NOTES

One: The Door Swings Open: Threshold

1. Leclercq (1924), I, 932–942.

2. This particular aspect of mystical experience is the one most readily expressed in language or indicated by a church building. A good introduction to the subject as a whole is Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism. New York and London: Doubleday, 1990. Originally published 1891.

3. Thomas M. Robinson, ed. and commentary, Heraclitus: Fragments (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1987). Fragments 60 and 12.

4. Blaise Pascal, Pensées. Edition de Philippe Sellier (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1999). Originally published 1670. Fragment 220.

5. For a simple treatment of the difficult subject of ritual, see Visser (1991), s. v., which treats as ritual performance the way human beings eat meals.

6. Aristotle Poetics 6.1449; 13.1452–14.1453.

7. The phrases “narrowing and flattening” and “deviation into the trivial” are Charles Taylor’s, in The Ethics of Authenticity (Boston: Harvard U.P., 1991), 6, 57.

8. Matthew 24:42–44; Mark 13:33–37.

9. Exodus 3:14.

10. Julian of Norwich, fourteenth century. Modern version: Revelations of Divine Love, tr. and ed. Clifton Wolters (London: Penguin Books, 1966), chapter 73, p. 192, chapter 5, p. 68, chapter 26, p. 102. Original version: A Revelation of Love, ed. Marion Glasscoe (U. of Exeter Press, 1986), chapter 27, pp. 28–29, chapter 26, p. 28.

11. The word “mean” is from Old English maenan, “to recite, to tell.” It means “to have in mind,” with an intention of communicating; its sense, therefore, is both “to intend” and “to signify.” In this context God is what Julian has in mind as her destiny. But the idea of God as “Meaning” is, I believe, not foreign to Julian’s thought: God is already there, making sense of her life and giving it depth and direction.

12. Costantino Caetani, early seventeenth century. MS in the Biblioteca Alessandrina, cod. 91, fol. 306r–307r. Quoted at length in Frutaz (1992), 52–54.

13. In a Roman church matroneum is, strictly speaking, an incorrect term for this gallery. De Benedictis (1981) shows that in Rome a matroneum was a small area of the right aisle near the sanctuary, on the ground floor and walled off by parapets, for the use of consecrated women. There was a senatorium on the other side, for consecrated men.

14. In opus mixtum, one (sometimes two) layers of tufelli (bricks made from tufa) alternate with two to four strata of broken clay bricks; this was the characteristic masonry of early Christian times. For the rest, the walls of the passage are medieval and built all of tufelli. Krautheimer (1937), 19, 23.

15. Virgil Aeneid 6. 264–268.

16. John 12:25; Matthew 10:39.

17. John 12:24.

18. For nearly three hundred years the steps led directly into the church’s narthex. See Krautheimer (1937), fig. 10.

19. Costantino Caetani, early seventeenth century. Quoted in Frutaz (1992), 86. There are now nine windows, five on the left and four on the right.

20. Two of the ten bas-reliefs—Endymion Sleeping and Perseus Rescuing Andromeda—are kept in the Capitoline Museum; copies of them are in the Palazzo Spada. One of the bas-reliefs was found in the Piazza SS Apostoli and another on the Aventine, but they clearly belong to the same set. See Ashby (1906), 41–42.

21. Lanciani (1924), 261–267.

22. Krautheimer (1980), 66.

23. Romans 16:11.

24. Bacci (1902), 51–58; see Schmitz (1926).

25. Liber Pontificalis II, 24. The Liber Pontificalis or “Book of the Popes” is an ancient and medieval compilation of the lives of the popes, beginning with Peter and ending with Pius II (died 1464). It was begun in the sixth century, using earlier sources, and was continued thereafter by various hands. The edition used here is that of Louis Duchesne, vol. I (1886) and vol. II (1892).

26. Hebrews 12:1.

Two: Space and Time: Narthex and Ground Plan

1. The blessing, which is performed by a priest, dedicates the water to God and moves it from the secular or “profane” sphere into that of the church—both building and institution.

2. For the history of the sign of the cross, see Thurston (1953) and Sulzberger (1925).

3. The inner wall of the present façade of the church is three hundred years older than the rest of the building: it is of the same masonry as the lower left-hand portions of the wall in the passage down, which are datable to the fourth century. Krautheimer (1937), Plan IV and p. 25.

4. Hebrew “Eden,” meaning “plain,” is a word, like “Paradise,” that has connotations of pleasure and ease: the Israelites found it wonderful to see rough places made plain. The Hebrew for “Paradise” in Genesis is gan eden.

5. Romans 5:20–21.

6. William Butler Yeats, “Lapis Lazuli,” line 24.

7. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is that God has three “persons.” It expresses the belief that God “is” loving relationship. God’s oneness is plural; God, being greater than any categories the human mind can devise, contains both one and many.

8. Isaiah 7:14, 9:1–7, 11:1–9; Matthew 1:18–25.

9. Exodus 25–31.

10. Exodus 36 gives a different version, saying that Moses built the structure only after the crisis was over.

11. Judges 18:31; 1 Samuel 1:3; 1:24; 3:3; 3:15.

12. 1 Samuel 4:3–11.

13. Isaiah 2:2–4.

14. See Frye (1981), especially 78–138.

15. 1 Kings 5:15–7:51; I Chronicles 22:7–10.

16. 1 Kings 8:1–9:25; 2 Chronicles 5.

17. 1 Kings 6–7; 2 Chronicles 3–4.

18. 1 Kings 7:23–39; 2 Chronicles 4:6.

19. 2 Kings 25:1–21; 2 Chronicles 36:17–21.

20. Ezekiel 40:1–48:35.

21. Hebrews 9:7.

22. Psalm 2:7–9; Isaiah 2:2–4, 9:1–7, 11:1–9, 61:1–2; Micah 5:1–3. The idea of the Messiah and this term to name him became common in post-Old Testament Judaism. See further R.E. Brown in Brown, Fitzmyer and Murphy (1990), 1310–1312 and bibliography.

23. Exodus 26:31–36.

24. Acts 2:46, 3:1–10.

25. Acts 26:28; I Peter 4:14–16; Tacitus Annals 15.44; Suetonius Lives of the Caesars 6.16.

26. See the Suffering Servant poems in the work of the “Second Isaiah,” especially Isaiah 53.

27. Matthew 21:12–17; Mark 11:15–19; Luke 19:45–48; John 2:13–22.

28. Luke 2:22–24.

29. I owe this interpretation to Francese Riera i Figueras, Jesús, el Galileo (Madrid: Narcea, 1992), 179.

30. Matthew 27:51.

31. Matthew 26:18–19; Mark 14:13–16; Luke 22:10–12; Matthew 14:13–21, 15:29–39.

Three: Trajectory: Nave

1. See, for instance, Matthew 5:1–12; Luke 6:20–23.

2. On the catacombs, see, for example, P. Brown (1981), s.v. “cemeteries”; Fasola in di Berardino, ed., Encyclopedia of the Early Church, I, 1992, 155–158; Fiocchi Nicolai et al. (1998); Frend (1996) passim (on the history of the rediscovery of the catacombs); Jeffers (1991), chapters 2 and 3; Luft (1990), chapter 29; Pietri (1976), 122–134, 659–667; Stevenson (1978); Tristan (1996), “Les catacombes.”

3. Ugo Ventriglia, La Geologia della Città di Roma (Rome: n. p., 1971), Fig. 101, p. 174, gives a cross-section of the soil structure of the Catacomb of Sant’Agnese, which depicts an arenaria and two levels of galleries dug into the tufa.

4. Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel XII.40.5–13.

5. See, for example, Prudentius, Hymn to Hippolytus, in his Peristephanon liber XI.194.

6. On the behaviour of ancient Romans, including Christians, at the cemeteries, and on the attitudes they expressed, see Barrai i Altet (1988), P. Brown (1981), Delehaye (1933), Février (1977).

7. The Laterani were a patrician Roman family whose property had been confiscated by Nero. Constantine’s wife, Fausta, was the sister of his defeated rival, Maxentius.

8. There is scholarly disagreement about the percentage of the population that was Christian before Constantine: estimates are necessarily hypothetical. For the tituli and church halls, see Krautheimer (1980), 18.

9. Constantine might have built on the outskirts and beyond the walls rather than in the centre of Rome because he did not dare, or found it impolitic, to disturb the city centre and so annoy still-powerful pagan interests. Nor did he convert pagan temples into Christian churches.

10. For Peter’s death and burial, see Eusebius II.25 and Toynbee and Ward Perkins (1956). À monumental basilica was built over the bones of Saint Paul, outside the walls on the road to Ostia, in 384 –ca. 390. Most of it burned down in 1823, and was later rebuilt.

11. The bishop of Rome was known in early times as Papa (“Father”). The earliest known inscription calling a bishop of Rome papa, or “pope” in English, is that of Marcellinus in the Catacombs of Calixtus (before 304 A.D.); the title is abbreviated as PP. The term was in common use by the fifth century. “Pope,” then, is very early popular usage for the correct title, which is “bishop of Rome.”

12. Krautheimer (1980), 55–56, 80, 203, 226–227; Corpus Basilicarum 5 (Vatican City: 1977), 1–92. The papal residence sometimes moved, but the Vatican remained the most important ecclesiastical site in Rome.

13. Van der Meer and Mohrmann (1966), #489b.

14. By the seventh century the octave of the feast, January 28, was celebrated as well, and it still is. According to the passio of Saint Agnes, just one week after her death the girl’s parents saw a vision of their daughter among a crowd of virgins in heaven. This vision is thought to have given rise to the second feast for Saint Agnes. See Frutaz (1992), 30–31.

15. See, for example, Swift (1951). The literature on basilicas, as well as the indebtedness of Christian basilicas to ancient Roman precedents, is enormous. The following is a selection: Andresen (1971); Armstrong (1967) and (1974); Deichmann (1983), chapter 6; Duval (1962); Krautheimer (1967), (1971)’ and (1986); Mathews (1971); Matthiae (1964); Ward Perkins (1954).

16. The medieval mosaics of the nave floor, and the reused marbles paving the aisles, had been replaced with a simple brick floor in 1728. Frutaz (1992), 65.

17. Glass (1980).

18. The Exodus is the central event in the Hebrew Bible. The promises to Abraham inform the entire Torah or Pentateuch (the Bible’s first five books), and the epic of the Exodus extends from the Book of Exodus to the Book of Joshua.

19. The Stations were made for this church in 1938 by Uno Gera, the sculptor of the life-sized bronze crucifix at the end of the left-hand aisle.

20. For the history of the Stations of the Cross, see Thurston (1906). The spread of the custom to churches outside the Holy Land seems to have occurred during the sixteenth century, and to have reached its full development as a popular devotion in the eighteenth.

