Julian Barnett
Hidden Rome, Part 4: ‘The Mother of all Churches’: Secret Glories of Catholic Rome

Julian Barnett - Hidden Rome, Part 4: ‘The Mother of all Churches’: Secret Glories of Catholic Rome

- This is the fourth of five lectures on Rome, and the fifth will be on Tuesday, the 25th of April, where I’m going to summarise everything I will have done in the first four lectures, and then be slightly provocative at the end of that lecture and pose the question as to what is the legacy of Rome to us today. But that’s for next time. In order to get there, I just wanted to finish off this fourth of five, and it is as build on Catholic Rome. But the one caveat I want to say, as I’ve said on a number of occasions is that although for reasons of practicality in the lectures that I’ve been giving, I’ve divided Rome into different periods. We started off with the period of the sixth century BC, the period of the kings in Rome. Then we moved into Republican Rome, then Imperial Rome, and then Byzantine Rome, and now Roman Catholic Rome. I think although one can divide Rome historically, Rome doesn’t so neatly fit into that, because Rome moved from one to the other, not seamlessly, but it’s not as if Rome cut itself off at the end of the Republican period and moved to the imperial period, then cut itself off on the imperial periods to move to the Byzantine period. Rome accrued these periods and became this tremendous almost living organism that keeps on living and keeps on occurring. So I think that is the way to view it. And although the lens we’re going to look at Rome through this evening is going to be a few of the Catholic churches in Rome, post Byzantine period Catholic churches, those churches must be seen within that context, that they are the product of 2,000 years of history or 1,500 years of history that preceded them. And indeed, the very consciousness of those buildings, the architecture of the buildings, the aesthetic of the buildings, have to be seen in that context.

How many churches are there in Rome? Well, nobody truly knows, it’s estimated that there are around about 900 official churches in Rome. So I’m going to give you a tiny, tiny taste of some of them. And I have tried my best to go for churches that it is likely many of you who have even been to Rome might not have been to. Rather, like the Byzantine churches that I looked at last week, which are a very under-visited part of Rome, the Catholic Churches’ Rome I’m going to show you today are some of the more unusual ones. I would make an audacious claim that just as Cairo, a series I did four lectures on in November, December, and January, just as Cairo, I would argue has the greatest repository of Islamic architecture in the world with no rival. Perhaps one rival might be Istanbul. I would imagine this would really provoke some fierce debate. But I would argue that Cairo is the greatest repository of Islamic architecture on Earth. I would also say that in my opinion, Rome is the greatest repository of Christian architecture on earth, church architecture on earth. And that is more or less because there has been an almost unbroken 2,000 year history of Christianity in that city. And not only that, it has been Christianity in that city where Christianity was the dominant force in Europe and beyond for a whole great big span of that 2,000 year period. And therefore, the intellectual energy, the aesthetic energy, the financial energy of many of the world’s economies was poured into Rome.

The other wonderful thing about the churches in Rome is that you can walk into a church, one can and one should, and one does walk into a church, and the first thing that I tend to do when I go into a church is to stand still and look, because there is such a tremendous amount of quality in those churches it beggars belief. The silver work, the gold work, the marble work and so on. All of that is fascinating. Sometimes it is overwhelming. Sometimes simplicity is forgotten because the ostentatiousness of the churches is so great. But there’s another reason why I stopped to look, not only to take in the sheer quantity of quality in these churches, but I also try to read that church. You will recall that last week, one of the churches we looked at was the Church of Santa Sabina, which was modelled on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Santa Sabina, an early Byzantine period church. Now you might remember when we walked into that church, I pointed out to you, spolia, the use of previous stonework, previous glasswork, previous woodwork put to secretary, sometimes third use, glass and stones and columns that have been in Roman temples beforehand, now put to secondary use within the Church of Santa Sabina. That is a wonderful thing to be able to do in any church in Rome, because any church in Rome tells a story that goes back way beyond that church. So a church is almost like a jigsaw, is almost like a code. It’s almost like Russian dolls, one inside the other.

And a really stimulating and fun and fascinating thing to do is to just stand and look. Look at the columns, look at the capitals, look at the windows, look at the flagstones on the floor, look at the brass work on the doors, and say to yourself, where have these come from? What is the story of each of these? Because almost inevitably, they would’ve come from many previous buildings. So after that introduction, let’s now go and thanks in advance, Emily, to the many slides you’re going to be turning today. Let’s go to an area of Rome nicknamed the Balcony of Rome. It’s the Janiculum Hill. We all know about the Seven Hills of Rome. There are many more than seven hills in Rome. This is not one of the Seven Hills in Rome, capital S, capital H. The Seven Hills of Rome were all to the east of the Tiber. They were all part of the ancient city of Rome. The Janiculum Hill is one of the many hills now in Rome, but it was outside of Rome when Rome was much smaller 2,000 years ago, 1,500 years ago. Just to give you a reminder, those seven hills are the Capitoline Hill where we get the word capital from. That is where government was led from. The Quirinal Hill, the Viminal Hill, the second and third hills. The Esquiline, the Caelian, the Aventine, and the Palatine Hill. These were the seven ancient hills of Rome. We have more or less touched upon those at various times, and we’ll just have a quick look at those very shortly just to give you a geographical idea. But the Janiculum Hill offers arguably the greatest view of Rome. And to follow, are four photographs over four periods in one day. So if we can now go through those, you will see what I mean.

