of the injuries it received from Robert Guiscard, who came to the rescue of the lawful pontiff.

The broad open space which we see beneath the steps was the favourite walk of the mediæval popes.

"The splendid palace of the Lateran reflected the rays of the evening sun, as Francis of Assisi with two or three of his disciples approached it to obtain the papal sanction for the rules of his new Order. A group of churchmen in sumptuous apparel were traversing with slow and measured steps its lofty terrace, then called 'the Mirror,' as if afraid to overtake him who preceded them, in a dress studiously simple, and with a countenance wrapped in earnest meditation. Unruffled by passion, and yet elate with conscious power, that eagle eye, and those capacious brows, announced him the lord of a dominion which might have satisfied the pride of Diogenes, and the ambition of Alexander. Since the Tugurium was built on the Capitoline, no greater monarch had ever called the seven hills his own. But, in his pontificate, no era had occurred more arduous than that in which Innocent III. saw the mendicants of Assisi prostrate at his feet. The interruption was as unwelcome as it was abrupt; as he gazed at the squalid dress and faces of his suitors, and observed their bare and unwashed feet, his lip curled with disdain, and sternly commanding them to withdraw, he seemed again to retire from the outer world into some of the deep recesses of that capacious mind. Francis and his companions betook themselves to prayer; Innocent to his couch. There (says the legend) he dreamed that a palm-tree sprouted up from the ground beneath his feet, and, swiftly shooting up into the heavens, cast her boughs on every side, a shelter from the heat, and a refreshment to the weary. The vision of the night dictated the policy of the morning, and assured Innocent that, under his fostering care, the Franciscan palm would strike deep her roots, and expand her foliage on every side, in the vineyard of the Church."--Stephens' St. Francis of Assisi.

The western façade of the basilica, built by Alessandro Galilei in 1734, has a fine effect at a distance, but the statues of Christ and the apostles which line its parapet are too large for its proportions.

The ancient Palace of the Lateran was the residence of the popes for nearly 1000 years. Almost all the events affecting the private lives of a vast line of ecclesiastical sovereigns happened within its walls. Plundered in each successive invasion, stricken with malaria during the autumn months, and often partially burnt, it was finally destroyed by the great enemy of Roman antiquities, Sixtus V. Among the scenes which occurred within its walls, perhaps the most terrible was that when John X., the completer of the Lateran basilica, was invaded here by Marozia, who was beginning to seize the chief power in Rome, and who carried the pope off prisoner to St. Angelo, after he had seen his brother Peter murdered before his eyes in the hall of the pontifical palace.

The only remnants preserved of this famous building are the private chapel of the popes, and the end wall of their dining-hall, known as the Triclinium, which contains a copy, erected by Benedict XIV., of the ancient mosaic of the time of Leo III. which formerly existed here, and the remains of which are preserved in the Vatican.

"In this mosaic, Hallam (Middle Ages) sees proof that the authority of the Greek Emperor was not entirely abrogated at Rome till long after the period of papal aggrandisement by Pepin and his son, but he is warranted by no probabilities in concluding that Constantine V., whose reign began A.D. 780, is intended by the emperor kneeling with St. Peter or Pope Sylvester."--Hemans' Ancient Christian Art.

Professor Bryce finds two paintings in which the theory of the mediæval empire is unmistakeably set forth; one of them in Rome, the other in Florence, (a fresco in the chapter-house of S. M. Novella).

"The first of these is the famous mosaic of the Lateran triclinium, constructed by Pope Leo III., about A.D. 800, and an exact copy of which, made by the order of Sixtus V., may still be seen over against the facade of St. John Lateran. Originally meant to adorn the state banqueting-hall of the popes, it is now placed in the open air, in the finest situation in Rome, looking from the brow of a hill across the green ridges of the Campagna to the olive groves of Tivoli and the glistering crags and snow-capped summits of the Umbrian and Sabine Apennine. It represents in the centre Christ surrounded by the apostles, whom He is sending forth to preach the gospel; one hand is extended to bless, the other holds a book with the words 'Pax vobis.' Below and to the right Christ is depicted again, and this time sitting: on His right hand kneels Pope Sylvester, on His left the Emperor Constantine; to the one He gives the keys of heaven and hell, to the other a banner surmounted by a cross. In the group on the opposite, that is, on the left side of the arch, we see the Apostle Peter seated, before whom in like manner kneel Pope Leo III. and Charles the Emperor; the latter wearing, like Constantine, his crown. Peter, himself grasping the keys, gives to Leo the pallium of an archbishop, to Charles the banner of the Christian army. The inscription is 'Beatus Petrus dona vitam Leoni P. Pet victoriam Carulo regi dona;' while round the arch is written, 'Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax omnibus bonæ voluntatis.'

"The order and nature of the ideas here symbolized is sufficiently clear. First comes the revelation of the gospel, and the divine commission to gather all men into its fold. Next, the institution, at the memorable era of Constantine's conversion, of the two powers by which the Christian people is to be respectively taught and governed. Thirdly, we are shown the permanent Vicar of God, the apostle who keeps the keys of heaven and hell, re-establishing these same powers on a new and firmer basis. The badge of ecclesiastical supremacy he gives to Leo as the spiritual head of the faithful on earth, the banner of the Church militant to Charles, who is to maintain her cause against heretics and infidels."--J. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, ch. vii. pp. 117, 118, 3rd ed., 1871.

In the building behind the Triclinium, attached to a convent of Passionist monks, and erected by Fontana for Sixtus V., is preserved the Santa Scala. This famous staircase, supposed to be that of the house of Pilate, ascended and descended by our Saviour, is said to have been brought from Jerusalem by Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, and has been regarded with especial reverence by the Roman Church for 1500 years. In 897 it was injured and partially thrown down by an earthquake, but was re-erected in the old Lateran palace, whence it was removed to its present site on the demolition of that venerable building. Clement XII. caused the steps to be covered by a wooden casing, which has since been repeatedly worn out by the knees of ascending pilgrims. Apertures are left, through which the marble steps can be seen; two of them are said to be stained with the blood of the Saviour!

At the foot of the stairs, within the atrium, are fine sculptures of Giacometti, representing the "Ecce Homo,"--and the "Kiss of Judas," purchased and placed here by Pius IX.

Between these statues the pilgrims kneel to commence the ascent of the Santa Scala. The effect of the staircase (especially on Fridays in Lent, and most of all on Good Friday), with the figures ascending on their knees in the dim light, and the dark vaulted ceiling covered with faded frescoes, is exceedingly picturesque.

"Reason may condemn, but feeling cannot resist the claim to reverential sympathy in the spectacle daily presented by the Santa Scala. Numerous indulgences have been granted by different popes to those who ascend it with prayer at each step. Whilst kneeling upon these stairs public penance used to be performed in the days of the Church's more rigorous discipline; as the saintly matron Fabiola there appeared a penitent before the public gaze, in sackcloth and ashes, A.D. 390.... There is no day on which worshippers may not be seen slowly ascending those stairs; but it is during Holy Week the concourse is at its height; and on Good Friday I have seen this structure completely covered by the multitude, like a swarm of bees settling on flowers!"--Hemans' Ancient Sacred Art.

"Brother Martin Luther went to accomplish the ascent of the Santa Scala--the Holy Staircase--which once, they say, formed part of Pilate's house. He slowly mounted step after step of the hard stone, worn into hollows by the knees of penitents and pilgrims. An indulgence for a thousand years--indulgence from penance--is attached to this act of devotion. Patiently he crept half-way up the staircase, when he suddenly stood erect, lifted his face heavenward, and, in another moment, turned and walked slowly down again.

"He said that, as he was toiling up, a voice as if from heaven, seemed to whisper to him the old, well-known words, which had been his battle-cry in so many a victorious combat,--'The just shall live by faith.'

"He seemed awakened, as if from a nightmare, and restored to himself. He dared not creep up another step; but, rising from his knees, he stood upright, like a man suddenly loosed from bonds and fetters, and with the firm step of a freeman, he descended the staircase, and walked from the place."--Schönberg-Cotta Chronicles.

"Did the feet of the Saviour actually tread these steps? Are these reliques really portions of his cross, crown of thorns, &c., or is all this fictitious? To me it is all one.

"'He is not here, he is risen!' said the angel at the tomb. The worship of the bodily covering which the spirit has cast off belongs to the soul still in the larva condition; and the ascending of the Scala Santa on the knees is too convenient a mode for obtaining the forgiveness of sins, and at the same time a hindrance upon the only true way."--Frederika Bremer.