21. John 14:6.

22. Apocalypse 1:8, 21:6, 22:13. See also Isaiah 44:6.

23. John 10:7–9.

24. Genesis 6:5–8:22.

25. Early Christian writings that use this imagery are the Apostolic Constitutions on the ordination of bishops, the Clementine Homilies, Asterius Homilies XX.19, and Hippolytus of Rome, Christ and Antichrist (before 236 A.D.). See Daniélou (1961), 58–70; Rees (1992); Rush (1941), 54–71; Stuhlfauth (1942).

26. Romans 8:31–39.

27. Vitruvius says that the name was in memory of the abject slavery to which the Greeks reduced the women of Caryae, as a punishment because the men of Caryae supported the Persians when they invaded Greece (De architectura 1.1.5). But caryatids existed in the Near East a long time before they reached Greece.

28. Galatians 2:9.

29. The Letter of Clement was sent, in its own words, “by the Church of God dwelling as a pilgrim in Rome to the Church of God dwelling as a pilgrim in Corinth.” The author is believed to have been Clement the bishop of Rome (88–97 A.D.), and also, traditionally, the person who donated to the Christians a building in Rome (a titulus) that lies underneath the church of San Clemente. The building can be visited. It is situated below a fourth-century basilica, on top of which is the present basilica, built ca. 1100. See Boyle (1989).

30. Apocalypse 3:12.

31. Pliny Natural History 36. 6. 45.

32. Paul Valéry, Charmes (Paris: Gallimard, 1922).

33. The Doric temple of Athena in Syracuse, now Santa Maria delle Colonne, shows what changes were necessary to turn a pagan temple into a Christian church. The peristyle was filled in; the arcades were created by piercing the cella walls so that the corridors between cella and columns became aisles. The partition between the cella and the enclosed section behind it, the opisthodomos, was broken down in order to create an area for the altar, which is now housed, because it is a Christian church, inside rather than outside the building.

34. The sixteen clerestory windows were originally larger than they are now, but still smaller than the gallery spaces. See Krautheimer (1937), 23.

35. One aisle would fit almost three times into the width of the nave; a much more common arrangement in Rome is a nave the width of two aisles. See Krautheimer (1937), 38.

36. Krautheimer (1937), 36.

37. Deichmann (1941), 73–76.

38. On San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, see Krautheimer (1960); Krautheimer, Corpus (1962); Matthiae (1964).

39. In Byzantine churches, galleries were where women sat, apart from the men. This is why the gallery at Sant’Agnese’s is sometimes referred to as a matroneum. But as we have seen, the gallery had a specific, and different, function in Sant’Agnese’s. The same is true of the gallery in San Lorenzo’s, which was built in the reign of Pope Pelagius II (579–590).

40. Frutaz (1992), 167, note 85; Lanciani (1924), 260.

41. “Composite” is a Renaissance term for these capitals; Romans thought of them as Roman Corinthian.

42. J. Onians (1990), 42–48.

43. Onians thinks that the galleries are given a status lower than that of the nave by means of the capitals: Ionic at the start, and merely Corinthian at the end. This, he says (p. 67), is because the gallery was for women only, as in Byzantine practice. But see above, note 39, and Chapter 1, note 13.

44. The present organ was built in 1931.

45. Sfondrati also had vaults made for the church’s gallery, and in doing so covered up a series of medieval (mainly thirteenth and fourteenth century) paintings. These paintings were rediscovered in 1855, removed, and taken to the Vatican Museums. They include eleven scenes from the life of the virgin martyr Catherine of Alexandria, and eleven from the life of Saint Benedict. Frutaz (1992), 63, 252.

Four: Alpha and Omega: Altar

1. By Pietro Gagliardi, 1856.

2. Prudentius Peristephanon liber XIV.124–125. The title of the book is translated, in Vol. ii of the Loeb edition of Prudentius, as Crowns of Martyrdom. The painting above the arch illustrates Prudentius’ poem.

3. The quotation, placed on the arch by Pope Pius IX in 1855–1856, replaces Pope Honorius’ seventh-century inscription, which said in Latin: “The virgin’s hall is resplendent with twinkling metals, but shines more brightly still because of her great merit.” The “twinkling metals” referred to the gold mosaic in the apse.

4. By Virgilio Marchi, Emilio Tavani, and Silvio Mingoli, inaugurated January 18, 1940. Frutaz (1992), 74.

5. The Eucharist may also be kept in a small box called a pyx, originally an ointment box (Greek puxis), which was traditionally made of boxwood (Greek puxos).

6. The Pantheon was exceptional in being built with a giant dome: Roman temples were normally given a non-domed shape, which was for Rome traditional, even archaic. The Pantheon’s outline contains the height and diameter of a perfect sphere, with the dome as its top half. See further MacDonald (1976).

7. For the complicated history of St. Peter’s dome, see, for example, Lees-Milne (1967), chapters 5 and 6; and Lotz (1995), 98–101.

8. Liber Pontificalis I, 323.

9. The buildings next door to the church are those of a medieval monastery. They are now referred to as the “canonry” because the order of priests who live there are canons, not monks.

10. A broken gilded metal transenna was discovered in an oratory of the canonry; it, too, is thought to have been part of the medieval altar complex. Frutaz (1992), 70.

11. The broad pavonazzetto band above the horizontal strip of porphyry had two curtained windows, inserted into it during the seventeenth century to give light to the apse; they were covered over during the 1950s. The only signs of them now are to be seen outside the church from the road.

12. The original tituli are the ancient downtown churches whose buildings were donated to the early Christian community. They are known by the names of their original owners, who were later called saints. All the cardinals’ churches at Rome are now called “titles.” Cardinals are the most senior members of the Church hierarchy after the pope himself. The word “cardinal” expresses the importance of the office: it comes from Latin cardo, meaning “hinge” or “pivot.”

13. Pomegranate lamps identical to the original ones at Sant’Agnese’s may be seen on the altar balustrade in the church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome.

14. Romans 5:20–21.

15. Tertullian (A.D. 160–240) Apologeticus 50. The mystical Spanish poet Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591) was especially fond of pomegranates and their imagery; see The Spiritual Canticle and his commentary on its meaning.

16. Grisar (1897).

17. Pressouyre (1984).

18. Middleton’s Letter from Rome set out to show “the exact conformity between Papism and the religion of the Romans of today, which is derived from their pagan ancestors.” See Frutaz (1992), 172.

19. Luke 22:19–20; Matthew 26:26–29; Mark 14:22–25.

20. Sacrifice is an immensely broad and difficult subject. A very short summary of the reasoning and meanings behind it may be found in Visser (1991), 32–37, together with a short bibliography, p. 361. Sacrifice remembers the death that gives rise to the life-giving comfort of eating. The Eucharist is a “sacrifice” in part because it remembers the death at the very moment that it gives rise to hope.

21. On this subject, see Leon R. Kass, The Hungry Soul. Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature (New York: Macmillan, The Free Press, 1994).

22. Psalm 118:22–23; Matthew 21:42. See further Isaiah 8:14, 28:16; Ephesians 2:20–22.

23. Matthew 16:13–19.

24. Acts 4:11; 1 Peter 2:4–10.

25. Compare Colossians 1:24.

26. I John 4:19–20.

27. Wyschogrod (1990) provides a reproduction of a fresco depicting the event (see p. 2). It is by the Sienese painter Giovanni di Paolo (died 1482), and is kept in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

28. John 14:6

29. John 10:7–9

30. Matthew 10:38; 16:24–25; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23, 14:27.

31. For example, in Greek myth the sadistic bandit Procrustes devised a hideous form of torture for his victims: he would forcibly fit them to a wooden bed, stretching them if they were too small, and lopping off any pieces of their bodies that extended over the edge of the bed, Plutarch, Lives. Theseus 6.

32. Fanano (1968).

33. “Mandorla” is from the Italian word for “almond,” because of its shape. (Another term for a totally enclosing halo of this shape is vesica piscis, “the bladder of a fish,” again descriptive of the outline.) An “aureole,” from aureus, “golden,” is an elliptical display of golden light completely surrounding a figure, unlike a nimbus or halo, which emanates from the head only.

34. The source of this symbolism is Ezekiel 1:5–14, where the prophet tells his strange vision of the four winged “beasts,” each of which had four faces, of Man and Lion and Ox and Eagle. John’s Apocalypse (4:6–8) describes four creatures, Man and Lion and Ox and Eagle, surrounding the throne of God. They were known very early thereafter as the “apocalyptic beasts,” and taken to represent the four Gospel writers: Man for Matthew because he begins his Gospel with the ancestors of Christ; Lion for Mark, who starts with “a voice crying in the wilderness”; Ox, the beast of sacrifice, for Luke because he opens with the sacrifice of Zacharias; and Eagle for John, because he soars at once to the heights of heaven, with “In the beginning was the Word…”

35. Josi (1933); Fasola’ (1954–55).

36. See, for example, Matthew 10:37, 12:46–50, 19:29; Mark 3:31–35, 10:28–30; Luke 8:19–21, 18:29–30.

37. Apocalypse 6:9.

38. First Epistle of John, 3:2.

39. There is another chapel dedicated to her, in the Roman seminary, or college for student priests, that occupies the Palazzo Capranica, in the piazza named after it. This Renaissance building incorporates a medieval chapel traditionally believed to have been built on the site of Agnes’ family home. The street-level chapel now houses an antique shop, but the students have a chapel in honour of Agnes upstairs; she is regarded as their patron saint. See Caiola (1997).

40. Teasdale Smith (1974), 383, citing Dio Cassius. Roman History, Book 75, 166–167.

41. Teasdale Smith (1974), 381–382.

42. Parmenides Fragment 8 (DK 28 B 8), lines 42–49; Fragment 1 (DK 28 B 1), line 29.

43. For a drawing of the ancient Jewish picture of the world, see Boadt (1984), 115.

44. John 8:12, 9:5. See also John 1:7–9, 3:20–21.

45. For the history and meaning of Sunday, see Bradshaw (1996), 75–79; Rordorf (1968). For the number eight in its relation to baptism, see Chapter Eight.

46. Augustine Confessions 1.1.

47. Julian of Norwich. Modern version: Revelations of Divine Love, tr. and ed. Clifton Wolters (London: Penguin Books, 1966), 68 (Chapter 5).

48. Jesus said, “And when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself.” John 12:32, cf. John 8:28. Being “lifted up” refers to his death by crucifixion, adds John (12:33).

49. John 3:8; see Acts 2:2. The Spirit is also symbolized by water (John 7:37–39) and fire (Acts 2:4).

50. Genesis 1:2.

51. Matthew 3:16–17; Mark 1:10–11; Luke 3:22; John 1:32–34.

Five: World Without End: Apse

1. Jerusalem-made-perfect is for Christians a symbol of the end of all things, in the final epiphany of God. The ideal Jerusalem is described in the Book of Ezekiel, 40:1–48:35. In the New Testament the Heavenly Jerusalem appears in Hebrews 12:22–24 and Apocalypse 21:2–22:5. For the meanings of gold, see Averincev (1979).

