Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Church’s Pilgrimage on the Feast of the Apostles—The Seven Commemorative Churches—The Byzantine Basilica of St. Paul—The Apostle’s Tomb—Ostian Way, the Saddest of All Roads—The Tideless Sea—Call of the Unknown, Gorgeous East—Santa Pudentiana, the Site of St. Paul’s First Abiding Place in Rome—Christianity in Early Rome—Priest Pastor’s Story of the Pudens Family—Holy Relics—Story of the Crime of the Vico Scellerato—The Last of the Roman Kings.

From things of the recent past let us turn for a moment to follow a pilgrimage which the Church makes during the seven days following the Feast of the Apostles in June and in the course of which she draws our attention to the seven spots in the Eternal City most closely connected with their glorious end. These spots had been for long centuries points of attraction to the Christians who flocked Rome-wards from all over the world at that time of year, but it was not till 1743 that Benedict XIV, Prospero Lambertini of Bologna (and the fifth Pontiff born in that city of learning), laid down the order in which the seven sanctuaries should be publicly honoured.[10]

In a bull dated April 1, 1743, Benedict decreed that the various corporations of the hierarchy should take it in turn to honour the Octave of SS. Peter and Paul by proceeding in state to the Church designated for the day when a pontifical Mass was to be celebrated, with the assistance of the whole body of the Pope’s Chair. These seven Churches are so bound up with the last days of our great Fathers in the Faith that in passing from one to another it is possible to realise very vividly the scenes of the tremendous drama enacted in the year of grace 67 during the last days of Heaven’s patience with the tyranny of Nero.

Taking them in their order we will leave the Pope, according to his wish, to say his Mass in St. Peter’s on the 30th of June, and follow the Apostolic Vicars, his “Assistants of the Throne,” as they go in state to the Basilica of St. Paul without the Walls. Once that long road skirting the river was the most crowded of the approaches to the city, but that was before the Tiber, having gorged itself to congestion with silt and plunder, had turned aside to find another outlet, when the galleys could still be rowed up within sight of Rome and tumble out their freight of grain or marble or wild beasts on the quays that are deserted to-day. The Ostian Way is the saddest of all roads now; few ever pass over it; there is but one habitation between the city gate and the Basilica, nearly two miles distant. The river rolls, yellow and sullen, to the sea, through flat lowland, reeking with malaria from the swamps, where the fierce black buffaloes still wander at will, and vehemently resent the intrusion of a stranger on their domain.

The Basilica to which the Vicars Apostolic of Benedict XIV went in state was not the one which pilgrims visit now; in the early days it was the centre of a thriving little town outside the town, the suburb of Joannopolis, so called from Pope John VII, who founded and fortified it as a stronghold for the defence of Rome on the side towards the sea. Built in the time of Constantine, added to through the centuries, ever more beautified and never defaced, those who saw it tell us that it was a perfect specimen of the Byzantine Basilica, nobly severe, making the impression of vast undisturbed spaces for worship, yet in reality a treasure-house of riches and art. Its mysterious destruction by fire, scarcely to be accounted for in an erection all of marble and stone, took place on the 15th of July, 1823, on the last night of the life of Pius VII, the Pontiff upon whom Napoleon had laid sacrilegious hands and kept in captivity over five years—a captivity that in years, months, and days was precise in duration with his own after-imprisonment at Saint Helena. Dates are curious things!

While Pius VII lay on his deathbed on that night of the 15th of July (the anniversary of his signing of the Concordat, twenty-two years earlier), he was greatly distressed by a dream which roused him again and again from torpor to enquire of his attendants whether some great calamity had not fallen on Rome. With the dawn came the news of the burning of the Basilica, but it was kept from him, and he passed away that day, without learning the truth of that which the clairvoyance of approaching dissolution had cloudily revealed to him.

Some fragments were saved and incorporated in the new Church which at once rose to replace the ancient one, of which the Sovereigns of England were, until the Reformation, proud to call themselves the titular protectors. The minute description of the original Basilica, left us by Cardinal Wiseman and others who had seen it, shows how, in all respects save one, the new one falls short of the earlier beauty and majesty; but the tomb of St. Paul, the heart of the whole, remains to us intact, far below the level where fire or storm can rend it, and the very emptiness and bareness of the great Church above seem to enhance the awe inspired by that great sarcophagus in the crypt—raised high from the ground of the deep vault, as on an altar throne, so as to be above the depredations of the Tiber even in the river’s most uncontrollable outbreaks.

