VATICANO

Summary: I. Geography (cols. 1040-41). - II. Law (cols. 1041-53). - III. Archaeological Zone and Basilica (cols. 1053-1097). - IV. The Vatican Palaces (cols. 1097-1106). - V. Pontifical Museums and Galleries (cols. 1106-23). - VI. Vatican Library (cols. 1123-1130). - VII. Vatican Archives (cols. 1131-35). - VIII. Vatican Printing House (cols. 1135-37). - IX. Observatory and Vatican Radio (cols. 1137-1140).

I. GEOGRAPHY.

Extending barely 440,000 sq. m., it is the smallest State known and is entirely enclosed within the urban perimeter of Rome, on the slopes of a hill that has remained substantially outside the inhabited center of Rome. Its borders therefore coincide for the most part (to the N., W., and S.) with the city wall erected by the Popes (Paul III, Pius IV, Pius V, and Urban VIII) between about 1550 and 1640 to enlarge and defend this city, while to the E., from Porta Cavalleggeri to the Museums, where it is not marked by the road network, the boundary is actually interrupted, as it were, in correspondence with St. Peter’s Square and Bernini’s colonnade. The border line is marked here, on the floor of the square, only by a strip of travertine that unites the two arms of the colonnade and, in effect, retreats as far as the Arch of the Bells, the columns and gates of the Basilica, and the Iron Door.

The territory of the State of the so-called Vatican City assumes a roughly trapezoidal shape with the longer side to the S. Its maximum width (from E. to W.) is just over one kilometer (1,045 m.); its length is even less (850 m.). The elevation rises from 19 m. above sea level at St. Peter’s Square to 77.5 m. in the Vatican Gardens; on the NW walls it descends to 56.5 m. One third of the territory is occupied by buildings, one third by squares and courtyards, and the remainder is available for possible construction.

Beyond this proper territory of the State, several smaller and separate areas remain, always within the borders of Italian territory, but enjoying the benefits of "extraterritoriality" and "exemption from expropriation and taxes," or both. These areas cover a total surface area of approximately 700,000 square meters; the largest (approximately 400,000 square meters) is that occupied by the Papal Palace, the Villa and the Palazzetto Cybo, and the Villa Barberini at Castelgandolfo, the summer residence of His Holiness. Following these are the Villa Gabrielli on the Gianicolo, the Palace of the Holy Office, the Lateran (with the Basilica and the Scala Santa), the Dutria, the Chancellery, Propaganda Fide, Saint Calixtus in Trastevere, the Eastern Church, and the Vicariate. Those enjoying only exemption rights are the Palaces of the Gregorian University, of the Holy Apostles, those annexed to the church of Saint Andrew of the Valley and of Saint Charles at the Catinari, the Biblical, Oriental, and Christian Archaeology Institutes, the Lombard and Russian Colleges, the two Palaces of Saint Apollinaris, and the House of Spiritual Exercises for the Clergy of Saints John and Paul. In this way, it has been possible to provide a seat for some of the central organs of the Vatican, which would otherwise have been unable to find space within the proper territory of the State, guaranteeing them, in essence, the same conditions they would have enjoyed there. Excluding the Villa of Castelgandolfo (27 km from Rome), the farthest extraterritorial zone from the Vatican (Saint Paul’s) is 5 km away.

Railway communications are ensured by a spur of a few hundred meters, connecting the station of Saint Peter on the Rome-Viterbo line with the special Vatican station built in the Cortile del Belvedere (elevation 42) with a monumental character (a station of honor). The State of the so-called Vatican City has its own postal, telegraphic, and telephone offices, as well as a high-power, modern radio transmitting and receiving station, and an electric power plant located within the State itself.

According to the census of December 31, 1936, the population of the State of the so-called Vatican City was 956 people (compared to 1,025 in 1932), of whom 746 were citizens and 210 residents. Those born in Italy formed the vast majority (596 citizens and 197 residents); in terms of status, laypeople predominated (615), while there were 94 priests and 37 religious. The official language of the State is Italian.

II. LAW

I. CONCEPTS

In its historical and political antecedents, the creation of the Vatican City State is connected to the Roman Question (v.), which arose between the Holy See and Italy from the very dawn of the Risorgimento, following the gradual conquest of the Papal States and, finally, of Rome itself by the Italian government; and as a result of the Holy See’s constant and irreconcilable claims to this civil principality, as a necessary and irreplaceable requirement for the perfect exercise of its spiritual and religious activity as the supreme institution of the Catholic Church.

The foundation of this requirement of the Holy See is predominantly theological and is linked to that fundamental principle of divine law according to which the Pope must be exempt from the interference of any external authority and enjoy absolute, visible, and manifest independence in the exercise of his universal religious functions as head of the Church. For although, in the order of religious relations, the Holy See (v.) already enjoys such full independence by virtue of being the head of a societas iuridica perfecta, that is, a primary legal order such as the Catholic Church, its subordination in the order of temporal and political relations would in practice necessarily reverberate even into the order of spiritual relations and impair or obstruct the perfect enjoyment and free exercise of its own religious sovereignty. Hence the necessity that, even in the temporal order, it be exempt from the interference of any external power and placed in a position of absolute and visible independence and autonomy.

Now, to achieve this result effectively, according to canonistic doctrine, there is only one means: the creation of a civil principality for the Holy See, that is, a true State placed under the sovereignty of the Pope, constituted for his service and functioning as his temporal bulwark, so that he, adding to his spiritual sovereignty as head of the Church a full political sovereignty as head of a State, may exercise his universal religious activity with that true, stable, and visible independence which belongs to him by divine right. It is precisely this canonistic requirement, realized in the past by the Papal States, that today finds its concrete fulfillment in the Vatican City State: created precisely and solely (as formally declared in paragraph 2 of the preamble to the Lateran Treaty) to ensure the Holy See absolute and visible independence and to guarantee undisputed sovereignty even in the international sphere.

II. NATURE

Without pausing on the preliminary question, of purely juridical dogmatics, concerning the manner in which the process of juridical formation of this new State was effected, and coming straightaway to the examination of its nature and internal constitutional structure, the first problem which arises in this regard from the juridico-political standpoint is whether such a new organism can be objectively recognized as possessing the qualification, the characteristics, and the functioning of a true and proper State.

However singular and anomalous its characteristics may be when evaluated in the light of the general theory of the State, under the positive aspect of internal Vatican constitutional law the solution can only be an affirmative one.

From the very first moment of its existence, in fact, the S.C.V. not only formally proclaimed itself to be a true and proper State, but strove to secure
VATICAN CITY — Territory of the State of the Vatican City (photo Gab. Fot. Naz.)

1) privilege of extraterritoriality with exemption from expropriation and taxes; 2) the Basilica and Apostolic Palace of the Lateran with the annexed Holy Stairs; 3) the Basilica of St. Mary Major with the annexed buildings; 4) the Basilica of St. Paul with the annexed buildings; 5) the Palace of the Dataria; 6) the Palace of the Chancellery; 7) the Palace of Propaganda Fide; 8) the Palace of St. Callistus in Trastevere (now of the Sacred Congregations); 9) the Palace of the Convertendi (now the Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Church); 10) the Palace of the Holy Office and its dependencies; 11) the Palace of the Vicariate; 12) properties on the Janiculum; 13) minor seminary. Properties exempt from expropriation and taxes; 13) the Gregorian University; 14) the Gregorian University at the Pilotta; 15) the Biblical Institute; 16) the Palace of the Twelve Holy Apostles; 17) the palace annexed to the church of St. Andrew of the Valley; 18) the palace annexed to the church of St. Charles at the Catinari; 19) the Archaeological Institute — Oriental Institute — Oriental College — Russian College; 20) the Palaces of St. Apollinaris; 21) the House of Spiritual Exercises for the Clergy at SS. John and Paul. Property exempt from certain taxes; 22) the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy (Piazza della Minerva).

in any case to translate into action and render as solid and evident as possible, seeking also substantially within its internal constitutional order that precise juridical physiognomy, those characteristic features and that conduct which are proper to States; which is decisive to conclude that, at least from the perspective and in relation to Vatican internal law, the S.C.V. cannot but be considered constitutionally recognized as such, since it is in substance a juridical sphere in which only its sovereign and unquestionable self-determination subsists and in which therefore it and it alone rises to the decisive element for the specification of its nature and juridical position objectively.
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III. STRUCTURE

Once this preliminary question has been resolved, one can proceed directly to an analysis of its internal constitutional structure, as it presents itself in its constituent elements: territory, people, sovereignty, and end, highlighting, albeit synthetically, the manifold peculiarities found in each.

1. **The Territory.** — The Vatican City State presents itself as the smallest State in the world. Its area, fixed in a special plan constituting Annex I of the Lateran Treaty, measures barely 44 hectares and consists substantially of the Vatican Palaces with all the buildings, gardens, and annexed lands. The extraterritorial properties of the Holy See in Rome, as listed in the aforementioned art. 15, enjoy the immunities recognized for the seats of diplomatic agents of foreign States. In art. 15 itself, it is stated unequivocally that they form part of the territory of the Italian State, and the same property and immunities enjoyed by them are recognized in favor of the Holy See not as sovereign of the Vatican City State, but as the supreme institution of the Church.

Special rights and duties of the two contracting parties in their reciprocal relations are then established in the Treaty with regard to the territory. Thus, on the part of the Holy See, there is the obligation: a) that St. Peter’s Square, although forming part of the Vatican City State, continue to be open to the public and subject to the police powers of the Italian authorities, save, however, the right of the Holy See, in view of particular functions, to temporarily withdraw it from public free transit and from the powers of the Italian authorities (art. 3, paras. 2, 3); b) that the Basilica of St. Peter continue to be open, normally at least, to public worship, while it remains forbidden for Italian authorities to mount the steps and to enter it, except by invitation of the competent authorities (ibid.); c) that the treasures of art and science existing in the Vatican City State remain accessible to scholars and visitors, although the Holy See reserves full freedom to regulate public access (art. 18).

On the part of the Italian State, there is the obligation: a) pursuant to art. 7, para. 1, not to permit new constructions around the Vatican City State that would constitute an encroachment and to provide for the partial demolition of those already existing for the same purpose (art. 7, para. 1); b) not to carry out or permit, without agreement with the Holy See, any road or building changes that might affect the Vatican City State in St. Peter’s Square and in the zones adjacent to the colonnade (art. 7, para. 3).

Vatican — Territory of the State of the Vatican City: 1) Vatican City. Buildings with extraterritorial privileges exempt from expropriation and taxes; 2) Basilica and Apostolic Palace of the Lateran with the Holy Stairs; 3) Basilica of St. Mary M

The anomalies and singular peculiarities that, in the light of general theories of the State, the territory of the Vatican City State presents are numerous and truly significant. First, its extreme smallness, which ends up reducing the State itself almost to the sovereign’s palace, situated not only in a city but indeed within the very capital of another State. Second, its distinctly private-law nature, which makes it appear rather as the private patrimony of the Holy See than as the true territory of a State, the Holy See being recognized on it not only with absolute public-law authority but also full private-law ownership (Tvatt., precamb. para. 2, arts. 3 and 5). Third, its absolute immutability, rendering it incapable of any increase or decrease and ensuring that for the State the principle of absolute territorial inalienability prevails; an inalienability that does not derive even from the State’s internal constitution nor represents a mere self-limitation of the same, but flows from the very international act of its formation and cannot be revoked or modified by its own will. Finally, and above all, the grave anomaly that, since the Vatican City State is constituted first and foremost to secure the temporal independence of the Holy See, the territory comes to have, in relation to this purpose, a far more important function than the population, being of much greater value than the latter as a prerequisite for such independence, and thus ends up rising to the primary element of the State in contrast to the population, which functions as a merely secondary element—an outright antithesis to what obtains in all other States.

2. The People

This matter is regulated by articles 9 and 21 of the Lateran Treaty and by Vatican Law III on citizenship and residence. According to these provisions, the following are considered Vatican citizens: a) those who reside permanently in the Vatican City State by reason of office, dignity, post, or employment, when such residence is prescribed by law or authorized by the Cardinal Secretary of State or the Governor as connected with the necessity of the office (Treaty art. 9; Vat. Law III, art. 1, para. b); b) those who reside permanently in the Vatican City State, independently of office-related reasons, by discretionary authorization of the Pope with grant and retention of citizenship (Treaty art. 9; Vat. Law III, art. 1, para. c); c) the spouses, children, ascendants, brothers, and sisters of a Vatican citizen, provided they live with him and are authorized to reside in the State according to the norms established in the same Vatican law (Vatican Law III, arts. 3, 4, 5); d) the Cardinals of the Roman Curia, i.e., those residing in Rome, even if they dwell outside the Vatican City State (Treaty art. 21; Vatican Law III, art. 1, para. a).

Therefore, it can be concluded that Vatican citizenship is acquired, as a general rule, through stable functional residence, i.e., stable residence within the territory accompanied by the exercise of an office; and, as an exception, either through stable residence alone for those who have obtained papal authorization or who find themselves in the conditions provided by Vatican law, or through the office alone for cardinals of the Curia.

The loss of any of these conditions results, in individual cases, in the loss of citizenship, which may therefore be either voluntary (spontaneous abandonment of residence or renunciation of office), or imposed by law, or decreed by authority (cessation of the conditions under which residence is permitted; revocation of office or of authorization to reside, etc.: Vatican Law III, arts. 6, lett. b = d; 8). However, according to article 9 of the Treaty, residence—and thus citizenship—is not lost by the mere fact of a temporary stay elsewhere, provided this is not accompanied by the loss of one’s dwelling in the city itself (for cardinals, even in Rome), or by other circumstances evidencing the abandonment of such residence.

Upon the loss of Vatican citizenship, those who, before acquiring it, were Italian citizens, or are descendants of Italian citizens, or who, though originally foreign citizens, have no right to reclaim or enjoy citizenship in any other State, revert to or become Italian citizens (Treaty, art. 9, para. 2).

Finally, with regard to the legal status of Vatican citizens in Italy, the Treaty, in the already cited article 9, provides that in all cases where Vatican law does not lay down special provisions, they fall under the application of Italian law in Italian territory if they were originally Italian citizens, and under the law of their respective foreign State if they were originally citizens of other States.