So there it is, early morning-ish. It was about 10:00 AM. By the way, the hills of the backgrounds are the Sabine Hills, and that’s where the Sabine tribes came from. And the Sabine tribes were the tribes of the very earliest period of Rome, the nascent Rome six, seven, eighth centuries BC. So that goes back way back to the period of the kings. You’ll remember that last week I showed you the Servian Walls of the period of the kings, way before even the Republican period in Rome, into the dim and distant parts of Rome. In those hills, in the Sabine Hills, is where the Sabine tribes lived, which were the forerunner of the Roman tribes themselves that eventually moved into the basin and started to establish themselves. Will now see the same view later on in the day. And you can see there it is, the sun is out, the snow is gone from the top of the hills, that snow cap on the top of those hills, and the city is looking beautiful in that sunshine middle of the day. I could spend an hour and a half with you just looking at that one picture. And pointing out what every dome, every building, every structure is. That’s for another time maybe. Moving on to the same view again, we see that now dusk is coming, that golden hour, those beautiful golden hues, really wonderful colours, the magic of Rome really coming through.

It is remarkable how, I wouldn’t say the Janiculum Hill is a secret of Rome, many people go there, but many people go up to the Spanish steps to take a view or to the hill above the Spanish steps, near one of the parks. Far, far less people come to this view, which really affords you the view of all of the seven hills of Rome, which is the whole point of getting this view. And finally, a nighttime view of this same view. There it is. You can see the national monument there, the huge whitestone structure. You can see the two domes in the Tower of Santa Maria Maggiore, which is a church we looked at last week, all flood lit, one of the largest churches in the world, right near Termini bus station. So this is the Janiculum Hill. Where does that word come from, Janiculum Hill? Well, it comes from Janus, the god of Janus. Because like everything in Rome, you have eras built upon eras, built upon eras. The God of Janus was the god of beginnings, of gates, of transitions, of doorways, of passages. It’s where we get the word janitor from, because janitor guards all those things moving from one to another, moving from a passage to a door, beginning a new room from another. Janus was the god of these things. And the Janiculum Hill is named after the god of Janus. Let’s have a look at the fountain built on top of the Janiculum Hill. And there you can see there is this magnificent fountain built by the wonderfully named Adriano Fontana, Adriano of the Fountain family. Now that was the family name. And this structure was built all the way back in 1612. You’ll remember again as I hark back to previous lectures that even if you might get fountains, like many of the fountains we looked at in lecture two and lecture three, although the fountain structures like this might be 17th century, might be 16th century, it might be 15th century, the fountain is much older because the fountain comes from a natural spring.

So all there has been a drinking spot on the top of the Janiculum Hill, we know from Roman chronicles and other sources, for 2,200 years since the early Republican period. This structure now houses the fountain, but there were many previous structures to it. Let’s get a closer look at this wonderful thing. If you go to the next picture, there it is. You can get an idea of the immensely of this thing with a lady cycling by just there. And onto the next picture, a little view from the botanical gardens. Again, wonderful place to visit in Rome anytime of the year. I think the fee to get in is four euros, worth every single penny, so to speak. And there it is, an unusual view looking up at the Fountain of Fontana from the botanical gardens. And now to the next one, if I recall correctly, it’s a nighttime picture of this fantastic fountain. There is a most fantastic film called the Great Beauty, La Bella Belletta. And the opening scenes of that film were filmed here. And they were filmed at noon, because at noon every day since 1849, a massive gun has fired from just behind this fountain. This commemorates the battle that Garibaldi fought in 1849 defending the nascent republic of Rome against the French forces of Napoleon. And every single day that gun is fired off across the river Tiber. And it’s well known, rather like Edinburgh. And by the way, talking of Edinburgh, May the 7th to May the 14th, I’ll be doing a double whammy on the city of Edinburgh. More that to come in due course, from Rome to Edinburgh, two wonderful cities.

Let’s move on and let’s now look at what is behind this fountain, because I’m going to take you, in the next picture, first we’ll look at, just to get an idea of those hills, there you have that little sketch I was promising of the hills. So the Palatine hill that we, sorry, the Janiculum Hill, which we have just been looking at, the fountain at the top of the hill, is more or less where the R of the word Tiber is. So we will be standing at the top of that R, looking over those seven hills. There you can see Romulus and Remus. And there you can see those seven hills, the Capitoline Hill, the largest and the most important, where the centre of Roman government was led from. And you can see the Campus Martius to the left where there was a huge population, the Aventine Hill, the Palatine Hill, and so on. Let’s have a look at another sketch of the hills of Rome. And you can see there, is there? Yes, you can see again those seven hills. And once again, Tiber Island there, the Tiber winds its way around. Now look at a third picture of these hills. Let’s move on one more. And you can see there, you can see how those hills are populated by the ancient city of Rome. Once again, this is ancient Roman, almost exclusively ancient Rome was to the east of the Tiber with settlements just beginning, just beginning in the western part. Now right in the middle of that map, you can see the word Subura, right in the middle, S-U-B-U-R-A. Can I recommend to you all a series on Netflix?

It is called “Subura.” It’s very violent, it’s pretty outrageous, but it’s full of fantastic quotations about Rome. It’s filmed almost exclusively in Rome. For those of the faint heart, don’t watch it, but it’s a completely mad, bizarre crime drama, totally over the top. Refinement, an understatement, is not part of “Subura.” It’s dubbed, but it does have wonderful shots all over Rome. But there was a line about that neighbourhood of Subura. Now there is a street in the middle of Rome, and it’s called Subura, it’s one of the ancient streets. And I’d just like to read you a wonderful quotation said by one of the police inspectors in the first episode of the first series. And he says the following. “Subura, this street hasn’t changed in two millennia. Patricians and plebeians, politicians, and criminals, prostitutes and priests, Rome.” That in a nutshell is Rome is two and a half thousand years of the history of this city. So now I’m going to take you to some of those churches in Rome. Let’s start off back on the Janiculum Hill. And the name of this church is the Tempietto at San Pietro in Montorio. Now this is an absolute gem. So let’s go to that first picture. And there it is a little piazza, a little square right on top of the hill. And most people don’t even know they’re walking across the piazza, it’s so unnoticeable. Let’s go to the next picture, because at the edge of that piazza is a little entrance. That again, unless you took the care to go to that entrance and walk up the steps, you’d simply walk past the building. It’s nothing too remarkable. In many cities, you’d think the building was an elegant building, but in a city like Rome that has a complete overflowing of elegance, you just wouldn’t give it a second look. If you walk up those steps, if we can go a bit further to the next picture, please, Emily, you come to an amazing structure.