2. 4 Esdras 2:34–35. 4 Esdras is a Christian addition to a Jewish apocalyptic text, and is dated about 100 A.D. The work belongs to the Apocrypha, meaning that it is not part of the canonical Bible; since 1590 it has stood as an appendix after the New Testament in the Latin Vulgate Bible. What has survived is a Latin translation of an originally Greek text.

3. The chief early sources for the story of Agnes are: the Depositio martyrum (336 A.D.), which is the first mention of the saint, giving her feast day as a customary celebration; the Damasus inscription at Sant’Agnese’s, between 366 and 384; Ambrose’s De virginibus, ca. 377; a passage by Ambrose in a letter, De officiis, 389–390; the Ambrosian hymn Agnes beatae virginis, fourth century (it is not absolutely certain that the hymn is by Ambrose, though most scholars now think it is); Prudentius’ “Hymn to Agnes,” published in 405 (Prudentius went to Sant’Agnese’s in 402–403); the passio or Gesta Sanctae Agnetis in Latin, compiled by pseudo-Ambrose from traditional sources, early 400s, with chapter III added later; a shorter Greek passio derivative from the Latin one, and a translation of it into Syriac, fifth century.

4. God’s love for the soul is frequently expressed in erotic language. This section of the passio of Agnes is written in the tradition of the Old Testament Song of Songs. Compare also Ezekiel 15:6–14, where the Lord covers Israel, as a woman, with his gifts. (The Latin word vernantibus, literally “burgeoning as in the spring,” I have translated here as “glowing.”)

5. Pseudo-Ambrose, Gesta Sanctae Agnetis (see bibliography, under Ambrose). In the Greek passio Agnes is burned to death. She is also described as a young adult, and this could well have influenced the mosaic artist.

6. For the costume and its history, see Houston (1931).

7. This is an early version of what later became a Byzantine convention. See Oakeshott (1967), 148, and the examples given.

8. Herodotus 2.73; Pliny Natural History 10.2; Tacitus Annals 6.28; Gregory of Nazianzus Carmina I.2.532–533; Van den Broek (1972).

9. The Magi brought as gifts to the infant Jesus “gold, frankincense, and myrrh” (Matthew 2:11). These, the wealth and perfumes of Arabia (cf. Isaiah 60:6), symbolize his kingliness (gold), his divinity (frankincense), and his redemptive death (myrrh).

10. The connection is made in the Letter of Clement, 25 (ca. 96 A.D).

11. 1 Corinthians 15:20–23. For more on “first-fruits,” see Visser (1991), 34–35.

12. Canaan, where the Israelites settled, was inhabited by Phoenicians; in Mesopotamia the word “Canaan” meant “purplish red dye,” and in biblical Hebrew the word “Canaanite” became the equivalent of “merchant,” like one of the mercantile Phoenicians. Van den Broek (1972), 65.

13. Acts 2:1–18, especially 4.

14. Examples in Rome include the apse of the church of Santi Cosma e Damiano in the Forum, the apse of Santa Prassede, and that of Santa Cecilia.

15. John 12:13. (See above, Chapter One.) Mark (11:8) says the crowd waved “greenery” (the Greek word stilbadas means “what you use to strew the ground”). It is pointed out that palms were not native to Jerusalem, and the Jews imported them for the Feast of Tabernacles (2 Maccabees 10.7). Still, John calls the plants “palms” because of their well-known symbolism.

16. R. B. Onians (1951), especially Part 2, chapters 1 and 2.

17. The upper apse at Sant’Agnese’s is actually less than half a dome, but the symbolism of a dome and a semidome is in no way altered by this fact.

18. Such a depiction of the cosmos in the hollow of a dome is called a “meniscus” or lens-shape, from the Greek for “little moon.”

19. See Bisconti, in Fiocchi Nicolai et al. (1998), 80–81. On goldglass, see further Engemann (1968–69), Garrucci (1858), Morey (1959), Zanchi Roppo (1969).

20. Apocalypse 21:18.

21. Swift (1951), 134. On mosaic technique, see further Oakeshott (1967), Matthiae (1967), Sear (1977), and Milburn (1988), chapter 13.

22. Oakeshott (1967), 148.

23. Astorri (1934).

24. Matthiae (1967), 173.

25. Oakeshott (1967), 70.

26. Frutaz (1992), 71.

27. Thérèse wrote a Cantique à Sainte Agnès on the saint’s feast day, January 21, 1896, based on the passio of Agnes, which she probably read in Latin.

28. For the following brief summary, I am indebted to Duffy (1997); various entries in the Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (1990); Krautheimer (1980); Mathieu-Rosay (1988); McBrien (1981), especially 835–842; McBrien (1997); Richards (1979); and Ullmann (1972), especially chapters 2 and 3.

29. Most Lombards were pagans, and the Christians among them Arians; Gregory initiated their conversion through their Catholic queen, Theodolinda, wife of two successive Lombard kings.

30. “The Church was the only efficient organization left to maintain the economic, social, and indeed the political fabric of Rome.” Krautheimer (1980), 69.

31. See Robert Wilken, in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, s.v. “Monophysitism.”

32. John 1:1–5.

33. Leo I, the Great, Tomē. Opera, P. and H. Ballerini, eds., in J-P Migne, Patrologia Latina vols. 54–56.

34. Constantine had called the Council of Nicaea in 325 for the same purpose. Several early emperors (when they were not Arians themselves) took steps to enforce orthodoxy.

35. Scriptural passages adduced include Luke 10:16, John 16:13–15, and Matthew 16:16–20.

36. 1 John 1:3 and Ephesians 4:5–6 were among the scriptural passages quoted.

37. See Mathieu-Rosay (1988), s.v. “Honorius I.”

38. Honorius built churches “too numerous to mention,” says the Liber Pontificalis I 323–324.

39. Liber Pontificalis I, 324; Krautheimer, Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae Vol. III (1967), 153–174.

40. A fifth-century legend recounts that when Saint Paul was decapitated at this spot, his head bounced three times, giving rise to a spring at each bounce. Legends of the saints often relate that saints’ deaths, especially the deaths of decapitated martyrs, give rise to fountains. Fountains are beginnings—what we call in English “springs” or “fountainheads”; and Christians thought of the blood of the martyrs as the “seed,” in Tertullian’s phrase, of the Church. In Christian symbolism streams of water “mean” redemptive cleansing, and very specifically baptism; and we shall see that the idea of “dying” to the past is part of the Christian initiatory sacrament.

41. Jounel (1977), 217.

42. A hundred years later, according to Roman custom, he would have been given a square halo, as founder of a church and still living when the mosaic was made. A square halo does not denote a saint: people can be called saints only after their deaths. Honorius was not made a saint.

43. Perrotti (1961).

44. In the Middle Ages the meat of peacocks was said to be incorruptible; this notion derived from the symbolism of immortality already attached to the bird.

45. Perrotti (1961), 163.

46. Houston (1931), chapter 5.

47. For the pallium, see Noonan (1996), 359–363, and the illustrations.

48. Luke 15:4–7; John 10:1–16. Tristan (1996), “Agneau et Bon Pasteur,” 122–141.

49. Matthew 26:69–75; Mark 14:66–72; Luke 22:54–62; John 18:15–27, 21:15–17.

50. John 1:29.

51. I owe these facts to my sister, Dr. Joan Barclay Lloyd, who got them from the prior of Tre Fontane, Father Ansgar Christensen, O.C.S.O. See further Frutaz (1992), 32–37.

52. Frutaz (1992), 136.

53. Liber Pontificalis I, 263.

54. Liber Pontificalis I, 208.

55. Liber Pontificalis I, 180.

56. G.B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianae II, 127. Cited in Richards (1979), 179–180.

57. The translation of this sentence is Oakeshott’s (1967, p. 31).

58. Genesis 1:4–5.

Six: Living Stones: Chapel, Left Side

1. Pope Gregory I, the Great, Homily on Ezekiel 19. Compare Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman, John 4:20–24.

2. Between pages 416 and 417 of Pétrement (1973), vol. 2, are photographs of Weil’s original hand-written account of what happened.

3. Emmanuel Lévinas, Humanisme de l’autre homme (Paris: Fata Morgana, Le livre de poche, Biblio-Essais, 1994), 58.

4. Ekklesia literally means “summoned out of.” The Greek word distinguishes the “called” group from everybody else.

5. For a history and analysis of this complex ceremony, see Crichton (1980).

6. 1 Corinthians 6:19

7. Ephesians 2:20–22; 1 Peter 2:4–5. See also 1 Corinthians 3:9, 16–17; Ephesians 4:12.

8. See, for example, Green (1983), 86–88.

9. Mark 3:20–21, 31–35. See also Luke 2:49–50, 11:27–28.

10. Olive oil symbolizes the Holy Spirit as saving, strengthening, nourishing, and health-giving. It signifies that the Christian is a disciple of the Anointed One, which is the meaning of the words “Christ” and “Messiah.” Baptism also makes complex references to Noah and his ark, interpreting the Flood as the death of the old so that the new can begin afresh. The oil recalls the olive twig brought home by the dove to Noah in the ark, signifying that the Flood was receding and God was ready now to make peace with the world. Anointing with olive oil is the final act of initiation after baptism, assuring the initiate of support from the life-giving Spirit.

11. Psalm 51:7. Hyssop in the psalm is probably the plant known as the thorny caper (Capparis spinosa), and was used for sprinkling water in Jewish purification rites.

12. Colossians 3:13; 1 John 4:19–20. See also Romans 5:5. Christianity’s most important prayer makes the next step, trusting God to “forgive us as we forgive others” (Matthew 6:12, 14–15; Luke 11:3–4; cf. Matthew 18:18).

13. Luke 6:29, 6:37; Matthew 5:23–24, 5:38–40, 18:21–22.

14. Luke 23:34.

15. Matthew 7:1–5; Luke 6:36–37.

16. John 1:4–5, 8:12.

17. Genesis 1:1–2:2. Genesis 6:13–8:14. Genesis 17:1–8. Genesis 22:1–19. Exodus 14:5–15:21. Isaiah 55:1–11.

18. Lent is a forty-day-long “low” period in the Church’s liturgical year; it is a preparation for the week-long climactic remembrance of Christ’s death and Resurrection. The forty days recall the Hebrew symbolism of forty as “a sufficiently long period of time”: for example, Moses spent forty days with God, the Flood lasted forty days, Christ fasted for forty days. People pray especially intensely during Lent, and do whatever else they need to do to prepare themselves spiritually for Easter. They may fast, or not eat certain foods. The effect is to heighten and intensify the celebration of Easter, which includes feasting (on eggs, for example), and the return of ritual expressions of joy. Human restraint on eating during Lent allows young animals to be born and grow, and the first new vegetables to mature. Cosmically speaking, Easter is Spring. The English word “Lent” is from the same root as “lengthen”: the days are “Lentening.”

