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Page 36
The debased taste and the unfeeling ignorance of restorers have been
employed, as so often in Italy, to spoil and desecrate the memorials
of the past; and the munificence of Pius, _Munificentia Pii IX._, is
placarded on the inner walls. One is too frequently reminded at Rome of
the old and new lamps in the story of Aladdin.
We turn reluctantly from the Nomentan Way, and passing through Rome,
we go out of the gate which opens on the Appian. About a mile from the
present wall, just where the road divides before coming to the Catacombs
of St. Callixtus, a little, ugly, white church, of the deformed
architecture of the seventeenth century, recalls, by its name of _Domine
quo vadis?_ "O Lord, whither goest thou?" one of the most impressive,
one of the earliest and simplest, of the many legends of the legendary
religious annals of Rome. It relates, that, at the time of the
persecution of Nero, St. Peter, being then in Rome, was persuaded to fly
secretly from the city, in the hope of escaping from the near peril.
Just as he reached this place, trembling, we may well believe, not more
with fear than with doubt, while past scenes rose vividly before him,
and the last words heard from his Master's lips came with a flood of
self-reproach into his heart,--as he hurried silently along, with head
bowed down, in the gray twilight, he became suddenly aware of a presence
before him, and, looking up, beheld the form of that beloved Master whom
he was now a second time denying. He beheld him, moreover, in the act
of bearing his cross. Peter, with his old ardor, did not wait to be
addressed, but said, _Domine, quo vadis?_--"O Lord, whither goest
thou?" The Saviour, looking at him as he had looked but once before,
replied, _Venio Romam iterum crucifigi_,--"I come to Rome to be
crucified a second time"; and thereupon disappeared. Peter turned,
re�ntered the gate, and shortly after was crucified for his Lord's sake.
His body, it is said, was laid away in a grave on the Vatican Hill,
where his great church was afterwards built.
And here we come upon another legend, which takes us out again on the
Appian Way, to the place where now stands the Church of St. Sebastian.
St. Gregory the Great relates in one of his letters, that, not long
after St. Peter and St. Paul had suffered martyrdom, some Christians
came from the East to Rome to find the bodies of these their countrymen,
which they desired to carry back with them to their own land. They so
far succeeded as to gain possession of the bodies, and to carry them as
far as the second milestone on the Appian Way. Here they paused, and
when they attempted to carry the bodies farther, so great a storm of
thunder and lightning arose, that they were terrified, and did not
venture to repeat their attempt. By this time, also, the Romans had
become aware of the carrying off of the sacred bodies, and, coming out
from the city, recovered possession of them. One of the old pictures on
the wall of the portico of the ancient basilica of St. Peter's preserved
a somewhat different version of the legend, representing the Romans as
falling violently upon the Oriental robbers, and compelling them, with
a storm of blows, to yield up the possession of the relics they were
carrying away by stealth.
But the legend went on further to state, that, on the spot where they
thus had regained the bodies of their saints, the Romans made a deep
hole in the ground, and laid them away within it very secretly. Here for
some time they rested, but at length were restored to their original
tombs, the one on the Ostian Way, the other on the Vatican. But St.
Peter was again to be laid in this secret chamber in the earth on the
Appian Way. In the episcopate of the saint and scoundrel Callixtus,
the Emperor Elagabalus, with characteristic extravagance and caprice,
resolved to make a circus on the Vatican, wide enough for courses of
chariots drawn by four elephants abreast. All the older buildings in the
way were to be destroyed, to gratify this imperial whim; and Callixtus,
fearing lest the Christian cemetery, and especially the tomb of the
prince of the apostles might be discovered and profaned, removed the
body of St. Peter once more to the Appian Way. Here it lay for forty
years, and round it and near it an underground cemetery was gradually
formed; and it was to this burial-place, first of all, that the name
Catacomb,[B] now used to denote all the underground cemeteries, was
applied.
[Footnote B: A word, the derivation of which is not yet determined. The
first instance of its use is in the letter of Gregory from which we
derive the legend. This letter was written A.D. 594.]
Though at length St. Peter was restored to the Vatican, from which he
has never since been removed, and where his grave is now hidden by his
church, the place where he had lain so long was still esteemed sacred.
The story of St. Sebastian relates how, after his martyred body had been
thrown into the Cloaca Maxima, that his friends might not have the last
satisfaction of giving it burial, he appeared in a vision to Lucina, a
Roman lady, told her where his body might be found, and bade her lay it
in a grave near that in which the apostles had rested. This was done,
and less than a century afterward a church rose to mark the place of his
burial, and connected with it, Pope Damasus, the first great restorer
and adorner of the catacombs, [A.D. 266-285,] caused the chamber that
was formed below the surface of the ground around the grave of the
apostles to be lined with wide slabs of marble, and to be consecrated as
a subterranean chapel. It is curious enough that this pious work should
have been performed, as is learned from an inscription set up here by
Damasus himself, in fulfilment of a vow, on the extinction among the
Roman clergy of the party of Ursicinus, his rival. This custom of
propitiating the favor of the saints by fair promises was thus early
established. It was soon found out that it was well to have a friend
at court with whom a bargain could be struck. If the adorning of this
chapel was all that Damasus had to pay for the getting rid of his
rival's party, the bargain was an easy one for him. There had been
terrible and bloody fights in the Roman streets between the parties of
the contending aspirants for the papal seat. Ursicinus had been driven
from Rome, but Damasus had had trouble with the priests of his faction.
Some of them had been rescued, as he was hurrying them off to prison,
and had taken refuge with their followers in the Basilica of St. Maria
Maggiore. Damasus, with a mob of charioteers, gladiators, and others of
the scum of Rome, broke into the church, and slew a hundred and sixty
men and women who had been shut up within it. Ursicinus, however,
returned to the city; there were fresh disturbances, and a new massacre,
on this occasion, in the Church of St. Agnes; and years passed before
Damasus was established as undisputed ruler of the Church.
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