There, as far as human foresight can discern, the holy, weary relics will lie till the Judgment Day, resting after all the travel and shipwrecks, the cold and hunger and strifes of life, and from the hurried journeys on which they were carried hither and thither, in search of safety from profanation, after death. There is a loneliness of grandeur about the character and mission of St. Paul which, in these ends of time, have come to surround his grave also, and they suit it well. Often in my girlhood I traversed that desolate road between the city and the sea, and all the vitality of youth could not avert the shudder of cold and solitude that came over me in doing so, no matter how numerous and gay my companions might be. We used to drive out to Ostia in the spring, when the sea calls so alluringly to its lovers, and spend long hours under the pines that fringe the beach. The Tiber abandoned the old port long ago and twists itself into the Mediterranean a couple of miles north of its original outlet. In April the stretch of low rolling ground near Castel Fusano is all one field of wild jonquils that fill the air with perfume, and beyond them there is nothing but the long forsaken beach and the regular beat of the tideless sea. I stood there one day on a little rock as far out as I dared to go, with the waves breaking round my feet, and the west wind singing in my ears—singing strange songs of far lands that were already beckoning me away from my Roman home. The sun had sunk towards them, leaving the sky a dome of green and citron, delicate and dim; the sea was sullen grey on the hither side, and floating opal in the west; and when at last I was called back to land, the pines leaned together and whispered dark things about the destinies of mortal maids who ventured to listen to the call of the Unknown.

And how it calls me yet—the Unknown that has just flicked its fringes in my eyes, wafted a ghost of its scent in my nostrils! There are two of us—I and my first-born—to whom Mother Asia still cries heart-breakingly through all the stress and all the staleness of life in the ready-made places. We began our life there together, the baby who opened his eyes in the white heat of an Asiatic summer, and I, who had passed from girlhood to motherhood at his coming; we two knew it, the air of the great plains that reach from Pechili to the Tundras, from Peking to Lake Oo-nor—and the Altai—the padding of the camels’ feet in the dust—the smell of camphor and sandal-wood, and tea-brick—the touch of Siberian sable and silver fox, lighter than my kiss on his cheek, warmer than my arms around his body—the clang of the hammer on the bronze, the damp sweetness of the temple courts, the gleam of rough gold and the blue of the turquoise—the melancholy eternal splendour of the heart of Asia, the dear raw strength of it all, uncannily perfumed and terrifyingly sacred, as the scent let loose from some regal, balm-stuffed tomb! And we go back to Asia and follow the caravans starting for Nijni Novgorod, and talk with the merchants, and rest in our own fairy temple among the white pines of the western hills—for whole nights together sometimes—and the next day return to our places in the cheap civilised world as if nothing had happened—and we never tell anybody where we have been!

But we must continue to follow another and more important pilgrimage. On the 1st of July, the “Apostolic Pronotaries” celebrate the Divine Mysteries in the Church of Santa Pudentiana, the sanctuary which stands upon the site of the house where St. Paul lived during his first stay in Rome from 41 to 50 A.D. It was the property of Pudens, the same, apparently, whom St. Paul mentions in his second Epistle to Timothy, together with Eubulus and Linus (afterwards Pope) and Claudia. Pudens was a wealthy Senator who eagerly embraced the Christian Faith and brought all his family and household into the Fold. What power they had for good, those masters of huge households, in the Rome of the First Century of our era! Doubtless, Pudens, like many others of whom it is consoling to read even in that age of gross selfishness and cruelty, had ever been a just man and merciful to his slaves; but what must have been the rejoicing of the poor bondsmen when he summoned them to listen to the Apostle and learn that Christ died for all, that He had bought for each one of them, as fully as for the greatest potentate on earth, an eternity of happiness in which they would be compensated for all the privations and sorrows of life! Think what that doctrine meant to the unfortunate creatures for whom not only life itself with no hope or intimation of a beyond, but every alleviation of their wretched lot, depended on the whim of an owner, who, if reasonable and kind himself, might at any moment sell or present them to another, of the most cruel and savage character! Even to those of them who did not at once embrace Christianity the master’s altered convictions must have brought intense relief and comfort, and, to those who did, it must have been like the rising of a sun of warmth in darkest, coldest night.