Ascending one of the lateral staircases--no foot must touch the Santa Scala--we reach the outside of the Sancta Sanctorum, a chapel held so intensely sacred that none but the pope can officiate at its altar, and that it is never open to others, except on the morning before Palm Sunday, when the canons of the Lateran come hither to worship, in solemn procession, with torches and a veiled crucifix, and, even then, none but the clergy are allowed to pass its threshold. The origin of the sanctuary is lost in antiquity, but it was the private chapel of the mediæval popes in the old palace, and is known to have existed already, dedicated to St. Laurence, in the time of Pelagius I. (578--590), who deposited here some relics of St. Andrew and St. Luke. It was restored by Honorius III. in 1216, and almost rebuilt by Nicholas III. in 1277.

It is permitted to gaze through a grating upon the picturesque glories of the interior, which are chiefly of the thirteenth century. The altar is in a recess, supported by two porphyry columns. Above it a beautiful silver tabernacle, presented by Innocent III. (1198-1216), to contain the great relic, which invests the chapel with its peculiar sanctity,--a portrait of our Saviour (placed here by Stephen III. in 752), held by the Roman Church as authentic,--to have been begun by St. Luke and finished by an angel, whence the name by which it is known, "Acheirotopeton," or, the "picture made without hands."

"The different theories as to the acheirotopeton picture, and the manner in which it reached this city, are stated with naïveté by Maroni--i.e., that the apostles and the Madonna, meeting after the ascension, resolved to order a portrait of the Crucified, for satisfying the desire of the faithful, and commissioned St. Luke to execute the task; that after three days' prayer and fasting, such a portrait was drawn in outline by that artist, but, before he had begun to colour, the tints were found to have been filled in by invisible hands; that this picture was brought from Jerusalem to Rome, either by St. Peter, or by Titus (together with the sacred spoils of the temple); or else expedited hither in a miraculous voyage of only twenty-four hours by S. Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, who desired thus to save such a treasure from the outrages of the Iconoclasts; and that, about A.D. 726, Pope Gregory II., apprised of its arrival at the mouth of the Tiber by revelation, proceeded to carry it thence, with due escort, to Rome; since which advent it has remained in the Sancta Sanctorum."--Hemans' Mediæval Christian Art.

Above the altar is, in gilt letters, the inscription, "non est in tota sanctior urbe locus." Higher up, under gothic arches, and between twisted columns, are pictures of sainted popes and martyrs, but these have been so much retouched as to have lost their interest. The gratings here are those of the relic chamber, which contains the reputed sandals of Our Saviour, fragments of the true cross, &c. On the ceiling is a grand mosaic,--a head of Our Saviour within a nimbus, sustained by six-winged seraphim--ascribed to the eighth century. The sill in front of the screen is covered with money, thrown in as offerings by the pilgrims.

The chapel was once much larger. Its architect was probably Deodatus Cosmati. An inscription near the door tells us, "Magister Cosmatus fecit hoc opus."

Here, in the time when the Lateran palace was inhabited, the feet of twelve sub-deacons were annually washed by the pope on Holy Thursday. On the Feast of the Assumption the sacred picture used to be borne in triumph through the city, halting in the Forum, where the feet of the pope were washed in perfumed waters on the steps of Sta. Maria Nuova, and the "Kyrie Eleison" was chaunted a hundred times. This custom was abolished by Pius V. in 1566.

The Modern Palace of the Lateran was built from designs of Fontana by Sixtus V. In 1693 Innocent XII. turned it into a hospital,--in 1438 Gregory XVI. appropriated it as a museum. The entrance faces the obelisk in the Piazza di San Giovanni. The palace is always shown, but the terrible cold which pervades it makes it a dangerous place except in the late spring months, and a visit to it is often productive of fever.

The ground floor is the principal receptacle for antiquities, found at Rome within the last few years. It contains a number of very beautiful sarcophagi and bas-reliefs.

Entering under the corridor on the right, the most remarkable objects are:--

1st Room.--

LEFT WALL:

Relief of the Abduction of Helen.

RIGHT WALL:

High relief of two pugilists, 'Dares and Entellus.'

Grand relief of Trajan followed by senators, from the Forum of Trajan.

The sacred oak of Jupiter, with figures.

Bust of Marcus Aurelius.

2nd Room.--

Beautiful architectural fragments, chiefly from the Forum of Trajan.

3rd Room.--

ENTRANCE WALL:

Statue of Æsculapius.

RIGHT WALL:

Statue of Antinous, called the Braschi, found at Palestrina.

Bought from the Braschi family by Gregory XVI for 12,000 scudi.

WALL OF EGRESS:

Sarcophagus of a child, with a relief representing pugilists.

4th Room.--

ENTRANCE WALL:

Greek relief of Medea and the daughters of Peleus.

Above (one of a number of busts), 762. Beautiful head of a Dryad.

Statue of Germanicus.

RIGHT WALL:

Statue of Mars.

WALL OF EGRESS:

Copy of the Faun of Praxiteles.

IN THE CENTRE:

A fine vase of Lumachella.

A passage is crossed to the

5th Room.--

IN THE CENTRE:

1. Sacrifice of Mithras. 2. A stag of basalt. 3. A cow.

RIGHT WALL:

Sepulchral urn, with a curious relief representing children and cock-fighting.

6th Room.--

An interesting collection of statues, from Cervetri (Cære), including those of Tiberius and Claudius; between them Agrippina, sixth wife of Claudius,--and others less certain.

BETWEEN THE WINDOWS:

Drusilla, sister of Claudius, and, on the wall, part of her epitaph.

7th Room.--

RIGHT WALL:

Faun dancing,--found near Sta. Lucia in Selce.

FACING THE ENTRANCE:

A grand statue of Sophocles (the gem of the collection), found at Terracina, 1838. Given by the Antonelli family.

"Sophocle, dans une pose aisée et fière, un pied en avant, un bras enveloppé dans son manteau qu'il serre contre son corps, contemple avec une majestueuse sérénité la nature humaine et la domine d'un regard sûr et tranquille."--Ampère, Hist. Rom. iii. 573.

8th Room.--

Statue of Neptune, from Porto--the legs and arms restored.

9th Room.--

Architectural fragments from the Via Appia and Forum.

10th Room.--

A series of interesting reliefs, found 1848, at the tomb of the Aterii at Centocellæ, representing the preparations for the funeral solemnities of a great Roman lady.

ENTRANCE WALL:

The building of the sepulchre. A curious machine for raising heavy stones is introduced.

RIGHT WALL:

The body of the dead surrounded by burning torches, the mourners tearing their hair and beating their breasts.

WALL OF EGRESS:

Showing several Roman buildings which the funeral procession would pass,--among them the Coliseum and the Arch of Titus--inscribed, "Arcus in sacra via summa."

Signor Rosa has considered this last relief of great importance, as indicating by the different monuments the route which a well-ordered funeral procession ought to pursue.

A second passage is crossed to the

11th Room.--

Containing several fine sarcophagi.

12th Room.--

ENTRANCE WALL:

Sarcophagus, with the story of Orestes.

RIGHT WALL:

Sarcophagus decorated with Cupids bearing garlands, and supporting a head of Augustus.

WALL OF EGRESS:

Sarcophagus representing the destruction of the children of Niobe.

13th Room.--

ENTRANCE WALL:

Statue of C. Lælius Saturninus.

IN THE CENTRE:

Sarcophagus of P. Cæcilius Vallianus, representing a funeral banquet.

LEFT WALL:

Unfinished statue of a captive barbarian, with sculptor's marks remaining, to guide the workman's chisel.

15th Room.--

This and the next room are devoted to objects recently found in the excavations at Ostia.

LEFT WALL:

Mosaic in a niche.

16th Room.--

IN THE CENTRE:

Reclining statue of Atys.

RIGHT WALL:

Frescoes of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, from a tomb at Ostia.

The Christian Museum, founded by Pius IX., and arranged by Padre Marchi and the Cavaliere Rossi, is of great interest. In the first hall is a statue of Christ by Sosnowsky, and in the wall behind it three mosaics,--two from the catacombs, that in the centre--of Christ with SS. Peter and Paul--from the old St. Peter's. Hence we ascend a staircase lined with Christian sarcophagi. At the foot are two statues of the Good Shepherd.

"Une des compositions de Calamis ne doit pas être oubliée à Rome, car ce sujet païen a été adopté par l'art chrétien des premiers temps. Les représentations du Bon Pasteur rapportant la brebis, expressions touchante de la miséricorde divine, ont leur origine dans le Mercure porte-bélier (Criophore). Quelquefois c'est un berger qui porte un bélier, une brebis ou un agneau; l'on se rapproche ainsi a l'idée du bon pasteur. En général, le bon pasteur, dans les monuments chrétiens, porte une brebis, la brebis égarée de l'Évangile; mais quelquefois aussi il porte un bélier; et alors le souvenir de l'original païen dans la composition chrétienne est manifeste."--Ampère, Hist. Rom. iii. 256.

