All the brouhaha surrounding the Pope's death has prompted me to do a
little research, primarily about Catholicism's beginnings, specifically
about St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Since I was raised a Mormon, and
never had much interest in this stuff, most of it is new to me.
What follows is a collection of stuff I've learned in the last few
days, garnered from various sources. I realize that much of it may be
wrong, and that many of you will find fault with some of the material
no matter how accurate it might be. A good deal of it is religious
legend and, as with many legends, the facts can't be verified.
I'm also fully aware that some of you don't really give a *****. You
consider all information related to religion (especially Christianity)
irrelevant. Obviously, this wasn't written for you. Personally, I find
the history, even if it is wrong, fascinating. If you don't, fine. Move
along to a different thread or go play Halo or something.
Saint Peter's Bones:
The current St. Peter's Basilica sits on or very close to the former
Roman Circus Maximus. Floor plans of the two buildings superimposed on
each other show them in approximately the same position, with the same
north-south orientation.
It was at the Circus Maximus (not, according to popular lore, the
Coliseum) where the Roman Emperor Nero publicly executed early
Christians, most notably in the summer of the year 67 as scapegoats for
his own incompetence; a fire that he either started himself or allowed
to burn out of control.
Among these early Christians was Peter, also called Simon, one of
Jesus' 12 apostles, who was by then approaching 70 years of age. It is
said that he was crucified upside down so as not to equate himself with
Jesus, and that his feet were hacked off after death in order to make
it easier to remove him from the cross.
According to Catholic legend, Peter's body was interred in a crypt very
near the spot where he was killed. This area of Rome was filled with
grottos where numerous burials took place over the course of decades if
not centuries.
Peter's grave became a secret meeting place for early Christians, who,
until Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the Fourth
Century and legitimized the religion, underwent periodic persecutions
that forced them underground.
Constantine really took to the new religion. Beginning in the year 324,
he tore down the Circus Maximus and on its spot built the first St.
Peter's Basilica. He seemed to have some special knowledge about the
place, for he built its main altar directly on top of the tomb believed
to hold Peter's bones, requiring him to move several million cubic
yards of dirt to shore up a hillside where half of the future church
would be built, shearing off the tops of innumerable other tombs and
burial chambers in the process, which he filled with dirt. It is said
he begun construction by filling and moving twelve baskets of dirt with
his own hands, one for each of the 12 Apostles. St. Peter's basilica in
Rome is literally built on the bones of hundreds.
Time went by. Emperors and popes ruled and died. Peter's tomb was all
but forgotten, and the original basilica was sacked and rebuilt several
times over the course of twelve centuries until, at the end of the
middle ages, it had fallen into such a state of disrepair that the only
option was to rebuild a new church in its spot.
It was the Sixteenth Century. The Italian Renaissance. Folks like
Michelangelo, Bernini, Bramante, and the popes Julius II, Nicholas V
and Sixtus IV were around. With flamboyant genius and the wealth of the
Catholic church behind them, they created a masterpiece. It doesn't
matter what you think of religion in general or Christianity and
Catholicism in particular, the new St. Peter's basilica is one of the
world's most beautiful buildings, rivaling anything built before or
since in sheer stateliness, proportion, opulence and scale.
An area below the basilica known as the Vatican Grottos -- an area also
reportedly containing the bones of St. Peter -- went largely
undisturbed during the rebuild. The bodies of several popes were buried
below the church near the main altar in the ensuing years, almost
haphazardly it would seem, and without much of the normal Catholic pomp
and attention to detail. It was not until 1939 and the death of Pope
Pius XI that his successor, Pius XII, decided to reorganize the space
into a proper burial place for popes. He directed the Vatican
administrator and its architects and engineers to estimate what
modifications could be made to the space to that end.
As soon as the engineers began to explore the space below the altar,
excavating through several feet of dirt, they realized they were
uncovering significant portions of Roman and Catholic history. At a
depth of three feet they discovered the tops of masonry walls that had
been crudely sliced off. The interior spaces were packed with dirt and
compressed fill. Fifteen feet down through this dirt, they discovered
the mausoleum of a Roman family named Caetennii. Then they discovered
tombs on either side of it.
