If you can make out the Latin behind us it reads: Sepulcrum Sancti Petri Apostoli - The Tomb or Sepulchre of St. Peter, Apostle. I'm on the right with my head framed by a square granite plaque.
Due to the fact that we are not supposed to use our cameras, this is the only pic I have (apart from the ones I posted yesterday... oops! sorry. Well, those pictures from yesterday are special, then.
In the afternoon we had a rather remarkable tour of the Scavi. It is hard to describe. No cameras allowed, again, so no pictures. Imagine going down into the dark, dank basement of the oldest house you can find. The air is close, the atmosphere is constraining and uncomfortable. It is dimly lit and you know that it is actually a graveyard from previous generations. Yes, there are people buried in the cellar walls and you are going down there because you want to understand the history of the place and you have heard it on good authority that someone incredibly important is buried there.
During and after WWII archaeologists uncovered an old Roman necropolis (literally 'city of death') where upper middle class Romans entombed their loved ones. This graveyard isn't like a typical Canadian cemetery. There was a main 'street' and on either side of the street there were 'burial rooms' for lack of a better description. I saw these homes, each with a legal description of ownership over the doorway, with a central room with niches in the wall for the cremated remains of family members.
These archaeologists obtained permission from Pius XII to continue working their way along this road, unearthing these rooms that had been packed with earth by Constantine in 313-314 AD in order to make a solid foundation for the first St. Peter's. Why would he build on a sacred Roman cemetery? There were laws against that, like there are today. Why would the Emperor risk the wrath of the populous by declaring that he was going to build a Church there for the hated Christians? He gave everybody a year to claim the remains of their relatives from the niches in their burial rooms, and then filled them all in with earth.
The archaeologists painstakingly dug all of these rooms out by hand... moving every closer to the spot that would be right under the present altar of St. Peter's and finding increasingly Christian inscriptions as they progressed. Pius XII didn't want them to dig too close to the area under the altar... but even as they tried to go around, they discovered a marble wall, a massive marble box really, set around the site directly under the altar by Constantine in 313 AD. On the far side of the marble box they discovered an opening, and another wall inside, from the earliest century, being preserved by the marble casing set there by Constantine in 313 AD... a red wall with pillars sheltering an inner tomb with bones dating to the first century AD. Who's bones would be so carefully preserved?
Several inscriptions on the tombs nearby indicated that later Christians were buried there in an attempt to be as close to St. Peter's burial site as possible. The bones inside had one remarkable feature: There were no ankle bones or feet. Because St. Peter was crucified upside down, and he was crucified in the three days in which Nero killed Christians (especially the leaders) as scapegoats for the burning of Rome, the disciples who were eager to honour the great Apostle in the midst of a horrendous persecution, had to act with great haste (the dead Christians would be otherwise discarded into a lime pit or subject to mass cremation) and so, not being able to unfasten the nail which had been driven into his feet they cut his body off at the ankles. This has always been the understanding and tradition of the Church. The fact that this skeleton had no ankle or foot bones was confirmation of the oral tradition. The stresses on the feet and ankles of a body being crucified upside down would have been tremendous. In any case, the bones in the tomb that had been honoured with protective walls, and porches and marbles shrouds are Peter's... and they rest directly below the altar of St. Peter's Basilica... and I stood there on Tuesday in that dark, underground excavation site and saw the bones that are still there. On the opposite side of the excavation site but still opening onto the Tomb of St. Peter is the well lit crypt (pictured above) where we said Mass.
Lots of words today and not many pictures... but I wanted to share my discoveries in the Scavi, the necropolis and the Confessio. If you want more detail on the archaeological evidence and the Church's confirmation that the foremost Basilica of Christendom rests over the burial site of St. Peter himself, you can read more about it on Wikipedia here.
No comments:
Post a Comment