Under these conditions, it is clear why the element of "people" in the Vatican City State presents an absolutely anomalous nature and exceptionally peculiar characteristics. First, the fact that the matter is regulated in the Lateran Treaty rather than solely in internal Vatican laws, with the consequence that the freedom of the Vatican City State to determine sovereignly who constitutes its population and under what conditions individuals may enter or be excluded from it—rights inherent to all States—is bound and limited. Second, the fundamental criterion adopted as the basis for the acquisition, retention, and loss of citizenship, which, being founded on stable functional residence rather than on *jus sanguinis* or *jus soli*, in practice results in the absence of any blood or racial ties among its members and in the lack of that national element which forms the social foundation of the people of every State.

Moreover, while citizenship by definition is an original and definitive status that attaches to the individual from birth and accompanies him until death automatically, Vatican citizenship presents itself with an essentially acquired, precarious, and unstable character, such as that which is acquired by an act of will and at a later time, which is held temporarily and can be lost at any moment, so much so that it is not without reason concluded that it is in fact nothing more than a superimposed nationality that is added and removed like a garment (Larrie, op. cit. in bibl., p. 22).

Finally, the very position of these citizens within the State is truly singular, in that they exist only insofar as they are necessary for the administration of the territory and for the service of the State, and subsist only as officials (employees) of the State itself or of the Holy See. Hence it is not the State that exists to embody the interests of its own community, but rather this community that is instituted to provide for the welfare of the State—indeed, not even of the State, but of another distinct entity, the supreme institution of the Church, of which the Vatican City State is ultimately a mere instrument for the attainment of its ends. From this it follows, as has already been noted, that, unlike other States, in the Vatican City State the citizens appear with respect to the territory as merely accessory and secondary objects of the sovereignty of the Holy See.

3. Sovereignty

The sovereign of the State, by virtue of the Treaty and in accordance with the fundamental laws of Vatican City, is naturally, indeed necessarily, the Holy See, that is, the Roman Pontiff, inasmuch as and because he is the supreme institution of the Catholic Church; and civil and political sovereignty in the Vatican City State is assumed by him as soon as he is elevated to the pontificate, precisely because—as canonists explain—*principatus civilis sequitur ut accessorium principatum religiosum*. For this same reason, during the period of vacancy of the Holy See, the College of Cardinals, in assuming the government of the Church, is also invested with supreme power in the Vatican City State. Yet, just as in regard to the Church its powers of governance are limited and, as regards legislative activity, restricted to cases of urgency (Apostolic Constitution *Vacante Sede Apostolica* of Pius X, no. 5), so too with regard to the government of the Vatican City State it may issue legislative provisions only in cases of urgency and with effect no longer than the duration of the vacancy, unless they are confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff subsequently elected in accordance with the Sacred Constitutions (Fundamental Law I, art. 1, para. 1).

The authority of the Pope, as regards the government of the Vatican City State, is truly autocratic and unlimited; he possesses the fullness of legislative, executive, and judicial powers within the framework of the State's legal system (Fundamental Law I, art. 1), and the representation of the State in its relations with foreign States in all matters of international law (ibid., art. 3). In practice, he exercises these absolute powers of government, partly directly and partly through special delegated organs. These are:

a) The Pontifical Commission. — It was established by His Holiness Pope Pius XII on 20 March 1939 and consists of several cardinals assisted by a secretary; it is delegated to exercise all the powers belonging to the Supreme Pontiff in matters pertaining to the government of the Vatican City State. The nature of this Commission has been compared in doctrine, though seemingly without solid foundation, to that of the lieutenant-general of the Kingdom in Italian constitutional law.

b) The Governor. — He is appointed and removed by the Pope and is directly and exclusively responsible to him. By law, he is delegated the normal exercise of executive power (Fundamental Law I, art. 6), except for specific acts reserved to the Pope (ibid., arts. 2–4), and he may, at the Pope’s discretion, be delegated legislative power to regulate particular matters or individual objects (art. 5, para. 2). Furthermore, even without express delegation, he may issue regulations and ordinances for the execution of laws, after obtaining the opinion of the General Counselor of State, and without being able to derogate from or dispense with the laws themselves (art. 4, paras. 3–4). By law of 1 December 1932, no. XXXII, the office of the Governor was definitively structured, providing that in the exercise of his functions and in the study and handling of the most important affairs, the Governor be assisted by a Central Council composed of the three directors of the central offices (Secretariat, Monuments, Museums and Galleries, Technical Services), which group together all the services under the Governor’s authority, and by a president possessing special technical-administrative expertise.

c) The General Counselor. — He too is appointed and removed directly by the Pope and is directly and exclusively responsible to him; he is not required to assume Vatican citizenship or residence, nor does he belong to the category of State officials, but receives only an allowance for his office (Law IV on administrative order, art. 8). He is a consultative organ of the State, with administrative functions, and is required to give his opinion whenever so stipulated by law or requested by the Pope or the government (Fundamental Law I, art. 8). Moreover, appeals for the redress of rights or interests addressed to the Pope and petitions for clemency must be submitted through him.

d) The judicial organs. — The appointment and removal of judicial personnel is the prerogative of the Pope. Such personnel are not required to assume Vatican citizenship or residence, nor do they belong to the category of state officials; they receive only an indemnity for their office. For lesser civil matters and for contraventions in penal matters, judicial functions are entrusted to a single judge, who in civil cases is the President of the Court of First Instance or one of the judges of that court designated by him, and in penal cases is an administrative official designated by the Governor.

For other cases, the Court of First Instance is collegial and composed of a President, two effective judges, and one substitute judge; jurisdiction in higher degrees is ensured by a Court of Appeal and a Court of Cassation. Moreover, the extraordinary remedy of recourse to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura is admitted. Naturally, lay tribunals are excluded from all matters which, by reason of subject or object, are reserved, in accordance with the Code of Canon Law, to ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

e) The administrative bodies. — All depend on the Governor of the State; not all are necessarily listed. The rights and duties of officials, employees, and wage-earners, their appointment, discipline, and removal are determined by a regulation of the Governor (Law IV on administrative order, art. 9).

As for the governing functions of the Holy See, its constitutional legal organization was regulated by the promulgation of 6 fundamental laws published on 7 June 1929 and distinguished by progressive serial numbers, namely: Law I Fundamental Law of the Vatican City State; Law II On the Sources of Law; Law III On Citizenship and Residence; Law IV On Administrative Order; Law V On Economic, Commercial, and Professional Order; Law VI On Public Security.

Law II, which governs the subject of the sources of the objective law of the S.C.V., distinguishes between principal sources and supplementary sources. The former are: a) the CIC and the Apostolic Constitutions; b) laws issued for the City of Vatican by the Pope or by subordinate authorities delegated by him, as well as regulations issued by the competent authorities (art. 1). The latter are: a) Italian civil, commercial, procedural (a special judicial system was established by the decree issued with the law of 1 May 1946) and penal laws in force on 7 June 1929; b) the general and local regulations of the province and governorship of Rome indicated by the law itself and with the modifications and limitations specified therein, always excepting the precepts of divine law and the general principles of canon law; c) the norms of the Treaty and Concordat; all the aforementioned norms, in relation to the factual situation existing in the S.C.V., must be applicable there (art. 3). Special norms are finally established to fill any remaining gaps in both civil and penal matters (cf. art. 22 and 23).

Having made these brief observations on the governmental system of the S.C.V., we may proceed to examine its most notable characteristics. In the S.C.V., sovereignty is configured as an elective monarchy of an autocratic, patrimonial, and extratemporal character.

The first of these characteristics does not require special comment. As has already been seen, the Holy See holds sovereignty as a veritable absolute monarch in the most precise and complete sense of the term. Any idea of distinction, let alone opposition, between the Holy See as sovereign and the Vatican subjects would be truly puerile, just as inconceivable is any thought of a division of powers or separation of functions, the masterpiece of the constitutional systems of modern States. In particular, by the solemn provision of art. 1 of the Fundamental Law I, the Holy See is, as has been seen, the source of all sovereign powers without exception, and even when in their actual exercise the existence of other organs (Governor, tribunals, etc.) is found, they appear as its mere delegates, and their very delegation reduces to a mere possibility left to its exclusive discretion and revocable at any time. Conversely, the subjects of pontifical sovereignty not only are not recognized any political rights or any participation in the exercise of governmental power, but in practice lack the opportunity to exercise many fundamental public rights, such as religious freedom, individual freedom, freedom of association, of the press, of teaching, etc.

The same six fundamental laws, which consecrate the juridical organization of the State, do not constitute a true self-limitation of sovereignty on the part of the Holy See either, since this, as in the order of the Church is above canon law, so in that of the Vatican City State remains above the laws it itself has enacted and is absolutely free to abrogate, modify, or derogate from at any time and at its own pleasure.

An even more singular feature of the Vatican City State is that, in terms of sovereignty, it presents itself as a revival of that figure of a patrimonial State which was common in the feudal era; that is to say, a State in which juridical personality, and thus the power of will and governance, does not belong to the state order understood as a unitary whole, but to a subject existing within it, the supreme ruler, who is its actual holder by virtue of a superior interest. The supreme ruler asserts and exercises this power in his own name and for his personal advantage as an inalienable and perpetual right of his own, with a conception and content of a rather private-law nature rather than public-law (roughly speaking, as a private individual might exercise his *ius dominii* over a piece of land he owns); and he exercises it finally primarily as dominion over the territory and only secondarily as imperium over the citizens.

In the Vatican City State, in fact, the Holy See exercises its autocratic power of imperium not for the interest and advantage of the State itself, but precisely in the name of a different and superior interest, that of the Church. It exercises this power with absolute supremacy over all the various constituent elements of the State: over the territory, which is the object of its private ownership; over the people, constituted by its mere officials; over the organization, created by it and dependent solely on it; and over the laws, whose enactment, preservation, and repeal depend exclusively on its discretion. It exercises this power as a necessary, inalienable, and perpetual right of its own, since the Vatican City State arose as a means and bulwark of the Pope’s spiritual sovereignty and was at the same time recognized by Italy in Article 26 of the Treaty precisely under his sovereignty. The Pope’s possession of the most absolute sovereign power in the State thus becomes a true necessary, inalienable, and immutable element of the State itself, rising to the fundamental presupposition of its juridical existence and subsistence, both internally and internationally, at least in relation to Italy. Finally, as has been repeatedly noted, this power is exercised primarily as dominion over the territory and only secondarily as imperium over the citizens.

Finally, the last characteristic of the element of sovereignty in the Vatican City State is its essentially extratemporal content, namely the fact that the temporal power of the Holy See, though in itself so autocratic and unlimited, seems to have estranged itself even from the protection and pursuit of the temporal interests of its own community, and ends up appearing reduced, in this respect, to a mere *nudum ius*. The higher purpose, in fact—essentially religious and spiritual—which the Holy See has set out to achieve through its *principatus civilis*, has led it to regard as negligible, if not as a true obstacle, any involvement in those public services connected with the exercise of political sovereignty. Thus, rather than burdening itself with such onerous and, from its point of view, useless obligations, it has preferred to renounce their organization and fulfillment, entrusting them, as will be explained later, outright to Italy.

4. *Its end.* — Since the Vatican City State was created precisely and solely to provide the Holy See, the supreme institution of the Church, with sovereignty even in the temporal sphere, its ultimate necessary purpose, as the preamble to the Treaty notes, is concretized in the precise aim of *ensuring the Holy See absolute and visible independence and guaranteeing an indisputable sovereignty, even in the international sphere*. Hence the consequence that the end of the Vatican City State presents itself with three unique and most singular characteristics: it must necessarily be an apolitical end, a purpose transcending the interests of its own population, and a teleological end.

The Vatican City State first of all has an apolitical purpose. Whereas a state, by definition, is a political entity, that is, an entity with general purposes and therefore potentially unlimited and variable by its own exclusive self-determination, the Vatican City State is an entity with a fixed, determined, and immutable purpose, incapable of any variation. Moreover, it has an end that is absolutely alien and transcendent to the interests of its own population. While every state is, by definition, directed toward the subjective realization of the well-being of its community, the Vatican City State appears instead to pursue solely spiritual and religious ends of a transcendental and universal nature, entirely exceeding the material interests of its people. It also presents a typically teleological end, in the sense that it does not find, as every other state does, its justification in itself, in the mere fact of its juridical existence.

All this ultimately results in the Holy See assuming, in its internal structure and in its international character, the typical figure of a theocratic hierocratic State; a State in which the religious element is inherent and intrinsic to its organic structure, so much so as to inform and permeate all its political and juridical life and activity, indeed to be elevated to the true informing concept and ultimate end of its entire organization and functioning. It is made to appear as an organism subject to an external and superior will, the divine will, in which resides its primary reason for being and its very capacity to live and act, and of which its governing organs appear as the representatives and bearers, while its laws are presented as concrete manifestations and commands.

IV. EXTERNAL INTERNATIONAL ASPECT

Having outlined the constitutional profile of the State of the Vatican City (S. C. V.) and highlighted its singularities from this internal point of view, it is necessary to examine its juridical position and its particular characteristics from the external international aspect.

The first question to examine and resolve is whether, in this order of relations, it actually possesses that juridical state nature which it exhibits (as has been seen) under the profile of its internal constitutional order, and whether, therefore, it can and must truly be considered a member of the international community of States. Naturally, such qualification and position are not lacking in affirmation and claim by the S. C. V. (cf. Fundamental Law I).

The recognition of the S. C. V. S. C. V.; but also and above all in the very fact that all of them equally continued to maintain unchanged their diplomatic and juridical relations with the Holy See, even after its solemn proclamation as sovereign of the S. C. V., without entertaining any reservation or exception in this regard. All this, moreover, apart from the fact that it would have been illogical and absurd for such recognition to be lacking on their part, since, in substance, it was precisely those States, far more than Italy, which had a real political interest and advantage in recognizing the S. C. V. as an authentic State member of the international community, for it was precisely with the creation of this organism that the Holy See’s full independence and autonomy from the Italian State was secured — an independence and autonomy which they were particularly eager to see affirmed dogmatically and realized practically in an incontestable manner before the entire Catholic world.