There is a set of gates, and that structure leads you in. Now there is an aerial view coming up next picture, and you’ll get the idea of what this is. So this is an entire complex of buildings. The complex of buildings is pretty old. The building on the left-hand side of the complex is in fact 1,700 years old. Simple, look at the structure, very old structure, a basilica shape. You’ll recall from last week I said there were two uses of the word basilica. One is a religious use when you get a major church that is given basilica status by the mother church in Rome. But the second use of the word basilica is, it’s an architectural term. A simple structure normally rectangular in shape, often with an atrium in front, with pillars and colonnades, but not always, but rectangular is a key thing. So there is a 1,700 year old basilica. On the right hand side is a renaissance periods quadrangle. And in the middle is this exquisite, exquisite little structure built by Bramante, built in 1502. It is seen, as considered by architects, as the original renaissance structure in Rome. And although the Renaissance, the home of the Renaissance is in Florence, as we all know, it is considered to be the very start of that renaissance architecture worldwide. This structure was the inspiration for St. Peter’s, the dome of St. Peter’s, which was eventually built upon the old Byzantine St. Peter’s. But it itself was inspired by the Church of Santa Costanza, which I showed you last week. You’ll remember that is the church, the round church, one of those seven round churches I showed you.

And it’s the round church that had those incredible 1,700 year old mosaics in the most immaculate state of repair. Those pictures of pigeons dipping their beaks into bowls and of golden horns and of oxen ploughing the fields. Do you recall all of those? So that church, Santa Costanza, that housed the tomb of Constance, the daughter of Constantine the Great, that church Santa Costanza built in the fourth century inspired Bramante to build this, and this in turn inspired Michelangelo and others to build St. Peter’s and the dome of St. Peter’s. It is called the Tempietto, because that literally means tempietto, small temple, because on this spot is considered to be this point of the crucifixion of St. Peter in Rome all the way back in those very, very early days, of the martyrdom of St. Peter. Let’s go to the next picture and have a look at a couple of closeups of this exquisite, exquisite building. Just look, it is so beautiful. You can see a man there to give you scale. I waited for some time to get somebody there because it’s hardly visited. And you have to just wait for somebody to turn up. Otherwise, you wouldn’t really get an idea. It’s almost like a little model from Legoland. Yet despite its diminutive size, it has every single detail you would find in a vast structure. It has Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan columns. It has little stained glass. It has little frescoes within the interior. It’s dome is perfectly, absolutely perfectly configured and the proportions are just beautiful. And look how it just sits in this beautiful little courtyard. It serves no purpose other than two things. Number one, an experiment in architecture, which Bramante was very keen to do. Number two, it marks the spot of an older structure that mark the spot of the crucifixion of Peter.

Let’s look at the next photo, much closer up of this beautiful thing, there you can see. So there it is through an arch. Bramante was very keen to really make it look beautiful, to use the surrounding arches, which predate the actual Tempietto. So the Tempietto was built within a preexisting structure to use those arches in order to enhance it. It is the most sublime experience to come on a summer’s day through these arches. And there you see this very beautiful thing. And to the final picture of the Tempietto, even closer, to give you a sense of proportion, there is somebody there, this poor man. He had to wait about five minutes for me to position him here, position him there, so I could get him just right to get a sense of proportion, that he was very obliging, and he appreciated the fact that I appreciated the beauty of the place, and it really is something that you must go and see just in case you haven’t. Something to be experienced. Within it, and I wasn’t permitted to take photos, that here of the interior, within it is a little interior. The interior goes down to a little cellar underneath which has a little mosaic. And that mosaic is actually the spot that marks the point. Now in London, one of the great museums of London is the Victorian Albert. And the Victorian Albert Museum has scale models of what the Victorians felt were the seminal buildings in human history, the pyramids for example. It has a whole variety of wooden and cork structures built.

This, Bramante’s Tempietto, is one of them. So important is this building yet hardly celebrated at all by most people who will just walk past the doorway that hides the courtyard that hides the Tempietto itself. A real little Rome secret. Okay, let’s move on, because if I then carried on, you would then see how that was the inspiration for St. Peter’s. Just go back one, Emily, please. Just one, just one final look at the Tempietto. Now look at the dome of St. Peter’s. You can really see what I mean. We’re now going to go in closer to the dome of St. Peter’s to see the tremendous power of that structure. And again, you can really see that inspiration. Okay, let’s move on. San Pancrazio, St. Pancras. St. Pancras was a very early Roman martyr. He was martyred at age 14. He came from a wealthy Roman family. Many, many of the early Roman martyrs were not these very almost peasant-like early Christians who had converted to Christianity and were hiding their Christianity. Many of the early Roman martyrs, sorry, many of the early Christian martyrs were in fact Romans. And many of them were Roman nobles who discovered the faith and converted and were then martyred as a result. St. Pancras was a 14 year old boy martyred very early on in 304AD. So we are talking these very early years. Now when you bear in mind that Christianity, Roman Empire converted to Christianity in 326AD, the conversion of Constantine the Great in 326. This is on that cusp. This is where the persecution of the Christians was past its height. It’s a past the time of thousands and thousands and thousands of Christians being murdered, killed, massacred in the Colosseum every year. So there was almost now an accommodation of the Christian cults and sects as they were seen by the Romans. And Rome was changing.

