Birthday Celebrations (& A History Lesson!)

Wow, blogosphere. 20 years old. That's a long time of living. What better place to celebrate this marker than in Rome. After all, it was just 10 years ago that I first came to this city after the first decade of my life was over with. So my birthday day was pretty much divided in two parts: the visit to the Necropolis and Tomb of St Peter and then the celebrations that occurred afterward. For obvious reasons, I'll spend most of the time writing about the former and not the latter.

Before we start, just for clarifications sake, everything I write about below is just my opinion as a blogger. I used information I learned from the tour guide, as well as things I remembered from past history and archeology classes then filled in the cracks with a quick wikipedia search here and there; I tried to be as factually accurate as I could. Since we weren't allowed cameras, most of the photos are not mine and are from Google image search. But as you all know, most events, people and places from history can be debated since none of us were there as witnesses so just remember that when reading this and don't quote me as 100% factual. (Just read about disclaimers in my business law class)

Presidential Arrival

So one of the best parts of this tour of St Peter's tomb was all the information I learned throughout the tour. So I'll sum up the major points right here so if you're not interested in this then you can scroll down but I think you'll find this all really neat. [Turns out I basically ramble on for this entire post, sorry :)] Oh and the other cool part was that our tour was kind of delayed because the President of Iceland decided to come and get the tour during our time slot, so we had to wait for him and his entourage to start his tour before we could go in. So originally, the area where The Vatican City, named after the Etruscan god of death, used to just be a swampy area away from the main part of Rome. And that's true if you take a look at a map, The Vatican is pretty much the only thing on this left side of the Tiber river, everything else from ancient times is south east on the right side of the Tiber. Of course, my apartment is also here on the left side so let's not act like there's nothing at all worthwhile on this side. So this area became home to the Circus de Nero (Circus meaning race track, not Barnum & Baileys), Nero being the former Roman Emperor as we all remember from history class. Oh and he was also crazy.

So everyone's probably heard the phrase "Rome is Burning" or something like that (Thank You, Jim Rome), well this is where that is from. Around 64 AD Nero decided that he wanted to rebuild Rome to make it even grander and leave his mark. But how could you rebuild Rome, the greatest city in the world, if there was already a city standing in its place? Solution: Burn Rome down and then blame it on someone else and rebuild the city even better. So who was unanimously hated by everyone in 64 AD and would have been easy to blame a fire on; Christians, bingo. So after blaming it on them, Nero famously "Played the fiddle while Rome burned." The fire wiped out a lot of the city and he rebuilt it better than ever. One of these projects that he completed was the Circus of Nero, named after.. him! It was similar to the Circus Maximus down by the Coliseum (except smaller) in that it's just a typical oblong chariot race track (and bloody battle ground). It was also sometimes called the Circus of Caligula because the obelisk in the middle of it was brought over from Egypt by Emp. Caligula. Finally, an answer to this obelisk question I've been asking since I got here.

So there's a huge obelisk in the center of St Peter's Square today and it's been there forever and I've always wandered what it was. Well, when St Peter was crucified during the reign of Nero, it happened in Circus di Nero (partly because all the other areas for public execution had just been burned down by the fire). Although no one knows exactly when Peter died, it is commonly thought to be around the time right after the Great Fire of 64 AD. He was crucified in Circus de Nero upside down and the last thing that he would have seen before he died was that obelisk, brought over by Caligula standing in the center of the Circus. Now, 2000 years later, that obelisk still stands in almost its original location but it was moved a little bit to be the center of St Peter's Square which was designed in the mid 1600's by Bernini. The drawing shows Circus de Nero in green over top of the current layout of St Peter's Basilica and Square. So you can see that this obelisk has been standing in the same spot for pretty much two millennium. -- Fun semi-related fact, if you stand on a circle marker next to the obelisk, you can see an optical illusion that makes it seems like the row of columns along the perimeter of the square are actually only one (left picture) even though they're actually 3 rows deep (right picture). Good work, Bernini!