We get a beautiful glimpse into the home life of Christians in those days in the detailed story of the family of Pudens, left us by the Priest, Pastor, the brother of Pius I. The friend and host of St. Paul, having mightily aided the cause of the Faith, was rewarded, it is believed, with the crown of martyrdom, under Nero, but his son, also named Pudens, and heir to his virtues as well as his estates, vigorously continued the good work begun by the father, and brought up his two daughters, Praxedis and Pudentiana, in the love of God from their earliest years. Of the manner of his end I have found no record, though we may be sure it was a happy one; we know that by the time Pudentiana was sixteen, she and her sister were orphans, the possessors of great riches, and that they had vowed themselves to the service of God and His poor.

It was the privilege of wealthy Christians to provide fitting places for the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries and for the assembling of catechumens for instruction, whenever a lull in the tempests of fast-succeeding persecutions made it safe for them to pray and teach elsewhere than in the Catacombs. Pudentiana, although the younger of the two sisters and scarcely more than a child when she died, seems to have been of a most valiant spirit, the one to direct and organise, while the gentle Praxedis, destined to survive her for some years, supported and aided her in all things. These two rich girls, in the flower of their youth, gave all their time to prayer and praise, to charity and penance. “They desired,” says Pastor, “to have a baptistery in their house, to which the blessed Pius not only consented, but drew the plan of the fountain for it with his own hand. Then, calling in their slaves, both from town and country, the two virgins gave liberty to those who were Christians, and urged belief in the Faith on those who had not yet received it. By the advice of the blessed Pius, the affranchisement was declared, with all the ancient usages, in the oratory founded by Pudens; then, at the festival of Easter, ninety-six neophytes were baptised; so that thenceforth assemblies were constantly held in the said oratory, which resounded with hymns of praise night and day. Many pagans gladly came thither to find the faith and receive baptism.

“Meanwhile the Emperor Antoninus, being informed of what was taking place, issued an edict commanding all Christians to dwell apart in their own houses, without mixing with the rest of the people; also forbidding them to go to the public shops or to frequent the baths. Praxedis and Pudentiana then gathered into their own house those whom they had led to the faith, and sheltered and nourished them for many days, all watching and praying. The blessed Bishop Pius himself frequently visited us with joy, and often offered the Sacrifice for us to the Saviour.

“Then Pudentiana went to God. Her sister and I wrapped her in perfumes and kept her concealed in the oratory. Then, at the end of twenty-eight days, we carried her to the cemetery of Priscilla, and laid her near her father, Pudens.

“Eleven months after, Novatus[11] died in his turn. He bequeathed all his goods to Praxedis, and she then begged of St. Pius to erect a Church in the baths of Novatus, which were no longer used and where there was a large and spacious hall. The Bishop made the dedication in the name of the blessed virgin Praxedis herself, and in the same place he consecrated a baptistery.

“But at the end of two years a great persecution was declared against the Christians, and many received the crown of martyrdom. Praxedis concealed a great number of them in her oratory and nourished them with the food of this world and the Word of God. But the Emperor Antoninus, having learnt that these meetings took place in the oratory of Praxedis, caused it to be searched, and many Christians were taken, especially the Priest Simetrius and twenty-two others, and the blessed Praxedis collected their bodies by night, and buried them in the cemetery of Priscilla on the seventh day of the Kalends of June. Then the virgin of the Saviour, worn out with sorrow, only asked for death. Her tears and her prayers reached to Heaven, and fifty-four days after her brethren had suffered she passed to God. And I, Pastor the Priest, have buried her body near that of her father, Pudens.”[12]

There is nothing that could be added to the Priest Pastor’s story. It is so complete, so loving, and so illuminating in the gentle charity with which it tells us that “Pudentiana passed to God.” Not a word of her cruel death—we know of that from other sources, no complaints about the rampant hatred which made it necessary to conceal her body for four weeks before it could be laid beside that of her father in the holy ground of the Appian Way. All is told without a spark of rancour or an exclamation of grief—yet when Pastor buried Praxedis beside her sister, the loving circle to which he had ministered in their house was broken up, every member of the family was dead, as well as most of the friends they gathered there; the home had been raided and desecrated, and he was a marked man, holding himself in readiness for his end.