So this was on that cusp. But these martyrdoms were still occurring. Let’s now move on and let’s have a look at St. Pancras himself. But this St. Pancras as you can see, he’s dressed like a Roman noble, because that is where he came from. 14 year old boy carrying the palm because he was martyred some say on Palm Sunday, some say in May, I think May the 14th, I believe. Well, May the 20th perhaps is his saints day. He’s holding there the parish church of St. Pancras. But this picture wasn’t taken in Rome. This is in, next picture, please, near St. Pancras Station in London. One of these days, I’m going to make a whole series of lectures on Rome, because we’ve looked at Edinburgh, we’ve looked at Cairo, we’ve looked at all types of places. London has to come one day, I hope. This is St. Pancras, it’s the terminus of the Middles Railway. It’s also now St. Pancras International. It’s where trains from Paris come from Gare du Nord to London. They originally came to Waterloo, now they come to St. Pancras, it’s a terrific structure. Let’s just go inside St. Pancras. I couldn’t resist it, sorry. This is the great shed built by Barlow. It was the biggest steel covered building in the world when it was first built in the 1863. And Barlow also built Clifton Suspension Bridge down in Bristol. But we mustn’t get two-way aids. Let’s now have a look at St. Pancras Church, which is nestled behind the station, in through these gates of a very local neighbourhood in the shadow of St. Pancras, yet very local, full of public housing. One goes through the gates, into one of the oldest places of Christian worship in Britain.

This church was built on a site of Christian worship from the beginning of the fourth century. So this goes back a long way. Into the church, please, Emily. And there’s two pictures, if memory serves me correctly, of this church. There’s another of the exterior, Romanesque period church. It’s one of the oldest churches in London. And now two pictures of the interior, please. Here’s one coming up. It’s simple, it’s beautiful, it’s peaceful. Whitewashed, Romanesque, Norman stonewalls. And the next picture, please. And there you can see on the right of that picture, right on the right there is St. Pancras himself where we started off. But let’s now go back to Rome, to the next picture. Let’s go to St. Pancras in Rome. It’s a pretty rundown area. Well off the beaten track at the top of Janiculum Hill where we started this lecture. And I took this picture, there you can see the litter on the street. It’s quite a poor neighbourhood. Now let’s go to the next picture. Only in Rome, in a poor neighbourhood like this, would you have a column from a Roman temple of Jupiter, 2,100 years old. And on top of the column, a little capital from a Greek temple in Olympia that was brought to Rome in the fourth century in this very, very off the beaten track neighbourhood. This little column with a capital in front of St. Pancras Church. Let’s now go into St. Pancras Church, Rome as opposed to St. Pancras Church, London. Now we’re going through the entrance. And to the next picture, the Catacomb of St. Pancras. How do we define catacombs? Well, a catacomb is defined, I suppose, as it’s a man-made, subterranean, set of passageways serving a religious purpose. And many cities have catacombs. London has catacombs in Brompton Cemetery. Last summer I did do a one-off lecture. I think Trudy Gold wanted a series of what she called frothy summer lectures.

And one of the frothy summer lectures I did, a great word by Trudy, was on famous gravestones of London. And one of them was in Brompton Cemetery. But Brompton Cemetery has a catacomb, it’s open once a year. There were the catacombs of Paris, the catacombs of New Orleans. And all over the place there were catacombs. But that word catacomb goes back to Rome. We don’t know exactly the etymology of the word. It comes from catacumbas. And we think it is something, it’s an obscure origin. We think it’s based upon a Roman family of that name who has a large private underground cemetery. And that’s where it came from. Rome is honeycombed with hundreds and hundreds of catacombs. I think I’ve mentioned to you before. Rome is the only city in the world that I know of where the municipality has a permanent department of sinkholes, because Rome is so honeycombed with catacombs that sinkholes occur all the time in Rome, every few days, believe it or not, there are sink holes. None of them are massive, none of them cost, very few of them thankfully cost lives. But such is the vastness of the underground nature of Rome. A city at its height, population of 1 million in ancient times, phenomenal population of ancient times, that you have to have a permanent department that deals with catacombs, that are being found sort of quite regularly, and the sinkholes that come from. Let’s now go into the catacomb of this church, Catacombe di San Pancrazio. We go into the courtyard of the church.

There I park my bike in front of another column, and then I went through the entrance. Let’s go to the next picture. Quite a humble church, a local parish church. And in through the door, please, Emily. And again, please. And we go into the church. Now, my only reason for going to this church was to go down these steps. Let’s go down these steps and into vast catacombs. I was taken in by the parish priest. I was the only person there that day. He told me I was the first visitor in three weeks. Go down these stairs into this incredible space. I’m going to take you through these pictures quite fast. If I come to one I want to say comment on, I’ll just say, hold it there Emily. So let’s go through, look at the size of these catacombs. To the next, look at the quality of the wall painting. This is 2,000 year old wall paintings. And the next, and the next, and the next, beautiful floors. Hold it there please, back one, Emily, please. Here you can see a really interesting structure in the roof. So here you can see a lower roof that was put in. So the catacombs are 2,000 years old. San Pancrazio was martyred in the fourth century, 304. So when he was finally buried here, other Christian martyrs were buried here. So this became a place of burial for Christian martyrs. So they lowered the roof to make it a more intimate space. So here you have a very rare thing in Rome. You have a really high catacomb, and then with a lower roof put in, it’s really exquisite. And you can see this very beautiful dancing figure with original Roman paintings from between 2,000 years old and 1,700 years old. Let’s go to the next picture. Some really, really beautiful, vibrant colours. Look at this, these are the original colours. And to the next one, I snapped away with my phone. Look at this. And the next one. An alcove with beautiful paintings of trees and rural scenes.