Yet, even in its international aspect, the S. C. V. presents a nature and characteristics all its own and quite special.

First of all, as has already been observed, the Holy See, at least in relation to Italy, if it appears as it does in its external apparatus with the characteristics of a state organism, is in fact still a State willed and recognized by the two contracting parties for the special purposes and under the modalities set out in the ... Treaty, that is, with certain attributes and aims which not only directly affect its essence and constitutional structure, but which also give juridical value and significance to its very personality and its mode of international experience. Indeed, by constituting as many prerequisites for its recognition by Italy, these attributes and aims have come to be essential qualifications of its very international personality vis-à-vis at least the Italian State, any alteration of which would ipso facto entail the extinction of the State as a subject of rights in the international order; indeed, according to the authoritative opinion of some jurists, it would ipso jure restore to the Italian State sovereignty over the parcel of territory and population to which it has renounced. This has the effect of making the Holy See a truly unique and singular example of a State necessarily having a predetermined, fixed, and immutable physiognomy, functioning, and purpose, and for which, therefore, having a specific constitutional configuration and internal activity is a juridically relevant condition, indeed a true essential prerequisite for its very possibility of existence and subsistence in the order of international relations.

Another characteristic, then, no less worthy of note though not equally singular, is its juridical status as a neutralized State. This finds its basis in the provision of Article 24, final paragraph, of the Treaty: “The Vatican City shall always be considered neutral and inviolable territory”; and it has the effect that the Holy See is thus abstractly bound erga omnes by a perpetual and absolute commitment to neutrality, by virtue of which it is obliged not to have any international relations other than those of peace, and therefore not only to refrain from participating in wars between States, but also to abstain from acts that might lead to such participation (offensive and defensive alliances; political unions with other non-neutralized States, etc.), while naturally retaining its full right of self-defense against any aggression.

As has moreover already been noted, the Holy See, having its own territory completely surrounded by that of another State, Italy, assumes in relation to it the character of an enclave, with the consequent ipso jure obligation upon Italy to ensure, both for the Holy See and for third States, independently of any conventional agreement, the full and absolute freedom of communication. However, with regard to the particular relations between the Holy See and Italy, this obligation loses much of

or — Interior of the church of S. Anna dei Palafrenieri, raised by Pius XI to the status of a parish church of the City of the Vatican [cf. *cost. paensi pacto*, 30 May 1929: *AAS*, 21 [1929], p. 310]. In-

its practical interest, inasmuch as the Treaty itself formally delimits and pre-establishes a whole series of conventional obligations assumed by the Italian State towards the Vatican State, aimed precisely at ensuring and guaranteeing its free connection and autonomous freedom of communication with other States, both with regard to telegraphic, radiotelegraphic, telephone, radiotelephone and postal services and the circulation of its vehicles (art. 6), and also with regard to its agents and diplomatic relations (arts. 12 and 19). In practice, therefore, this figure of an enclave would have an effective legal relevance only in the fact that third States, although remaining extraneous to the relations agreed upon between the two contracting Parties, would nonetheless have the right to demand from Italy the observance of these obligations towards themselves, at least within the limits arising from this particular situation presented by the Holy See.

Finally, the last characteristic peculiar to it from an international standpoint is that deriving from the singular relationship that necessarily binds it to the Catholic Church. Although in reality this is an issue that reflects more the Holy See than the State of the Vatican City and is directly connected to the problem of its current juridical position in the international order, it is worth observing here, with particular regard to the State of the Vatican City, that it appears in the international order as a state organism, if not indeed merged, certainly intimately connected and bound to another organism, the Catholic Church, which is also a subject of international law or at least a primary legal order, but which, on the other hand, has an essence and characteristics that are entirely different and antithetical, namely a nature by definition extrastatual and an activity and purpose exclusively spiritual, religious, and universal, rather than temporal, political, and territorial. It is, in fact, joined to the Church both by a very strict bond of stable, perpetual, and indissoluble union, which is manifested in the necessary sharing of the sovereign subject, the Holy See; and at the same time by a condition of intimate and immutable dependence, which is revealed in the direct subordination of its state interests and purposes to the extrastatual interests and purposes of the Church and is such as to make it first and foremost a mere instrument at its service. This is perhaps, at least from the international standpoint, the greatest and most serious anomaly presented by the State of the Vatican City; an anomaly which, added to all the other exceptional characteristics it displays in its process of formation, in its internal constitutional structure and functioning, and in its international profile and activity, truly makes it a unique phenomenon in the political and juridical life of peoples.

III. ZONA ARCHEOLOGICA E BASILICA.

I. La zona vaticana

I confini della zona vaticana sono ben delineati dalle mura di cinta erette dal papa Leone IV (848-52), onde fu detta città Leonina (v. sotto).

La denominazione «Vaticanum» come l'altra vicina Iuniculum sembrano designare località etrusche di pendenti da Veio. Secondo l'ipotesi di B. G. Niebuhr (Römische Geschichte, I, 2a ed., Berlino 1827, p. 299) in questa zona sarebbe stato un pago (villaggio) di

Nome Vaticum come Labicum o Vatica da cui sarebbe venuto l'aggettivo Vaticanus.

Plinio il Vecchio ricorda pure in questi luoghi un elec secolare a cui si attribuiva un potere magico e che aveva affissa al suo tronco una tabella di bronzo nella quale erano incise lettere etrusche (Nat. Hist., XVI, 237). «Mons Vaticanus» è adoperato da Orazio (Od., I, 20, 7) e da Damaso con riferimento al colle posto subito ad occidente della Basilica (A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, Città del Vaticano 1942, p. 92). Cicerone designa col plurale montes (De lege agraria, II, 35, 96) le alture tra le quali si aprono a sud-ovest le vallecole del Gelsomino e delle Fornaci e la valle detta dell'Inferno a nord. Queste località furono sfruttate dagli antichi per fabbriche di vasi vinari (cadi), di utensili per cucina (patellae) e dal periodo imperiale in poi per i laterizi (latere).

The terrain configuration was also most varied and rugged; in fact, from the north the highest hill, now called Monte Mario, sloped down toward the south, forming the separating valley known as the Valley of Hell, descending to between 26 and 28 meters above sea level, then rising again with the present-day Vatican Gardens between the elevation of 72 up to a maximum of 80.60 meters at the westernmost point. As can still be seen today, the terrain from the Gardens slopes down toward the east, that is, toward the present Basilica (elevation 30.07 m.), reaching the lowest point at the site of the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square, elevation 19.1 m., where the virgin soil lies about 9 meters below the present level. Turning northward, still from the Valley of Hell and further east, the terrain rises again to the height of the Cortile di S. Damaso (elevation 38.80 m.) and the modern papal palace, then slopes down toward the Sistine Chapel and the present Vatican Basilica (elevation 30.07 m.). Beyond this point—past the Valley of the Jasmine and the Fornaci—it rises again toward the south in the direction of the two Augustinian colleges of S. Monica and Propaganda Fide, Via delle Fornaci and S. Onofrio al Gianicolo, and the Curia Generalizia of the Society of Jesus, before descending once more toward the Tiber. Perhaps the lowest point was reached in the southern corner of the present façade of the Basilica, for, around the beginning of the 17th century, during its foundations, the architect Carlo Maderno was forced to descend to 135 palms below the level of the staircase of the new Basilica, that is, to a depth of 33 meters, and at the same time, according to the indications of the archivist of the Chapter of St. Peter, G. Grimaldi, the pavement of a Roman road passed near the Campo Santo and was at a depth of 50 palms (11.15 m.) from the Palazzo del S. Uffizio, while the valley floor reached 90 palms, that is, 20.071 meters. Even the terrain occupied by the Ager Vaticanus between Monte Mario, the Tiber, and the Milvian Bridge has changed in elevation, for in the modern Prati district, ruins have been found 4 meters below ground level.

Before the present transformations for Piazza Pio XII, the corner of the house opposite the pediment of the northern colonnade marked the point of greatest depression, being at an elevation of 18.2 meters, while the base of the obelisk is at 19.1 meters; the right arm of the outer floor of the basilica is at 23 meters; the site of the Porta Cavalleggeri was at 24 meters; the level of the Cortile di Belvedere is at 27 meters; Piazza della Sagrestia lies to the east at 25 meters and to the west at 28 meters; the threshold of the main door of the Basilica is at 30.27 meters.

Vatican – Plan of the explored area of the Vatican necropolis. The precise position of the necropolis beneath the present Basilica is indicated in the plan of the Basilica reproduced at V. PIETRO APOSTOLO, tav. A.

G. De Angelis D'Ossat pointed out that the present Basilica, the church of S. Stefano, the Governor’s palace, the Ethiopian Seminary, the railway station, as well as the Vatican walls, where the new entrance to the Vatican Museums is located, rest upon the deep marine marls known as Piacenzian. Above the Vatican marls lie permeable rocks, so that rainwater, after passing through them, could seep insidiously into the alluvial deposits and the drainage, making them fertile, as still happens at present (G. De Angelis D'Ossat, *La geologia e le Cat. rom.*, II, Vatican City, 1938, Appendix; id., *Carta geologica della città del Vaticano*, from *Memorie Pont. accad. Scienze Novi Lincei*, 2nd series, 17 (1933), pp. 43-74; 3rd series, 1 (1934), pp. 1-36; 2 (1935), pp. 1-50.

At the point where the Palace of the Holy Office meets the southern corner of the Basilica, the greatest depth of the valley, the so-called *Vallis vaticana*, is found; this valley is mentioned by Tacitus in connection with the Circus of Gaius, later called the Circus of Nero (Ann. XIV, 14). To the southeast of the hills stretched the *ager aquilinus*, the “infamous Vatican places” infested by malaria, which during the summer of 69 A.D. decimated the soldiers of Vitellius (Tacitus, *Hist.*, II, 93). Agrippina the Elder was notified of the unhealthy nature of the land and perhaps modified its configuration when she had gardens laid out there, which were connected to the Tiber by a portico. Her son Caligula received the envoys of Israel in these gardens in 39 A.D. From that time, communications between the Vatican area and the Flaminian Circus must have been ensured by the bridge over the Tiber opposite the present-day hospital of S. Spirito, called the Nero Bridge in twelfth-century documents and located “ad Sassiam,” but out of use because it was “ruptus” (R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, *Codice topografico*, III, Rome 1947, pp. 26, 84); its ruins are visible when the Tiber is low. Only in 134 A.D. was the Aelian or Hadrianic Bridge built further upstream.

The precise position of S. Peter’s in the Vatican was established in 1351, when a base with an inscription in his honor was discovered near the mausoleum of Hadrian. It is certain that the site on which Hadrian built his mausoleum then belonged to the imperial fisc.

In 1886, about 500 m north of the northern bastion of Castel S. Angelo, a group of sumptuous rooms and a pool were found, constructed with extraordinary perfection, which R. Lanciani attributed to the time of Nero; but all the rooms had later been filled up to a height of 1.80 m with human skeletons. This was the result of an epidemic of warriors, since it is recalled that from the time of the Gothic siege (537) the mausoleum of Hadrian had been adapted as a fortress and henceforth called a castle, now Castel S. Angelo.

Moreover, the *gens Domitia* may have recovered ownership of its property after Nero’s death; it is certain that the Domitii possessed vast properties in the Vatican area under the Flavian emperors, especially through their brickworks in the valley called Inferno between the second half of the 1st century A.D. and the first half of the 2nd, although many of their holdings had again been confiscated by the imperial treasury under Domitian. The properties of Domitia Lucilla, wife of P. Calvisius Tullus, in the year 109, and those of Domitia Lucilla, wife of Annius Verus, are well attested by the makers’ stamps on the bricks.

The roads of the Vatican region were the Cornelia, the Nova Aurelia, and the Triumphalis. The first, probably of consortium origin and perhaps the oldest, ensured communication with the kilns and brick factories; the second joined the *Punta* with the *Vetus Aurelia*, which rose from the present Piazza S. Crisogono to the Gianicolo and served as a major artery toward the Tyrrhenian Sea; the Triumphalis climbed to Monte Mario.

It is certain that the Cornelia and the Nova Aurelia had a single curator in the time of Vespasian (69–79 A.D.) (R. Cagnat, in *Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres*, 1921, p. 225); under Antoninus Pius (138–61) a single curator was appointed for both Aurelias, the Cornelia, and the Triumphalis.

The exact course of these three roads in the Vatican area cannot be traced. Roman road remains came to light along Borgo S. Spirito (A. Canezza, *Pio Istituto di S. Spirito e Ospedali riuniti*, Rome 1933, p. 11). A valley road is today indicated by the constant southern orientation of the entrance to the sepulchral chambers found beneath the basilica; this road must have had the circus at its foot and the necropolis on its slope, continuing to the summit of the hill. After the construction of the Constantinian Basilica, two roads are recorded, one in the valley and one on the hillside, still shown in the maps of L. Bufalini (1551) and of Du-Pérac-Lafréry (1577). On the hillside of the Basilica a road gave access to the churches of S. Vincenzo, SS. Sergio e Bacco, to the monastery of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and likewise reached the postern called Porta Pertusa in the walls of Leo IV. The course of the Roman road crossing the Basilica and adjacent to the tomb of St Peter, marked by R. Lanciani in his *Forma Urbis* and accepted by later topographers, has been disproved by recent excavations. Two other secondary roads are ancient: the extension of the Via Septimiana toward the northwest and the present Via delle Fornaci, which from the *Vetus Aurelia* continued northward, i.e., toward the medieval Via Francigena or Via Sacrata (cf. A. Elter, *Vaticanum*, in *Rheinisches Museum*, 46 [1891], pp. 112–138; G. Lugli, *Il Vaticano nell’età classica*, in *Vaticano*, ed. G. Fallani and M. Escobar, Florence 1946, pp. 3–22).