What strikes one particularly in all the stories of this time is the resolute veneration with which the Christians, in spite of all prohibitions, collected the bodies of their slain comrades and succeeded in burying them in holy ground. The bodies of Pudentiana and Praxedis were finally restored to their home, already consecrated as a church, and there we can behold at this day the phials in which they gathered up the blood of the martyrs. It was the zeal of the valiant Pudentiana in this work of love which drew down upon her the wrath of the persecutors and hastened her own death. A hundred years later the noble Cecilia, with her husband and his brother, suffered for the same cause, and what thousands had been immolated for it between! Nothing could daunt the Christian spirit in this regard, and it cannot but enhance the preciousness of our holy relics to reflect that so many of our forbears in the Faith preserved them for us at the price of their own lives.

There are some startling juxtapositions in the topography of old Rome. But a stone’s throw from the venerable Church of St. Pudentiana is a spot which, when I was a child, was still regarded by the Romans as cursed, still known to us as the Vico Scellerato, though I do not find the name on the modern lists of Roman streets. It was there that was enacted the last scene of one of the ugliest tragedies in the records of humanity, a story of crime so appalling that it has survived twenty-five centuries of oblivion, and is still told, with shudders of horror, among the poor people of that quarter of the city, even as the memory of the good Queen Tanaquil is still venerated for her virtue and wisdom. In these times, when so much instructive old material has been swept away to make room for the fads and futilities of modern education, it seems worth while to place the tale on record again. It opens (as did the history of Hipparchus) with a Greek, one Lucumo, who drifted to Italy in the days of Ancus Martius. Lucumo was the son of a native of Corinth, and, on landing in Italy, settled at a town in the heart of Etruria, called Tarquinii. Doubtless he found friends and countrymen there, for the Greeks were ever a roving people and, to judge by the Greek influence so visible in Etruscan Art, must very early have brought their love of beauty and skill in labour thither. Tarquinii was a walled city, five miles in circumference, as can still be seen from the remains near Corneto Tarquinii, the town which has replaced it. But it was not stirring enough for the venturesome Lucumo, and, moved perhaps by some such mysterious power as that which, centuries later, whispered in Alaric’s ear, “Penetrabis ad Urbem,” travelled southwards and came to Rome, bringing with him his beautiful Greek wife, Tanaquil, and all his goods, which appear to have been of great value. It was quite a caravan, therefore, which approached the northern gate of the city, and one can fancy the hum of excited talk among children and dependents as they paused to gaze at it.

At that moment a great eagle, flapping along in search of a Campagna lambkin for its brood in the Sabines, hovered above the travellers for a moment, its dark wings spread motionless against the blue; then it darted down, and, snatching the cap from the head of Lucumo, soared away with it, while all gazed up in awe and consternation, wondering what the marvel might portend. In an instant another followed. The eagle, after wheeling aloft, swooped down once more and replaced the covering on the leader’s head, then flew away and was no more seen. “It is a happy omen!” cried Tanaquil to her husband, “of this great city thou shalt one day be King!”

He found a warm welcome in Rome and so endeared himself to the inhabitants by his generosity and wisdom that when Ancus, the reigning King, died, they chose Lucumo to replace him. The new King did much to embellish and fortify the city, and Tanaquil, while sharing his state and councils, became the model of all Roman matrons, spinning and weaving the wool for the garments of her family, and clinging in all her ways to the old simple, frugal ideals; her distaff and spindle, and her woollen girdle, were preserved for many centuries, and ranked in importance with the “palladium” and other venerated insignia of Rome’s power.