19. Lent is often marked by “negatives,” such as not ringing bells, not playing the organ, and not saying the prayer known as the Gloria or the word “Alleluia.” “Alleluia” or “Halleluia” is from Hebrew halelu-Jah, meaning “praise God.” It is used by the angels as a cry of jubilation in the Apocalypse (19:1–6). Joyfulness is its connotation; the forty preceding days without it serve greatly to increase its meaningfulness and power when Easter finally arrives.

20. The symbols derived from Scripture, in order of mention, are from Matthew 5:14–16; John 15:1–8; Isaiah 5:1–7; Ezekiel 19:10–14; Psalm 79(80):8–16.

21. Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42; Matthew 6:10; Luke 1:38. In addition to these three instances, there are others: see, for example, Mark 3:35 and John 5:30.

22. Biblical scholars remind us that “the story” as we have it was written down, in four differing versions, after the Resurrection, and therefore from a post-Resurrection perspective. Mary’s words, spoken within Luke’s version of the “Infancy Narratives,” which have been called “the Gospel in miniature,” must in part be taken as a theological preparation for what follows. See R.E. Brown (1993).

23. John 2:1–12, especially 4–5.

24. John 19:25–27.

25. Matthew 16:18, 26:69–75; Mark 14:66–72; Luke 22:54–62; John 18:15–27.

26. Luke 1:46–55. “Yes, from this day forward all generations will call me blessed,” she said, “for God has done great things for me.… He has pulled down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things, the rich he has sent empty away. He has come to the help of Israel his servant, mindful of his mercy, and according to the promises he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.”

27. Also venerated in early times were the Apostles (almost all of them martyrs), and the “confessors,” which meant those who had not actually been killed, but who had suffered imprisonment, torture, or exile for their faith.

28. “Epiphany” means “showing” or “manifestation” in Greek. It can mean an individual mystical experience. In the Christian liturgical vocabulary it is the name of the feast on or near January 6, which celebrates the first four manifestations of Jesus to the world: at his birth, first to the Jewish shepherds (his own people) and then to the Magi (representing the rich, the intellectuals, the Gentiles, and people from countries far from the Holy Land); his baptism as an adult, when he was revealed as God’s “beloved son”; and the first manifestation of his power, at the wedding at Cana when he turned water into wine.

29. Prudentius, “Hymn to Agnes,” Peristephanon XIV.112–118. The Passio of Perpetua and Felicity includes the original diary which Perpetua kept in prison, before she was gored by a wild cow and then had her throat cut in the arena at Carthage on March 7, 203 A.D. Perpetua recorded a dream she had in which she, too, trod down a serpent as her soul prepared for her death: “Slowly, as though he were afraid of me, the dragon stuck his head out from underneath the ladder. Then, using it as my first step, I trod on his head and went up.” Musurillo (1972), 112.

30. Genesis 3:15; Apocalypse 12:1–17.

31. This is the hagiographical background for Keats’ poem “The Eve of Saint Agnes”; in England, however, January 21 is not spring but winter.

32. For a good recent account of the phenomenon of Lourdes, see Harris (1999).

33. A rosary is a string of beads used for counting prayers; it is arranged in a circle, with a short pendant ending in a cross. Its use began to be promoted, especially by members of the Dominican order, in the fifteenth century, although Christians were using strings of prayer beads before the ninth century. Because it is circular, the rosary is called after a garland of roses, known as a rosarium; compare the children’s game, “Ring-a ring-a rosie” or “Ring Around a Rosie.”

34. The underground watercourse was known to exist before Bernardette uncovered it.

35. By the mid seventh century, belief in the Immaculate Conception of Mary was common in the Eastern Church, where it arose first. A famous hymn by Andrew of Crete (died 740) calls Mary “alone wholly without stain.” For a summary of the theology of the Immaculate Conception, see McBrien (1981), 885–889.

36. Luke 1:28.

37. For more on Catherine Labouré, see Laurentin (1980).

38. The vast theological system worked out by the Canadian theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) is based on five “transcendental precepts.” The first of these, the indispensable beginning for all the rest, is “Be attentive.” The others are: “Be intelligent,” “Be reasonable,” “Be responsible,” “Be in love.” Lonergan (1957) and (1971).

39. The original picture of the Madonna of Pompeii (of which this one is a copy) was given to the desperately poor town near this famous archaeological site by Bartolo Longo in 1876, and a church built for it. An orphanage and a home for children whose parents are in prison are among the many outreach programs associated with this church.

40. Luke 2:35.

41. For a reappraisal of the role of modern popular religious art, mainly in the lives of North American Protestants, see Morgan (1998).

42. Matthew 11:29.

43. (Deutero-)Isaiah 42:1–7, 49:1–7, 50:4–9, 52:13–53:12. Compare Matthew 12:17–21.

44. Luke 10:29–37.

45. This is a paraphrase of Matthew 25:35–46. See also Matthew 10:42,18:5–6,18:10; Mark 9:36–37; Luke 9:48.

46. John 19:33–37.

47. Matthew 25:1–13.

Seven: One Body: Chapels, Right Side

1. The spiral staircase was added after the seventeenth century, when the great staircase down to the church was reconstructed. See Krautheimer (1937), 22.

2. Saint Augustine (354–430 A.D.) was a Doctor of the Church and Bishop of Hippo in Africa. “Doctor of the Church” is a title given to eminent ecclesiastical writers who are also saints. The first four Doctors of the Western Church were Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great. The first four Eastern Doctors were Basil, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom. All these men are commonly depicted in churches, sometimes in groups of four.

3. Canons are priests attached to a cathedral or to a church. The word kanon means “rule” in Greek; a canon is called a canonicus, “one who lives by a Rule” in Latin. Canons Regular (as opposed to Canons Secular) are like monks in that they live in community; they do not, however, restrict their contacts with the outside world as monks do.

4. For the history of the mitre, see Noonan (1996), 364–371. The word “bishop” is from Greek episkopos, meaning literally “overseer” or “superintendent.” A bishop has received the highest of the three “holy orders,” which are those of deacon, priest, and bishop.

5. Acts 4:32. See also Augustine, Sermons 355 and 356, and Possidius, Life of Augustine (fifth century); P. Brown (1967).

6. Saint Dominic was an Augustinian canon before he founded his own order. The fourth Lateran Council (1215) forbade the introduction of new religious Rules, which is perhaps why Dominic adopted that of Saint Augustine. (Saint Francis had had his Rule approved before the council.)

7. Frutaz (1992), 175, note 110.

8. For the office of Commendatory Abbot, see G. and M. Duchet-Suchaux (1993), 111–112.

9. See Frutaz (1992), 103.

10. Stephen’s story is related in Acts of the Apostles, chapters six and seven. Other figures revered as “first” Christian martyrs, but who died before Christ, are the Holy Innocents (the babies Herod killed in case Jesus was among them, according to the account in Matthew 2:16–18), and Saint John the Baptist (Matthew 14:10–12).

11. Acts 8:1–4; Tertullian Apologeticus 50.

12. Peristephanon Liber II; “The Passion of Lawrence” is one of the finest of the collection of fourteen poems.

13. Prudentius, “The Passion of Lawrence,” lines 169–312, 401–408.

14. Hall (1974), 291.

15. The Rota is the supreme tribunal for the annulment of marriages. Its most famous case was the request (refused) of Henry VIII of England for the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon because she did not bear him an heir. The tribunal was called the Rota because the jurists used to sit at a round table.

16. The eight altars: one made for St. Peter’s and now in the town of Boville Ernica; three at St. John Lateran; one at St. Paul’s outside the Walls; one at the SS Apostoli; one at Santa Maria del Popolo (where des Perriers is buried); and the one now at Sant’Agnese’s.

17. The vestment’s name comes from Dalmatia (today, roughly Croatia) because it was once made of Dalmatian wool; the garment’s design might also have been originally Dalmatian.

18. Becoming a deacon came later to mean reaching the penultimate of seven stages in the process of becoming a priest. (There are now only two stages.) The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) encouraged men to become permanent deacons, and so returned to the earliest practice. Married men can become deacons. They can baptize and preach, but not consecrate the Eucharist. They are permitted to wear the priestly stole, but only over one shoulder and diagonally across the chest, to show that they are not priests. Priests wear the stole like an untied scarf around the neck (that is, over both shoulders), the two halves hanging straight down in front. Deacons now seldom wear the dalmatic, except on very solemn occasions; the distinctive stole normally takes its place.

19. Honorius of Autun Gemma animae 1.212.

20. The liturgical colours are white or gold, red, violet or black, and green. On two days of the year the colour is pink, signifying subdued joy: Laetare Sunday during Lent and Gaudete Sunday during Advent. Both laetare and gaudete are words taken from the Masses for those days, and both mean “rejoice.” See further Pastoureau (1988), a and b.

21. When Saint Benedict decided to withdraw from the world, he went to live in or near a village church, taking with him his devoted nurse. (Gregory the Great, Life of Benedict, Book II of the Dialogues, 593 or 594 A.D.) The passio of Nereus and Achilleus, brothers whose hypogeum survives in the Roman catacomb of Domitilla, tells us that the brothers each had a milk sister; their names were Euphrosyna and Theodora.

22. superflui, miseri, caduci atque atrocissimi

23. Bernard of Clairvaux, De Consideratione 5.11.24.

24. For details and dates for the sources of these Itineraries, see E.R. Barker (1913), 112–115.

25. Armellini (1876); Fasola (1954–1955).

26. Fasola (1954–1955), 8.

27. The Sancta Sanctorum, housed in the building called the Scala Santa, opens out of a private chapel built for the popes at the Lateran. In its present form it is the work of cosmatesque artists of the thirteenth century; the name “Sancta Sanctorum” was given it because it contained so many relics. On the walls are mosaics and frescoes, including a mosaic portrait of Agnes and a fresco of her martyrdom, because her skull was believed to be kept here. See Grisar (1907) and Pietrangeli (1995). Florian Jubaru found the skull, which was examined and its teeth found to be those of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old (Jubaru 1907, 8–9, 335–337). It was taken to the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone, where it is still revered and is displayed on the saint’s feast day every year.

