Tuesday, September 04, 2012

The Pieta, Michelangelo's masterpiece, in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome
The Baldacchino under Michelangelo's dome in St. Peters Basilica, Rome, with the golden light in background, outlined by a dove symbolizing The Holy Ghost
Enter St. Peter's Basilica in Rome from the center door and view the huge interior

St. Peter's Basilica


Chapter 17-- Rome

The Basilica di San Pietro – St. Peter's Church

     Doors open at 7:30 am. I would be there at the appointed hour to enter St. Peter's Church, the most famous holy church and historic building in the world.
     The previous day, we toured the Vatican Museums, buildings stuffed with the treasures of the world, and also really stuffed with tourists.
     The Vatican Museum tour ends with the Sistine Chapel, then moves into The Basilica di San Pietro – St. Peter's Basilica. Once in the basilica, even as huge as it is, that afternoon it remained heavily stuffed too .
     The basilica opens each day at 7:30, and I vowed to be there next morning, before the crowds, to absorb the building alone.
     So here I am, early in the morning, myself and a few pilgrims coming in for early mass.
     At right as you enter, there's the Pieta, Michelangelo's masterpiece, the Virgin Mary holding the dead Jesus, after the crucifixion. It's behind protective glass now, ever since in 1972, a person tried to damage it with an ax.
     Here's a quote by Charles Dickens who visited the church in 1846, describing his first steps into the building: The first burst of the interior, in all its expansive majesty and glory and most of all the looking up into the dome, is a sensation never to be forgotten.
     Early morning inside is dark, the sun low against illuminating the interior. Along the sides are small chapels, and I see a service in progress near the front. Noticing many nuns, and since the public is allowed in at 7:30, this must be an early mass being said for workers in the Vatican. As the morning progresses, more and more people enter, many of them locals arriving for mass before work. A priest enters another chapel and begins a service, as many visitors follow. By the time I leave at about 10 am., the chapels are busy, including an organist.
     Many are tourists like myself who simply had to be there, to witness this magnificent holy building, and allow it absorb you. It does not matter your faith, one way or another, this atmosphere, this building interior, will move you.
     The first chapel concludes, worshipers break into groups and go their ways. I watch one of the caretakers, a sampietrini,  manipulate gallon jugs, filling huge baptismal fonts with holy water, ready for the day's visitors.
     As I wander through the basilica, photographing what I can because of the dim light, there are statues everywhere including the 13th Century bronze statue of St. Peter. After all, this is St. Peter's church, his holy shrine, plus the finest renaissance monuments and decorations money could buy.
     There are more monuments, 39 of saints who founded religious orders and St. Teresa of Avila and other renaissance decorations, plus 44 altars, 27 chapels, 800 columns, 400 statues and 300 windows.
     It is huge inside covering 5.7 acres able to accommodate crowds up to 60,000.
     St. Peter's was founded in 324 by Constantine, then rebuilt in the 16th Century by Renaissance masters including Bramante, Michelangelo and Bernini with the center focus as the shrine to St. Peter, the first pope, crucified and buried on this very spot, his tomb under the central altar.
     As you wander the church, there is always something that strikes your eye – high above the altar designed by Bernini, a bright golden window of glass with the outline of a dove, shines over all. It's the symbol of the holy ghost. .
     As you enter and walk towards the dome, there is Bernini's Baldacchino at the crossing of the transepts, shelter of the papal alter. If you have seen televised events from the basilica, you have seen this on television, four giant twisting columns of bronze, rising 90 feet from the floor. At the apex of the Baldacchino a globe is supported by four ribs and crowned by a cross.  It is the most sacred location of the Roman Catholic Church, a vertical axis runing from the exact center of Michelangelo's dome then going straight down into the Tomb of St. Peter.
     As you look up into Michelangelo's dome, there are the famous inscriptions surrounding the base: (in Latin of course) You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
     And: (in Latin) To the glory of St. Peter, Sixtus V, pope, in the year 1590 and the fifth year of his pontificate.
     Now you can take the elevator or climb the stairs to the dome, view the interior of the church from the gallery above, feel its enormity. Then go out onto the east side of the roof, view Vatican City, St. Peters Square and the Eternal City beyond.
     Three blocks away was our apartment. I returned, gathered the family, and on a quiet Roman side street in the residential area, we enjoyed morning cappuccino and a pastry, as all Italians do.

A Book Review


     If you like murder mysteries particularly spy novels, a new book by author Danial Silva is now available, entitled The Fallen Angel. Silva is a spy novelist, with his central character and super spy Gabrial Allon, a master art restorer who is regularly contracted  by the Vatican.
     Gabrial Allon also is an undercover Isreali assassin, on call from Israeli secret security forces for special deadly assignments usually involving international terrorism.
      He is in the Vatican in this current novel restoring a Carravegio, The Deposition of Christ,  when he is summond by the pope's senior aide to come to the Baldacchino area in St. Peter's Basilica where there lies under a tarpaulin the shattered female body of one of the art historians of the Vatican.  She supposedly fell from the catwalks of  Michelangelo's dome, straight down towards the tomb of St. Peter.
    It was first ruled to be a suicide, but Gabrial Allon knows she was murdered.
    In another of Silva's books, Gabrial Allon saves the pope from a terrorist bomb, which does great damage to St. Peters square during the Wednesday audiance killing hundreds of pilgrims.
     Silva's spy novels are fast paced, a roller coaster ride through Europe and the Middle East.   


        Carravaggio's Deposition of Christ, regarded as his finest painting, is described in the spy novel, A Fallen Angel by Daniel Silva who writes:  "the art restorer glowed under the intense white light.  Gabriel stood motionless before the towering canvas for several minutes, hand pressed to his chin, head tilted to one side, eyes fixed on the haunting image.
 " Nicodemus, muscular and barefoot, stared directly back as he carefully lowered the pale, lifeless body of Christ toward the slab of funerary stone where it would be prepared for entombment.  Next to Nicodemus was John the Evangelist, who, in his desperation to touch his beloved teacher one last time, had inadvertently opened the  wound in the Savior's side.
  Watching silently over them were the Madonna and the Magdalene, their heads bowed, while Mary of Cleophas raised her arms toward the heavens in lamentation.  It was a work of both immense sorrow and tenderness, made more striking by Caravaggio's revolutionary use of light.
  Even Gabriel, who had been toiling over the painting for weeks, always felt as though he were intruding on a heartbreaking moment of private anguish."