If you look up a bit from the Circus obelisk location on the above diagram and over to the left to where the center of the cross shape is (the basilica) you can see where St Peter's remains were buried. It was all part of Via Cornelia which ran parallel along the north side of the Circus, which today would be right under the Basilica. Here is a picture of what Via Cornelia looks like today. It's still there, don't worry, except now its 30 feet underground never to see the light of day again. As you can tell, it was a narrow road. The purpose of this road was to have mausoleums for people that died during the bloody events that occurred inside the Circus. After St Peter was crucified, the Christians at the time would have most likely done all they could to obtain his body, which they managed to do, whether by stealing it or bribing a Roman guard, no one knows for sure. The easiest place to bury him would have been right up along this road under cover of darkness.

Obviously, the Christians wouldn't have been able to mark his grave with any kind of monument at the time because of persecution and universal hatred of Christians; they would have wanted this place to remain a secret as much as possible. Therefore, he was literally wrapped up and dumped in the ground there. As time went on, people would make pilgrimages to this site to pay their respects to him and offer prayers. He stayed in this place until the 300's when Constantine changed everything.

Before the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312, Emperor Constantine the Great had a dream in which he was spoken to by God to paint the Chi-Rho on the shields and helmets of his men. The Chi-Rho stands for Christos because chi and rho are the first two letters of spelling Christ in Greek. Outnumbered and defeat being an almost foregone conclusion, somehow, Constantine and his men were able to pull out a victory. He attributed this to his vision of God and to make a long story short, with the urging of his mother, St Helen, Christianity became acceptable in Rome. This was a novel concept at the time because Constantine made it okay to practice any religion you wanted to! (It wasn't until the 1598 Edict of Nantes by King Henry IV of France that you were allowed to have the freedom to practice any religion you wanted to there in France, so yeah, pretty novel concept for the time). Christianity then became the state religion of Rome later in 380 under the rule of a different Emperor.

Now that Christianity was tolerated in Rome, Constantine wanted pay his respects to the bones of St Peter that were supposed to be on Via Cornelia. Now at this point in history, there had since been erected a chamber above the vault. The purpose of this was to make it easier for pilgrims to pay their respects to him. The chamber was small and could only fit 4 people at time and had a thick half wall that partitioned the room into two parts, one part having a hole in the ground that led directly down to his remains and the other part being a type of waiting room. The thick partition wall was used as a place for pilgrims to inscribe "religious graffiti." It was during this time that the bones of St Peter were actually moved out of the original grave hole. They were placed by Constantine into a hallowed out portion of that thick dividing wall and inscribed over it was the phase "Peter lies within." This is supported by the fact that the bones found in this wall in the 1980's have dirt from the original grave hole on them and also are marked in purple dye that was used only by Roman Emperors (such as Constantine). They were also dated to be that of a heavy male in his 60's. Description matches. Curiously enough, in the actual grave, three different skeletons were found of people who we're not sure who they are.

Now that Constantine had placed the bones of St Peter in a spot for safe keeping, he wanted to build a basilica over top of these remains. This would be difficult because of the fact that there was a whole area of dead bodies there. He gave all citizens the opportunity to move the remains of loved ones from the area before he started with his plan of filling the whole area in with dirt for the foundation of his basilica. He had to do this because the Vatican is literally on a hill, called Vatican Hill. Rome is a city of 7 different hills of which this was one. Since this area was along the side of that hill, he had to fill in all the mausoleums with dirt to give himself a level foundation. After doing this, he built his basilica on top with the alter being directly measured above the remains of St Peter. The picture above is of the first mausoleum when you enter the street that was filled up with dirt up until recent excavations, you probably can't see this but there are many subtle Christian symbols throughout it. During these excavations in 1939, they had to be very secret about it because you-know-who was trying to take over the world and any artifact discovered down here would've been taken by him despite the fact that he clearly was not a religious man. Anyways, they were able to do the excavations in secret only at night and uncover this lost road. When Berlin would check in to see what the Pope was up to and why there were so much dirt everywhere, the Pope simply said that they were redoing his gardens. Go Pope!