One day, as she was crossing the court of the palace, the Queen saw some of her servants gathered in a group, staring at some object on the steps leading into the atrium. On approaching she beheld a young boy of great beauty—Servius Tullius by name—whom she had taken into her service, lying asleep on the step, while a crown of lambent flame played above his unconscious head. The servants were terrified, but Tanaquil, versed in all the Etrurian lore of omen, at once perceived that he was to be a favourite of the gods. She told her husband that the boy was destined to great glory, and Lucumo, ever heedful of her wise counsels, henceforth treated him as a son and educated him with the greatest care.

Lucumo, whom the Romans by this time called Lucius, had sons of his own, but the succession, still purely elective, was coveted by the two sons of his predecessor Ancus. Filled with jealousy of the young Servius, whose election as his own successor they feared that Lucius would procure, they laid a trap for the latter by requesting a private audience with him. When they found themselves alone with the King, now an aged man—he had reigned forty years—they basely murdered him and rushed out into the city to tell the people he had died suddenly, and to sway the populace to make them Kings in his place.

But so great was the mourning for good King Lucius when his death was announced, that the people gave themselves up to their grief and put the matter of the election aside. And Tanaquil, the wise woman, caused it to be proclaimed, in an hour or two, that Lucius was merely stunned and not dead at all, and that until his recovery should be complete he desired that Servius should fill his place. Great was the rejoicing in Rome, and with much alacrity the people put themselves under the orders of the young Servius, who himself in all things obeyed the noble Tanaquil. So, for many days, the government was carried on, and when the people had become accustomed to regarding Servius as their ruler, Tanaquil told them that her beloved husband had at last succumbed to his wounds, and that Servius Tullius would in all things follow his good example if they would elect him as King.

This they gladly did, and he reigned over them in peace and honour for many years; but, alas! the bright portent of his youth no longer hovered over his destiny, and dark days were at hand for him and for Rome. He had two daughters, both called Tullia—the elder good and pure as Tanaquil, who had now passed away, and the younger with a heart full of evil and cruelty. These two girls their father had given in marriage to the two sons of his benefactor Lucius, in hope of securing peace to the kingdom by thus uniting the families. The two sons of Lucius presented the same violent contrasts of character as the daughters of Servius; one was a sinner, the other a saint; and marriage mismated them, giving the elder Tullia to proud, wicked Lucius Tarquinius, and her black-hearted younger sister to the good Aruns. The consequences were soon all too apparent. Lucius fell in love with his brother’s wife; she responded to his passion; they two conspired to murder their lawful spouses, carried out their bloodthirsty plot, and then turned their attention to the removal of the aged Servius from their path to the throne.

Servius, sprung from the people, had made many enemies among the nobles by restraining their oppressions, and by championing the poorer classes, and the wicked Lucius found no difficulty in drawing discontented men into a plot to kill the King. They waited craftily till the height of the harvest season, when the able-bodied workingmen were all busy in the fields outside the city; then, gathering in force in the Forum, they installed Lucius in the seat from which Servius was accustomed to judge the causes that were brought before him. Servius was at once warned of that which was taking place, and hurried on foot from the royal residence on the so-called Cispian Hill; in haste to reach the Forum and quell the insurrection, he took the short-cut through what is now the Via Urbana. At the end of this street he was met by a band of assassins who hewed him down and left him in his blood, lying right across the road.

Meanwhile his daughter Tullia had left her own home (now marked by the Church of St. Peter of the Chains) and bade her charioteer drive at full speed to her father’s house, of which it was arranged that she should take possession while the slayers were despatching him. On reaching the Via Urbana the driver, aghast, pulled up his horses.

“We can go no further on this road, Lady!” he said, pointing to the body of the murdered King.

“Drive on!” she commanded.

“I cannot—without crushing the King’s body,” he protested.

“Drive on!” she cried, frantic to reach her goal, and the trembling man obeyed. The wheels bit deep into the yet warm flesh, and dripped and spattered her father’s blood all along the road which the daughter followed to reach the stolen throne. And from that day on through all the ages the thoroughfare was called the Vico Scellerato—the atrocious road!

Tullia’s son grew up to be “False Sextus,” whose crime forced chaste Lucrece to take her own life. Then the people rose against the tyrants and drove them out, to die despised and in exile and never another “King” ruled in Rome till it opened its dishonoured gates to Victor Emmanuel in 1870.