The sarcophagus on the left, which tells the story of Jonah, is especially fine. The corridor above is also lined with sarcophagi. The best are on the left; of these the most remarkable are, the 1st, the marriage at Cana; 4th, the Good Shepherd repeated several times among vines, with cherubs gathering the grapes; 7th, a sarcophagus with a canopy supported by two pavonazzetto columns, and on the wall behind, frescoes of the Good Shepherd, &c. At the raised end of the corridor is the seated statue of Hippolytus, Bishop of Porto in the third century (the upper part a restoration), found in the Catacomb of Sta. Cyriaca, and moved hither from the Vatican Library; upon the chair is engraved the celebrated Paschal Calendar, which is supposed to settle the unorthodoxy of those early Christians who kept Easter at the same time as the Jews.

Hence, three rooms lined with drawings from the paintings in the different catacombs, lead to,--

THE PICTURE GALLERY.

1st Room.--

ENTRANCE WALL:

Cartoon of stoning of Stephen: Giulio Romano.

Below this is the celebrated mosaic called Asarotos, representing an unswept floor after a banquet. It is inscribed with the name of its artist, Heraclitus, but is a copy from one of the two famous mosaics of Sosus of Pergamus (the other is "Pliny's Doves"). It was found on the Aventine in 1833 in the gardens of Servilius, and "probably adorned a dining-room where Cæsar may have supped with Servilia, the sister of Cato, and mother of Brutus." A similar pavement is alluded to by Statius:--

"Varias ubi picta per artes Gaudet humus superare novis asarota figuris."

Sylv. i. 3, 55.

LEFT WALL:

Christ and St Thomas--a cartoon: Camuccini.

WINDOW WALL:

The first sketch for the famous fresco of the Descent from the Cross at the Trinità de' Monti: Daniele da Volterra.

On the right is the entrance of the

2nd Room.--

ENTRANCE WALL:

Annunciation: Cav. d' Arpino.

RIGHT WALL:

George IV. of England (most strangely out of place): Lawrence.

WALL OF EGRESS:

Assumption of the Virgin: After Guercino.

From the corner of this room, on the right, a staircase leads to a gallery, whence one may look down upon the huge and hideous mosaic pavement--with portraits of twenty-eight athletes--found in the Baths of Caracalla in 1822.

"Les gladiateurs de la mosaïque de Saint Jean de Latran ont reçu la forte alimentation qu'on donnait à leurs pareils; ils ont bien cet air de résolution brutale que devaient avoir ceux qui prononçaient ce féroce serment que nous a conservé Pétrone: 'Nous jurons d'obéir à nôtre maître Eumolpe, qu'il nous ordonne de nous laisser brûler, enchaîner, frapper, tuer par le fer ou autrement; et comme vrais gladiateurs, nous dévouons à notre maître nos corps et nos vies.'"--Ampère, Hist. Rom. iv. 33.

On the left of 1st room is the

3rd Room.--

ENTRANCE WALL:

Madonna with SS. Peter, Dominic, and Anthony on the right, and SS. John Baptist, Laurence, and Francis on the left: Marco Palmezzano di Forli, 1537.

IN THE LEFT CORNER:

Madonna and Saints: Carlo Crivelli, 1482.

LEFT WALL:

St. Thomas receiving the girdle of the Virgin (the Sacra Cintola of Prato)--with a predella: Benozzo Gozzoli.

WALL OF EGRESS:

Madonna with St. John Baptist and St. Jerome: Palmezzano.

4th Room.--

ENTRANCE WALL:

Sixtus V. as Cardinal: Sassoferrato.

Madonna: Carlo Crivelli, 1482--very highly finished.

LEFT WALL:

Sixtus V. as Pope: Domenichino(?).

Two Gobelins from pictures of Fra Bartolommeo at the Quirinal.

WALL OF EGRESS:

Christ with the Tribute Money: Caravaggio.

5th Room.--

ENTRANCE WALL:

Entombment: Venetian School.

LEFT WALL:

Greek Baptism: Pietro Nocchi, 1840.

WALL OF EGRESS:

Holy Family: Andrea del Sarto.

6th Room.--

ENTRANCE WALL:

Baptism of Christ: Cesare da Sesto.

LEFT WALL:

SS. Agnes and Emerentiana: Luca Signorelli; Annunciation: F. Francia; SS. Laurence and Benedict (very peculiar, as scarcely showing their faces at all, but magnificent in colour): Luca Signorelli.

WALL OF EGRESS:

Coronation of the Virgin, with wings, of saints, angels, and doves: F. Filippo Lippi.

BETWEEN THE WINDOWS: S. Jerome, in tempera: Giovanni Sanzio, father of Raphael.

7th Room.--

ENTRANCE WALL:

Pagan sacrifice: Caravaggio (?).

LEFT WALL:

Altar-piece by Antonio da Murano, 1464.

WALL OF EGRESS:

Christ at Emmaus: Caravaggio.

8th Room.--

An oil copy of the fresco of the Flagellation of St. Andrew by Domenichino, at S. Gregorio.

9th Room.--

A set of beautiful terracotta busts and reliefs by Pettrich, illustrative of North American Indian life. This room is called the Hall of Council, and is surrounded by fresco portraits of popes, and pictures allegorical of their arms, &c.

The walls of the open galleries on this floor of the palace have been covered with early Christian inscriptions from the catacombs, which have been thus arranged in arches:--

1--3. Epitaphs of martyrs and others of temp. Damasus I. (366 to 384). 4--7. Dated inscriptions from 238 to 557. 8--9. Inscriptions relating to doctrine. 10.--Inscriptions relating to popes, presbyters, and deacons. 11--12. Inscriptions relating to simple ecclesiastics. 13.--Inscriptions of affection to relations and friends. 14--16. Symbolical. 17.--Simple epitaphs from different catacombs.

On the third floor of the palace are casts from the bas-reliefs on the column of Trajan.

Before leaving the Lateran altogether, we must notice amongst its early institutions, the famous school of music which existed here throughout the middle ages.

"Gregory the Great, whose object it seems to have been to render religion a thing of the senses, was the founder of the music of the Church. He instituted the school for it in the Lateran, whence the Carlovingian monarchs obtained teachers of singing and organ-playing. The Frankish monks were sent thither for instruction."--Dyer's Hist. of the City of Rome.

Opposite the palace is the entrance of the Villa Massimo Arsoli, to which admission may be obtained by a permesso given at the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne. There is little to see here, however, except a casino beautifully decorated with scenes taken from the great Italian poets by the modern German artists, Schnorr, Kock, Ph. Veit, Overbeck, and Führich.

"Les sujets sont tirés de Dante, de l'Arioste, et du Tasse. Dante a été confide à Cornélius, l'Arioste à Schnorr, le Tasse à Overbeck, les trois plus célèbres noms de cette école qui croit pouvoir remonter par une imitation savante à la naïveté du XVe. siècle."--Ampère, Voyage Dantesque.

Leading from the Piazza di San Giovanni to Sta. Maria Maggiore is the Via Immerulana, where, in the hollow, is the strange-looking Church of SS. Pietro e Marcellino, in which is preserved a miraculous painting of the Crucifixion; the figure upon the cross is supposed to move the eyes, when regarded by the faithful. This picture, a small replica of the magnificent Guido at S. Lorenzo in Lucina, is shown, behind a grille, by a nun of Sta. Theresa, veiled from head to foot in blue, like an immovable pillar of blue drapery.

"SS. Pietro e Marcellino stands in the valley behind the Esquiline, in the long, lonely road between Sta. Maria Maggiore and the Lateran. SS. Peter Exorcista and Marcellinus are always represented together in priestly habits, bearing their palms. Their legend relates, that in the persecution under Diocletian they were cast into prison. Artemius, keeper of the dungeon, had a daughter named Paulina, and she fell sick; and St. Peter offered to restore her to health, if her father would believe in the true God. And the jailer mocked him, saying, 'If I put thee into the deepest dungeon, and load thee with heavier chains, will thy God deliver thee? If he doth, I will believe in him.' And Peter answered, 'Be it so, not out of regard to thee; for it matters little to our God whether such an one as thou believe in him or not, but that the name of Christ may be glorified, and thyself confounded.'

"And in the middle of the night Peter and Marcellinus, in white shining garments, entered the chamber of Artemius as he lay asleep, who, being struck with awe, fell down and worshipped the name of Christ; and he, his wife, daughter, and three hundred others, were baptized. After this the two holy men were condemned to die for the faith, and the executioner was ordered to lead them to a forest three miles from Rome, that the Christians might not discover their place of sepulture. And when he had brought them to a solitary thicket overgrown with brambles and thorns, he declared to them that they were to die, upon which they cheerfully fell to work and cleared away a space fit for the purpose, and dug the grave in which they were to be laid. Then they were beheaded (June 2), and died encouraging each other.