Old St. Peter's Basilica - Obelisk still in original location on left

After Constantine finished his basilica, now known as the Old St Peters Basilica, it eventually became run down and in desperate need of repairs. Now, 1200 years after its completion, Pope Julius II shocked the religious community by declaring he would tear it down and build a new basilica in its place and construction started in 1504 and it was completed in 1626. This is when the obelisk, now sitting off to the left of the old basilica, was moved into the center of St Peter's Square. One of the reasons that the original basilica was in such bad shape was because right around this time the church was experiencing the crises known as the Avignon Papacy and Great Schism. This was the time when there were fractions developing within the church that actually led to there being three different Popes at the same time.

It's kind of an entertaining story, well at least I think it is. Let's see how much I remember from my medieval history class. Let me set the scene for you. It's around the year 1300 and King Philip IV of France was a little behind on his bills and needed money so he came up with this great idea of taxing the French clergy. Well this didn't sit well with Pope Boniface VIII who issued a papal decree reminding King Philip that he's not allowed tax clergymen. When a French bishop then refused to pay this tax, King Philip arrested and imprisoned him which resulted in Pope Boniface holding a council which declared all kings, along with everyone else in the world, as subject to the Pope (Boniface thought he was kind of a big deal).

Okay so a few years later, Boniface died and a new Pope needed to be elected (after French troops smashed their way into the Papal Palace and took Boniface as a prisoner). Don't worry, they released him eventually. So somehow, the Cardinals ended up voting in as their new Pope, a Frenchman! So, on his way from France to Rome to assume his new position as Pope, he stopped in the French town of Avignon where his fellow French Cardinals convinced him to stay because Rome was allegedly too corrupt. For the next 70 years, the Popes lived in Avignon, not Rome. Anyways, now, in the thick of the 100 years war, a new election is held after Pope Gregory VIII died shortly after returning the Papacy to Rome. The Italian Cardinals were scared of another Frenchman getting the position so they fix it (always a bad idea) so that the winner of the Papal election is an Italian, who was kind of a terrible person/pope (even worse). So now the French feel cheated and pissed off so they stomp on back home to Avignon where they eat their escargot, smelly cheeses and elect their own Pope. So for all those keeping score at home, we now have 2 different Popes for the same church. This, The Great Schism, was a bad problem for the Church for obvious PR reasons. Even Charlie Sheen's lawyers and publicists would have been overwhelmed. Then, to make it all worse, each Pope took a different side in the 100 years war, (Avignon on the French side, Rome on the English side) and last time I checked, getting mixed up in wars among secular powers was not part of the Churches mission. #thataintwinning, right Charlie?

Purple was Team Avignon, Green was Team Rome

To remedy all of this, a council of high church representatives met in Pisa and elected a new Pope. (Don't ask me what qualifies you as a 'high representative') So now, again for those keeping track at home, there were three Popes going around. It's okay though, they all excommunicated the other ones so your Pope was the only real Pope.. Oh and all the people following a Pope that wasn't yours, accused you of being a heretic (you would die for that in those days). Anyways, finally after many 'councils' two of the Popes resigned and the 3rd one that refused to, well was 'forced' into resignation and they elected a new Pope in 1417 after going a couple years of flat out not having one. This little story was just to show you why the old basilica was falling apart and in need of repairs, as you can see, they were worrying about other stuff. That's why they started plans to build a new basilica shortly after this mess. I also always find that story fun.

I won't go into much detail about this but another fun fact relates directly as a result of this. So obviously it costs money to build the biggest basilica in the world, so the Church needed to get this money somehow. Enter Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz. He owed a lot of money to The Vatican and thus became a huge proponent of the method of selling indulgences (pay the Church money and get (partially) absolved of some of your sins) so he hired German Johann Tetzel as his #1 salesman. Tetzel knocked on the wrong door one day, begging for some change (indulgence change, not Obama kind of change - that's not worth anything); the door of Martin Luther, who did not appreciate his way of selling get-into-heaven-free cards. Martin Luther then in response wrote a letter with 95 theses, pinned it to the door of a church and started a revolution that near ruined the Church. All just because the Pope wanted to build a new church. That's the Summary of the Spark Notes Summary version of that story.