At this point, they notified Pius XII, who abruptly abandoned plans for
an underground chapel and, instead, commissioned the first modern
archaeological excavation under St. Peter's basilica. Under the
direction of Jesuit archaeologists and Vatican engineers, an entire
street of tombs was eventually discovered. 300 feet long, it contained
the simple remains of freedmen as well as other tombs decorated with
opulent mosaics, one of them a golden mosaic illustrating Jesus driving
a chariot across the sky; as one reporter noted: "a motif borrowed from
depictions of the [pagan] sun god Sol."
At the outset, Pope Pius XII made one restriction: Excavators were
forbidden from exploring the area directly under the main altar in St.
Peter's basilica. But, one by one, signs began to appear that would
give the hearts of most Christians palpitations: The ancient,
decapitated street of tombs led straight to the legendary burial place
of Peter, directly under the high altar. Graffiti scratched on one wall
said, in Latin, "Peter, pray to Jesus Christ for the holy men buried
near your body."
By 1941 even the Pope knew that they were on the verge of a momentous
discovery. He relented and directed his workmen to explore the area
below the high altar. While Europe waged war above, the church
excavated below St. Peter's basilica in secret. It took three years to
uncover a paved courtyard, 7 meters by 4, directly under the altar. On
its western edge a thick wall of red brick, called "The Red Wall,"
contained two niches covered by a slab of marble supported by two
columns; a little altar or temple. But no human remains.
On the floor of the courtyard, however, at the north end of the Red
Wall, another slab of marble had been laid, into which had been cut a
small square opening. Beneath this slab was clearly a grave, badly
damaged, and littered with coins from ancient Christendom that had been
dropped into the hole as "offerings." The grave was small, barely 72 cm
square and 1.4 m deep. It was in a bad state of repair; its sides
crudely lined with stones that had collapsed into the cavity.
At first, the cavity contained no signs of bones or other human
remains. But, looking closer, investigators saw a small pile of bones
pushed carelessly towards the back of the hole. From this pile they
extracted a number of bone fragments, including part of a breastbone,
half of a shoulder blade, and many other smaller pieces not immediately
recognizable. There was no skull, which was to be expected, since the
skull of Peter was widely believed by Catholics to be in the basilica
of Saint John Lateran since at least the Ninth Century.
Over time, the contents of this crypt were examined more closely.
Several of the coins recovered were obviously too early. Among them,
one from the reign of Augustus, who died in CE 14, when Peter was still
a boy. It is possible this coin was retained by an early numismatist
for 50 years or more, but the vast majority of other coins were at
least 150-200 years older. At the very least, the coin evidence was
inconclusive.
Astonishingly, the bones recovered from this niche were initially
identified as belonging to a "powerfully built man who had been 65 or
70 years of age at the time of his death," which fits a general
description of Peter. The description, made by a general physician
named Galeazzi-Lisi, held for a number of years.
Near the crypt, attached to the Red Wall, was another wall, called the
"Graffiti Wall." Coated with plaster, it contained hundreds of
inscriptions, nearly all of them unintelligible, a jumbled mass of
scribblings that would take a future expert investigator (Margherita
Guarducci) years to decipher. Some of the inscriptions were readable,
however, and one in particular, a fragment, hinted at something
wonderful.
John Curran describes the scene:
"Antonio Ferrua was visiting the site on his own one evening when he
noticed that a piece of plaster from the wall on the right hand side of
the shrine had worked itself free from the back of the wall, where it
was placed against the crack in the Red Wall. Ferrua looked carefully
at the fragment and noticed that some unknown hand had scratched two
lines of Greek. On the upper line only the letters pi, epsilon, tau and
rho were still visible, while of the lower line only epsilon, nu and
part of a vertical line survived. Ferrua, however, with his grounding
in Christian epigraphy, immediately restored the missing letters in his
mind, so that the short inscription read "Petr[os] en[i]", "Peter is
here within"."
In 1950, during his Christmas message broadcast to the world on
December 23, Pope Pius XII finally announced the discovery:
"Has the tomb of Saint Peter really been found? To that question the
answer is beyond all doubt yes. The tomb of the Prince of the Apostles
has been found. Such is the final conclusion after all the labour and
study of these years. A second question, subordinate to the first,
refers to the relics of Saint Peter. Have they been found? At the side
of the tomb remains of human bones have been discovered. However, it is
impossible to prove with certainty that they belong to the apostle.
This still leaves intact the historical reality of the tomb itself."