28. Frutaz (1992), 157, note 61.

29. Frutaz (1992), 156–157, note 59.

30. E. Stevenson (1896). These inscriptions are now in the passageway down, and are mentioned in Chapter One.

31. Réau (1955–1959), s.v. “Emerentiana.” King Louis XI of France was hunting in the forest of Longué in Anjou in 1472 when he was struck down with violent stomach pains. He prayed to Saint Emerentiana, recovered, and later had a chapel built for her. It is still there, at La Pouëze in Angers; in it is a statue of the saint.

32. The tradition is not merely an instance of picturesque realism; it refers to God’s lament in Isaiah 1:3: “The ox knows its owner, and the ass knows the manger of its lord, but my people do not understand.”

33. A Christmas crib embodies and conflates two Gospel accounts. There are no angel choirs and shepherds in the “infancy narrative” of Matthew, and neither magi nor star appear in Luke. See R.E. Brown (1993).

34. For the history of Roman cribs, see Escobar (1988). The Christmas cribs of Catalunya often include, among the people present in the scene, a little figure defecating. Modern tourists are shocked and fascinated; but the cagoners or “shitters,” as they are robustly called in Catalan, are utterly traditional in showing human life in all its realism. The birth of Jesus is depicted as taking place in the midst of the most ordinary aspects of human life—not in some sanitized shop window.

35. The Te Deum is an early fifth-century hymn believed to be by Niceta of Remesiana (Bela Palanka in Serbia), who died in 414. Its opening words mean, “To you, O God, we offer praise; we acknowledge you as Lord.”

36. The tiara, a beehive-shaped crown surmounted by an orb and a cross, is the pope’s most formal headgear and is shown on top of his coat of arms. In 1963 Pope Paul VI was crowned according to custom, but later sold the papal tiara and gave the money to the poor. See Duffy (1997), 275. The symbolic crossed keys, one gold and one silver, are also part of the papal arms. They refer to the words of Jesus to Peter, giving him “the keys of the Kingdom” (Matthew 16:18–19): the gold key is for heaven, the silver key is for the earth. See Noonan (1996), 189–190.

37. For this account, I am indebted to Lequenne (1991).

38. The Franciscan habit is brown, grey, or black, with a hood. It is belted with a rope knotted three times, for the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. (The Capuchins, a branch of the Franciscans, are named for their cappuccio, or “hood” in Italian; they traditionally wore brown and were bearded, the old Cappuccini, of course, having white beards. Cappuccino, the frothy coffee, is named after the Cappuccini, because it is brown with a white “beard.”)

39. The Cathari (“Pure Ones” in Greek), also known as Albigensians after the town of Albi in Languedoc, were neo-Manichaeans. They believed the world was controlled by a pair of powers: God (light) and Satan (darkness). According to the Cathari, if a person was not perfect, it mattered little what he or she did; among their anarchic beliefs they included total opposition to marriage. A small number of them were the real Cathari, who were believed to have reached perfection, and were called “Parfaits.” The northern French used the existence of this heresy as a pretext for crushing Languedoc and annexing it to France.

40. Matthew 1:19. For a complex and eloquent meditation on the plight of Saint Joseph and his response to it, by a modern Catholic father of a family, see Baumann (1994).

41. Joseph was often a jokey figure in medieval drama; see Pastoureau (1991), 34–36. He is one of the models for Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses: the indomitable ordinary man, loving, dependable, constant—and cuckolded by his wife Molly.

42. However, the Protevangelium of James 9:2 (fourth century) has Joseph say, “I already have sons and am old, but she [Mary] is a girl.”

43. Early narratives concerning Joseph are the Protevangelium of James, The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, and the fifth-century Greek History of Joseph the Carpenter.

44. The history of devotion to Joseph is, of course, much more complicated than this suggests. See, for example, the article “St. Joseph” by Charles Souvay in The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Charles Hebermann et al. (New York: Universal Knowledge Foundation Inc., 1913), vol. VIII, 504–506.

45. The Canon of the Mass is the heart of the celebration, during which the consecration of the Eucharist takes place. Also during the Canon, prayers are said for Church members both living and dead, and the saints (men and women officially “canonized” as such) are remembered as being at one with the Church still in travail. The Canon ends with the solemn Great Amen.

46. For the saints in the Canon, see Kennedy (1963).

47. Pope John had already placed the Second Vatican Council under the protection of Saint Joseph, on March 19 (Joseph’s feast day), 1961.

48. See Frutaz (1992), 93–96.

49. When Sant’Agnese’s stood in open countryside, its parish boundaries were of vast extent. Now that the region has been built up, the same area comprises twenty-six parishes.

50. The community of Sant’Egidio, named after its mother church, Sant’Egidio (Saint Giles) near Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome, began in 1968; its founder, Andrea Riccardi, was then eighteen years old. The community is international, admits men and women whether married or not, and today numbers about twenty thousand in Italy alone. The community is especially well known for having brokered the peace that ended the civil war in Mozambique (October 4, 1992), and for other peace projects in Africa and elsewhere. See Riccardi (1996).

51. For the custom of the Roman stations and its history, see Baldovin (1987).

Eight: Eternal Rest: Outside

1. There is no standard book on Santa Costanza’s; I therefore append a list of articles, monographs, and extracts from books: Amadio (1986); Armellini (1982), 1068–1070; Bovini (1968), 270–300, and (1971), 33–63; Colvin (1991); De Angelis d’Ossat (1940); Deichmann (1982); Donati (1968); Frutaz (1992), 106–118 and notes; Jobst (1976); Lees-Milne (1988), 23–43; Lehmann (1955); MacDonald (1976), 104–108; Matthiae (1964), 116–117, 133–136; Monti (1992); Oakeshott (1967), 61–65; Polacco n.d.; Prandi (1942–1943); Sjöqvist (1946), 144–146; Stanley (1994); Stern (1958); van Berchem and Clouzot (1965), 1–8.

2. Krautheimer (1980), 66.

3. For the chi-rho sign, see Lactantius The Deaths of the Persecutors 44.5; Eusebius Life of Constantine 1.26–31. See further Bruun (1963); Marrou (1959); Sulzberger (1925).

4. See, for example, Homer Iliad I.482, XIV.16, XVI.391. (Ancient ideas about colour, which seem very strange to us, often place surprisingly little emphasis on actual hue.)

5. On porphyry, see Klemm and Klemm (1993). On the discovery of the Porphyry Mountain, see G. Wilkinson, “Notes on a part of the Eastern Desert of Upper Egypt,” Journal of the Royal Geographic Society 2 (1832), 53 f., cited by Klemm and Klemm. The explorations by Wilkinson were carried out in 1822–1823.

6. Frutaz (1992), 116.

7. Frutaz (1992), 206–207, note 18. Another porphyry sarcophagus was taken from the mausoleum to the Vatican in 1606; it may have been the tomb of Helena, Constantina’s sister. Frutaz (1992), 207, note 22.

8. Most of the restoration was done in 1834–1840.

9. Winged genii or “cupids” are also found on the porphyry sarcophagus; they may well represent souls, psychai, in paradise. An ancient Roman genius was a representation of what today might be called the “self”; it was an embodiment of the traits that made up the individual’s personality. A man had a genius, a woman a juno. (These winged figures, however, are all male, even though the sarcophagus contained a woman.) A genius was often portrayed as adult and bearded, but infant genii appear in the mosaics of Pompeii, for example. There are baby genii on the second-century Roman sarcophagus kept today in the Sala Giulio II in the canonry.

10. Visser (1991), 166.

11. A faded inscription over the sarcophagus niche records the removal, by Cardinal Fabrizio Veralli, of the remains of the mosaic.

12. Ezekiel 47:1–12.

13. Genesis 4:4–5; Exodus 17:5–6; I Kings 18:20–46; Daniel 13; Tobit 6:2–3.

14. The mausoleum of Constantine’s son and Constantina’s brother, the Emperor Constans (reigned 337–350), at Centcelles near the town called Constanti near Tarragona, Spain, is similar to Santa Costanza’s. Its damaged mosaic cupola also depicts biblical scenes set in a wheel, but in three concentric rings. The porphyry sarcophagus, reused as part of the tomb of King Pere II in the nearby monastery of Santes Creus, is thought to have been taken from the mausoleum at Centcelles. See Camprubi (1952).

15. Liber Pontificalis II, 163; see Duffy (1997), 80–81.

16. Matthew 26:26–29; Mark 14:22–25, Luke 22:19–20; John 2:1–10; John 15:1–8. See further Jubaru (1904); Leonardi (1947).

17. Several of the disciples of Jesus were fishermen, until he promised them, “I shall make you fishers of men” (Luke 5:1–11). Fish were part of the miracles of multiplication, when Jesus fed the crowd with a few loaves and fish (Mark 6:35–44, 8:1–8). As well, he ate fish with his disciples after the Resurrection (Luke 24:41–43; John 21:1–14). A secret sign for early Christians was a fish. The acronym IXθUΣ, “fish” in Greek, stood for Iesous CHristos THeou Uios Soter, “Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour.” Tertullian (fl. 200) wrote, “We as little fishes, in accordance with our ichthus, Jesus Christ, are born in water” (On Baptism 1). See further Daniélou (1961); Doelger (1910–1957), an exhaustive treatment; Morey (1910), (1911), and (1912); Thérel (1973).

18. See for example Fiocchi Nicolai et al. (1998). And for the subject generally, see Elsner (1995); C. Murray (1981); Rees (1992).

19. On the two apse mosaics, see Davis-Wyer (1961); de Francovich (1958); Grabar (1967); Oakeshott (1967), 64–65; Pietri (1976), vol. II, 1417–1421; Stanley (1987); Thérel (1973), 75–98; Tristan (1996); Vallin (1963).

20. It may have been depicted in the original apse mosaic of St. Peter’s basilica in the fourth century. A mosaic of the scene, possibly in imitation of the earlier one, certainly occupied the apse there from the late twelfth to the sixteenth century; it was destroyed when the present basilica of St. Peter’s was built. See Krautheimer (1980), 205.

21. Genesis 2:10–14.

22. John 10:1–16, 4:10–15, 7:37–38. See Underwood (1950).

23. See Galatians 2:7–8.

24. Matthew 16:18–19.

25. Ephesians 2:13–14. See Vallin (1963).

26. In the ancient world circles and spheres were thought to be “perfect” figures. From this point of view the mausoleum of Santa Costanza should be compared with its much larger architectural forerunner, Rome’s Pantheon (which was not, however, built as a mausoleum). See further Hautecoeur (1954); MacDonald (1976); Poulet (1966). Schwarz (1958) discusses the possibilities of circular planning for the expression of meaning in Christian churches, in his First Plan, Second Plan, and Third Plan.

27. Olney (1972), 33, 49, 111 (where he points to the use of the image of life as a “road around” the self in the writings of Carl Jung).