This of course would’ve been a rural area outside of Rome at the time. And to the next one. The state of these paintings is gorgeous. This is the 14 year old Pancras, and Pancras trying to fend off attacks defending people. He was eventually captured and he was beheaded. And the next one. Look at those colours. It’s just extraordinary, underneath the church, in an off the beaten track area, behind the brow of a hill that not many people visit. So that’s a perfect example of what Rome has for people. Let’s just carry on a bit further, please. Few more pictures from these wonderful catacombs. And now coming up there, just hold it. Sorry, back one. that is the actual tomb of St. Pancras himself. That is a sepulchre, it marks the spot. And underneath, rather like the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Rome, cameras have been sent in, almost like endoscopic cameras. And it is indeed an ancient Roman burial site to do with the cult of Janus, which I’ve mentioned, the Janiculum Hill. And that is where, according to Christian tradition, St. Pancras was laid to rest after he had been beheaded. Okay, let’s move on to another not very well-known church, but the saint is extremely well known. St. Valentine, 14th of February. So let’s have a look at the Church of St. Valentine, San Valentino. It’s a wonderful church and let’s just have a look. So we’re now cycling slightly out of the centre of Rome, putting my glasses on, Via Di Porta San Sabastiano.

And in my lecture two of four, you’ll remember I took you on a tour of the walls of Rome, the Aurelian Walls of Rome, those 25 kilometres of the Aurelian Walls of Rome, of which 75% survive. Again, hardly frequented by people. If you cycle up that road, you’ll get eventually, let’s go up that road to the next picture. And the next one. It’s a very beautiful road with these wonderful structures built into the wall. And the next one, please. And there is a flight of steps. You go up those steps, in through the door, and you enter here into a courtyard, into the church of St. Valentine. Let’s go into this church. It’s a really old structure, fifth century Byzantine period. And in again, the colour is red. We all know red is the colour of St. Valentine. The church is not permanently carried out, just hold the pictures there a little bit. It’s not permanently decked out in red, but very frequently. And the quality of this red fabric really is something to be believed. So all the columns are decked as red. By the way ladies and gentlemen, if you live in London and you should go to the Oratory, the church called the Oratory, which is on the Brompton roads, because at Christmas time, they don’t have trees, they don’t have lights, they simply deck the church out in vast swathes of red fabric. It is so beautiful, so moving, so powerful. And it’s sort of done out like this, wonderful Catholic tradition. Let’s now have a close up look at this fabric, the red of St. Valentine. And even closer. And even closer.

And you can see the beauty of that ecclesiastical fabric. Really gorgeous stuff. Okay. The reason why I went into this church was to actually go underneath because this is one of the oldest places of Christian worship in Rome. I just want to read to you the words of Pope Gelasius I in 496AD. And he said the following of Valentine, quote, “He is amongst those venerated whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God.” Isn’t that beautiful? Valentine comes from valens, meaning strong or powerful. And it was Valentine who was said to have administered to the Christians who were being slaughtered in the Colosseum. He was the minister and the the comforter to those that were being murdered in the Colosseum by the Romans. And underneath is meant to be a place, one of the oldest places of Christian worship in Rome. I’ve mentioned lots of places that make that claim because there are so many ancient places of Christian worship in Rome. But this place is so old that the columns and the stonework are so crude, that it’s very powerful. Let’s go downstairs into that church. So we go down, and we go in to the next picture. Look at the columns and you will see closely. Firstly, the columns are just plunged into the ground. There’s no refinement here. This is old, old Rome. Look at the walls and you can see alcoves. This is where ossuaries, for those people that were with me on the tour of my home almost a year ago when I showed you some of the sort of items that I collect, one of them was an ossuary, a Roman period bone box from Palestine 2,000 years ago. Those bone boxes would’ve been put onto these shelves in these alcoves. The bones would’ve been collected, wealthy Romans.

The body would’ve been taken down after a year, the family would’ve come down, the body would’ve decomposed, the bones would’ve been left there. The bones would then be gathered together. The longest bone would’ve been measured, the femur, and a box would’ve been made as long as the femur. And then of course all the other bones would fit in because all the other bones are shorter. That box would then be put on shelves. And that is how wealthy Roman families stored their remains. Wealthy Romans wanted to have the remains of their loved ones put next to beloved saints. We’re talking about Romans in the Byzantine period now. Romans who are Christian. Look at those columns. They are very, very ancient columns, perhaps even from the pre Roman Etruscan period. Look at the capitals, from a completely different building altogether. But again, the capitals are quite crude. None of these Corinthian column floral designs, this is much older. Now let’s have a closeup of those columns, to the next picture. And you can see how they are literally plunged, first the upwards, holding up a very crude ceiling. And now, let’s look at the next picture, plunged downwards into the floor.

Elegance isn’t the words, but power is the words, because this place has the power of time. You stand there, and I was really proud to gain access. So proud, sorry folks, I had to do a selfie. So the next picture showed me doing a selfie in, sorry, the next picture, doing a selfie, and the next picture. And there in this chapel that gains very, very few visitors, I was very happy with myself. Couldn’t resist putting that in this evening, sorry. Okay, let’s now have a look at what is behind this very, very ancient room. You can see this, an altar with a skull in it. Now to the next picture, closer up. And to the next one, even closer up. And you can see along the top of the head, Santa Valentino, St. Valentine. Now we don’t know how reliable that is. The relics industry was a true industry. So one has to be very, very sceptical. But you will remember last week when I showed you a picture of the Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, San Paolo alle Mura, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, I told you of that remarkable discovery at the turn of this century, 2004 and five and six, and subsequent experiments that have happened, there was a tradition that St. Paul was buried there, that his remains were there. And only 15 years ago was access given to an ancient sepulchre, and an ancient chest, where there are the remains of a 2,000 year old human being with the most beautiful purple and gold fabric. So sometimes traditions have to be treated with great caution, even scepticism, even cynicism. But time and time again that human condition, that human tradition of the power of an oral tradition passing down that this is the relic of, that this is the sight of. Time and again, that has been proved correct.

