The Via Appia and Pilgrim's Rome

The problem with being on pilgrimage is that there's so much to see in the locations you're at, you really slip back into being a tourist on holiday. Yet on Saturday, I was determined to get on the real pilgrim road and see the many shrines and churches of Rome.

I began, quite naturally, with the Basilica of St. John Lateran (San Giovanni in Laterano). If you haven't heard of this church, know that it is the true capital of world Catholicism. St. Peter's Basilica of Vatican City may be the largest Catholic church in the world and the basilica of the Vatican, but the papal throne- that is, the diocesan seat of the bishop of Rome- is at St. John Lateran. This is the pope's official church, and it is its episcopal chair where he sits in order to become the pope.

The church is absolutely magnificent. It was the first major church built after Christianity was legalized by Constantine's 313 Edict of Milan. Today, even thought it lies outside the walls of Vatican City, it is still sovereign Vatican territory; when you pass the meter high markers in the piazza outside, you are no longer in Italy. The other fascinating passageway on my way into the church were the doors; the grand bronze doors (not the ones I passed through, alas) are the actual doors of the Curia, the Senate house of Rome. Yes, those are the actual doors that saw the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, there on St. John Lateran.

From there I went to Santa Maria Maggiore, the leading church in the world dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was built in the midst of the Nestorian controversy once the Council of Ephesus ruled that Mary was indeed the God-bearer, or Theotokos, and therefore the Mother of God. The debate was significant because the opposing side (the Nestorian heretics) ruled that Mary was only the mother of Christ (Christotokos, or Christ-bearer), of his human nature, and not his divine nature. Obviously, she did not generate his divine nature, but motherhood is an interpersonal, relational role. Therefore, if she was only the mother of his human self, then Christ was both a human person and a divine person as well as having both human and divine natures. Christ thus acquires multiple personality disorder. No, said the Council of Ephesus, Christ is one human person, and Mary is the mother of that total human person, with complete human and divine natures.

This began the excellent and proper tradition of ascribing honor to Mary in order to say something about Christ. We call her the Virgin Mary in order to affirm Christ's origins; we call her Theotokos in order to affirm Christ's divine nature and singular personhood. And so on and so on. Santa Maria Maggiore was built specifically to commemorate this victory of true doctrine and to emphasize the truth about Christ by celebrating truths about Mary. Contained in the church, by the way, are the supposed relics of the manger of Bethlehem. Er, well, it's the thought that counts...

The other churches I visited later in the day were closed, so I made my way by bus to the Appian Way. I was dropped off on the southern end and walked downhill, past the Tomb of Cecilia Metella (daughter-in-law of Crassus) and the Villa of Maxentius (the enemy defeated by Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge). After only a few minutes (and a few more minutes stop for lunch), I came upon the Catacombs of St. Sebastian.

St. Sebastian was a pre-Constantinian martyr who served as a captain of the imperial guard but built up others' faith in times of persecution and death. For this he was shot through with arrows, a scene often depicted in iconography and later realistic art (the story goes that he miraculously survived this, and was later beaten to death; who knows). He was buried in these catacombs, and his body now rests in peace in the Constantinian Basilica of St. Sebastian built atop them.

The catacombs are miles and miles of subterranean tunnels used for burial. Romans preferred to cremate the deceased, but Christians, due to their belief in the resurrection of the dead, preferred full burial. Since the Romans did not permit burial within the sacred boundaries of the city (as I mentioned in my post 'Jesus Is Lord (and Caesar is not)') these catacombs, as well as mausoleums like that of Cecilia Metella, were placed along the Via Appia.

Alas, there were no photos permitted in the catacombs (although I did get a picture inside the church of the tomb of St. Sebastian, left), but it was an interesting experience to view ancient Christian tombs- with adjacent Christian graffiti- stretching out beneath the earth. I highly recommend it for anyone visiting Rome.

I walked farther up the Appian Way past the catacombs of St. Calllisto (which I did not enter for lack of time) to the Church of Domine Quo Vadis. Domine Quo Vadis means 'Lord, where are you going?" So the legend goes, Peter fled Rome during Nero's persecution of Christians after the Great Fire. On his way out, leaving other Christians and martyrs behind, he encountered Christ (or a vision of Christ) walking in the opposite direction, and asked Domine, quo vadis? Christ answered "I am going to Rome to be crucified again." Peter took this to mean that he should face death in solidarity with his fellow Christians, and returned to Rome to be crucified upside down. The church marks the supposed spot where the meeting between Christ and Peter took place. Er, well, it was a nice little church.

My day continued with a return to Pilgrim's Rome (the neighborhood of St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore, between the Termini Train Station and the Colosseum). The next church I saw was St. Peter-in-Chains. This church holds the chains that are said to be the ones that bound him to his cell in Caesarea Maritima and in the Mamertine Prison of Rome (during his imprisonments in those places as recorded at the end of Acts).

Relics aside, the church contains one of Michelangelo's greatest sculptures: the horned Moses on the tomb of Pope Julius II. The tomb was originally meant to be his greatest achievement, fit for none but the greatest of the late medieval/renaissance warrior popes, Julius II, but when the pope died the funding dried up, and when Michelangelo died the tomb was left unfinished. The tomb as it exists today is a mere compilation of the few portions he finished; the famous horned Moses was supposed to be in the far upper right hand corner. As it stands today, the tomb is a mish-mash of whatever Michelangelo managed to complete. All the same, the horned Moses is one of the greatest pieces of sculpture on the planet.

He is horned, by the way, because the rays of light that shone from Moses as he descended from seeing God on Mount Sinai were translated in the Latin Vulgate as 'horns.' Michelangelo knew better, but by then it had become tradition to depict Moses with horns, and the Moses in question is supposed to be menacing. This is, after all, Moses at the moment he descends from Mount Sinai with the original tablets of the law, horrified and angered by the idolatry of Israel and the Golden Calf. The horns just complete the scene.

After a brief stop at San Clemente- a 12th century church built atop a 4th century church built atop a 1st century temple of the eastern Mithras mystery cult built atop Roman homes- I headed on the metro down to St. Paul's-Outside-the-Walls. St. Paul's was the largest church in Christendom until St. Peter's was completed, and it contains some of the finest mosaics in Rome. Indeed, all of the churches mentioned in this post- except the Basilica of St. Peter- have early medieval iconographic mosaics that look straight out of the Christian East. That surprised me to no end, I must admit, but in the most pleasant way.

That's a fairly quick summary of my Saturday, but it was a very fulfilling day.