The Vatican Cemetery. The custom of arranging tombs along the Roman roads just outside the city explains the large number of graves throughout the Vatican area, near the three main roads that crossed it: the Via Aurelia Nova, the Via Cornelia, and the Via Triumphalis, as well as the smaller ones running from south to north. Not far to the west of the mausoleum of Hadrian, at the intersection of the Borgo Nuovo with Vicolo della Traspontina, there stood a grand tomb in the shape of a pyramid, still indicated in the map of L. Bufalini from 1551; however, it was demolished by Alexander VI as early as 1499 to make way for the new road that took its name from the pope, the Via Alessandrina, later called the Borgo Nuovo. The structure, made of concrete, with sides of about 30 meters and the same height, was externally clad in large marble slabs taken by Pope Donus (676–678) to pave the atrium of St. Peter’s (Lib. Pont., I, p. 348). In the Middle Ages, the monument had received the most fanciful names: *meta* or *memoria Romuli*; *sepulchrum Romuli*; *pyramis Romuli*; *Scipionis sepulchrum*; *sepulchrum Apulonium*. It is mentioned in the bull of Leo IX dated March 21, 1053 (L. Schiaparelli, in *Arch. Soc. rom. di storia patria*, 24 [1901], p. 472), in various editions of the *Mirabilia*, and in the *Liber Politicus* of Benedict Canon or Peter Mallius (R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, *Codice topografico*, III, pp. 45, 163, 212, 218, 431). A list of reproductions of the so-called *meta Romuli* was published by B. M. Peebles (*La meta Romuli e una lettera di M. Fermo*, in *Rendiconti della Pont. accad. rom. di arch.*, 3rd ser., 12 [1936], pp. 21–63). The best drawings are those in the *Cod. Vat. Urb. lat. 277* of the year 1472 and in the *Escurialense ms. 28, II, 12* of the year 1490.

Another monumental cemetery was circular in shape; in the 15th century it still reached the height of Hadrian’s mausoleum, was clad in marble, and had acquired various names: *Terebintus*, *Tiburtinus Neronis*, *obeliscus Neronis*. Some apocryphal documents, such as the *Passio Petri et Pauli* and the pseudo-Marcellus, placed the tomb of St. Peter near a tree called the Terebinth (Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, ed. R. A. Lipsius, I, Leipzig 1891, pp. 172, 216); the name *Tiburtinus* derives from the *lapis Tiburtinus* with which it was clad (R. Valentini - G. Zucchetti, op. cit., III, 1945, pp. 45, 212, 218, 431). This structure was also demolished before 1499; when the Casa del Pellegrino was built at the beginning of Via della Conciliazione, the foundations of this great circular tomb were found to the northwest of the pyramid, and in some medieval documents it was also called *meta Remi*.

Besides these grand sepulchral monuments, inscriptions of *agitatores circenses* (CIL, VI, 10048, 10052–53) and of famous racehorses victorious in the time of Domitian, Trajan, and Antoninus Pius were discovered in this area (B. Borsari, in *Bull. arch. com.*, 40 [1912], pp. 177 ff.). In 1936, at a distance of 36 m.To the east of the obelisk, on its axis, there was found the funerary cippus placed by a Sextia Prisca to her patron L. Sextius Pothitus (Esplorazioni, cit., I, p. 18 and fig. 5). In the same place the east flank of a funerary monument appeared, and it was ascertained that the Roman level was at a depth of 9 m. In St Peter’s Square, during the laying of the foundations for the southern portico of Bernini (1656–67), sarcophagi and the entrance of a monument with a bas-relief were discovered (P. Santi Bartoli, Memorie di varie escavazioni fatte in Roma, in C. Foa, Miscellanea filologica, critica e antiquaria, Roma 1825, p. 236, n. 56). During the works for the construction of the present Vatican Annona building, in the summer of 1930, a Roman cemetery came to light, consisting of small cells for both inhumation and cremation rites, earthenware coffin burials, and simple cappuccina tombs; although it had suffered damage by autumn, the epigraphic and decorative material allowed the cemetery to be dated to the end of the 1st century and the second half of the 2nd century. Impressive too is the Roman cemetery brought to light between the years 1887–1908 between the bastions of the Belvedere and the Vatican Gardens, near the present-day entrance to the Vatican Museums and the streets Leone IV, Famagosta and Sebastiano Veniero. This is a complex of funerary cells in opus reticulatum and brickwork built along the Via Trionfale, which at that point ran 7.50 m lower than the present road level. Among the tombs, one of the most notable is that of the cobbler who had his shop at Porta Fontinale at the end of the 2nd century, whose expressive portrait is admired today in the Capitoline Museum; the tomb of a poet descended from a freedman of the emperor Claudius, of a native of Caria, and then freedmen, few imperials, many of the Aemilii, the Asinii, the Hirtii, the Lucani, the Terentii, the Valerii (Bull. arch. com., 1887, pp. 52–56; 1890, p. 332; 1891, pp. 70–76; 1906, pp. 321–26). Also in the year 1930 a cubiculum with both cremation and inhumation rites was identified along the new road to the Gardens near the fountain called della Galera. Of pagan tombs brought to light during the construction of the new basilica, accounts were left by Maffeo Vegio, T. Alfarano and G. Grimaldi. When

VATICAN

Under Nicholas V, construction began on the apse of the new basilica. Maffeo Vegio identified a notable place built for the burial of a family, containing also small urns filled with their ashes in the manner of the pagans (G. B. De Rossi, *Inscr. Chr.*, II, Rome 1888, p. 349, 8). Tiberio Alfarano writes that in the year 1574, when the bell tower was to be rebuilt, a sepulchral chamber was found, large as a chapel, with painted walls and tombs in the walls both for whole bodies and for cinerary urns. He also recalls a series of sarcophagi, including one with the representation of Bacchus, which was taken to the Vatican Palace, though he notes that a similar sarcophagus had previously been found in St Peter’s Square. Finally, the same author points to another series of very fine mausolea beneath the ancient choir chapel and beneath the ancient sacristy (*De Basilica Vaticana*, ed. Cerrati, Rome 1914, p. 151).

In the excavation carried out in 1586 to extract the base of the obelisk, an inscription was discovered commemorating the family of Antonia, daughter of Drusus (CIL, VI, 14897). The architect Flaminio Vacca, in his memoirs, wrote that in 1594 he had seen many sarcophagi uncovered in the atrium of St Peter’s, on which were carved men in togas holding books or wearing garlands, whom he took to be philosophers or poets. G. Grimaldi reports that in 1612 an inscription of Claudia Hermionis Archimima was found beneath the atrium of St Peter’s; her heirs declared that she was the greatest of her time; perhaps she was an Israelite on account of the opening expression “dormition” (CIL, VI, 10106); today it is in the Lapidary Gallery at the Vatican.

In the same atrium of St Peter’s there was found the cippus erected for a freedman of the emperor, Tiberius Claudius Severianus (CIL, 15263); the epitaph of M. Mannelius Hermes and his wife Mannelia Charesteni (CIL, 21998); the inscription of Cornelia Irene to her father Gaius Cornelius Cerealis (CIL, VI, 16174); that of Gessia Adiecta to her ninety-year-old husband P. Ragonius Epaphroditus (CIL, VI, 25354); and that of the couple Flavius Zosimus and Minucia Successa (CIL, VI, 1858). From the same foundations were also recovered the funerary epigraphs of a certain Verus to his wife Iulia.

Pudentilla (CIL, VI, 20648 a) e di un M. Aurelius Eutyches con la moglie Aurelia Appia. Nelle fondazioni della nuova cappella del coro si trovò nel 1611 un'iscrizione dedicata a Q. Erennio Etrusco Decio Cesare dagli argentieri e dagli «exceptores vini», e l'epitaffio di un M. Ragonius Blastus e famiglia, ora a Parigi (CIL, VI, 25338). Da due relazioni del canonico Ugo Ubaldini pubblicate da M. Armellini (Le chiese di Roma, 2a ed., 1891, pp. 700-18) e H. Lietzmann (Petrus und Paulus in Rom, 2a ed., Berlino 1927, pp. 305-10) si apprende che nel 1626, quando si gettarono dal Bernini le fondazioni per il baldeachino, si rinvennero i due mausolei R e S. la statua di Fl. Agricola di Tivoli e relativa iscrizione metrica (CIL, VI, 34182) e monete di Commodo, Faustina, Gallieno e Salomina. Da uno di questi due mausolei fin dal 1592 si era estratta l'iscrizione del celebre giuocatore di palla Ursus, idolo dei tifosi romani del sec. II d. C. (CIL, VI, 9797). Nei lavori di Paolo V per la confessione si trovò un sarcofago menzionante due «clarissimae feminae»: Messia Titiana e Pomponia Fadiola (CIL, VI, 31600). Un sarcofago grandioso a forma di vasca con scene dionisiache si rinvenne nel 1776 nelle fondazioni per la nuova sacrestia della Basilica vaticana. A sud di essa erano situati due grandi monumenti a pianta centrale. Il primo ad oriente ebbe una circonferenza esterna di ca. 110 m. Il papa Simmaco lo trasformò in basilica di S. Andrea che arricchì e vi cresce gli oratori dei SS. Tommaso, Cassiano, Proto e Giacinto, Apollinare, Sossio (Lib. pont., I, pp. 261, 265-66, nn. 17-19). La descrizione della basilica del sec. VIII vi aggiunge gli oratori di S. Lorenzo e di S. Vito (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. Christ., II, Roma 1888, pp. 207, 222, 246, 257; A. Silvagni, op. cit., nn. 4106-10). Al tempo di Pietro Mallio si chiamava «vestiarium Neronis» (R. Valentini e G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico, III, p. 396). Per rimuovere l'obelisco nel 1586 fu dovuta fare una larga breccia nel giro esterno dell'edificio che venne demolito nel 1776 quando Pio VI eresse la nuova sagrestia su disegno dell'architetto Marchionni. Nella demolizione apparve una muratura stimata da G. Marini della prima metà del sec. II (Atti e monumenti dei fratelli Arvali, Roma 1795, p. 265). Un recente tasto esplorativo confermò il suo giudizio e si constatò che l'edificio fu costruito ad un livello di sette metri più basso del piano della Basilica Costantiniana. Anzi G. B. De Rossi sospettò che anche l'altro edificio a pianta centrale ad occidente possa essere una costruzione anteriore alla Basilica Costantiniana (Bull. arch. crist., 3a serie, 3 [1878], p. 145). Detto edificio ad occidente servì di sepoltura alla fine del sec. IV a Maria moglie di Onorio, a Teodosio II ecc. Nel marzo 483 Cecina Basilio prefetto del pretorio e patrizio vi riunì il senato e il clero romano (Lib. Pont., I, p. 254, n. 16). Il papa Stefano II (752-57) lo trasformò in basilica di S. Petronilla (Lib. Pont., I, pp. 455, 461, n. 62) dove Paolo I nel 757 trasportò le reliquie della martire (Op. cit., I, p. 464). Nel 1077 vi fu sepolta Agnese vedova dell'imp. Enrico III. Nelle descrizioni dei Mirabilia fu identificato per il templum Apollinis; Luigi XI lo fece restaurare e venne da allora indicato come capella dei re di Francia; il card. de Villiers de la Gros-laye lo scelse per suo sepolcro e vi pose la Pietà di Michelangelo. I sepolcri vennero profanati nel 1519. Il sarcofago con le reliquie di s. Petronilla fu traslato nel 1574 nella nuova Basilica Vaticana. Nell'estate del 1950 una tomba a inumazione a tegole fu trovata sul colle Vaticano nelle fondazioni per l'ampliamento della stazione radiociclabile. Il marchio di fabbrica di un mattono apparteneva all'inizio del sec. II d. C. Nella primavera 1953 per lavori al Seminario minore vaticano tornò in luce un sepolcro a «forma».

III. The excavations beneath the Basilica (1941–49). The Roman sepulchre brought to light by lowering the level of the Vatican Grottoes consists of two rows of burial chambers or cubicles, all with their entrances facing south. The first row to the south is later than the second row to the north, which is arranged with its rear walls against the hillside; while in this northern row the monuments follow one another without interruption, ending with the left wall of the easternmost structure abutting the right wall of the westernmost one, in the southern row a passage (ambitus) had to be left to allow access to the northern tombs, overcoming a considerable difference in level.

The axis of the Roman sepulchre does not coincide with that chosen for Constantine’s Basilica, but is oblique to the south-west. Most of the vaults of the Roman sepulchre were destroyed by Constantine’s architects because they exceeded the level selected for the Basilica’s floor, and everything was then completely filled in with rubble. The first mausoleum in the southern row, Z, had its entrance wall and part of its two side walls demolished by Constantine’s architects to build the great southern foundation wall of the central nave, and its vault was also destroyed. Originally it consisted of four large arched recesses for inhumation, arranged in two tiers on each of the three walls, which were decorated with red plaster enlivened by garlands of flowers and animals; beneath the window in the centre of the rear wall is an Egyptian deity in profile facing left, holding in the right hand a staff while in the left it clutches the characteristic ankh. A high band secures the sides of the garment, which is of turquoise blue with geometric embroidery in green and white.

In one of the upper arches on the left side of the front wall, a sumptuous Greek marble sarcophagus was placed, which on its lid features a Bacchic dance and a Silenus atop an ass proceeding toward a cylindrical altar for the sacrifice of a goat and the offering of incense. The front of the sarcophagus depicts the triumph of Dionysus on a chariot drawn by a Satyr, preceded by a group of Maenads and Satyrs with Pan and Silenus advancing toward the island of Naxos to the discovery of Ariadne asleep. The sarcophagus is in perfect state of preservation. On the same wall to the right, a terracotta sarcophagus was decorated on the outside with a marble slab carved with hippocampi and strigils. An arch on the right wall received a sarcophagus that has in the center the representation of Dionysus, covered with a deer skin with a thyrsus and a kantharos with which he gives to drink to the panther; to the right a satyr who holds a garden hoe and supports the child Dionysus; to the left Dionysus crowned with vine leaves. In the last period (c. 1st to 2nd half of the 3rd century) the cell received in the surviving arch at the bottom of the left wall a Christian tomb, as evidenced by the painted inscription within an ansate tabula, where in red letters on white plaster is recalled the deposition of a deceased accompanied by the symbols of the dove and the palm. This demonstrates that this monument had passed into the possession of Christians or that the family members themselves had converted. But, as will be seen, it is not the only example of Christians buried in monuments originally pagan.