So all we can say is that these are the claimed remains of St. Valentine. They have been respected and venerated for centuries and centuries. And perhaps that gives them a holiness, not the innate holiness of who they might or might not be, but the holiness that is brought to them through the veneration of centuries and centuries, millennia of pilgrims that have risked life and limb and all their worldly possessions to come and venerate something like this. And Rome is full of such things. It’s a very moving city. Let’s move on. And to this remarkable place, Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara Coeli. The Ara Coeli means the altar of the sky, the Basilica of Santa Maria in the Altar of the Sky. This is on the top of the Capitoline Hill. It is an incredible church, up 124 steps. Let’s have a look at it from the exterior. And we’re going up those steps to the left. It’s a very early structure, early gothic that was once covered in mosaics, all stripped off. Let’s now go in inside this church, ‘cause the church is built in the hill, in we go. And although this next picture doesn’t really show it, the church is actually built on the hill. When you walk into this church, I wanted to actually lie on the floor to get an idea, but for obvious reasons it wasn’t a nice thing to do. So I didn’t. But the church, the hill continues in the church. When you walk down this tremendous nave of the church, you are walking up a slope still on a very, very slight gradient. I was woken up very early to come to this church.

I had a phone call that there was a remarkable service going on of the Knights of the Maltese Cross. And somebody called me to say, “Get there now, fantastic opportunity.” So off I dash, I always stay centrally in whatever city I stay in. Location is everything. Compromise on a small room in a small hotel. But what you are getting is location, location, location. So dashed out, cycled here. Let’s go to the next picture. And you can see the actual scene that I saw. And this is a tremendous service that was going on. The singing was extraordinary. The acoustics were incredible in this fifth century, fourth, fifth century church, the church of the heavenly altar, because this church was built upon the altar to Jupiter right at the top. And this by the way, was also built on the temple of Juno Moneta. Juno Moneta, the temple of that very early Roman god. And that’s where we get the word money from, because Moneta, the temple of Moneta was eventually where the mint was for coinage, for ancient Rome. And that of course where we get money from. Similarly, we get the word salary from the Latin word salaria salt, because Roman soldiers who were stationed outside of Rome all around the empire weren’t paid by in coinage, but were paid in salt, which they could then exchange for coinage later on down the line. Let’s now have a look at some pictures of this church. So again, go through these pictures. Quite wonderful flooring. Look at the windows. The windows are the Barbarini family, the symbol of the three bees to the next picture. And the next one, closeup of the three bees of the Barbarini family, one of the great families of Rome, were and still are a powerful family in Rome.

Look at the papal crown, the financiers of the papacy for centuries. The papal crown and the keys of heaven, the cross keys, the symbol of the Pope with the three-tiered papal crown. Tremendous structure, these stone angels holding it up. Let’s move on, please. And the floor of this church is tremendous. It’s the Cosmati floor of this beautiful, beautiful church. Let’s have a quick look at the pavement floor here. There it is, the Cosmati floor. And the next one, please. Beautiful, very early mediaeval 11th century. The Cosmati family were making floors for all the great churches of Rome. There were nine generations of this family that made these very beautiful pavements. So they were the inheritors of the Roman mosaic tradition then turned into a mediaeval and a Byzantine tradition. Let’s move on to the next Cosmati picture. And the next one. The next one is a bit of a trick, because that is the Cosmati pavement in Westminster Abbey. A wing of that family were brought over to London in the 11th century, early 12th, late 11th century. And they built this floor within Westminster Abbey. You can’t walk on it, it’s heavily protected, but you could see it if you were in the Abbey. And of course Westminster Abbey is going to come centre of the attention of this nation and of many countries around the world when we have the first coronation since 1953, June the second, '53, and we have a coronation coming up in May of 2023. The Cosmati Pavement, so-called in Westminster Abbey, is within that tradition taken from the Cosmati family in Rome. Let’s move on and let’s leave that church. And I want to take you to three final churches. One is this one.

It’s very, very different to the church I’ve just show you of Ara Coeli. This is a much more humble church, but I wanted to show it to you to show the variety. This is the Chiesa San Benedetto in Piscinula. And of course that word piscinula denotes fish, pond, lake because it was built upon a Roman bath and a fishing pond. Let’s have a look at a few of these pictures because the beauty of this church is its simplicity. Let’s go have a look at the courtyard. Next picture, please. And now we go inside. This church has all the feel of a wonderfully, benignly, neglected building. Just look at it, not a tourist in sight. There are a few spotlights as you can see. I love this church. Let’s go to the next picture. And the reason I took the next photo, sorry, and the next one, was what I found on the wall. Because that wall, look at the top part of the picture, it’s Byzantine period. You remember the golden blue colours of all those golden blue churches I showed you last week. So it’s Byzantine. But then look at the ablaq stripe pattern on the wall. Clear influence from Mamluk architecture in Cairo, because this church was part built by returning crusaders who had learned all about early Islamic architecture. So they came back, part built this church in Islamic designs using ablaq, black and white, almost checkerboard, striped checkerboard patterns. And also look at those wonderful lozenges in the wall, those maroon and sort of turquoise lozenges. They are from a previous Roman building. So what you have in that wall is Byzantine fourth century mosaic, Islamic Mamluk design, and Roman panels from a previous Roman building. Again, only in Rome would you have such a thing in a church. The reason why I love this church is that it’s a church still favoured by pilgrims. And if you were pilgrim coming to Roman, had no money, the church would put you up in very basic accommodation. Let’s go to the next picture and you’ll see what I mean, because in this church are beds for pilgrims.