"The fame of SS. Pietro e Marcellino is not confined to Rome. In the reign of Charlemagne they were venerated as martyrs throughout Italy and Gaul; and Eginhard, the secretary of Charlemagne who married his daughter Emma, is said to have held them in particular honour. Every one, I believe, knows the beautiful story of Eginhard and Emma,--and the connection of these saints with them, as their chosen protectors, lends an interest to their solitary deserted church. In the Roma Sotterranea of Bosio, p. 126, there is an ancient fragment found in the catacombs, which represents St. Peter Exorcista, St. Marcellinus, and Paulina, standing together."--Mrs. Jameson.

Behind the Santa Scala, a narrow lane leads to the Villa Wolkonski (a "permesso" may be obtained through your banker), a most beautiful garden, running along the edge of the hill, intersected by the broken arches of the Aqua Claudia, and possessing exquisite views over the Campagna, with its lines of aqueducts to the Alban and Sabine mountains. No one should omit to visit this villa.

"Where the aqueducts, just about to enter the city, most nearly converge, and looking across the Campagna--which their arches only seem able to span--towards Albano and the hills, stands the Villa. Embosomed in olive and in ilex trees, it is rich in hoar cypresses, in urns, and in those pathetic fragments of old workmanship which an undergrowth of violets and acanthus half hides, and half reveals."--Vera.

* * * * *

About a mile beyond the Porta S. Giovanni, a road branches off on the left to the Porta Furba, an arch of the Aqua Felice, founded on the line of the Claudian and Marcian aqueducts. Artists may find a picturesque subject here in a pretty fountain, with a portion of the decaying aqueduct. Beyond the arch is the mound called Monte del Grano, which has been imagined to be the burial-place of Alexander Severus. Beyond this, the road (to Frescati) passes on the left the vast ruins, called Sette Bassi.

The direct road--which leads to Albano--reaches, about two miles from the gate, a queer building, called the Casa del Diavolo, on the outside of which some rude frescoes testify to the popular belief as to its owner. Just beyond this a field track on the left leads to the Via Latina, of which a certain portion, paved with huge polygonal blocks of lava, is now laid bare. Here are some exceedingly interesting and well-preserved tombs, richly ornamented with painting and stucco. The view, looking back upon Rome, or forward to the long line of broken arches of the Claudian aqueduct, seen between these ruined sepulchres, is most striking and beautiful.

Close by have been discovered remains of a villa of the Servilii, which afterwards belonged to the Asinarii. Here also, in 1858 (on the left of the Via Latina), Signor Fortunati discovered the long buried and forgotten Basilica of S. Stefano. It is recorded by Anastasius that this basilica was founded in the time of Leo I. (440--461) by Demetria, a lady who escaped from the siege by the Goths, with her mother, to Carthage, where she became a nun. It was restored by Leo III. at the end of the eighth century. The remains are interesting, though they do little more than show perfectly the substruction and plan of the ancient building. An inscription relating to the foundation of the church by Demetria has been found among the ruins.

Not far from this is the Catacomb of the Santi-Quattro.

Three and a half miles from Rome is the Osteria of Tavolato, near which is one of the most striking and picturesque portions of the Claudian Aqueduct. It is on the rising ground between this aqueduct and the road, that the Temple of Fortuna Muliebris is believed to have stood. This was the temple which Valeria, the sister of Publicola, and Volumnia, the mother of Coriolanus, claimed to erect at their own expense, when the senate asked them to choose their recompense for having preserved Rome by their entreaties.

"As Valeria, sister of Publicola, was sitting in the temple, as a suppliant before the image of Jupiter, Jupiter himself seemed to inspire her with a sudden thought, and she immediately rose, and called upon all the other noble ladies who were with her, to arise also, and she led them to the house of Volumnia, the mother of Caius (Coriolanus). There she found Virgilia, the wife of Caius, with his mother, and also his little children. Valeria then addressed Volumnia and Virgilia, and said, 'Our coming here to you is our own doing; neither the senate nor any mortal man have sent us; but the god in whose temple we were sitting as suppliants put it into our hearts, that we should come and ask you to join with us, women with women, without any aid of men, to win for our country a great deliverance, and for ourselves a name, glorious above all women, even above those Sabine wives in the old time, who stopped the battle between their husbands and their fathers. Come, then, with us to the camp of Caius, and let us pray to him to show us mercy.' Volumnia said, 'We will go with you:' and Virgilia took her young children with her, and they all went to the camp of the enemy.

"It was a sad and solemn sight to see this train of noble ladies, and the very Volscian soldiers stood in silence as they passed by, and pitied them and honoured them. They found Caius sitting on the general's seat, in the midst of the camp, and the Volscian chiefs were standing round him. When he first saw them he wondered what it could be; but presently he knew his mother, who was walking at the head of the train, and then he could not contain himself, but leapt down from his seat, and ran to meet her, and was going to kiss her. But she stopped him, and said, 'Ere thou kiss me, let me know whether I am speaking to an enemy or to my son; whether I stand in thy camp as thy prisoner or thy mother?' Caius could not answer her; and then she went on and said, 'Must it be, then, that had I never borne a son, Rome never would have seen the camp of an enemy; that had I remained childless, I should have died a free woman in a free city? But I am too old to bear much longer either thy shame or my misery. Rather look to thy wife and children, whom, if thou persistest, thou art dooming to an untimely death, or a long life of bondage.' Then Virgilia and his children came up to him and kissed him, and all the noble ladies wept, and bemoaned their own fate and the fate of their country. At last Caius cried out, 'O mother, what hast thou done to me?' and he wrung her hand vehemently, and said, 'Mother, thine is the victory; a happy victory for thee and for Rome, but shame and ruin to thy son.' Then he fell on her neck and embraced her, and he embraced his wife and his children, and sent them back to Rome; and led away the army of the Volscians, and never afterwards attacked Rome any more. The Romans, as was right, honoured Volumnia and Valeria for their deed, and a temple was built and dedicated to 'Woman's Fortune' just on the spot where Caius had yielded to his mother's words; and the first priestess of the temple was Valeria, into whose heart Jupiter had first put the thought to go to Volumnia, and to call upon her to go out to the enemy's camp and entreat her son."--Arnold's Hist. of Rome, vol. i.

"Il y a peu de scènes dans l'histoire plus émouvantes que celle-là, et elle ne perd rien à la décoration du théâtre; en se plaçant sur un tertre à quatre milles de Rome, près de la voie Latine, dans un lieu où il n'y a aujourd'hui que des tombeaux et des ruines, on peut se figurer le camp des Volsques, dont les armes et les tentes étincellent au soleil. Les montagnes s'élèvent à l'horizon. A travers la plaine ardente et poudreuse défile une foule voilée dont les gémissements retentissent dans le silence de la campagne romaine. Bientôt Coriolan est entouré de cette multitude suppliante dont les plaintes, les cris, devaient avoir la vivacité des démonstrations passionées des Romaines de nos jours. Coriolan eût ré sisté à tout ce bruit, il eût peut-être résisté aux larmes de sa femme et aux caresses de ses enfants; il ne résista pas à la sévérité de sa mère.

"Le soir, par un glorieux coucher du soleil de Rome qui éclaire leur joie, la procession triomphante s'éloigne en adressant un chant de reconnaissance aux dieux, et lui se retire dans sa tente, étonné d'avoir pu céder."--Ampère, Hist. Rom. ii. 402.

The return drive to Rome may be varied by turning to the right about a mile beyond this, into a lane which leads past the so-called temple of Bacchus to the Via Appia Vecchia.

* * * * *

We may now follow the lines of white mulberry-trees across the open space in front of St. John Lateran, which is a continuation of the ancient papal promenade of "the Mirror," to Sta. Croce. The sister basilicas look at each other, and at Sta. Maria Maggiore, down avenues of trees. On the left are the walls of Rome, upon which run the arches of the Aqua Marcia.

"Few Roman churches are set within so impressive a picture as Santa Croce, approached on every side through these solitudes of vineyards and gardens, quiet roads, and long avenues of trees, that occupy such immense extent within the walls of Rome. The scene from the Lateran, looking towards this basilica across the level common, between lines of trees, with the distance of Campagna and mountains, the castellated walls, the arcades of the Claudian aqueduct, amid gardens and groves, is more than beautiful, full of memory and association. The other approach, by the unfrequented Via di Sta. Croce, presents the finest distances, seen through a foliage beyond the dusky towers of the Honorian walls, and a wide extent of slopes covered with vineyards, amid which stand at intervals some of those forlorn cottage farms, grey and dilapidated, that form characteristic features in Roman scenery. The majestic ruins of Minerva-Medica, the so-called temple of Venus and Cupid, the fragments of the Baths of St. Helena, the Castrense Amphitheatre, the arches of the aqueduct, half concealed in cypress and ivy, are objects which must increase the attractions of a walk to this sanctuary of the cross. But the exterior of the church is disappointing and inappropriate, retaining nothing antique except the square Lombardic tower of the twelfth century, in storeys of narrow-arched windows, its brickwork ornamented with disks of coloured marble, and a canopy, with columns, near the summit, for a statue no longer in its place."--Hemans' Catholic Italy, vol. i.