Further to the east a small passage rising gently leads, as will be seen, to the northern row of sepulchral monuments and immediately one sees rising to the right, in its masonry of careful brick facing with joints highlighted by a line of lime, another mausoleum, integrated into the outer west flank up to its corner pilaster with the capital. The outer wall of its façade is also integrated to the west and in a panel is set a polychrome mosaic with small tesserae representing the battle of the Amazons. The interior, with a red background, is divided by a series of double and wide superimposed arches; the decoration in the lower zones offers satyrs, confronted peacocks, ancient ships, sea monsters, Nereids, baskets and garlands of flowers; in the upper zones mythical scenes are represented and among these returns the myth of Ariadne; on the dividing pillars are nimbed Sileni. The floor was paved with polychrome marbles forming the typical decoration of “opus sectile.” The chamber was occupied by two sarcophagi: the first, very large, was found with its lid broken in which were represented the portraits of the two deceased and in the center the tablet with the inscription: “Q. Marcius Hermes sibi et Marciae Thra

The most worthy spouses have placed [these images] while still alive.” The two spouses were thus two freedmen of the very well-known Roman family of the Marcii; the surname Hermes betrays his non-Roman origin, confirmed by the portrait that shows him with curly hair, short beard and a distinctive nose; his wife Marcia Trasnide has her hair parted in two, leaving her ears free, from which hang large earrings, a hairstyle according to the fashion of the first half of the 3rd century A.D.; Marcia holds in her right hand a pomegranate, a fruit sacred to Proserpina. The two portraits were executed after the sarcophagus had been carved and the two busts had already been roughed out beforehand; it was only after the purchase that the portraits were finished.

The chest of the sarcophagus is divided into five compartments, two of which are the usual strigilated fields; in the left corner a young woman plays the double flute, in the center stands a small aedicula placed between two fluted columns with Corinthian capitals and ending in an arch, decorated with hippocampi and theatrical masks; the field is occupied by Dionysus who holds in his left hand a “cantharus” and in his right the thyrsus; under his right arm a satyr stretches out; to the left at the feet of the deity a small faun rides a panther, in the background the vine tendrils rise up to crown with their leaves the head of the deity. In the right corner of the sarcophagus a sturdy satyr dances supporting the small Dionysus. On the two sides two winged griffins stand as protectors of the deceased. It is known that a sarcophagus with Bacchic scenes was found in 1772 while building the new sacristy of St. Peter’s during the time of Pius VI and is now in the Vatican Museum.

The second sarcophagus contains on the lid the inscription “Marcia Urbica to her dearest sister Marcia Felicitas” between the four Genii of the seasons and on the chest in the center the bust of the deceased with the characteristic hairstyle that was in fashion at the time of Otacilia Severa, wife of the emperor Philip, then two strigilated fields and at the two corners the two Dioscuri Castor and Pollux with their characteristic “pileus”; they support with one hand the spear and with the other the bridle of the horse. To the east of Mausoleum I another mausoleum, no. X, was found whose interior walls have two tiers of arches in which were painted scenes similar to those of the previous Mausoleum I, e.g. the characteristic representation of the discovery of Ariadne. On the back wall opposite the entrance were found the remains of a multicolored mosaic decoration. The entrance wall, arranged to the south as in the other monuments, was destroyed by the foundation of one of the piers built in the 16th century to support the floor of the new Basilica. The small surviving part has niches for cinerary urns.

The mausoleums of the second row are arranged higher up than the previous ones against the hill, all with their entrances facing south along a small path or “iter” that runs from east to west. Whereas in the previous row there was

Then it opened the barrel-vaulted cell B, which at the time of its discovery showed clear traces of a twofold painted decoration: the older one with garlands, multicolored disks interwoven, gazelles, birds, vases and baskets of flowers; in the center Helios on his chariot (v. NIMBO); in the four corners the personifications of the four seasons; to this period belong the small paintings placed in the niches. Later, however, the decoration became heavier and cruder, with peacocks, birds and imitations of veined and polychrome marbles; of this period are the tombs in immersion, and among these, in a terracotta coffin, was deposited Fannia Redempta, as learned from the inscription carved on a reused base: «d(i) m(anibus) / Fanniae Redemptae / e quae vixit ann(is) XX / mens(ibus) V (dieb(us) VI / i Aureli(us) Aug(usto-rum duorum) lib(ertus) Her / mes coniugi in / comparabili cum / qua vixit ann(is) XX / XXII». The mosaic floor with white and black tesserae shows two doves facing a vase.

The twofold decoration and the inscription of «Fannia Redempta», whose husband Aurelius Hermes was freedman of Diocletian and Maximian, demonstrate that the monument, which is slightly later than that of Popilius Heracla—i.e., from the mid-second century A.D.—was in use until the Constantinian age.

Facing the mausoleum is a small sarcophagus for a child who lived only eleven months and ten days, as read on the upper edge of the sarcophagus itself, which on the front is decorated with three putti supporting a festoon of fruits and flowers; on the two sides are carved, on one the father and on the other the mother in an attitude of grief.

The next mausoleum to the west, C, still has the inscription above the door; from it we learn that it was built by a freedman of the well-known Roman family «Tullia»: «L. Tullius Zethus fecit sibi et / Tulliae Atheniadi coniugi bene / merenti et Tulliae Secundae et / Tullio Athenaeo filii libertis liberta- busque». The interior was originally barrel-vaulted with polychrome stuccoes, of which some remains survive; the floor was a mosaic with white and black tesserae; in the back wall, in the remains of the decoration, the figure of a charioteer of the green faction with the palm of victory is discernible. There were also two cippi belonging to Tullia Secunda and Tullius Athenaeus, the two children of the owner; in addition, five sarcophagi filled with bones were placed here at the time of the demolition of the cemetery. One of the sarcophagi was placed for a certain «Lucia Alcestia Hedonis» by her husband «M. Ulpius Pussinio», who in turn had buried in another sarcophagus the son «Marcus Ulpius Pussinio Ciputianus»; in a third sarcophagus, beneath the bust of the deceased, is the combat of two roosters.

Simpler is the mausoleum D; it is in opus reticulatum, like the mausoleum B called that of Fannia, and is composed of two parts, namely an open-air vestibule and a cell with niches and cinerary urns. From the inscriptions found there with palm branches it seems that some of the deceased had been charioteers of the circus.

More elaborate, on the other hand, is the following mausoleum E, which we shall call that of the Aelii. The exterior features careful brick masonry with decoration also in brickwork, with polychrome carved cornices and pedimented windows of the same characteristic type as some in the Isola Sacra. The interior had a mosaic pavement, walls and vault decorated with polychrome stucco, with niches flanked by small columns also in stucco; on the west wall at the top two confronted peacocks are painted above a vase; on the right wall a staircase was built. The large arcosolia below were for the rite of immuration. Among the inscriptions still in place one recalls the following: “T. Aelio Aug(usti) lib(erto) Tyranno qui fuit a commentariis prov(inciae) Belgicae.” Titus Aelius Tyrannus was a freedman of Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius, who was emperor from the year 138 to 161; during this period, if not earlier, Aelius Tyrannus’ twenty-one-year-old son died, as attested by the inscription on his tomb where it reads: “Urbano Aug(usti) vern(ae) adiutori tabulari rationis patrimoni... Tyrannus Aug(ustus) lib(ertus) et Aelia Urbana parentes.” A third inscription recalls the mother of “Tyrannus,” named “Aelia Urbana”: “D. M. S. Aeliae Urbanae matri karissimae Tyrannus filius.” Within this monument two fine cinerary urns of alabaster were found, one of them with a Gorgon head.

Vatican – Titulus placed on the front of Mausoleum A of the Popilii with the topographical indication “in Vatic(ano) ad circum” (lines 6–7) – Pagan burial ground excavated beneath the basilica of St Peter.

The following mausoleum, F, is quite extensive; it was the first to appear during the level-lowering works. The exterior brick curtain stands intact up to the crowning cornice at a height of 4.80 m from the original Roman level; it had windows adorned with terracotta carvings and two reliefs: on the right, an architectural perspective with a colonnade receding into the distance and a coffered ceiling—a rare example of perspective that would later be found in the Vatican Virgil codex; on the left, a partridge. The interior features, on the back wall, an improperly used niche between two stucco colonnettes with the scene of Venus rising from the waters, supported by two tritons. On the side walls, below broad arches, are niches for cinerary urns separated by stucco colonnettes; on the upper part of the left wall is a landscape with a bull and a ram. The ceiling, destroyed during the construction of the Basilica, was a coffered vault in stucco and polychrome painting. In the niches are some marble urns, well decorated with garlands, rams’ heads, and birds. The inscriptions on them include, in a rich cippo: “Marco” Caetennio Antigono and Tulliae Secundae, his wife; “D(is) M(anibus)” / M(arci) Caetenni Ganymedis / vixit ann(is) XXXVII / M(arces) Caetennius Secundus / colliberto suo; then “D(is) M(anibus)” / Marco Caetennio Tertio fecit M(arces) Caetennius / Chilo colliberto santissimo; “D(is) M(anibus)” / Marco Caetennio Chry / seroti M(arces) Caetennius Antigonus / Iun(ior) patrono b(ene)m(erenti) / f(ecit)”; “D(is) M(anibus)” / Caetenniae Proclae / coniugi carissimae / que vix(it) ann(os) XX / M(arces) Aurelius Filetus / benemerenti titulu posuit. In a second period, whole-body burials were made in the back wall: the first for a Lucius Tullius Hermadion; the second, even later, with an inscription of Christian flavor: “Siricius / annorum XXV / mesorum V / uxor fecit virg(io) suo cum quo / bene vixcit a(nnis) VIII.” On the floor, a tomb is still preserved, closed by a large marble slab bearing the inscription: “mire ispecie et castitatis eius Aemiliae Gorgoniae quae vixit ann(is) XXVIII mes II (d)ebus) XXVIII Dormias in pace coniugi dulcissime fecit.” Beneath are two doves facing each other with an olive branch. To the left of the epigraph, the deceased “anima dulcis Gorgonia” is depicted drawing water, a symbol of eternal refreshment. The expressions of the inscription and the symbols clearly attest to the Christian faith of the deceased. Thus, even in this monument originally pagan, Christians were later buried: almost certainly a Siricius; undoubtedly Aemilia Gorgonia. Against the outer door of the Caetenni mausoleum was placed a Greek marble sarcophagus with two figures carved in the corners, while in the center of the lid and the sarcophagus itself was read: “d(is) m(anibus) Ostoriae Che / lidonis c(larissimae) f(eminae) Ostorii Euho / diani con-sulis / designati / filiae in / compara / bilis castita / tis et amoris / erga maritum / exempli femi / nae Vib(ius) Io / laus a memoria imp(eratoris) Augusti / uxori.” The sarcophagus was opened and the body of Hostoria Chelidone (Swallow) was found still embalmed, laid upon a thin layer of hydrated lime; she was wrapped in purple cloth and covered from head to foot by a delicate gold veil. On her left arm the deceased wore a yellow gold bracelet, somewhat worn from use but weighing 75 grams of gold, with three faces decorated in relief with crosses, small figures, and masks—a precious example of Syrian-style goldsmithing.

A small vaulted monument, G, with a decoration of little circles recalling that of the earliest period of the mausoleum known as that of FANNIA REDÉMPTA was built adjacent to the mausoleum of the Caetenni. A characteristic feature is that the niches containing the urns with the ashes were later walled up, then plastered and decorated.

The most sumptuous of the mausoleums is certainly that of H, belonging to a family of freedmen, namely the well-known Roman *gens* of the Valerii, whose palace stood on the Caelian Hill. The monument opens onto an open paved area of brickwork with niches for cinerary urns. Opposite stands the elegant entrance wall of the monument, constructed of fine brick masonry, divided by pilasters resting on Attic bases. Above the door is the marble inscription, which reads: “C(aius) Valerius Herma fecit et / Flaviae T(iti) F(iliae) Olympiadi coniugi et / Valeriae Maximae filiae et C. Valerio / Olympiano filio et suis et libertis libertabusque posterisque (que) eorum.” The epitaph was later reused in a tomb near the Apostle’s sepulcher: “d(is) m(anibus) / C(aius) Valerius Herma dum / vivo mihi feci et / Flaviae T(iti) f(iliae) Olympiadi coniugi.” This inscription was certainly removed when the Basilica of Constantine was built and this mausoleum filled in. The interior of the monument is entirely whitewashed, with the upper zones of the walls occupied by alternating niches of different shapes, separated by herms terminating in male heads with long hair, deeply sunken eyes, short beards, and drooping mustaches of Dacian type. Inside, the niches were finely decorated: the small ones with maenads and dancing satyrs, the large ones with male figures in togas or female figures in palla, arranged on small pedestals, with upper ledges holding writing implements, toiletries, and personifications of earth and aquatic deities. At the far right, where a small chamber opens and a staircase ascended, the stucco decoration in the niches is preserved; in the large central niche is a representation of the personification of Hypnos (Sleep) with bat wings, while in the upper chamber two putti, also with bat wings, play with a cornucopia filled with poppy stalks.

The owner’s son, whose portrait in gilded stucco survives, was buried in a low arcosolium closed by a marble slab with the following inscription: “d(is) m(anibus) C(aio) Valerio Olympiano qui vixit annis III menses V dies XIII / C(aius) Valerius Herma pater.” Another marble inscription still in place records a burial concession granted by Caius Valerius Herma. In the central niche of this mausoleum, Fr. Ferrua indicated two rough charcoal-drawn heads, one above the other, in one of which he read PETRV (The sepulcher of St. Peter is certainly in the Vatican Basilica, in *Messaggero*, 16 Jan. 1952). In Oct. 1952 Prof. M. Guarducci proposed reading “Petrus roga T XS HTS pro sanct(is) hom(inibus) Chrestianis (ad) co(r)pus tuum sep(ultis).” However, photographs taken in normal, ultraviolet, and infrared light, as well as monochromatic images, do not allow the proposed reading to be confirmed with certainty. Moreover, the image once identified by Fr. Ferrua as that of Paul was by Guarducci identified as that of Christ. Before the monument was reburied, several sarcophagi were gathered inside; among them is a notable example with a lid depicting a return from the hunt, accompanied by an inscribed plaque and a bust with only an outlined face. The inscription on the plaque, with the final line on the upper rim of the sarcophagus, reads: “D(is) M(anibus) Valerinus Vasatulus vixit annis XXXI m(ensibus) III d(iebus) X h(oris) III Valeria Florentia coniux fecit marito suo anime benemerenti d(e)p(ositio) eius idus s(e)pt(e)m(bres).” The phrase “anime benemerenti” and the mention of “depositio” suggest that he was a Christian. The sarcophagus, repaired by the ancients and perhaps reused, contains the well-known scene of the hunt of wild beasts.