Many churches in Rome have little side chapels where pilgrims who might have come from far away, could just put their head on a pillow for free and be fed for free. I did meet two pilgrims later on a few days later, and they had walked all the way from Albania, all the way up the length of Albania into Montenegro, into Trieste, down into Rome. So that was a walk I estimated about 900 miles in total. Look at the next picture. Not the most comfortable looking of beds, but they do the job that the pilgrims want. They want to sleep in a holy place in a holy city. And to the final picture, I think in this particular church, the bed, actual legs. Now to the last two churches, and you will see the Church of the Jesus. At five 5:30 every single day of the week, 365 days a year, there is what is nicknamed the Baroque Show. This is the mother church of the Jesuits. The Jesuits, the intellectuals arguably of the Roman Catholic Church. These are the intellectuals, the educationalists, the researchers. These are the heavyweight intellectuals of the church, founded by Ignatius of Loyola back in the 1520s. And he is indeed buried in this church. Now, within this church are many amazing things. I’ve been into this church, I would estimate probably 30 times, because I go into this church just for five minutes at a time, because it is such an overload of stunning art. Everybody often rushes to the Sistine Chapel. In my humble opinion, the ceiling paintings on this church outdo the Sistine any day. And you will often have this whole church to yourself or at most maybe a hundred people in it. It is a phenomenal structure, let’s go in. So here firstly, we see the chapel of Ignatius of Loyola. That is the exterior of the church. It’s an enormous church as you can see.

So let’s now go in and you’ll see the chapel of Ignatius of Loyola. And he is buried in the side chapel. And I’ve got two pictures here. The picture on the left shows the size of that painting. Can you see the people on the left hand side near the benches? And you can see a huge oil painting with a rounded top. At 5:30 every day, the wheels and the cogs start to turn. It is a vast 400 year old Baroque machine. Very, very slowly in this Catholic melodrama. It is absolutely something only the Roman Catholic could pull off with the vigour, and the power, and the wealth, and the intensity that it does. And slowly, slowly, slowly, this huge oil painting descends. This oil painting showing Ignatius of Loyola being inspired by the stories of Christ. And behind it, let’s go to the next picture now, please, is this enormous statue, six times life size of Ignatius of Loyola. Behind him is lapis lazuli. This is the largest use of lapis lazuli in the world. It was mined as it still is in Afghanistan, brought to Rome, put in there in the early 16th century. It is massive. And there is Ignatius of Loyola. There he is, arms outstretched, receiving actually the stigmata. He once suffered the stigmata. And we’ve looked at stigmata before when I did our tours of Jerusalem and I showed you a stigmata sufferer. It is an incredible, an incredible thing. By 5:40, the oil painting rises again and you have to wait until the next day to see this extraordinary thing happen. But this church has something else. Let’s now look at the next pictures. It has a ceiling that was painted, as you can see there. This was at the height of the Renaissance. This ceiling is absolutely remarkable. Now everything you are looking at in that ceiling is flat other than the curve of the ceiling. The angels on either side above the windows are not stone angels.

They are painted to look like stone angels. The clouds are flat. But in other words, all of that painting is rounded on the ceiling, but it looks like 3d. I kid you not. When I have stood there underneath that, my intellect, no, sorry, my eyes are telling me that this is sculpture coming out of the ceiling, that there is a 3d effect, that these are shadows, but it’s not, it’s flat. My intellect is telling me, “No, no, no, Julian, this is flat.” It is an absolutely near miraculous achievement that somebody could pull off this absolutely amazing thing. Let’s have a look at this. It was painted by Andrea Pozzi, 1696 to 1700. Four years it took him. All that you are looking at there, the white sculptures around the window are flat. They’re not sculptures. Next picture, please. I took these again with my camera, with my phone, I should say. All flat. The shadows are not shadows. So you have these angels coming out on clouds, hopping around on clouds. The clouds cast a shadow over the gold, but the shadow is flat, the clouds are flat. It is remarkable. Everybody must see this if they go to Rome. To the next picture, please, a few more of this church. Just look at that. And unlike the Sistine, you can go there, 10:00 in the morning, you’ll be looking at this alone. And it is a very, very powerful thing. Okay, remarkable. And now to our final church that I wanted to show you, just look at these figures, all flat I should keep on saying. Thank you, Emily. The final church, Basilica di San Clemente Al Laterno. I was sent there, one of the jobs, first jobs I had when I came back to live in London after returning from Israel is that I wrote speeches in the House of Lords. And one of the peers that I worked for who has now sadly died, he travelled to Rome in the 1950s. And he was at that time pretty much an atheist. But he came to this church and he was so deeply moved by this.

He never became a Catholic for the rest of his life. But he always felt that he had an affinity towards Catholicism because of the power of this building. Something happened to him in this building, if ever a building represented Rome it is this, the Basilica di San Clemente al Laterno. Let me take you into this quite quickly, because this basilica is a Byzantine church above, but it’s like once again, Russian dolls. It’s three churches, one built above another, going down and down and down into the throne. Let’s now go into the church. It has a lovely entrance, which is just again, slightly on a quiet street, slightly off the beaten track, very close to the Coliseum, but it’s a street that most people don’t walk down. And look at the other entrance into the courtyards. Next picture, please, and quite quickly go through these pictures into the courtyards. It’s almost like walking into heaven and into church. And into the church but now below. And now we’re going not into a catacomb, but we’re going, and if we can go to the next picture and hold it there, to a Mithraeum. Now the cult of Mithras we know very little about. It was a cult that grew up around Rome from around the first century onwards. Every cult of Mithras, there were temples all around the Roman Empire. And as the Roman empire grew, the cult of Mithras grew. There was no written literature to do with this, because they took the decision not to write rather like the ancient Spartans. The Spartans were illiterate, not through lack of education, not through lack of intelligence, but by choice.