The site of the Basilica of Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme was once occupied by the garden of Heliogabalus, and afterwards by the palace of the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, whose residence here was known as the Palatium Sessorianum, whence the name of Sessorian, sometimes given to the basilica.

The church was probably once a hall in the palace of Helena, to which an apse was added by Constantine, in whose reign it was consecrated by Pope Sylvester. It was repaired by Gregory II. early in the eighth century; the monastery was added by Benedict VII. about 975, and the whole was rebuilt by Lucius II. in 1144. The church was completely modernized by Benedict XIV. in the last century, and scarcely anything, except the tower, now remains externally, which is even as old as the twelfth century. The fine columns of granite and bigio-lumachellato, which now adorn the façade, were plundered from the neighbouring temple in 1744.

The interior of the church is devoid of beauty, owing to modernizations. Four out of twelve fine granite columns, which divided its nave and aisles, are boxed up in senseless plaster piers. The high altar is adorned with an urn of green basalt, sculptured with lions' heads, which contains the bodies of SS. Anastasius and Cæsarius. Two of the pillars of the baldacchino are of breccia-corallina. The fine frescoes of the tribune by Pinturicchio have been much retouched. They were executed under Alexander VI., on a commission from Cardinal Carvajal, who is himself represented as kneeling before the cross, which is held by the Empress Helena.

"The very important frescoes of the choir apsis of Sta. Croce (now much over-painted) are of Pinturicchio's better time. They represent the finding of the Cross, with a colossal Christ in a nimbus among angels above,--a figure full of wild grandeur."--Kugler.

"Near the entrance of the church is a valuable monument of the papal history of the tenth century, in a metrical epitaph to Benedict VII., recording his foundation of the adjoining monastery for monks, who were to sing day and night the praises of the Deity; his charities to the poor; and the deeds of the anti-pope Franco, called by Baronius (with play upon his assumed name Boniface) Malefacius, who usurped the Holy See, imprisoned and strangled the lawful pope, Benedict VI., and pillaged the treasury of St. Peter's, but in one month was turned out and excommunicated, when he fled to Constantinople. The chronology of this epitaph is by the ancient system of Indictions, the death of the pope dated XII. Indiction, corresponding to the year 984: and the Latin style of the tenth century is curiously exemplified in lines relating to the anti-pope:

'Hic primus repulit Franconis spurca superbi Culmina qui invasit sedis apostolicæ Qui dominumque suum captum in castro habebat Carceris interea auctis constrictus in uno Strangulatus ubi exuerat hominem.'"

Hemans' Catholic Italy.

The consecration of the Golden Rose, formerly sent to foreign princes, used to take place in this church. The principal observances here now are connected with the exhibition of the relics, of which the principal is the Title of the True Cross.

"In 1492, when some repairs were ordered by Cardinal Mendoza, a niche was discovered near the summit of the apse, enclosed by a brick front, inscribed 'Titulus Crucis.' In it was a leaden coffer, containing an imperfect plank of wood, 2 inches thick, 1½ palm long, 1 palm broad. On this, in letters more or less perfect, was the inscription in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, Jesus Nazarene King. It was venerated by Innocent VIII., with the college of cardinals, and enclosed by Mendoza in the silver shrine, where it is exposed three times a year from the balcony. The relics are exposed on the 4th Sunday in Lent. On Good Friday the rites are more impressive here than in any other church, the procession of white-robed monks, and the deep toll of the bell announcing the display of the relics by the mitred abbot, are very solemn, and it is surprising, that while crowds of strangers submit to be crushed in the Sistine, scarcely one visits this ancient basilica on that day."--Hemans' Catholic Italy.

"The list of relics on the right of the apsis of Sta. Croce includes, the finger of St. Thomas Apostle, with which he touched the most holy side of our Lord Jesus Christ; one of the pieces of money with which the Jews paid the treachery of Judas; great part of the veil and of the hair of the most blessed Virgin; a mass of cinders and charcoal, united in the form of a loaf, with the fat of St. Lawrence, martyr; one bottle of the most precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; another of the milk of the most blessed Virgin; a little piece of the stone where Christ was born; a little piece of the stone where our Lord sate when he pardoned Mary Magdalen; of the stone where our Lord wrote the law, given to Moses on Mount Sinai; of the stone where reposed SS. Peter and Paul; of the cotton which collected the blood of Christ; of the manna which fed the Israelites; of the rod of Aaron, which flourished in the desert; of the relics of the eleven prophets!"--Percy's Romanism.

Two staircases near the tribune lead to the subterranean church, which has an altar with a pietà, and statues of SS. Peter and Paul of the twelfth century. Hence opens the chapel of Sta. Helena,[285] which women (by a perversion especially strange in this case) are never allowed to enter except on the festival of the saint, August 18. It is built upon a soil composed of earth brought by the empress from Palestine. Her statue is over the altar. The vault has mosaics (originally erected under Valentinian III., but restored by Zucchi in 1593) representing, in ovals, a half-length figure of the Saviour; the Evangelists and their symbols; the Finding of the True Cross; SS. Peter and Paul; St. Sylvester, the conservator of the church; and Sta. Helena, with Cardinal Carvajal kneeling before her.

Here the feast of the "Invention of the True Cross" (May 3) is celebrated with great solemnity, when the hymns "Pange Lingua" and "Vexilla Regis" are sung, and the antiphon:--

"O Cross, more glorious than the stars, world famous, beauteous of aspect, holiest of things, which alone wast worthy to sustain the weight of the world: dear wood, dear nails, dear burden, bearing; save those present assembled in thy praise to-day. Alleluia."

And the collect:--

"O God, who by the glorious uplifting of the salvation-bearing cross, hast displayed the miracles of thy passion, grant that by the merit of that life-giving wood, we may attain the suffrages of eternal life, &c."

The adjoining Monastery belongs to the Cistercians. Only part of one wing is ancient. The library formerly contained many curious MSS., but most of these were lost to the basilica, when the collection was removed to the Vatican during the French occupation and the exile of Pius VII.

The garden of the monastery contains the ruin generally known as the Temple of Venus and Cupid, but considered by Dr. Braun to be the Sessorian Basilica or law-court, where the causes of slaves (who were allowed to appeal to no other court) were wont to be heard. Behind the monastery is the Amphitheatrum Castrense, attributed to the time of Nero, when it is supposed to have been erected for the games of two cohorts of soldiers, quartered near here. It is ingrafted into the line of the Honorian walls, and is best seen from the outside of the city. Its arches and pillars, with Corinthian capitals, are all of brick.

(On the left of the Via Sta. Croce, which leads hence to Sta. Maria Maggiore, is the gate of the Villa Altieri, chiefly remarkable for its grand umbrella pine, the finest in the city. Further, on the right, is a tomb of unknown origin, now used as a farm-house and a wine-shop.)

Turning to the right from the basilica, we follow a lane which leads beneath some fine brick arches of an aqueduct of the time of Nero, cited by Ampère,[286] as exemplifying the perfection to which architecture attained in the reign of this emperor, "by the quality of the bricks, and the excellence and small quantity of the cement." These ruins are popularly called the Baths of Sta. Helena.

Passing these arches we find ourselves facing the Porta Maggiore, formed by two arches of the Claudian Aqueduct, formerly known as the Porta Labicana, and Porta Prenestina, of which the former was closed in the time of Honorius, and has never been re-opened. Three inscriptions remain, the first relating to the building of the aqueduct by the Emperor Tiberius Claudius;--the second and third to its restoration by Vespasian and Titus. Above the Aqua Claudia flowed a second stream, the Anio Novus.

Outside the gate, only lately disclosed, upon the removal of constructions of the time of Honorius (the fragments of those worth preserving are placed on the opposite wall), is the Tomb of the Baker Eurysaces, who was also one of the inspectors of aqueducts. The tomb is attributed to the early years of the Empire. Its first storey is surmounted by the inscription: "EST HOC MONUMENTUM MARCEI VERGILEI EVRYSACES PISTORIS REDEMPTORIS APPARET." Its second storey is composed of rows of the mortars used in baking, placed sideways, and supporting a frieze with bas-reliefs telling the story of a baker's work, from the bringing of the corn into the mill to its distribution as bread. In the front of the tomb was formerly a relief of the baker and his wife, with a sarcophagus, and the inscription: "FUIT ATISTIA UXOR MIHEI--FEMINA OPTVMA VEIXSIT--QUOIVS CORPORIS RELIQUIÆ--QUOD SUPERANT SUNT IN--HOC PANARIO." This has been foolishly removed, and is now to be seen upon the opposite wall.