The last monument of the series was excavated in the year 1946; it is located more or less beneath the site where the triumphal arch of the Constantinian Basilica stands, between the two eastern piers of Michelangelo’s dome. This monument was erected before the two that were later built against it, to the east that of the Valerii and to the west the other of the Caetenni; but its façade was demolished in the Constantinian period and replaced by a continuous wall without a door, thicker and more projecting than the original one. The vault was also largely destroyed by the Constantinian filling; what remains of it shows polychrome compartments with stucco frames; but traces of an older decoration can be seen, which must also have been on the walls and in the original pavement.

The side walls contain a large arcosolium at the bottom for inhumation and above, niches for urns; higher up, on the right, a large duck is painted, and on the left, a peacock among roses and violets. On the back wall, at the top, two swans grasp two strands of pearls hanging from a central candelabrum; below is a large apsidal niche with a central shell and lateral colonnettes in stucco, and to the right and left two frescoes relate to the myth of Alcestis and Admetus; on the left, Admetus comforts his wife Alcestis ready to sacrifice herself for him; on the right, Hercules carries Alcestis away from the Underworld. Below are two more niches for urns. On the pavement, which slopes gently from south to north, much of the decoration in mosaic is preserved, in black on a white background, depicting the Rape of Proserpina and Mercury as Psychopompus.

Slightly further west of the mausolea described so far there immediately presents itself another mausoleum, L, which makes use of the wall of the preceding monument to the east, but is earlier than that which follows it to the west. It belongs to the Caetenni family, already known from the inscription found on the still-intact outer wall: “D. M. Caetennia Hygiae quae vixit ann. XXI d. XIII M. Caetennia Hyrmus filiae pientissimae et M. Caetennius Proculus sorori karissimae fecerunt et sibi et libertis libertabuse sui posterosque eorum. H(oc) m(onumentum) h(ere) dem) n(on) s(equetur). H(uc) m(onumento) d(olus) m(alus) a(besto).” The inscription is framed by a brick cornice surmounted on the right by an axe and on the left, also in brickwork, by an amphora. The external facing is of rough bricks with an upper cornice in brick; the two jambs delimit the “locus religiosus,” namely thirteen feet “in fronte” and twelve “in agro.” The letters of the epigraph and the structure allow this mausoleum to be dated toward the end of the 2nd century AD.

The interior, examined only on the west side, displayed the characteristic decoration divided into three compartments, as in the preceding Caetenni mausoleum, namely an arcosolium below and above it apsidal niches for urns; in the upper compartment, in the broken masonry, there appeared on a brick the manufacturer’s mark with the names of the consuls of the year AD 142 (CIL, XV, 1065). The mausoleum was occupied from north to south by a large retaining wall of tuff blocks at the time of the construction of the Constantinian Basilica. There too a large wall from the beginning of the 17th century was encountered, built with a mixture of tuffs, bricks and a quantity of broken marbles. Tiberio Alfarano relates that in the year 1574, while laying the foundations for a small portico in front of the high altar, a burial entirely of mosaic was discovered with figures that seemed to be horses, and at the window of this sepulchre the following inscription was placed: “D. M. Iulio Tarpeiano vixit ann. I m. VIII diebus XXVII Iulia Palatina et Maximus parentes fec(erunt) lib(ertis) libert(abus) po- steris(que) eorum. H(oc) m(onumentum) h(ere) dem) n(on) s(equetur)” (CIL, VI, 20293).

The small mausoleum M was built in a narrow recessed area that remained between the monument L of the Caetenni to the east and the following one N of the Ebuzi, even utilizing the pre-existing side walls. By the same means by which T. Alfarano saw this monument, access was gained during recent exploration work, namely through the same hole in the vault. The monument M was originally used for cremation, as attested by the cremation urns found behind the plaster of the back wall. Later, however, the burial rite was changed, and inhumation graves were opened in the floor; the scenes depicted on the walls, rendered in mosaic, belong doubtfully to Christians due to the subjects represented there.

The mosaic decoration rests on a layer of stucco about 3 cm thick, on which the artist quickly sketched the subject to be composed. The tesserae in enamel are of different sizes and exhibit a limited color range consisting of yellow, red, green in various shades, a little sky blue, black, and only a few gold tesserae. On the vault, against a yellow background, the vine tendrils intertwine, starting from the four corners; in the center, on a chariot drawn by four fiery horses (two of which are destroyed), stands Helios (the sun), with a radiant halo; it is the symbol of Jesus-Sun (cf. Fr. Dölger, *Sol Salutis*, Gebet und Gesang im christlichen Altertum. Münster 1925, pp. 371-373).

The back wall preserves only the stucco with the imprints of fallen tesserae; the scene of the fisherman is discernible: a fish has taken the hook while a second fish flees. It is the symbolic scene to which Clement of Alexandria alludes in his Hymn to Christ (*Paedagogus*, nos. 23-29); the same scene is known in the sarcophagus of La Gayolle in France and in the Roman catacomb frescoes of St. Calixtus and Domitilla. To the east, a few tesserae and imprints clearly reveal the representation of the prophet Jonah being cast from the ship and swallowed by the sea monster. To the left, traces of the Good Shepherd with a sheep on his shoulders and the muzzle of a sheep below are distinguishable.

The importance of these mosaics consists above all in the fact that, being certainly pre-Constantinian, they are the oldest known in Rome, predating, for example, those discovered by Fr. Marchi in the cemetery of Bassilla on the Via Salaria Vetere or others in Priscilla.

To the east, slightly to the south, is the mausoleum of the Ebucian family (N), of which only the façade is visible; it preserves within a brick frame the original inscription: *«d(is) M(anibus) M. Aebutius Chariot fecit sibi et libertis libertabuse quis sospitesque eorum (d(is) M(anibus) C. Clodi Romani q(ui) vix(it) a(nos) XIX. m(ensem) 1, d(ies) XXI. L. Volusius Successus et Volusia Megiste filio dulcissimo emerunt in parte dimidia, et sibi posteris(que) suis lib(ertis) lib(ertabus) q(uae) p(osterisque) eorum h(uc) m(onumento) d(lolus) m(alus) a(besto)»*. The monument, slightly later than that of Cetennia Hygia erected by Marcus Aebutius Chariot, served for C. Clodius Romanus, for Lucius Volusius Successus, and for Volusia Megiste.

Still to the west and beneath the southern side of the uncovered confession of Paul V is the mausoleum O, consisting of a sort of rectangular open enclosure, partly in reticulated work, and a covered cell. On the still intact entrance wall is the following inscription, which by its lettering can be dated to about the middle of the 2nd century A.D.: *«T. Matuccio Pallanti patrono optimo fecerunt Matucci (duo) Entinus et Zmaragdu sinietari et sibi liberisque suis posterisque eorum et libertis libertabuse suis»*. The external masonry is most carefully executed with trimmed bricks. To the northeast of the enclosure is a staircase. The interior of the mausoleum had a brick pavement. The vault, however, was demolished as early as the Constantinian period. The walls were decorated with plaster featuring yellow and purple panels, in which niches for the urns were set. Part of the mausoleum from north to south was later occupied by masonry constructions for burials arranged in a basilican fashion; some tombs high up were placed at a very short distance from the base of the statue of Pius VI, which stood in the center of the confession. It is evident that all the space immediately adjacent to the tomb of St. Peter was contested for burials after the basilica was completed.

The staircase at the corner of the mausoleum is contemporary with it; beneath the staircase a burial for inhumation was later inserted; but the staircase itself was truncated by the tombs constructed from the floor of the Basilica. Among the marble fragments found, a small inscription from the end of the 2nd century was recovered, reading: *«d(is) M(anibus) / T. Ma(t)uccio Deme/trio q(ui) vix. ann. / XXIII (men....) T. Ma/tucciu (S Her-m)a/iscus co(lliber)tus(s)»*.

The Matucci mausoleum is like the other one belonging to the Ebuzi, in the northernmost row; to the south of the Matucci, however, there are two monuments contiguous to one another from east to west, V and T.; these were built together and display many common features, not only in their masonry but also in their internal layout and decoration. The exterior of the two monuments is of brick; the rear walls facing north rest against the enclosing wall of the Matucci, indicating that they are later. The internal decoration is distributed in the same way: namely, decoration featuring birds, peacocks, and roosters; in U there is depicted a genius with a nimbus and a star on the forehead, riding and holding a torch (lucifer). The other monument, T, is called the Trebellena because inside the left wall of the entrance there is a marble cinerary urn with the inscription: «d(is) M(anibus) Trebellenae Flacciulae, Valeria Taecina matri dulcissim(ae) fecit». The mother, Valeria Taecina, was of the same
VATICAN - Plan of the Constantinian Basilica of St Peter’s with the parts of it discovered during recent excavations.

group of the family of Valerius Hermas. Among the ashes of an urn a coin of the early Constantinian period was found.

Mausoleum R was partly cut through at the end of the 17th century by the foundations of the internal wall of the semi-circular apse; it was then seen and partly explored in 1626, as was the adjacent mausoleum S, when the foundations were laid for the two southern columns of the bronze baldachin by G. L. Bernini. Two accounts of these discoveries exist, one in Latin and one in Italian, by the canon Ugo Ubaldini (M. Armellini, Le chiese di Roma, 2nd ed., Rome 1891, pp. 700-718; H. Lietzmann, Petrus und Paulus in Rom., 2nd ed., Berlin 1927, pp. 305-310). Mausoleum S (c. mid-11th century) had its entrance demolished by the Constantinian foundation works and marked; the interior was at the same time adapted for burials below (with arcosolia) and for cinerary urns above; indeed, a part of the upper zone to the west was later transformed for inhumation burials: three sarcophagi were found: in the first the deceased was represented as Meleager with Atalanta; on the lid of the second, containing the bodies of a child and an adult, near which were found a silver coin of Domitian, six bronze coins of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and a bronze of Septimius Severus; the second sarcophagus, with strigil decoration, has at the ends two female figures, one playing the lyre, the other engaged in study. The third sarcophagus was for a child. In the foundation works begun on 29 June 1626, sarcophagi and slab graves were immediately found; beneath an arcosolium a pit c. 1.50 m deep from the floor was discovered; among the ashes a coin of Maximian and one of Salonina, wife of Gallienus, were collected. At a later date a sarcophagus in cipollino marble was inserted between T and S. The bodies then discovered were placed in a polyandrium, on which a leaden plaque was affixed with the inscription: «Corpora santor(um) (prope sepulcrum S. Petri reperta cum) fundamenta effodentur aeneis col(um)nis ab Urbano VIII super hoc forni(ce) erect(i)s hic (s)imul collecta et re(po)sita a. 1626 2(8) iul(i)i». Other plaques were placed in the other polyandria; that of the north-eastern polyandrium bore the date 1626, 17 August, and that of the western polyandria 1626, 12 September.

Ad ovest di S. è il mausoleo R, la cui facciata però andò demolita dalla fondazione dell'abside costantiniana della Basilica; l'interno fu rovinato per l'immissione di sepolcri dal pavimento della Basilica, nella parete di fondo restano vestigia di nicchie e parte di una colonna scansata; vi fu immesso un sarcofago con le immagini di S. Pietro e S. Paolo agli angoli (v. CIMITERI CRISTIANI ANTICHI). Al di sotto del pavimento venne praticata una serie di tombe a inumazione fino a m. 2.10 di profondità. Su questo vano insisteva il pilastro di fondazione della colonna sud-ovest del baldacchino berniniano; per cui gli architetti della fabbrica riempirono il vano con quattromila mattoni. Ad un livello superiore, a nord di R, si rinvenne il vano R¹ le cui strutture interne furono demolite dalla confessione di Clemente VIII; situato a soli 20 cm. sopra il suo pavimento composto di una gettata di opus signinum, il suo ingresso guardava l'oriente, si ritiene sia stato il solarium di R. Tra R e S fu dovuto lasciare uno spazio libero, perché vi era un ambitus per salire all'area all'aperto costruita a nord della tomba apostolica; era dunque una servitù costituita, a somiglianza della scala a sinistra del Mausoleo O dei Matucci. Il luogo restò all'aperto, e sopra la porta di accesso è rimasta traccia del piccolo tetto di protezione della porta stessa, mentre sulla parete esterna occidentale di S. Vennero praticati sedili (cf. A. Ferrua, Nelle grotte di S. Pietro, in Civ. Catt., 1941, III, pp. 358-365, 424-33 sgg.; id., Nuove scoperte sotto S. Pietro, ibid., 1942, IV, pp. 73-86, 228-41; id., Lavori e scoperte nelle grotte di S. Pietro, in Bull. della Commis. Archeol., 70 [1942], pp. 95-106; id., Un mausoleo della necropoli scoperta sotto S. Pietro, in Atti della Pont. Accad. rom. di Arch., 3ª serie, Rendiconti, 23-24 [1947-49], pp. 217-29; O. Perler, Die Mosaiken der Liefergriff in Vatikan, Frührg. 1953]).

IV. THE BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE

The Constantinian origin of the Basilica built over the tomb of St. Peter (the entire question of the Apostle’s sepulchre is treated at V. Pietro) is established, says Duchesne, not so much by the notices in the Liber Pontificalis, in the biography of Sylvester (I, p. 124), as by the monuments themselves, such as the aforementioned inscription on the golden cross placed by Constantine and Helena and therefore not later than 337 (A. Silvagni, Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae septimo saec. antiquiores, II, Rome 1935, no. 4093). However, one must take into account the very recent observation by P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri regarding the highly uncertain date of St. Helena’s death, which cannot be considered to have occurred in the final years of Constantine (Constantiniana [Studi e testi, 171], Vatican City 1953, p. 164). Moreover, in the roofing of the Basilica tiles bearing the maker’s mark «Dominus» (Noster) Constantinus Aug(ustus) were used (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. Chr., II, Rome 1888, p. 230). In 1882 A. Frothingham published a study on the 4th-century museum located in the triumphal arch, destroyed in 1525, where the emperor Constantine was depicted offering the Basilica to the Saviour (G. B. De Rossi, Bull. arch. crist., 4th series, I [1882], pp. 80 ff.); on it, in golden letters, was the inscription «Quod, duce te, mundus surrexit in astra triumphans, hanc Constantinus victor tibi condidit aulam» (A. Silvagni, op. cit., no. 4092). Some have wished to see in duce Christ, but De Rossi and Wilpert consider that duce refers to Peter.