28. Romans 8:9–11; I Corinthians 6:19.

29. Between the first and second niches on the left is an entry to a spiral staircase that leads up to a small tower on the roof; it was presumably made to give access to the roof for repairs. Steps also lead down, to a catacomb gallery. The niches received frescoed saints, painted between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Fragments of these remain.

30. In ancient Greek lists of the opposites, one is “the opposite” of two. One is singular, for example, while two begins plurality; one is whole, while breaking one makes two. Further down the list, one becomes male, and two female.

31. The church of Saint Bernard in Rome, San Bernardo alle Terme, is round, and was once part of the Baths of Diocletian.

32. Romans 6:3–4. For the importance of this symbolism for architecture, see Krautheimer (1942).

33. Krautheimer (1980), 49–50. He says the Lateran Baptistery “recalls nothing so much as late-antique buildings, such as S. Costanza on the Via Nomentana.”

34. Genesis 1:2. The seventeenth-century inscription around the dove underlines this interpretation.

35. The inscription on the baptistery of the cathedral in Milan, attributed to Ambrose (ca. 337–397)’ describes in eight lines the importance of the number eight (symbolizing salvation and regeneration) for the octagonal building and its octagonal baptismal pool. Baptism signifies “the death of the old Adam and the beginning of new life,” “creation from the womb of water,” and “rebirth into the spiritual octave.”

36. The basilica was consecrated in 336; the Anastasis is known to have been in use by 350.

37. Santo Stefano Rotondo, built in the fifth century, has two concentric ambulatories inside, intersected by the shape of a Greek (equal-armed) cross.

38. Liber Pontificalis I, 180–181.

39. Bonifatius vero, sicut consuetudo erat, celebravit baptismam Paschae in basilica beatae martyris Agnae. Liber Pontificalis I, 227.

40. See, for example. Donati (1968).

41. Compare Romans 5:12–21, and I Corinthians 15:22 and 45. The word “Adam” is a modern scholarly conjecture; the two manuscripts have adhuc in one and Adae in the other, neither of which makes sense.

42. Compare the acronym IXθUΣ, “Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour,” creating the word for “fish” in Greek.

43. Acta Sanctorum, June Vol. V, 158–163. The Acta Sanctorum is a scholarly collection of documents relating to the lives of the saints. The work began in 1643 under the Jesuit John Bolland of Antwerp (1596–1665), and continues to this day. The Bollandists collect information in the pages of the organization’s learned review, Analecta Bollandiana, published in Brussels since 1882. The many volumes of the Acta Sanctorum include the passios. The saints’ lives are listed according to their feast days, and the months in which they fall. See further D. Knowles, in Great Historical Enterprises. Cambridge U.P. 1963.

44. Gallicanus was a fictional hero, created out of the figure of Constantina’s second husband, Gallus. See Grégoire and Orgels (1954).

45. The basilica of SS Giovanni e Paolo, whose martyrdom occurred in 362, still stands on the Coelian Hill in Rome. It was built in 398. Underneath it are extensive excavations that can be visited; the church is built over an ancient titulus. There is also, underground, a pagan shrine to the Nymphs and the confessio of the two martyrs, with fourth-century frescoes. The church building now has, though with later decorations, a mostly twelfth-century appearance, and a magnificent campanile of the same century.

46. Julian the Apostate reigned from 361 to 363; he was born in 331. He attempted to restore the ancient Roman religion and to put down Christianity. Constantina’s husband Gallus was a half-brother of Julian.

47. Ammianus Marcellinus Rerum gestarum libri XIV.1, 7, 9, 11.

48. Ammianus Marcellinus Rerum gestarum libri XXI.1.5.

49. An inscription dated 1256—found upside down and being used as a step in the passageway down to Sant’Agnese’s church, and now affixed to the wall there—shows that the women were believed, in accordance with the passios, to be Constantina, Attica, and Artemia, and the men Saturninus and Sisinius.

50. Polacco (n.d.), 53.

51. Krautheimer (1937), 30. Some now wonder whether this “earlier basilica” might have been only the present basilica’s foundations. See Frutaz (1992), 151, note 45.

52. Bacci (1902).

53. Ashby (1906).

54. Deichmann (1946).

55. The seventh century De locis Sanctis martyrum also says: “Beside the basilica of Agnes, Constantia, daughter of Constantine, rests in a separate church” (emphasis mine).

56. It is admitted today that the great explorer of the catacombs, Antonio Bosio (1573–1629), had suggested the idea, but nobody took him seriously.

57. It was pointed out (Krautheimer [1960] refers to the objection) that the windows could conceivably have been there simply for the view; the walls of Roman circuses, open to the sky, were known to have been sometimes pierced by windowlike openings.

58. See, for example, Lehmann (1955).

59. Exact measurements: the church was 98.3 metres long; the atrium was 59 metres long and 40.3 metres wide.

60. For an idea of what the building looked like, see Krautheimer’s reconstruction of a similar basilica (1960), 20. For more on the funerary or cemetery basilica: Bovini (1968); Colvin (1991), 109–129; Deichmann (1946); Gatti (1960); Krautheimer (1960); Perrotti (1956) and (1961); Snyder (1985), 92–103; Tolotti (1982).

61. Sancti Gregorii Papae I Opera Omnia, vol. 2. Migne, Patrologia latina 76, Homilia XI and XII, columns 1114–1123.

62. The underground burial galleries at this site were the only ones of which extensive areas were known throughout the Middle Ages; from the fifth century the place was called ad catacumbas (“at the declivities”) because of a natural depression between two hills at the site. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the other underground cemeteries were rediscovered, they were all called by the same name, “catacombs.”

63. Part of the ambulatory has been preserved and now houses the catacomb museum. See Tolotti (1982); Krautheimer (1980), 25. For the building’s original appearance, see the reconstructions in Krautheimer (1960), 24, and (1980), 24.

64. Opposite San Sebastiano’s today are the imposing ruins of a pagan circus, made in memory of Maxentius’ son Romulus in 306–311. The plan of this complex, with its circular tomb, is very like that of a cemetery basilica with a mausoleum nearby; this is one reason why scholars sometimes explained the shell of the great apse at Sant’Agnese’s as one end of the perimeter of a Roman circus.

65. Liber Pontificalis I, 180. Pope Damasus says in his inscription written for this place that he had actually met the martyrs’ executioner when he was a child, and learned the details of their martyrdom from him: percussor retulit Damaso mihi cum puer essem…

66. Gatti (1960). It is not established beyond scholarly doubt that the “basilica anonima sulla via Prenestina” was a Christian basilica.

67. Krautheimer (1960), 28–29.

68. Liber Pontificalis I, 263: Hic absidam beatae Agnae quae in ruinam inminebat et omnem basilicam renovavit.

69. One of Deichmann’s arguments in his 1946 article (p. 231) was that the Liber Pontificalis finds it necessary to clarify that Honorius built ubi requiescit, “where [her body] rests.”

70. Recent excavations have confirmed that the mausoleum and the basilica are two distinct buildings. Evidence was also found, under the narthex of the mausoleum, of the foundations of an earlier structure that was once an integral part of the basilica’s foundations. What this might have been is still in question. Stanley (1994).

Nine: Finer Than Gold: Road, Crypt, and Tower

1. The popes had increasingly preferred to reside at the Quirinale Palace, and from the eighteenth century onward the Vatican’s living quarters were almost deserted. See Girouard (1985), 123.

2. In 1947 the Quirinale Palace became the residence of the president of the Republic of Italy.

3. A truncated semi-circular tower still protrudes from the Aurelian Wall where the Porta Nomentana once stood, on viale del Policlinico. For a description of the via Nomentana at the beginning of the twentieth century, see Ashby (1906). The account gives an idea of how much beauty, and how much of historical interest, have been destroyed since then. See also Chandlery 1903.

4. Servius Tullius, a semi-legendary king of Rome, born a slave (servus), was once thought to have built these walls. He lived in the sixth century B.C. and did build walls, but not these.

5. Nomentum, founded by the Albans and conquered by Tarquinius Priscus in the fifth century B.C., was annexed by the Roman state in 338 B.C. Cicero’s friend Atticus had his villa in the vicinity. The site was abandoned in the eighth century A.D., and the new town called Mentana grew up nearby. (The ancient site is in the area of Casali.) A Roman mile (the word “mile” means “a thousand” [paces]) is 1.480 modern miles.

6. The bridge is near the Mons Sacer or Sacred Mountain. It was said that the Roman plebeians withdrew to this mountain from the city along the via Nomentana in 494 B.C., returning only when the patricians granted them concessions (Livy 2.32 and 3.52). (Another tradition said that the Secession of the Plebs took place on the Aventine Hill, today in downtown Rome.) Not far from the Ponte Nomentano was the villa of the freedman Phaon, where Nero committed suicide in A.D. 68, having fled from Rome on horseback along the via Nomentana (Suetonius Nero 48–49).

7. The emblem of Shell Oil is a scallop shell (coquille Saint Jacques in French), which was and is the sign worn by pilgrims. The symbol began as a badge of pilgrims to the shrine of Saint James (Saint Jacques) at Compostela in Spain, and later came to distinguish Christian pilgrims in general.

8. Pope Innocent VIII endowed the Canons of the Saviour, newly arrived at Sant’Agnese’s from Bologna in 1489, with the right to the toll paid by people passing through the gate. He also allowed the canons to live off the toll exacted for crossing the Nomentan Bridge.

9. Liber Pontificalis I, 127.

10. The discoveries did not prevent the placement of a statue of Pope Alexander I on the Porta Pia, in 1869, balancing a statue of Agnes. Both are by Francesco Amadori.

11. Acta Sanctorum, May Vol. 1. The Hieronymianum or “Martyrology of Jerome,” a calendar dated 592–600, gives the earliest mention of the young martyr Alexander, on his feast day, May 3. Nothing is said of his being a pope, and the tutor Eventius is named first among the three martyrs.

12. For the following, see further Belvederi (1937) and (1938); Marucchi (1922); Styger (1935), 257–259; Testini (1969).

13. The passio preserves the fact that Alexander and Eventius were buried together in one place, and Theodulus apart.

14. The body of Saint Pancratius also lay obliquely with respect to his basilica. Not until the restoration of the church in the seventh century by Pope Honorius I (the builder of Sant’Agnese’s) was the tomb moved into a straight position; Honorius explained what he had done in an inscription in the apse. See Delehaye (1933), 57.

15. The altar over the bones of Theodulus has completely disappeared. In the ninth century the bones of all three saints were brought within the walls of Rome and placed in the basilica of Santa Sabina, to protect them from the invading barbarian armies. The church on the via Nomentana subsequently fell into ruin and disappeared, until its rediscovery in the nineteenth century.