* * * * *

From this gate many pleasant excursions may be taken. The direct road leads to Palestrina by Zagarolo, and at 1½ mile from the gate passes, on the left, Torre Pignatarra, the tomb of Sta. Helena, whence the magnificent porphyry sarcophagus, now in the Vatican, was removed. The name is derived from the pignatte, or earthen pots, used in the building. Beneath it is a catacomb, now closed. The adjoining Catacomb of SS. Pietro e Marcellino contains some well preserved paintings; the most interesting is that of the Divine Lamb on a mound (from which four rivers flow as in the mosaics of the ancient basilicas), with figures of Petrus, Gorgonius, Marcellinus, and Tiburtius. At three miles from the gate the road reaches Centocellæ, whence, near the desolate tower called Torre Pernice, there is a most picturesque view of the aqueduct Aqua Alexandrina, built by Alexander Severus, with a double line of arches crossing the hollow. At five miles, on the right, is the Borghese farm of Torre Nuova, with a fine group of old stone pines.

The road which turns left from the gate leads by the Aqua Bollicante, where the Arvales sang their hymn, to the picturesque ruins of the Torre dei Schiavi, the palace of the Emperors Gordian (A.D. 238), adjoining which are the remains of a round temple of Apollo. This is, perhaps, one of the most striking scenes in the Campagna and--backed by the violet mountains above Tivoli--is a favourite subject with artists.

"Les Gordiens, très-grands personnages, furent de très-petits empereurs. Ils montrent ce qu'était devenu l'aristocratie romaine dégénérée. Le premier, honnête et pusillanime, comme le prouvent son élection et sa mort, était un peu replet et avait dans l'air du visage quelque chose de solennel et de théâtral (pompali vultu). Il aimait et cultivait les lettres. Son fils également se fit quelque réputation en ce genre, grâce surtout à sa bibliothèque de soixante mille volumes; mais il avait d'autres goûts encore que celui des livres: on lui donne jusqu'à vingt-deux concubines en titre, et de chacune d'elles, il eut trois ou quatre enfants. Il menait une vie épicurienne dans ses jardins et sous des ombrages délicieux: c'étaient les jardins et les ombrages d'une villa magnifique que les Gordiens avaient sur la voie Prénestine, et dont Capitolin, au temps duquel elle existait encore, nous a laissé une description détaillée. Le péristyle était formé de deux cents colonnes des marbres les plus précieux, le cipollin, le pavonazetto, le jaune et le rouge antiques. La villa renfermait trois basiliques et les thermes que ceux de Rome surpassaient à peine. Telle était l'opulence d'une habitation privée vers le milieu du troisième siècle de l'empire."--Ampère, Emp. ii. 328.

The road which continues in a straight line from hence passes, on the left, the Torre Tre Teste. The eighth mile-stone is of historic interest, being described by Livy (v. 49) as the spot where the dictator Camillus overtook and exterminated the army of Gauls who were retreating from Rome with the spoils of the Capitol.

At the ninth mile is the Ponte di Nono, a magnificent old bridge with seven lofty arches of lapis-gabinus. This leads (twelve miles from Rome) to the dried-up lake and the ruins of Gabii (Castiglione), including that of the temple of Juno Gabina.

"Quique arva Gabinæ Junonis, gelidumque Anienem, et roscida rivis Hernica saxa colunt."

Virgil, Æn. vii. 682.

The road which branches off on the left leads (twelve miles from Rome) to Lunghezza, the fine old castle of the Strozzi family, situated on the little river Osa. Hence a beautiful walk through a wood leads to Castello del Osa, the ruins of the ancient Collatia, so celebrated from the tragedy of Lucretia. Two miles beyond the Torre dei Schiavi, on the left, is the fine castellated farm of Cervaletto, a property of the Borghese. A field road of a mile and half, passing in front of this (practicable for carriages), leads to another fine old castellated farm (five miles from Rome), close to which are the extraordinary Grottoes of Cerbara,--a succession of romantic caves of great size, in the tufa rocks, from which the material of the Coliseum was excavated. Here the "Festa degli Artisti" is held in May, which is well worth seeing,--the artists in costume riding in procession, and holding games, amid these miniature Petra-like ravines. Beyond Cerbara are remains of a villa of Lucius Verus, and, on the bank of the Anio, the romantically-situated castle of Rustica.

From the Porta Maggiore we may follow a lane along the inside of the wall, crossing the railway--whence there is a picturesque view of the temple of Minerva Medica--to The Porta S. Lorenzo, anciently called the Porta Tiburtina (the road to Tivoli passes through it), built in 402, by the Emperors Arcadius and Honorius, on the advice of Stilicho, as we learn from an inscription over the archway of the Marcian, Tepulan, and Julian Aqueducts, now half buried within the later brick gateway.

The road just beyond the gate is connected with the story of the favourite saint of the Roman people.

"When Sta. Francesca Romana had no resource but to beg for the sick under her care, she went to the basilica of S. Lorenzo fuori Mura, where was the station of the day, and seated herself amongst the crowd of beggars, who, according to custom, were there assembled. From the rising of the sun to the ringing of the vesper-bell, she sate there, side by side with the lame, the deformed, and the blind. She held out her hand as they did, gladly enduring, not the semblance, but the reality, of that deep humiliation. When she had received enough wherewith to feed the poor at home, she rose, and entering the old basilica, adored the Blessed Sacrament, and then walked back the long and weary way, blessing God all the while."--Lady G. Fullerton.

A quarter of a mile beyond the gate we come in sight of the church and monastery, but the effect is much spoilt by the hideous modern cemetery, formed since the following description was written:--

"S. Lorenzo is as perfect a picture of a basilica externally, as S. Clemente is internally. Viewing it from a little distance, the whole pile--in its grey reverend dignity--the row of stones indicating the atrium, with an ancient cross in the centre--the portico overshadowing faded frescoes--the shelving roof, the body-wall bulging out and lapping over, like an Egyptian temple--the detached Lombard steeple--with the magic of sun and shadow, and the background of the Campagna, bounded by the blue mountains of Tivoli--together with the stillness, the repose, interrupted only by the chirp of the grasshopper, and the distant intermitted song of the Contadino--it forms altogether such a scene as painters love to sketch, and poets to re-people with the shadows of past ages; and I open a wider heaven for either fraternity to fly their fancies in, when I add that it was there the ill-fated Peter de Courtenay was crowned Emperor of the East."--Lord Lindsay, Christian Art.

"To St. Laurence was given a crown of glory in heaven, and upon earth eternal and universal praise and fame; for there is scarcely a city or town in all Christendom which does not contain a church or altar dedicated to his honour. The first of these was built by Constantine outside the gates of Rome, on the spot where he was buried; and another was built on the summit of the hill, where he was martyred; besides these, there are at Rome four others; and in Spain the Escurial, and at Genoa the Cathedral."--Mrs. Jameson.

We have already followed St. Laurence to the various spots in Rome connected with his story,--to the green space at the Navicella, where he distributed his alms before the house of St. Cyriaca (in whose catacomb he was first buried); to the basilica in the Palace of the Cæsars, where he was tried and condemned; to S. Lorenzo in Fonte, where he was imprisoned; to S. Lorenzo Pane e Perna, where he died; to S. Lorenzo in Lucina, where his supposed gridiron is preserved; and now we come to his grave, where a grand basilica has arisen around the little oratory, erected by Constantine, which marked his first burial-place in the Catacombs.

The first basilica erected here was built in the end of the sixth century, by Pope Pelagius II., but this was repeatedly enlarged and beautified by succeeding popes, and at length was so much altered in 1216, by Honorius III., that the old basilica became merely the choir or tribune of a larger and more important church. So many other changes have since taken place, that Bunsen remarks upon S. Lorenzo as more difficult of explanation than any other of the Roman churches.

In front of the basilica stands a bronze statue of St. Laurence, upon a tall granite pillar.

The portico is supported by six Ionic columns, four of them spiral. Above these is a mosaic frieze of the thirteenth century. In the centre is the Spotless Lamb, having, on the right, St. Laurence, Honorius III., and another figure; and on the left three heads, two of whom are supposed to be the virgin martyr Sta. Cyriaca, and her mother Tryphœna, buried in the adjoining cemetery. Above this is a very richly decorated marble frieze, boldly relieved with lions' heads. The gable of the church is faced with modern mosaics of saints. Within the portico are four splendid sarcophagi; that on the left of the entrance is adorned with reliefs representing a vintage, with cupids as the vine-gatherers, and contains the remains of Pope Damasus II., who died in 1049, after a reign of only twenty-three days. At the sides of the door are two marble lions. The walls of the portico are covered with a very curious series of frescoes, lately repainted. They represent four consecutive stories.