A second inscription, which is not later than the year 335, was placed in the apse and transcribed in the epigraphic collection of Einsiedeln: «Iustitiae sedes fidei domus aula pudoris / haec est quam cernis pietas quam possidet omnis / quae patris et filii virtutibus inclyta gaudet auctoremque suum genitorem laudibus aequat» (ibid., no. 4094). In it the merits of the emperor Constantine and of his son Constantius, who had completed the building, were extolled. G. Wilpert held that the epigram transcribed from the epigraphic collections «in fronte basilicae Vaticanae» or «in imagine Constantini», alluding to the emperor’s healing from a long illness, was also of Constantinian date, contrary to the opinions of L. Duchesne (Lib. Pont., I, p. cxiii) and T. Mommsen (Lib. Pont., p. xxxii, 6). Wilpert saw in the Vatican image of Constantine the first of the series of those ordered by him, as in his gold coins and in the painting at the entrance to his palace in Constantinople (La fede nella Chiesa nascente, Cit

The Vatican edition of 1938, pp. 205-207). Justly H. Grisar (Analecta romana, I, Rome 1899, p. 117) and A. Silvagni (op. cit., n. 4123) consider the inscription much later, when the Constantinian legend had already arisen. Moreover, in the apse there was admired the mosaic representing the Saviour enthroned delivering the law to Peter; on the other side, St Paul. This scene became the prototype for all others that are found repeated even in sarcophagi. In the lower part the mosaic represented the etimasia or preparation of the divine throne for judgment; in the centre the Lamb with the four rivers of paradise and twelve sheep, six coming from the city of Jerusalem, representing the Church drawn from the people of Israel, six from the city of Bethlehem, the Church of the Gentiles. The mosaic was restored for the first time by Pope Severinus in the year 640 (Lib. pont., I, p. 320); a second time by Innocent III (1198-1216), who added to it his own image and the figure of the Roman Church; it was destroyed together with the apse in the year 1592.

Per tornare alla documentazione della Basilica costantiniana occorre aggiungere che nel 1607 nelle fondazioni del portico si rinvenne una medaglia d'oro che aveva da una parte l'effigie di s. Pietro e dall'altra una crocetta con Costantino ed Elena indicati dai loro amici. Varie sono le opinioni degli studiosi circa la data della costruzione della Basilica costantiniana. Nel sec. XVIII G. Poleni ritenne più probabile per l'inizio della Basilica Costantiniana la data del 326, come quella dei vicinati Costantiniani (Memorie storiche della gran cipola del Tempio Vaticano, Padova 1748). N.-M. Denis Boulet propose di porre l'inizio della costruzione della basilica tra gli anni 325-29 e la fine al 25 dic. 335 (A des fouilles de St-Pierre, in Recherches de science, 34 [1947], pp. 385-406). Von Schönebeck pre- per l'inizio dei lavori la data del 326 cioè quella dei vicinati di Costantino (Beiträge zur Religionspolitik des Maxentius u. Costantin, in Klio, Supplem., 30 [1930], p. 89) mentre W. Seston propose il 333, anno in cui furono cristiani tanto il prefetto dell'Urbe che i due consoli (Revue d'hist. des Religions, 1945 e Hypothèse sur la date de la basilique costantinienne de St-Pierre de Rome, in Cahiers archéologiques, 2 [1947], pp. 153-59). A. Pigni, nel seguì l'opinione di Poleni e di A. Alföldi per l'inizio della Basilica Vaticana al 326 (L'état actuel de la question costantinienne, in Historia, 1 [1950], pp. 82-96). Il p. E. Kirschbaum mise in rilievo che nel 1936, data della Deposito martyrum, la festa del 29 giugno si celebrava per s. Pietro «in Catacumbas», poiché la basilica era in piena costruzione in quell'anno ed essa non poté essere compiuta prima del 350 (Petri in Catacumbas, in Misc. lit. in honorem L. C. Mohlberg, I, Rom 1948, pp. 221-29). Un'ipotesi sul periodo di durata della costruzione della basilica fu emessa nel 1950 da E. Josi (Rend. Pont. Accad. Rom. di Arch., 25-26 [1949-51], p. 4 e Comptes rendus de l'Acad des Inscr. et belles lettres, 1950, p. 434 sgg.). accettata da J. Carco-pino (Revue des deux mondes, 15 ott. 1952; Etudes d'hist. chrét., Parigi 1953, p. 129). Tale ipotesi era sorta in seguito all'osservazione che nell'area proveniente dal Phrygianum, oggi nel museo del Laterano, studiata da O. Magi- ruccchi e da altri (v. bibliografia relativa in Esplorazioni, cit., p. 14 sgg) si dichiarava che i sacrifici erano stati dovuti interrompere per 28 anni, e che pertanto questa interruzione poteva essere stata causata dalla costruzione della basilica. Occorre però tener presente che l'ubicazione esatta del «Phrygianum» non si conosce e che dall'ora parte esso continuò ad esistere almeno fino al 3000, come è attestato dall'ora n. 503 di tale anno. La data d'interruzione, almeno dalle are giunte fino a noi, non è dovuta essere fissata tra gli anni 319 (CIL, VI, 508) e il 350 (CIL, VI, 598), quindi si potrebbe immaginare che i lavori siano cominciati a quel tempo e terminati al 350; l'iscrizione dell'abside ricorda infatti il figlio di Costantino che continuò l'impresa paterna. Si ha poi che nel Natale 353 il papa Liberio dette il velo in S. Pietro a Marcellina sorella di s. Ambrogio (Ambrogio, De Virginitate, III, 1: PL 16, 231). Recentemente P. Franchi de' Cavalieri accetta con un forse la data del 333 per l'inizio dei lavori a Roma nel 1938, per la morte di Costantino (Constantiniana [Studi e testi, 171], Città del Vaticano 1953, pp. 119-20).

From street level, one ascended by 35 steps to a broad marble-paved forecourt which gave access, through three bronze doors, to the atrium composed of a four-sided colonnade supported by 46 columns, 62 m long and 56 m wide. In the centre of the square garden, whence the name Paradisus given to the atrium, stood the cantarius or ablution fountain. Later Pope Symmachus (498–514) adorned the atrium with mosaics. In the Middle Ages it was embellished with a series of twelve frescoes depicting the lives of the Apostles Peter and Paul. According to M. Cerrati these were not earlier than 1258, the time of Alexander IV.
From the portico one entered the basilica through five doors, three of which opened into the central nave and the other two into the side aisles. The central door was called the median, regia or argentine door because of the silver plates with which it had been revetted first by Honorius I (625–38; Lib. Pont., I, p. 323) and later by Leo IV (847–55; Lib. Pont., II, p. 127); Eugenius IV in 1445 placed there the enamelled and gilded bronze door cast by Filarete, which Paul V had adapted in 1619 to the central door of the new basilica (reprod. in vol. V, pl. 85). To the right of the main door was the so-called “Roman” door, used by Romans, as opposed to the more northerly one called “guidonca,” through which pilgrims were conducted. To the left of the main door the next was styled the “Ravennan” door, since through it entered those who lived beyond the Tiber, the Tuscans and the Transpadanes. The last door, on the south, was called the “Judgment” door because the dead were conducted through II.
The interior of the Constantinian basilica consisted of a rectangular area divided lengthwise by four rows of 22 columns, forming five naves: the central nave was about 24 m wide; its columns stood 9 m high including bases, Corinthian capitals and architraves; above them rose a wall 40 m high to support the roof; in the walls were eleven windows that lit the basilica. The two high walls of the central nave received their first decoration in the time of Pope Liberius (352–66), who had painted in them small medallion portraits from St Peter to Liberius himself, who bore a square nimbus as a living pope. This series of portraits of the bishops of Rome, imitated in antiquity at Naples, is the earliest of all, since the original medallions of the old basilica of St Paul are a century later. In St Peter’s Nicholas III (1277–80) added a second series. Above the medallions the walls were divided into three zones; in the upper zone, between the windows, were depicted patriarchs, prophets and apostles, their images being 4 m high. In the two lower zones there were 46 scenes on each side: on the right, 45 scenes from the creation of the world to the passage of the Red Sea; on the left, another 46 from the Annunciation to Pentecost. The paintings were restored in the time of Gregory IV (827–44), redone under Pope Formosus (891–94), and restored many times thereafter, also by P. Cavallini and Giotto, according to Vasari.

The four minor naves were about 9 m wide; the columns dividing them were 6 m high and supported round arches that in the two inner naves reached 18.50 m in height, while the outer naves were 14 m high. The five naves ended toward the apse in arches that opened into the transept, which measured 18 m in width. The arch at the end of the central nave was supported by two large columns and was revetted with the mosaic decoration already mentioned.

Gregory of Tours notes the extraordinary number of 100 columns in the Vatican Basilica; the number is exact, as R. Krautheimer has shown in The Art Bulletin, 31 (1949), pp. 211–13. Indeed, the five naves were divided by four rows of 22 columns each, making 88 columns; there were 8 columns in the transept, making 96, plus the 4 porphyry columns that supported the ciborium, for a total of 100.

For the columns of the transept see the drawing of the van

Heemskerk, preserved in the library of Stockholm and edited by Krautheimer himself. The roof is the part that most often underwent restorations. The earliest ones remembered were those of Gregory the Great (590–604), of Sergius I (688–701), of Adrian I (772–795), who had beams brought from the forests of Spoleto; of Leo III (795–816), of Benedict III (855–858), of John XXI (1276–77), Benedict XII in 1341, Gregory XI in 1372; and again of Pius II and Sixtus IV. Grimaldi measured a fir beam lowered in 1605; it was 133 palms long, i.e. over 29.50 m! Pope Damasus (366–84) had to carry out a grand restoration work above the Vatican Basilica (v. below: BAPTISTERY). After Damasus, the first pope of whom there is record of works carried out at the tomb of St Peter in the Vatican is Sixtus III (432–40), who, according to the 6th-century biographer (Liber Pontificalis, I, p. 233), not only adorned the Confession — a name that appears for the first time — with various silver objects amounting to 400 pounds, but also obtained from the emperor Valentinian III a gold composition set with precious stones representing the Saviour with the twelve Apostles and the heavenly Jerusalem with its twelve gates, a subject similar to that found on some Christian sarcophagi discovered in the Vatican, such as the one now in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The same pontiff had also obtained from the emperor Valentinian that he renew the famous silver ciborium or baldachin of the altar of the Basilica of the Lateran, made by Constantine and removed by the Vandals of Alaric. Perhaps the same had also damaged the Vatican Basilica, and this would explain Sixtus III’s intervention with Valentinian for the tomb of Peter (v. above). His successor Leo I (440–61) had to repair the damage caused by the terrible earthquake of the year 443 to the two great basilicas of the Vatican and Ostia. The Pope had turned for the restoration of the Basilica of Ostia to Galla Placidia, while for the Vatican Basilica he obtained the help of Marinianus, already prefect and ordinary consul, and his wife Anastasia. Certainly work was also carried out on the tomb of the Apostle, because the compiler of the Palatine sylloge transcribed an area super corpus beati Petri and the inscription of Rufus Viventius Gallus, of senatorial rank, who in fulfillment of a vow had adorned the tomb itself (A. Silvagni, op. cit., no. 4125). The Liber Pontificalis merely states that Leo I renewed after the earthquake — which is called divine fire — the basilicas of the blessed Peter and the blessed Paul (I, p. 239).In this Basilica on the Ostian Way, Leo I was forced to replace as many as sixteen of the forty columns in the central nave and to renew the roof, as attested by the commemorative inscription still preserved in the upper cloister; the damage was no less in the Vatican Basilica, where, among other things, the Constantinian façade’s mosaic decoration was also redone, as an inscription attests. This inscription was likewise transcribed in the *Sylloge Palatina*; it asserts that the former prefect and ex-consul Marinianus, together with his noble consort Anastasia, at the urging of Pope Leo and to fulfill a vow made to the most blessed Apostle Peter, “made a foundation for the façade of St Peter’s” (A. Silvagni, op. cit., no. 4102). Indeed, the inscription was copied onto the very front of the façade near the mosaic where Christ was depicted amid the symbols of the four Evangelists. Lower down, between the three windows, the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse were represented in groups of four. The mosaic was later restored under Sergius I (687–701), certainly after the so-called Trullan Council of 692, for, in place of the damaged image of Christ, the Pope had the Divine Lamb placed there (Lib. Pont., I, p. 375). An eleventh-century codex preserved in the well-known Eton College in England, coming from the celebrated Abbey of Farfa, contains a drawing of the façade of the Vatican Basilica with a representation of the mosaics that adorned II. In the lower zone, the scene of the funeral of Gregory the Great is depicted (H. Grisar, *Analecta Romana*, Rome 1899, pl. 10, reproduced under the heading GREGORIO I). The façade mosaic was later restored under Innocent III (1198–1216) but without alteration. Gregory IX (1227–41) modified the façade; he opened six large windows of marble and mosaic in it, and a document shortly thereafter calls it “Praesepe.” It was demolished in 1606 and dispersed; the dedicatory inscription read: “Alma beata mater Dei fecit servus Ioannes indignus episcopus” (ibid., I, p. 385; G. B. De Rossi, *Inscriptiones christianae*, II, p. 227).