I guess I got off topic. It's really not like me to ramble. Anyways, like I was saying up there, a new basilica needed to be built. So they made sure to keep all the dimensions lined up where the altar stood so the exact placement of the new altar would be directly above the bones of St Peter and the tip of Michelangelo's dome way at the top of the basilica was also engineered to be perfectly in line with them as well. Pretty impressive. Also, since money was already discussed as an issue, it was decided that they would 'recycle' nearby marble to build the new basilica to save money. So apologies to the Coliseum and Roman Forum, you guys used to look incredible with your shiny marble, but nevermore.

So I guess I should finish talking about the tour. Walking down that underground road and seeing two thousand year old things everywhere was one of the coolest things I've ever done. Inside one of the mausoleums was a mosaic of who I believe to be Jesus, depicted as Apollo, and is the oldest ever known portrayal of Jesus in artwork. Some argue that it is the god Sol invictus, the later Roman god of the sun (Apollo was Greek god of the sun). So it is heavily debated who this actually is. It was common for Apollo or Sol to be depicted with the chariot bringing the sun up every morning. But there's also lots of evidence that points to it being Jesus, and it's location also supports that. Oh but Romans did celebrate the festival of Sol on December 25th. As we wound our way up towards the end of the road, where St Peter's tomb is, we were literally walking down along the main aisle of the basilica right above our heads. The New Testament scripture in Matthew 16:18 "And I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church." The interesting part was that Jesus normally addressed him by Simon, his apostle name; Peter was a new nickname Jesus gave him and Peter coincidentally literally means rock in Greek. And from that point on he was commonly referred to as Petros (rock) or in English, Peter. And it was right, the church was literally built on him.

Source: www.stpetersbasilica.org

So finishing up the tour, we first started down on the street level and walked right by the hole in the ground where his bones were originally placed. Remember that soon after a chamber was built above it with that thick dividing wall so that people could pray above his tomb and drop prayers on parchment down into it. So the next stop was then climbing up some very narrow stairs to be along the level with the chamber. From this side we could see the original chamber where people would have knelt down and prayed. At this point, the tour guide had finished the story of the 1939 excavations and how they turned up empty, only finding the 3 skeletons in the grave hole, none of which could have been Peter's. Then we walk around the chamber to the other side when he tells us that a few years later, people stumbled upon this thick wall again and realized there was an inscription that read "Peter lies within." Tests on the bones found inside it showed that they could have been the bones of St Peter. There's obviously no way to accurately tell, you just have to have faith. Like the tour guide/seminarian said, all the traditions line up and say that in this very spot, St Peter was buried and they found bones that matched his age and stature in his own mausoleum chamber wall. And right after that we turned the corner and sitting in a plastic box in front of us, in the dividing wall, were the bones of St Peter. We reflected there for awhile and said a couple prayers. Now I know it was stuffy and cramped and I had been way underground for almost two hours, but the feeling I got in that chamber was a kind of surreal indescribable one that I could not pin as ever having felt before. I'll leave it at that. I definitely recommend to everyone doing this tour at some point in their life.

After that, we walked around Rome for awhile and then initiated the birthday festivities. We started at Abbey Theatre Irish Pub for happy hour. Then we wandered around the Piazza Navona area, while getting pleaded by every restaurant to come in as we walked by. Finally, one got was so persistent and would not leave us alone that we ate in his place. It was pretty good food, not gonna lie. No free birthday dessert though = lame. It's okay, I had gone out with some friends Thursday night to Dar Poeta and gotten the famous Nutella Calzone dessert, besttt dessert everrr and followed that up with a bar that served chocolate shots (the shot glass was actually an edible piece of chocolate.) After dinner and finding a nice gelato place, we went down towards the Campo di Fiuri area and went to Panta Rei club where we signed up for an open bar for two hours and definitely made it worth it. Oh and a Beatles cover band was playing, so cool. After that, more just wandering around Rome until I came back and called it a night. Successful day overall, lots of fun. Hope you all enjoyed my first post as a twenty year old! Here's to many more (but shorter) posts!