The reason for his caution at the end became clear rather early in the
investigation, when bricks from burials _below_ The Red Wall contained
maker's marks from factories that did not exist until several
generations _after_ Peter's death. Examination of the archeological
evidence confirmed rather accurately that whoever was buried in that
crypt was placed there around CE 147-161, nearly a century after Peter
was crucified at the Circus. Of course, this left open the possibility
that Peter's remains had been moved, possibly several times, and quite
possibly under hasty circumstances given the unhealthy climate for
Christians during those decades.
The final blow came in the 1950s when the bones were subjected to more
rigorous tests. The result showed that, instead of a man 65-70 years
old, the bones contained the remains of three people, one of whom was a
woman who was elderly, and two men who were not past their fifties at
the time of their death. To add to the confusion, the remains of a
chicken, a pig and a horse were also among the bones. I rather suspect
the Pope was a bit pissed when he heard that news.
So where the hell was Peter?
A possible answer was initiated by Margherita Guarducci, the woman who
investigated and deciphered the myriad messages on the Graffiti Wall.
In 1953, while working at the site, she offhandedly asked about a
second crypt, called the "loculus," that had been found near the wall.
Had it really been empty when found, as had been reported by the lead
archaeologists? Giovanni Segoni, foreman of the Vatican workmen,
replied that in 1942 he had been showing the Vatican Administrator
around the site when the loculus was uncovered. Peering inside, they
saw fragments of bone, which they decided were part of a routine
burial. The Administrator directed the crypt to be emptied and the
remains to be stored in a lead lined box.
The remains were forgotten until 1953, when Guarducci inquired about
them. Fortunately, by then, the bones were in the possession of the
same person who had determined the previous collection of bones to be
those of several individuals, including animals.
Guarducci was in an odd position. First, she was a woman. A specialist
and an expert to be sure, but still a woman. Second, in order to bring
this to the attention of Papal authorities, she would have also bring
to their attention the significance of a rather stupid mistake made
more than ten years earlier, a mistake that would lead to the worldwide
embarrassment of Pope Pius XII, and to a chink -- nay, a chasm -- in
his infallibility. She agonized over this dilemma for nearly ten years.
Then, on June 21, 1963, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini was elected
to the Papacy, taking the name Paul VI.
As it happened, Guarducci and the Montanis were pretty good friends,
and she was able to speak to the new Pope about the matter without fear
of reprisal. Paul VI immediately directed a new study of the loculus
bones.
These bones were comprised of 135 fragments, including parts of a
skull. (A thorough study of the Lateran skull indicated that it was not
part of this skeleton.) Several large fragments remained, including
both the left and right femurs and tibias. The remaining fragments
represented all other areas of the body except the feet. This
individual was buried without feet.
Most important of all, the bones came from a single human, male,
robust, who was between the age of 60 and 70 when he died. Adding to
the intrigue, almost infinitesimal scraps of purple cloth woven with
gold threads were found embedded in some of the bone fragments.
In 1965, with Papal blessing, Margherita Guarducci published _The
Remains of Saint Peter_.
On Wednesday, June 26, 1968, Pope Paul VI declared that the mortal
remains of Peter, foremost of the Apostles of Jesus Christ, had been
found beneath the great church in which he was speaking. The following
day, 135 fragments of bone were restored to their niche beside the
Graffiti Wall several meters below the great altar, where they remain
to this day.
Investigators, including the one from whom I drew a great deal of the
above detail, are not convinced that the remains of Peter have actually
been found. There are simply too many unknowns and too many
discrepancies in the story to be so certain as Paul VI or Margherita
Guarducci.
I am not convinced, either. I was an anthropology major in college and
actually worked on several digs, none of which (although conducted by
students) were as shabbily run as the one under St. Peter's basilica.
Apparently, no measured drawings of any of the excavations exist (or
are available to the public). Few photographs are available. The
project was cloaked in so much secrecy for so many years that its
results are inherently suspect.
And, of course, it is the Catholic Church from whom we're getting the
feed.
But still, it is an intriguing story.
References (partial) and further reading:
http://www.miraclerosarymission.org/stpetertour.html
http://stpetersbasilica.org/Docs/GuideSPB3.htm
http://www.ucd.ie/classics/96/Curran96.html
http://tinyurl.com/3znpa
http://sxws.com/charis/relics10.htm
http://www.wikipedia.org
-Frank
--
fwarner1-at-franksknives-dot-com
Here's some of my work:
http://www.franksknives.com/
.
|
