R.A. Scotti - Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter’s

BASILICA

ALSO BY R. A. SCOTTI

Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938

Cradle Song

For Love of Sarah

The Hammers Eye

The Devils Own

The Kiss of Judas

for Francesca,
a beauty inside and out

R. A. SCOTTI

BASILICA

The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peters

VIKING

VIKING

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First published in 2006 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright Rita A. Scotti, 2006

All rights reserved

Illustration credits appears at the end of this book.

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ISBN: 978-1-1011-5781-7

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CONTENTS

If they were great enough to invent such legends, we at least should be great enough to believe them.

Goethe

BUILDING THE BASILICA

Basilica of Constantine

When Nicholas V (14471455) returned the papacy to Rome after Avignon, he made the Vatican the permanent seat of the Church for the first time and, soon after, he began to rebuild the hallowed, old basilica of St. Peter, erected by Constantine in A . D . 326. After Nicholas died, the project languished until the new century, when Julius II was consecrated pope. During the interim years, Columbus discovered a New World, Lorenzo de Medici died in Florence, Michelangelo, Raphael, Magellan, Copernicus, and Martin Luther were born, and Leonardo painted The Last Supper.

Basilica of Julius

(For a complete list of the popes from Nicholas V to Alexander VII, see the appendix.)

VISUAL GLOSSARIES

AUTHORS NOTE

I first saw St. Peters Basilica on a scorching late September day of my first week in Rome. I was nineteen and spending a year in Italy. An Italian cousin picked me up in the morning in a green-and-black Roman cab and we rode out to the beach at Ostia, where, in my one-piece American bathing suit, I appeared ludicrously overdressed.

I was living at CIVIS, an international house for students, and I had to be back by three oclock at the latest. My group had a papal audience at four. I couldnt miss it, not only because no one stands up the pope but also because he and my father had been friends for years. They had met when my father was studying medicine at the University of Rome and Paul VI, then the young Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, was chaplain of an anti-Fascist student group. In his pre-pontiff days, he would visit us whenever church business brought him to the States. Somewhere I still have the photograph of his cat, taken on the balcony of his Vatican apartment, that he sent to me when I was nine or ten. He had to give the cat away when he was elected pope, and I had written to say how sad it was that the pope could not keep a pet.

On that September day, the sun and the wine at lunch and the salty Mediterranean air made time irrelevant. When I finally tore into CIVIS sunburned and sticky, it was well after three, and the group had left without me. CIVIS is a couple of miles north of the Vatican on the same side of the Tiber River, near Ponte Milvio, the bridge where Constantine, leading his army into the imperial city in A.D. 312, saw a cross in the sky and the words In hoc signo vinces By this sign you will conquer.

Constantine was a young general advancing on Rome to challenge Maxentius, the foremost contender to succeed the emperor Diocletian. With Christ so obviously on his side, Constantine defeated his rival easily and was crowned emperor. He mended his pagan ways and soon after built the first basilica of St. Peter.

Nothing happens quickly in Rome, but over the course of more than sixteen hundred years, a village grew up around Ponte Milvio. By the time I arrived, the old bridge still spanned the Tiber, but the road linking the village to the city proper had become a wide avenue with a bowling alley, a soccer stadium, and a half-mile stretch where prostitutes were allowed to solicit openly. (Only the bridge and the soccer stadium were mentioned in my guidebook.)

At three forty-five, I was standing at the bus stop just beyond the ancient bridge, in black dress, black heels, and black lace mantilla, prescribed attire for a papal audience but notably conspicuous for an average afternoon. The only vehicle in sight was a vintage pickup truck, one of those uniquely Italian three-wheeled contraptions. It appeared as ancient as the city as it hiccupped toward me. I stepped off the curb and waved. An immense workman with a very shiny, very black mustache sprouting beneath wide nostrils filled the cab. My father had warned me about Italian men. Being one himself, he knew the subject. But I was going to see the Holy Fatherwhat could happen?and the truck was going my way. Before the driver could protest, I edged in beside him. Il Papa, I said in my rudimentary Italian. Vaticano! Subito, per favore!

St. Peters should be hard to miss, but as we putted along, I strained in vain for a glimpse of the Basilica. As I was trying to orient myself, the truck lurched to a stop. Ecco! The driver pointed. Directly ahead of us, a line of stone columns stretched horizontally in both directions as far as the eye could see. Too flustered to recognize what they were, I began again. Il Papa By then, it was about two minutes to four, and I must have sounded frantic, because the driver, gesticulating broadly, shouted, Si, San Pietro in Vaticano. Eccolo!