16. This altar frontal, dismissed in the seventeenth century as worth no more than material for making a step, had been prized in the Middle Ages: it had been carefully included in the left-hand (Gospel) ambo of the thirteenth-century altar complex. It was seen there by Pompeo Ugonio in the sixteenth century, and an engraving of it was published (posthumously) by Antonio Bosio in Roma sotterranea as late as 1632. Later, the frontal was believed to have been irrecoverably lost. It is .93 metres high by 1.35 metres wide; the two side pieces are .61 metres high and .83 metres wide.

17. The photograph published by Armellini in 1889 shows letters drawn on the marble on either side of the figure’s head: SS AN and NEAS, “Sanctissima (SS) Anneas,” “Most holy Agnes.” These letters, together with a few other scattered initials, have since disappeared.

18. Exodus 17:11 (as long as Moses kept his arms raised, Joshua’s army had the advantage over the Amalekites); Lamentations of Jeremiah 3:41; Psalm 140/141:2.

19. Homer Odyssey 13.355; Virgil Aeneid 2.687–688; Horace Odes III, 23, 1.

20. See, for example, Tertullian On Prayer 14.

21. In the passio of Marcellinus and Peter, “the executioner saw the souls of the [two] martyrs rising from their bodies in the form of young women, dressed in shining garments and adorned with gold and jewels; they were carried to heaven by angels.” On orantes in general, see Grabar (1968), 72–74; Lowrie (1947), 645–69; Tristan (1996), s.v.

22. Luke 15:4–7; John 10:1–18.

23. The classic text on this subject is Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, 15:35–58: “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

24. See Grabar (1968), 75.

25. There have been thirty-nine anti-popes, or rivals for the pope’s chair, in the Church’s history; Felix II was the third of these. The last was Felix V, 1439–1449.

26. Liber Pontificalis I, 208.

27. For Marangoni’s dramatic account of the finding of the marble, and his foreman’s saving it just in time from destruction, see the original Latin account, Frutaz (1992), 119–121, note 5. The top left-hand corner of the inscription was easily reconstructed.

28. For much of his pontificate, Damasus I was opposed by supporters of the anti-pope Ursinus. There were bloody struggles at the beginning of his reign, one of which took place inside the big cemetery basilica of Sant’Agnese.

29. During the years 1912–1939, ten small pieces of Damasus’ inscription to the martyr Hippolytus were found cut up and used by medieval masons in the inlaid marble floor of the Lateran.

30. The poem says that she “suddenly left the embrace [literally “the lap”] of her nurse,” when the trumpet mournfully sounded; the allusion is to the horn blast that customarily announced trials that could lead to capital punishment. The background of persecution against the Christians is supplied by the rest of the account. The Ambrosian hymn Agnes beatae virginis says that her parents tried in vain to keep her at home.

31. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 160–215) had already written opposing voluntary martyrdom: Stromateis 147,173.

32. Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), The Book of Her Life in Collected Works, vol. 1, tr. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington: Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications, 1976), 55.

33. Damasus is quoting I Corinthians 3:16, and II Corinthians 6:16.

34. For the account that follows, see Krautheimer (1937).

35. Burial behind an altar placed over a saint’s relics is called burial retro sanctos, “behind the saints.” People often thought that burial near a certified saint would give them a better shot at heaven on “the last day.”

36. Letter from the scribe Evarestus, “The Martyrdom of Polycarp.” For the whole document, a letter written by Polycarp, and an introduction, see Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers, 113–135.

37. Athanasius Life of Antony 14; Jerome Epistles 107.1. See further P. Brown (1981), chapter 1, for this development.

38. Julian the Apostate, Epistulae et leges, ed. J. Bidez and F. Cumont (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1922). The translation is P. Brown’s (1981), 7.

39. Gregory Epistles 4.30. See further McCulloh (1975–1976).

40. Gregory several times sent bishops and royalty filings from Peter’s chains, enclosed in tiny key-shaped reliquaries (containers for relics). See Duffy (1997), 56. The very chains from which the filings were taken may be seen today in the basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli (Saint Peter in Chains), Rome. Two sets of chains are linked together. They claim to be (a) those that bound Peter in Jerusalem (Acts 12:6–9). They were sent to Rome by Eudoxia, wife of the Emperor Valentinian III, who replaced the fourth-century basilica, itself built on top of a third-century house, with the present church, consecrated in 439. They also claim to be (b) the chains that bound Peter in prison in Rome before his martyrdom.

41. Sozomen (fifth century) Ecclesiastical History 5.19.

42. Fiocchi Nicolai et al. (1998), 35–36; Carletti (1972), 22–25.

43. A poem for Hyacinthus and Protus, like the one for Agnes written by Damasus and inscribed on marble by Philocalus, is kept in the church of the Quattro Coronati in Rome. For a thousand years Seligenstadt in Germany claimed to have the bones of Saint Hyacinth; the Roman find showed that the German relics were false. See Hertling and Kirschbaum (1960), 48. Hyacinth’s grave had escaped rifling because the level of the pavement in the catacomb had been raised over that of his grave, and people had forgotten its existence.

44. Fiocchi Nicolai et al. (1998), 9, 65.

45. It was not uncommon for people to pre-empt the body of a living person who was likely to become a saint, by getting him or her to die in their town. We saw in Chapter Seven how Saint Antony of Padua, painfully dying, was dragged off in a cart by the Paduans, who wanted to ensure that he would be “theirs.” Their enterprise has not gone unrewarded; Antony’s cathedral still brings to Padua millions of pilgrims every year. One of the relics they may see—if they wish—is his tongue. Ancient Greeks also believed in the power of a hero’s bones; Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus shows how it came about that Oedipus died in Athens, and so deprived Thebes, his hometown, of his bones. See also Herodotus 1.67–68 on the struggle for the bones of Orestes.

46. Cappella meant first a cloak, then a reliquary, then a chapel. (The Sainte Chapelle in Paris can be thought of as a large reliquary.)

47. See P. Brown (1981), 88–91.

48. On relics in general, see Geary (1978); Herrmann-Mascard (1975); Hertling and Kirschbaum (1960); Lefeuvre (1932); McCulloh (1975–1976); Niermann in K. Rahner et al. (1969), “Relics,” vol. 5, 244–246; Pfister (1912); Rollason (1989); Rothkrug (1981); Smith and Cheetham (1875), vol. 2, 1768–1785; Snoek (1995); Sox (1985). On the importance of the Holy Places in the Christian sensibility and for the history of Christian art, see Loerke (1984).

49. Jean Calvin, Traité des reliques (Paris, 1629), 88, 92. Paulinus of Nola had written something similar in the late fourth or early fifth century: Epistle 49, to Macarius. However, the possibility of the survival of true relics of the Cross is strong enough to continue to inspire research. See most recently Matthew d’Ancona and Carsten Peter Thiede, The Quest for the True Cross. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000.

50. For intelligent consideration of relics from the historian’s point of view, see Geary (1978) and Herrmann-Mascard (1975).

51. Life of Abbot Hidulfus, Acta Sanctorum July 11; Acts of the Benedictines; Acts of SS. Fructuosus, Augurius, and Eulogius; Guibert, On the Relics of the Saints; Chaucer, Prologue to The Canterbury Tales lines 696–708; Lefeuvre (1932), 61; Sox (1985), chapters 2 and 3; Smith and Cheetham (1875), vol. 2, 1778.

52. For the concept of communitas, see V. Turner (1972) and (1973); V. Turner and E. Turner (1978).

53. Matthew 10:32–33.

54. A door from the new sacristy leads to the bridge-passage leading to the via Nomentana. Above this door there was once, outside, a bust of Agnes made from two fragments of antique marble. One night in 1973 the statue’s head was broken off and stolen.

55. Catacomb inscriptions show us that the people buried here were mostly very young: a large number of the adults died in their twenties. That might account for the fact that people seem to have been not only short in stature but also thin.

56. From very early times Paul has been depicted as balding and bearing his instrument of martyrdom, a sword; Peter is curly-headed and carries the keys of the kingdom (Matthew 16:19). The Sant’Agnese stone appears to be one of a minority of cases where the two men swapped hairstyles.

57. On the fossores, who were highly respected members of Christian congregations, with duties that were not only material but also spiritual (they came to count as members of the clergy), see Conde Guerri (1979).

58. For the archaeology of this area, see Fasola (1974). Other entries into the catacombs were once available. These led into the very restricted areas that had not been invaded by mud, and which appear to have been known in the Middle Ages. Earlier approaches to the present entry were first inside the Sacred Heart chapel, and then beside it; the door for the latter approach, facing into the church but now closed, is still marked Coemeterium S. Agnetis.

59. But Pope Paul V also named himself very visibly on the entablature of the ciborium over the altar.

60. Matthew 7:7–8; Apocalypse 3:20.

61. Genesis 3:9. For the semantron and its use, see Price (1983), chapter 4.

62. In Latin countries bells used to play the role of the Easter Bunny as the bringer of gifts. Children were told that the bells had flown away on Holy Thursday, like migrating birds, to Rome. They returned three days later, dropping Easter eggs in people’s gardens as they made their way back to their church towers in time to ring out on Sunday. Probably because of their wide-open rims, bells were thought of as the very image of what was needed in giving birth without pain; it was sometimes a custom of pregnant women to pray in the church tower near the bells for an easy delivery. They would also pray that the baby would be “as sound as a bell.”

63. The word kumbalon (“cymbal”) comes from Greek kumbos (“a hollow”) because of the two cupped shapes that are clashed together, as in the wooden version, castanets. Kumb- is the same syllable as we find in katakumbas, “in the hollows,” the name of the first catacomb, now known as San Sebastiano’s.

64. I Corinthians 13:1.

65. For the history and lore of bells, see Price (1983) and Rama (1993). An introduction to the history and art of “ringing the changes,” where a series of bells is rung, with complex variations, by a team of ringers, will be found, for example, in Camp (1975).

66. Exodus 28:34.

67. The English word “bell” is onomatopoeic; it comes from the same root as “bellow” and French bêler, “to bleat.” The word “belfry,” now meaning a bell tower, originally had nothing to do with bells; it is from French beffroi, a wooden tower on wheels used in attacking city walls.

68. Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3; the expression is reversed in Joel 4:10.

69. The science of bell making and bell tuning is far more complicated than this suggests, involving, for example, the contours of bells and the varying thicknesses of their sides. The alloy for a bronze bell in the Christian tradition is seventy-eight per cent copper and twenty-two per cent tin; it is the tin that is responsible for the ring. In addition, different religious and cultural traditions have different bases for a bell’s tuning. For an introduction, see Rama (1993), 168–170. Some bells, for example the shrill warning bell or tocsin, were deliberately made non-consonant and therefore “non-musical” to the ear.