On the right:--

A holy hermit, living a life of solitude and prayer, heard a rushing noise, and, looking out of his window, saw a troop of demons, who told him that the Emperor Henry II. had just expired, and that they were hurrying to lay claim to his soul. The hermit trembled, and besought them to let him know as they returned how they had succeeded. Some days after, they came back and narrated that when the Archangel was weighing the good and evil deeds of the emperor in his balance, the weight was falling in their favour--when suddenly the roasted St. Laurence appeared, bearing a golden chalice, which the emperor, shortly before his death, had bestowed upon the Church, and cast it into the scale of good deeds, and so turned the balance the other way, but that in revenge they had broken off one of the golden handles of the chalice. And when the hermit heard these things he rejoiced greatly; and the soul of the emperor was saved and he became a canonized saint,--and the devils departed blaspheming.

The order of the frescoes representing this legend is:--

1, 2. Scenes in the life of Henry II. 3. The Emperor offers the golden chalice. 4. A banquet scene. 5. The hermit discourses with the devils. 6. The death of Henry II.--1024. 7. The dispute for the soul of the Emperor. 8. It is saved by St. Laurence.

The second series represents the whole story of the acts, trial, martyrdom, and burial of St. Laurence; one or two frescoes in this were entirely effaced, and have been added by the restorer. Of the old series were:--

1. The investiture of St. Laurence as deacon. 2. St. Laurence washes the feet of poor Christians. 3. He heals Sta. Cyriaca. 4. He distributes alms on the Cœlian. 5. He meets St. Sixtus led to death, and receives his blessing. 6. He is led before the prefect. 7. He restores sight to Lucillus. 8. He is scourged. 9. He baptizes St. Hippolytus. 11. He refuses to give up the treasures of the Church. 13, 14, 15. His burial by St. Hippolytus.

The third series represents the story of St. Stephen, followed by that of the translation of his relics to this basilica.

The relics of St. Stephen were preserved at Constantinople, whither they had been transported from Jerusalem by the Empress Eudoxia, wife of Theodosius II. Hearing that her daughter Eudoxia, wife of Valentinian II., Emperor of the West, was afflicted with a devil, she begged her to come to Constantinople that her demon might be driven out by the touch of the relics. The younger Eudoxia wished to comply,--but the devil refused to leave her, unless St. Stephen was brought to Rome. An agreement was therefore made that the relics of St. Stephen should be exchanged for those of St. Laurence. St. Stephen arrived, and the empress was immediately relieved of her devil, but when the persons who had brought the relics of St. Stephen from Constantinople were about to take those of St. Laurence back with them, they all fell down dead! Pope Pelagius prayed for their restoration to life, which was granted for a short time, to prove the efficacy of prayer, but they all died again ten days after! Thus the Romans knew that it would be criminal to fulfil their promise, and part with the relics of St. Laurence, and the bodies of the two martyrs were laid in the same sarcophagus.

The frescoes in the left wall represent a separate story:--

A holy sacristan arose before the dawn to enjoy solitary prayers before the altars of this church. Once when he was thus employed, he found that he was not alone, and beheld three persons, a priest, a deacon, and sub-deacon, officiating at the altar, and the church around him filled with worshippers, whose faces bore no mortal impress. Tremblingly he drew near to him whom he dreaded the least, and inquired of the deacon, who this company might be. 'The priest whom thou seest is the blessed apostle Peter,' answered the spirit, 'and I am Laurence who suffered cruel torments for the love of my master Christ, upon a Wednesday, which was the day of his betrayal; and in remembrance of my martyrdom we are come to-day to celebrate here the mysteries of the Church; and the sub-deacon who is with us is the first martyr, St. Stephen,--and the worshippers are the apostles, the martyrs, and virgins who have passed with me into Paradise, and have come back hither to do me honour; and of this solemn service thou art chosen as the witness. When it is day, therefore, go to the pope and tell what thou hast seen, and bid him, in my name, to come hither and to celebrate a solemn mass with all his clergy, and to grant indulgences to the faithful.' But the sacristan trembled and said, 'If I go to the pope he will not believe me: give me some visible sign, then, which will show what I have seen.' And St. Laurence ungirt his robe, and giving his girdle to the sacristan, bade him show it in proof of what he told. In the morning the old man related what he had seen to the abbot of the monastery, who bore the girdle to the then pope, Alexander II. The pope accompanied him back to the basilica,--and on their way they were met by a funeral procession, when, to test the powers of the girdle, the pope laid it on the bier, and at once the dead arose and walked. Then all men knew that the sacristan had told what was true, and the pope celebrated mass as he had been bidden, and promised an indulgence of forty years to all who should visit on a Wednesday any church dedicated to St. Laurence.

This story is told in eight pictures:--

1. The sacristan sees the holy ones.

2. The Phantom Mass.

3. The sacristan tells the abbot.

4. The abbot tells the pope.

5. The pope consults his cardinals.

6. The dead is raised by the girdle.

7. Mass is celebrated at St. Lorenzo, and souls are freed from purgatory by the intercession of the saint.

8. Prayer is made at the shrine of St. Laurence.

The nave--which is the basilica of Honorius III.--is divided from its side aisles by twenty-two Ionic columns of granite and cipollino. The sixth column on the right has a lizard and a frog amongst the decorations of its capital, which led Winckelmann to the supposition that these columns were brought hither from the Portico of Octavia, because Pliny describes that the architects of the Portico of Metellus, which formerly occupied that site, were two Spartans, named Sauros and Batrachus, who implored permission to carve their names upon their work; and that when leave was refused, they introduced them under this form,--Batrachus signifying a frog, and Sauros a lizard.

Above the architrave are frescoes by Fracassini, of the lives and martyrdoms of SS. Stephen and Laurence. Higher up are saints connected with the history of the basilica. The roof is painted in patterns. The splendid opus-alexandrinum pavement is of the tenth century. On the left of the entrance is a baptismal font, above which are more frescoes relating to the story of St. Laurence. On the right, beneath a mediæval canopy, is a very fine sarcophagus, sculptured with a wedding scene,--adapted as the tomb of Cardinal Fieschi, nephew of Innocent IV., who died in 1256. Inside the canopy, is a fresco of Christ throned, to whom St. Laurence presents the cardinal, and St. Stephen Innocent IV. Behind stand St. Eustace and St. Hippolytus. The west end of the church is closed by the inscription, "Hi sunt qui venerunt de tribulatione magna, et laverunt stolas suas in sanguine agni."

The splendid ambones in the nave, inlaid with serpentine and porphyry, are of the twelfth century. That on the right, with a candelabrum for the Easter candle, was for the gospel; that on the left for the epistle.

At the end of the left aisle, a passage leads down to a subterranean chapel, used for prayer for the souls in purgatory. Here is the entrance to the Catacombs of Sta. Ciriaca, which are said to extend as far as Sant' Agnese, but which have been much and wantonly injured in the works for the new cemetery. Here the body of St. Laurence is related to have been found. Over the entrance is inscribed:--

"Hæc est tumba illa toto orbe terrarum celeberrima ex cimeterio S. Cyriacæ Matronæ ubi sacrum si quis fecerit pro defunctis eorum animas e purgatorii pœnis divi Laurentii meritis evocabit."[287]

Passing the triumphal arch, we enter the early basilica of Pope Pelagius II. (572--590), which is on a lower level than that of the nave. Here are twelve splendid columns of pavonazzetto, of which the two first bear trophies carved above the acanthus leaves of their capitals. These support an entablature formed from various antique fragments, put together without uniformity,--and a triforium, divided by twelve small columns.

On the inside, which was formerly the outside, of the triumphal arch, is a restored mosaic of the time of Pelagius, representing the Saviour seated upon the world, having on the right St. Peter, St. Laurence, and St. Pelagius, and on the left St. Paul and St. Stephen, and with them, in a warrior's dress, St. Hippolytus, the soldier who was appointed to guard St. Laurence in prison, and who, being converted by him, was dragged to death by wild horses, after seeing nineteen of his family suffer before his eyes. He is the patron saint of horses. Here also are the mystic cities, Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

A long poetical inscription is known to have once existed here; only two lines remain round the arch:--

"Martyrium flaminis olim Levita subisti Jure tuis templis lux veneranda redit."

The high altar, with a baldacchino, supported by four porphyry columns, covers the remains of SS. Laurence and Stephen, enclosed in a silver shrine by Pelagius II., a pope so munificent that he had given up his own house as a hospital for aged poor. St. Justin is also buried here.