They chose their culture to be not a literate based culture. The same with the cult of Mithras. It is thought to have come out of some form of Zoroastrianism, the native religion of ancient Persia. Every Mithraic temple is underground. It shows the slaying of a bull. It has these benches to the sides. And I have to put in a mention of my hometown of Lester because just this week it was announced that a temple has been found underneath Lester Cathedral. Who knows, there is some talk that it’s a Mithraic temple. The most northern Mithraic temple in the Roman Empire is right near the third or fourth bridge, just near Edinburgh. But this Mithraic temple is one of the best preserved in the world. There is also a Mithraic temple in Bloomberg’s headquarters in London, in the city of London underneath Bloomberg’s. But this Mithraic temple is tremendous. Have a look to the next last pictures of this week. You can really get a sense, look at the benches, that is the benches where the people would sit, stone rock-hewn benches, hewn out of the natural rock. They are not benches made by lumps of stone. It is simply the rock hollowed out and people sitting out on rock-hewn benches. The early Mithraic cults had to be secret about their meetings, otherwise they would’ve been killed.

But later it became much, much more accepted. But it’s more or less lost the time now what their beliefs were. Lots of theories, a fascinating cult, all around the Roman Empire. Let’s have a look at the final pictures of this very well preserved temple of Mithras. Wonderful spot, deep underground that anybody can go to. And there you can see the penultimate picture, a good cross section. So there you’ve got San Clemente Basilica on top, and down and down it goes. Animal remains as you can see, temple to Minerva, natural springwater down to the cult of Mithras. Two final pictures, if you look at the next one, this is another Roman temple, and underneath is another temple of Mithras. And the final picture, beautifully lush picture of a corner of Rome. There are archaeological digs about to start here because sonar archaeology seems to have found another temple of Mithras in Rome. We’ve run a bit over and delighted to take photos. Don’t forget Tuesday, April the 25th is the wind up for Rome. But when I’m really going to ask some philosophical questions about the legacy of the Romans to us, and the 14th and the 21st of May, AW one and two. I’ll take some questions now.

Q&A and Comments:

I can see the sixth there, which is just perfect.

Q: Oh, please tell us about the books behind you.

A: Well, why don’t I say that maybe for a future lecture when I show you some of my choice books? Some of them are first editions of the “Arabian Knights.” It’s a whole variety of things, but a lot of 'em have a religious tinge, because as you know from my lectures about Jerusalem, I’m really interested in religious sects of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. So there’s a lot of religious books to do with that.

Q: Angela, “May I have the name of the first church and the area it is in?”

A: Yes, that church is on the Janiculum Hill. And it’s the Spanish Church of the Tempietto. Just Google Tempietto, T-E-M-P-I-E-double T-O, Janiculum Hill, that will give you the church.

Q: How did St. Pancras in London survive the ravages of Henry the Fifth?

A: It’s a good question. Well, it didn’t exactly because many things were ripped out. It wasn’t raised to the ground, so the structure survived. But of course the Reformation pulled out lots of things. It was forgotten, it was a very poor slum area. But I will tell you something else, it partly survived, because the name of St. Pancras in London, it’s name is actually Old Pancras Church. So what happened was when New Pancras Church was built, they didn’t demolish the old one. They built the new one, about half a kilometre away, in a much better area. So therefore, the old one was just left to rack and ruin, and it survived.

Q: Margaret, what would’ve been put into the alcove in the catacombs of St. Pancras Church.

A: You are talking about the catacombs underneath St. Pancras church in Rome, bone boxes, so stone boxes. And within those stone boxes, the bones of people that had been gathered and had died. Maybe I’ll do not a repeat, maybe I’ll do another tour, some objects in my home sometime in the future. And one of the objects I’ll reshow you if you are interested, is a 2,000 year old bone box that I have. And I will then explain showing you the real thing, how people would actually assemble bones in boxes.

And just going down to Michael, in engineering terms, Brunelleschi’s Dome in France basilica have inspired some Peter’s dome in Rome. Yes, but of course the Tempietto predates it, which is really quite interesting. But you’re absolutely quite right. There were various inspirations. I mean, you know, there were lots and lots of inspirations. So every major construction was, I suppose, a compendium of lots of inspirations. And of course, bear in mind, that St. Peter’s dome in Rome. is domes within domes and so on, rather like St. Paul’s Cathedral. So it was based upon, it’s a composite of a number of inspirations.

Q: Please repeat the name of the church with the painted ceiling?

A: Oh, that’s an easy church to remember, the Church of the Jesu, Chiesa Gesu, G-E-S-U. It is the mother church of the Jesuits of the world. It’s the Jesuit mother church of the world in the centre of Rome. Thank you, Ron.

Q: Do I have a photographic memory?

A: No, don’t think so, but I have a historian’s mind. I’m a historian, so thank you for that.

Q: Why do we consider St. Valentine’s as love?

A: Let me save that, because I’m going to touch upon that in my last lecture. It touches upon certain things, I’ll save that for then.

That winds us up. See you all on April the 25th for the wind up to Rome 505. Emily, as always, thank you very much. I wish you all are good rest of March. Bye-bye.