70. Acts 12:6–9.

71. For Roman campaniles, see Priester (1990).

72. On the renovatio, see the articles in R.I. Benson and G. Constable, eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., 1982). Architectural reform appears to have begun at the great Abbey of Monte Cassino in southern Latium. Rome seems to have resisted building campaniles for a few decades after they began to sprout in other Italian towns. Priester (1990), 141–156.

73. The Divine Office is contained in the book called the breviary or Liturgy of the Hours, usually in four volumes covering the liturgical year. These are prayers, including the Psalms, spoken and chanted most especially in monasteries, at the Hours of Matins (four a.m.), Lauds (seven a.m.), Terce (nine a.m.), Sext (noon), Nones (three p.m.), Vespers (six p.m.), and Compline (nine p.m.). (Psalm 119:164 says, “Seven times daily I praise you.”) In the fourteenth century the practice began of ringing, at non-monastic churches as well, the Angelus bell at six a.m., noon, and six p.m. to call to mind the annunciation of the angel to Mary that she would conceive God’s son. The Angelus is still commonly rung.

74. Some said that Lucy tore her own eyes out and presented them to her suitor, who had been smitten by her beauty. Agatha figures in Lucy’s story: Lucy’s mother was healed of a hemorrhage at the grave of Agatha, and thereafter accepted Lucy’s desire to imitate Agatha in remaining a virgin. A fourth-century inscription concerning Lucy survives.

Ten: Virgin Martyr: Tomb

1. Livy I. 58.

2. For Hestia/Vesta, see Vernant (1974). For Tyché/Fortuna, see Champeaux (1982) and (1987).

3. Porta Collina was not far from the old Porta Nomentana (now bricked up) and the Porta Pia, which replaced it. The campus sceleratus, for the burial alive of any vestal virgin who might sin, was near Porta Collina.

4. The Latin phrase flexu in plateae is obscure, but it could refer to a curved space, such as a Roman circus for races. The Loeb edition of Prudentius translates the phrase as “in the corner of the square.”

5. For the church, designed by Rainaldi and Borromini, see Buchowiecki (1967), vol. I, 284–296; Ciofetta (1996); Parsi (n.d.), vol. II, 27–41; Sciubba and Sabatini (1962); Sharp (1967), 29–32. Montagu (1985), vol. I, 150–156 and 216–217, describes and discusses the sculptures for the church by Alessandro Algardi and his pupil Ercole Ferratta.

6. “Agone” is from the Greek agon, “struggle,” here meaning “sporting competition”; the word “Navona” is a corruption of in Agone, denoting the site of Domitian’s Circus Agonalis.

7. See Marucchi (1909), 417.

8. A well-known example of a similar arrangement in the ancient world was that of the hero Oedipus at Athens. Shrines to Oedipus and to the Furies/Eumenides existed both at the Areopagus in central Athens and at Colonus outside the city walls.

9. For the process of canonization, see Woodward (1996). For the meaning of saints, see, for example, Cunningham (1980); Kieckhefer and Bond (1988); McGinley (1970); K. Rahner et al. (1969), vol. 5, “Saints”; Wilson (1983).

10. They were painted in the nineteenth century. In the sacristy of the church is a fine oil painting of Agnes surrounded by a crowd of female martyrs, each of whom carries her identifying attribute.

11. Animals in the stories of martyrs, even the animals in the arenas, often take the martyr’s side. In real life, apparently, the wild animals would often refuse to attack victims in the arenas. See Salisbury (1997), 140.

12. For a good treatment of this complex and fascinating subject, see Heffernan (1988), especially his introduction.

13. David Barrett and Todd M. Johnson in Our World and How to Reach It estimated in 1990 that 26,625,000 Christians had been martyred since 1900. Cited in Bergman (1996), 17. See further Andrea Riccardi, Il Secolo del martirio: i cristiani nel novecento. Milan: Mondadori, 2000.

14. The Puritan poet Milton, in Comus: A Mask (1637), follows the last point in this schema to the letter. His virgin Lady is quite confident that “he, the Supreme good… Would send a glistring Guardian if need were / To keep my life and honour unassail’d” (lines 217–220). The Lady is not martyred, but she is rescued by supernatural means from her would-be seducer.

15. Vernant (1974). The god Hermes expressed “movement,” while Hestia embodied “immobility.”

16. Compare Matthew 22:15–22; Mark 12:13–17; Luke 20:20–26.

17. See, for example, Robert (1994) for Pionios, and Salisbury (1997) for Perpetua and Felicity.

18. A famous description of such a death is in Pericles’ speech extolling soldiers who have died in war, according to Thucydides II.42–46.

19. Matthew 5:1–12; Luke 6:20–23; John 15:18–21. Mark 10:21, 13–14; Matthew 19:21, 23–26. Luke 10:21.

20. Both the Damasus inscription and, more clearly still, the Ambrosian hymn echo descriptions of sacrificed maidens in pagan mythology: the death of Polyxena in Euripides Hecuba 523–570 and Ovid Metamorphoses 13.456–480; and the death of Iphigenia in Lucretius De rerum natura 1.84–101.

21. Under the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone is a bas-relief by Giovanni Buratti, from an Alessandro Algardi design of the 1650s, that shows Agnes being led to the fornix by Roman soldiers, trying (not entirely successfully) to cover her body with her hair. A bust derived from the bas-relief, the head and arms of Agnes, is in the Palazzo Doria Pamphili nearby. Inside the church, among scenes depicting the Agnes legend and related martyr stories, Algardi placed a flying putto in bas-relief, carrying Agnes’ hair.

22. The young man has done nothing at all to merit the grace of God—yet he receives it. This scene was to be used as an illustration of the proclamation of the Council of Trent (1563): “We are justified by grace, because none of the things that precede justification, neither faith nor works, merit the grace that justifies.” The intercession of Agnes and her complete forgiveness of her enemy save him: the scene was also to be used in support of the Catholic belief in the Communion of Saints. For an example of the use of the Agnes story in sixteenth-century theological debate, see Douglas-Scott (1997) on Tintoretto’s altarpiece of Saint Agnes at the Madonna dell’Orto in Venice.

23. Matthew 27:11–26; Mark 15:2–15; Luke 23:2–7, 13–25; John 18:29–19:16.

24. This is an echo of the story of the three young men in the fiery furnace (The Book of Daniel, Chapter 3), a favourite subject in early Christian painting. The young men stand in the flames unharmed, with their arms raised in prayer; they are accompanied by an angel. They had been sentenced to be burned for refusing to sacrifice to idols. We may also recall the Liberian altar frontal, with Agnes as an “orant.”

25. It was common practice for a victim being burned to be “finished off” with a sword; compare the death of Saint Polycarp.

26. In the medieval story of Lady Godiva, the lady rides through Coventry naked, covered only by her hair. “Peeping Tom” the tailor, the only man in town who dares to peer at her from his window, is struck blind for doing so.

27. Matthew 5:38–48; Luke 6:27–35, 23:34; Acts 7:60. See also Matthew 6:12; Mark 11:25; Romans 12:14–21, etc.

28. There is a pun in the text, on leone (condemned “to the lion”) and lenone (condemned “to the owner of a brothel”). The quotation goes on: “The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.” Tertullian Apology 50.

29. Robert (1994), Pionios VII.6.

30. For example, Aeschylus Agamemnon 198–254. The death of Iphigenia by stabbing at the hands of her father Agamemnon (a form of incestuous infanticide combined with human sacrifice) made the Trojan War possible; it also gave rise to crime upon crime in the House of Atreus, the family of Agamemnon and Iphigenia. See Aeschylus’ trilogy, The Oresteia.

31. Tacitus Annals V.9. See also Dio Cassius Roman History 58.11; Suetonius Tiberius 61; Cyprian De mortalitate 15; Tertullian De pudicitia 1.221. In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the girl begs the magistrate to allow her to remain a virgin until her execution by exposure to beasts in the arena.

32. See the excellent essay on a modern understanding of the virgin martyrs in Norris (1996), 186–205.

33. Augustine Epistles 121.9 and 228.7.

34. For the meanings of virginity for Christians in late antiquity, see P. Brown (1986) and (1988); Chadwick (1960). Early Christian women have been the subject of enormous numbers of recent books and articles. For a good example, see Burrus (1987).

35. As we have seen, twelve centuries later, when as a child Saint Teresa of Ávila discovered that her parents wouldn’t let her run away to be martyred, she and her little brother knew exactly what to do next: they decided they should become hermits.

36. Ambrose wrote De virginibus for his sister Marcellina, who was a virgin dedicated to celibacy. The opening line of the Latin passio of Agnes addresses it to a community of celibate women.

37. Matthew 19:10–12. See also Isaiah 56:3–5.

38. The offence to the Roman state constituted by consecrated virgin women found expression in a command by Diocletian during the Great Persecution that professed (that is, formally dedicated) Christian virgins should be searched out and violated. (Codex Vat. Gr. 1669 fol. 401, cited in Jubaru [1907], 68.)

39. For the history and significance of this ceremony, see Metz (1954).

40. Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:47. His cry of affliction is the first line of Psalm 22—a prayer that ends in joy, with the coming of what Jesus called “the Kingdom of God.” The crucified Jesus lived the beginning of this prayer in all its desolation; Christians believe that their response must be to ensure that the rest of the psalm is brought to fruition in the world’s history.

41. Popular fairy tales and rhymes still include “Snow White” and “Mary had a Little Lamb.”

42. Girard (1999) makes an excellent introduction to his work.

43. For examples in Greek mythology and literature, see Visser (1982).

44. See Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, s.v.

45. Flavius Philostratus (third century A.D.), The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Harvard U.P., Loeb Classical Library, Book 4, Chapter 10. See Girard (1999), 83–99.

46. John 11:49–50.

47. See further Barrett (1954–55); Gerke (1934); Kirschbaum and Braunfels (1971), vol. 3, columns 7–14; H. Leclercq, “Agneau,” (1924); Tristan (1996), 123–141.

48. Isaiah 53:7; see the entire section, 52:13–53:12. The figure that Isaiah describes is taken by Christians to be the “type” of Christ.

49. John 1:29 and 36. Compare I Peter 1:18–20. Paul describes Christ as “our passover” (I Corinthians 5:7). For Christians Christ is also the “paschal lamb,” the lamb killed for the Jewish passover, the blood of which the Israelites used to mark their doors so that the plague “passed over” them (Exodus 12:7). Jews did not interpret passover in terms of Isaiah 53, but Christians did. And Jesus as “paschal lamb” is consumed in the mystery of the Eucharist. In the Apocalypse, Christ as Lamb is mentioned thirty times. The Heavenly Jerusalem is “the bride of the Lamb,” and the Lamb is the temple and the light of the city (Apocalypse 21:9–10, 21:22–24).

50. Matthew 18:12–14; Luke 15:4–7; John 21:15–17; Matthew 10:16.

51. John 12:24.

52. John 1:4–5.