"No one knew what had become of the body of St. Stephen for 400 years, when Lucian, a priest of Carsamagala, in Palestine, was visited in a dream by Gamaliel, the doctor of the law at whose feet Paul was brought up in all the learning of the Jews; and Gamaliel revealed to him that after the death of Stephen he had carried away the body of the saint, and had buried it in his own sepulchre, and had also deposited near it the body of Nicodemus and other saints; and this dream having been repeated three times, Lucian went with others deputed by the bishop, and dug with mattocks and spades in the spot which had been indicated,--a sepulchre in a garden,--and found what they supposed to be the remains of St. Stephen, their peculiar sanctity being proved by many miracles. These relics were first deposited in Jerusalem, in the church of Sion, and afterwards by the younger Theodosius carried to Constantinople, whence they were taken to Rome, and placed by Pope Pelagius in the same tomb with St. Laurence. It is related that when they opened the sarcophagus, and lowered into it the body of St. Stephen, St. Laurence moved on one side, giving the place of honour on the right hand to St. Stephen: hence the common people of Rome have conferred on St. Laurence the title of 'Il cortese Spagnuolo'--the courteous Spaniard."--Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art.

Behind the altar is a mosaic screen, with panels of porphyry and serpentine, and an ancient episcopal throne.

The lower church was filled up with soil till 1864, when restorations were ordered here. These were entrusted to Count Vespignani, and have been better carried out than most church alterations in Rome; but an interesting portico, with mosaics by one of the famous Cosmati family, has been destroyed to make room for some miserable arrangements connected with the modern cemetery.

It was in this basilica that Peter Courtenay, Count of Auxerre, with Yolande his wife, received the imperial crown of Constantinople from Honorius III. in 1217.

Adjoining the church is the very picturesque Cloister of the Monastery, built in 1190, for Cistercian monks, but assigned as a residence for any Patriarchs of Jerusalem who might visit Rome. Here are preserved many ancient inscriptions, and other fragments from the neighbouring catacombs.

The basilica is now almost engulfed in the Cemetery of S. Lorenzo, the great modern burial-ground of Rome. It was opened in 1837, but has been much enlarged in the last ten years. Hither wend the numerous funerals which are seen passing through the streets after Ave-Maria, with a procession of monks bearing candles. A frightful gate, with a laudatory inscription to Pius IX., and a hideous modern chapel, have been erected. There are very few fine monuments. The best are those in imitation of the cinque-cento tombs of which there are so many in the Roman churches. That by Podesti, the painter, to his wife, in the right corridor of the cloister, is touching. The higher ground to the left, behind the church, is occupied by the tombs of the rich. Those of the poor are indiscriminately scattered over a wide plain. A range of cliffs on the left were perforated by the catacombs of Sta. Cyriaca, which, with the bad taste so constantly displayed in Rome, have been wantonly and shamefully broken up. Those who do not wish to descend into a catacomb, may here see (from without) all their arrangements--in the passages lined with sepulchres, and even some small chapels, lined with rude frescoes, laid open to the air, where the cliff has been cut away.

A Roman funeral is a most sad sight, and strikes one with an unutterable sense of desolation.

"After a death the body is entirely abandoned to the priests, who take possession of it, watch over it, and prepare it for burial; while the family, if they can find refuge anywhere else, abandon the house and remain away a week.... The body is not ordinarily allowed to remain in the house more than twelve hours, except on condition that it is sealed up in lead or zinc. At nightfall a sad procession of becchini and frati may be seen coming down the street, and stopping before the house of the dead. The becchini are taken from the lowest classes of the people, and hired to carry the corpse on the bier and to accompany it to the church and cemetery. They are dressed in shabby black cappe, covering their head and face as well as their body, and having two large holes cut in front of the eyes to enable them to see. These cappe are girdled round the waist, and the dirty trousers and worn-out shoes are miserably manifest under the skirts of their dress--showing plainly that their duty is occasional. All the frati and becchini, except the four who carry the bier, are furnished with wax candles, for no one is buried in Rome without a candle. You may know the rank of the person to be buried by the lateness of the hour and the number of the frati. If it be the funeral of a person of wealth or a noble, it takes place at a late hour, the procession of frati is long, and the bier elegant. If it be a state-funeral, as of a prince, carriages accompany it in mourning, the coachman and lackeys are bedizened in their richest liveries, and the state hammer-cloths are spread on the boxes, with the family arms embossed on them in gold. But if it be a pauper's funeral, there are only becchini enough to carry the bier to the grave, and two frati, each with a little candle; and the sunshine is yet on the streets when they come to take away the corpse.

"You will see this procession stop before the house where the corpse is lying. Some of the becchini go up-stairs, and some keep guard below. Scores of shabby men and boys are gathered round the frati; some attracted simply by curiosity, and some for the purpose of catching the wax, which gutters down from the candles as they are blown by the wind. The latter may be known by the great horns of paper which they carry in their hands. While this crowd waits for the corpse, the frati light their candles, and talk, laugh, and take snuff together. Finally comes the body, borne down by four of the becchini. It is in a common rough deal coffin, more like an ill-made packing-case than anything else. No care or expense has been laid out upon it to make it elegant, for it is only to be seen for a moment. Then it is slid upon the bier, and over it is drawn the black velvet pall with golden trimmings, on which a cross, death's head, and bones are embroidered. Four of the becchini hoist it on their shoulders, the frati break forth into their hoarse chaunt, and the procession sets out for the church. Little and big boys and shabby men follow along, holding up their paper horns against the sloping candles to catch the dripping wax. Every one takes off his hat, or makes the sign of the cross, or mutters a prayer, as the body passes; and with a dull, sad, monotonous chaunt, the candles gleaming and flaring, and casting around them a yellow flickering glow, the funeral winds along through the narrow streets, and under the sombre palaces and buildings, where the shadows of night are deepening every moment. The spectacle seen from a distance, and especially when looked down upon from a window, is very effective; but it loses much of its solemnity as you approach it; for the frati are so vulgar, dirty, and stupid, and seem so utterly indifferent and heartless, as they mechanically croak out their psalms, that all other emotions yield to a feeling of disgust."--Story's Roba di Roma.

"Ces rapprochements soudains de l'antiquité et des temps modernes, provoqués par la vue d'un monument dont la destinée se lie à l'une et aux autres, sont très-fréquents à Rome. L'histoire poétique d'Énée aurait pu m'en fournir plusieurs. Ainsi dans l'Énéide, aux funérailles de Pallas, une longue procession s'avance, portant des flambeaux funèbres, suivant l'usage antique, dit Virgile. En effet, on se souvient que l'usage des cierges remontait à l'abolition des sacrifices humains, accompli dans les temps héroïques par le dieu pélasgique Hercule. La description que fait Virgile des funérailles de Pallas pourrait convenir à un de ces enterrements romains où l'on voit de longues files de capucins marchant processionnellement en portant des cierges.

... 'Lucet via longo Ordine flammarum.'"

Æn. xi. 143.

--Ampère, i. 217.

On the other side of the road from S. Lorenzo is the Catacomb of St. Hippolytus, interesting as described by the Christian poet Prudentius, who wrote at the end of the fourth century.

"Not far from the city walls, among the well-trimmed orchards, there lies a crypt buried in darksome pits. Into its secret recesses a steep path in the winding stairs directs one, even though the turnings shut out the light. The light of day, indeed, comes in through the doorway, as far as the surface of the opening, and illuminates the threshold of the portico; and when, as you advance further, the darkness as of night seems to get more and more obscure throughout the mazes of the cavern, there occur at intervals apertures cut in the roof which convey the bright rays of the sun upon the cave. Although the recesses, twisting at random this way and that, form narrow chambers with darksome galleries, yet a considerable quantity of light finds its way through the pierced vaulting down into the hollow bowels of the mountain. And thus throughout the subterranean crypt it is possible to perceive the brightness and enjoy the light of the absent sun. To such secret places is the body of Hippolytus conveyed, near to the spot where now stands the altar dedicated to God. That same altar-slab (mensa) gives the sacrament, and is the faithful guardian of its martyrs' bones, which it keeps laid up there in expectation of the Eternal Judge, while it feeds the dwellers by the Tiber with holy food. Wondrous is the sanctity of the place! The altar is at hand for those who pray, and it assists the hopes of men by mercifully granting what they need. Here have I, when sick with ills both of soul and body, oftentimes prostrated myself in prayer and found relief.... Early in the morning men come to salute (Hippolytus): all the youth of the place worship here: they come and go until the setting of the sun. Love of religion collects together into one dense crowd both Latins and foreigners; they imprint their kisses on the shining silver; they pour out their sweet balsams; they bedew their faces with tears."--See Roma Sotterranea, p. 98.

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