Gregory III (731–41) obtained from the Exarch of Ravenna, Eutychius, six columns of verde antique which he had brought to St Peter’s and arranged three on the right and three on the left before the presbytery, near the other six ancient columns of the same kind. Above these columns he placed beams covered with pure silver, with images on one side of the Saviour and the Apostles and on the other of the Madonna and holy virgins, and above them lilies and silver candelabra, all together weighing 700 pounds (Lib. Pont., I, p. 417). The verde antique columns are depicted in a painting by Giulio Romano in the rooms called Raphael’s in the Vatican and in the Sala dei Cento Giorni at the Palazzo della Cancelleria. Cerrati believes that the removal of the verde antique columns occurred around the year 1544, under Paul III, but the precise date of this transfer is not easy to establish.Oggi otto delle colonne vittiene sono nelle logge sopra le quattro grandi statue dei piloni della cupola; una è nella prima cappella a destra, cioè nella cappella dove si conserva la Pietà di Michelangelo, due ai lati dell’altare di S. Francesco nella cappella del S.mo Sacramento (J. B. Ward Perkins, The Shrine of St. Peter and twelve spiral Columns, in Journal of Roman Studies, 1952, pp. 21-33). Stefano II (752-57) costruì la torre campanaria che rivestì in parte di lamine d’oro, in parte d’argento e vi pose tre campane per invitare il popolo agli uffici divini. Inoltre rinnovò il cantaro dell’atrio, circondato da otto colonne di porfido finemente istoriate e sorreggenti una cupola di bronzo dorato. Vicino alla basilica, oltre l’oratorio di S. Andrea nel luogo detto Mosileo, cioè mausoleo, adattò una chiesa in onore di S. Petronilla, per collocarne il corpo, e arricchì l’edificio con ornamenti e cesti argentei (Lib. Pont., I, pp. 454-55). Il fratello Paolo I (757-67) suo successore compì ivi la traslazione di S. Petronilla dal cimitero di Domitilla sulla Via Ardeatina (ibid., I, p. 464). Leone III (795-816) decorò il battistero ampliandolo in forma circolare, circondandolo di colonne di porfido, pose anche una colonna nel mezzo della vasca e sopra vi collocò un agnello d’argento da cui sgorgava l’acqua (ibid., II, p. 17) e fece molti altri lavori (ibid., pp. 14-17, 29-31). Pasquale I (817-24) costruì un grande oratorio in onore dei martiri Processo e Martiniano di cui aveva trasportato le reliquie dai loro sepolcri sulla Via Aurelia, deponendole in un sarcofago di porfido (ibid., II, p. 53). Gregorio IV (827-44) trasferì in S. Pietro le reliquie dei martiri Sebastiano, Tiburzio e Gorgonio (ibid., II, p. 74) e ne pose le reliquie sotto ciascuno dei tre altari secondari nell’oratorio da lui costruito per trasferirvi il corpo di S. Gregorio Magno, oratorio decorato di musica ricordati da Gio-

vanni Diacono (S. Gregori M. Vita, IV, 8o: PL 75, 228); M. Andrieu ne ha indicata l'ubicazione esatta e non vellutum secretarium» (Le chapelle de St Grégoire dans l'ancienne basilique Vaticane, in Riv. Arch. crist., 13 [1936], pp. 61-99). Gli altari di S. Sebastiano e di S. Tiburzio sono ancora ricordati da Benedetto Canonico ca. il 1140 (Liber Censuum, ed. Fabre-Duchesne, II, p. 143). Sotto il pontificato di Sergio II (844-46) avvenne il saccheggio dei Saraceni, i quali non solo non risparmarono la Basilica vaticana, ma profanarono lo stesso atare, come si legge nella biografia del suo successore pa- pa Leone IV (847-55) il quale si prodigò in tutti i modi per riparare gli scempi perpetrati dai Saraceni; tutta la sua biografia è piena di donazioni offerte dal Pontefice in riparazione di quanto era stato trafugato (Lib. Pont., II, pp. 106-109, 111-14, 116, 119, 121-23, 127-29, 133). Le notizie di restauri si fanno dopo il X se. sempre più scarse. Il card. Bosone nella vita di Innocenzo II (ibid., II, p. 380) ricorda come Pietro di Pietro Leone (Anacleto II) «tampam sacrilegus predo» spogliò dei suoi tesori la Basilica vaticana, strappando persino il rivestimento prezioso del ciborio fatto da Leone IV (ibid., II, p. 121). Pietro Mallio attesta che Callisto II (1119-24) vedendo l'altare maggiore «nimia vetustate et lapidum percussionibus quodammodo violatum, optimis marmoribus vestit ed decoravit» e lo consacrò il 25 marzo 1123 (cod. Vat. lat. 6757, f. 15 in G. B. De Rossi, Inscriptions Christianae, II, 1, Roma 1888, p. 233). Al ritorno dei papi da Avignone, Roma era ridotta in tanto squallore da non aver quasi più l'aspetto di una città; deserta era la città Leonina, in rovina erano le strade che conducevano alla Basilica vaticana, di cui lo stesso portico era cadente. Il papa Gregorio XI (1370-78), rientrando in Roma da Avignone il 17 gen. 1377, rimase atterrito nel veder lo squallore della città ridotta a non più di 20.000 abitanti; nel 1414 per la festa di S. Pietro il 29 giugno non fu possibile procurare una lampada da accendere davanti alla Confessione. Per avere un'idea di quello che con l'andar del tempo vi si era accumulato basta gettare uno sguardo alla pianta CAFARNAO (v.) canonico vaticano (1544-96). La pianta, eseguita nel 1571 (riprodotta al vol. I, tav. 64) è corredata da una descrizione che è fondamentale per lo studio dell'antico edificio, come hanno dimostrato G. B. De Rossi ed il Duchesne e più recentemente M. Cerrati che ne curò l'edizione critica (v. tav. fuori serie).

IV. IL BATTISTERO

La costruzione della imponente Basilica costantiniana aveva modificato il regime delle acque e queste avevano finito per invadere i tanti sepolcri che erano nel declivo del colle. Un epigramma del papa Damaso parla dei lavori da lui affidati al diacono Mercurio per captare nel colle Vaticano le vene d'acqua e utilizzarle per la fontana nell'atrio e il fonte battesimale (A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, Città del Vaticano 1942, pp. 88-93). Che poi il battistero sia opera di Damaso è attestato da un altro epigramma dello stesso Papa: «tantissimus Christi composuit Damasus», tramandato dalla sille del I Cor. (A. Ferrua, ibid., pp. 93-94). Alla fine del se. IV il poeta Prudenzio celebra l'opera di Damaso (Peristephanon, XII, n. 31 sgg.; CSEL, 61, pp. 412-22). Tali versi vennero riferiti al battistero damasiano situato nella parte destra del transetto della Basilica, mentre invece, secondo la giusta osservazione del p. Ferrua (op. cit., p. 154), essi descrivono la sorgente scoperta dai lavori damasiani. Più tardi una conferma dei lavori di Damaso e del suo battistero si ha nei Gesta Liberii (PL 8, 1392 sgg. e Lib. pont., ed. Duchesne, I, p. cxxxii). A. Silvagni (op. cit., n. 4100) attribuisce al Battistero vaticano un carme in cui si ricordano lavori compiuti dai papi Bonifacio I e Celestino I (anni 422-32). Il papa Simmaco aggiunse al battistero tre oratori dedicati alla S. Croce, a S. Giovanni Battista e a S. Giovanni Evangelista, come quelli costruiti al Laterano dal papa Ilaro, per lo sviluppo dei riti dell'iniziazione cristiana (Lib. Pont., I, pp. 261 e 266, nn. 20-22). Detti oratori, abbattuti dallo stesso Papa, sono ricordati nella descrizione della basilica del se. VIII e più tardi da P. Mallio e da T. Alfarano (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. Christ., II, pp. 206, 227, 258).

VI. I SEPOLCRI DEI PAPI

Come giustamente osserva il Duchesne, quando nel se. VI furono scritte le biografie dei papi nel Liber pontificalis, si riteneva che i primi successori di Pietro fossero stati sepolti vicino alla tomba dell'Apostolo; ma allora non erano certo più visibili, data la costruzione della basilica costantiniana. Nel 1615 da alcuni si credette che fosse stato scoperto il sarcofago di Lino, perché nel coperchio insieme con altre lettere si trovò un LINUS; l'identificazione si mostrò molto in- verosimile anche per la dizione latina, perché come è noto tutte le più antiche iscrizioni sepolcrali dei papi da Antero (236) a Gaio (296) sono in greco ad eccezione di quella di Cornelio (253). Il rev. dr. Ruysschaert della Biblioteca Vaticana nell'adunanza del 9 luglio 1953 della Società dei cultori dell'Archeologia cristiana in seguito allo studio della biografia di Anacleto nel Liber Pontificalis, in cui viene attribuita a questo papa l'eruzione di un'area sepolcrale per i vescovi di Roma, propose di riconoscere nelle undici tombe rinvenute nel campo P, ad eccezione di 7, i sepolcri degli undici successori di s. Pietro indicati nel Liber Pontificalis come depositi in V. s. Pietro. Con Leone I si iniziò una nuova serie di papi depositi in S. Pietro; dopo di lui, durante cinque secoli, ca. settanta papi vi vennero sepolti in luoghi diversi. Infatti lo stesso Leone I venne deposto fuori della Basilica, presso la Sacrestia; per cui nel suo carme sepolcrale è detto inanito arcis (A. Silvagni op. cit., n. 4148). I vi rimase per 227 anni sino al 688, quando Sergio I lo trasferì nel portico presso la facciata. Poiché la tomba era stata forse profanata dai Saraceni, Leone IV la portò nell'interno al lato meridionale della nave trasversa, presso una porta d'uscita. Presso il suo sepolcro Pasquale II trasportò i resti dei papi Leone II, III e IV che furono poi ritrovati nel 1580 da Gregorio XIII e rimossi da Paolo V nel 1607 e poi di nuovo nel 1715 collocati sotto l'attuale altare dedicato a Leone I decorato col rilievo di Alessandro Algardi (1602-54) rappre- sentante l'incontro tra Attila e Leone I. Papa Simplicio (468-83) fu deposto nel portico anteriore della Basilica come Gelasio (492-96), Anastasio II (496-98), di cui si conosce l'iscrizione sepolcrale metrica (ibid., n. 4149); Simmaco (498-514); Ormisda (514-23) sepolto nel pavimento del portico (ibid., n. 4150) e di cui pure fu trascritto il carme sepolcrale tra i poemi di Alcuino nel se. IX. Nel portico fu pure la tomba di Giovanni I (523-26); la sua iscrizione metrica ci è nota da un manoscritto della Biblioteca nazionale di Parigi (ibid., n. 4151); anche di Felice IV (526-30) ci è noto il testo (ibid., n. 4152), come del suo successore Bonifacio II (530-32) del quale si conserva un frammento del marmo nelle Grotte Vaticane (ibid., m. 4153), di Giovanni II (533-35) si conosce pure l'iscrizione (ibid., n. 4154). Sempre nel portico fu sepolto Agapito (535-36). Davanti alla Sacristia furono depositi Pelagio I (556-61) di cui le raccolte epigrafiche tramandarono il carme sepolcrale (ibid., n. 4155), Giovanni III (561-74) e Benedetto I (575-79). Nel portico sotto il pavimento fu la tomba di Pelagio II (579-90) e di Gregorio I (v. 590-604) il «con- sole di Dio» del quale l'elogio marmoreo ricorda che inviò missionari per la conversione degli Angli (ibid., n. 4156). I suoi resti furono traslati poi da Gregorio IV (827-44) e questa traslazione è rappresentata nel codice di Eton, già ricordato. Di Sabiniano (604-606), se- polto davanti alla Sacristia, oltre l'intero testo conservato nelle raccolte epigrafiche si conserva un frammento nelle Grotte Vaticane (ibid., n. 4157). Di Bonifacio III (606-607) pure è noto il testo del carme (ibid., n. 4158), come anche di Bonifacio IV (608-15; ibid., n. 4159), di Deus- dedit (615-18; ibid., n. 4160), di Bonifacio V (619-25; ibid., n. 4161), di Onorio (625-38; ibid., n. 4162). Man- cano invece i carmi di Severino (640) e di Giovanni IV (640-42) depositi sempre nel portico, come Teodoro

(642-49) of whom only the beginning of the carmen is known; EUGENIUS I (654-57), VITALIAN (637-72), ADEODATUS (672-76), DONUS (676-78), buried in the Vatican, whose inscriptions are unknown; however, that of AGATHO (678-681; G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. christ., II, p. 52) is preserved; that of LEO II (682-83) is missing. The carmina of BENEDICT II (684-85; G. B. De Rossi, op. cit., II, p. 129), of JOHN V (685-86; ibid.) are known; that of CONON is unknown. The burial of so many popes in the portico led to this being given the name of the portico of the pontiffs. But there were so many tombs that they were crowded together. Thus SERGIUS I (687-701) wished to highlight the tomb of LEO THE GREAT, hidden among the others, as he says in the metrical inscription, and he wished it to be exposed to public veneration (Lib. Pont., I, 375; G. B. De Rossi, op. cit., II, p. 56).

Perhaps SERGIUS I also removed the tombs of SIMPLICIUS, of GELASIUS I and of SYMMACHUS, since their existence is still recalled in the 12th century.

Sergio I è ricordato come sepolto nel portico in Vaticano (Lib. Pont., I, p. 376) come Giovanni VI (701-705; ibid., I, p. cxxxix). Ma Giovanni VII (705-707) volle essere deposto nella basilica, presso il sontuoso altare da lui eretto alla Vergine (G. B. De Rossi, I musaici ecc., Roma 1899, tav. 20). Di Siminio (708) è di Costantino (708-15) non sappiamo con esattezza l'ubicazione dei loro sepolcri in Vaticano. Gregorio III (731-41) fu sepolto a destra dell'altare maggiore e si conosce un solo verso del suo carme sepolcrale. Zaccaria (741-52) è indicato nel portico, ma si ritiene sia quello interno della Basilica; altrettanto deve dirsi per Stefano II (752-57). Il papa Paolo I (757-67) fu sepolto nell'oratorio di S. Maria detto «ad grada» presso i gradini, nell'atrio della Basilica; oratorio che egli aveva restaurato e abbellito con musica. Anche Stefano III (768-72) fu sepolto in Vaticano, ma non sappiamo dove. Adriano I (VIII) (772-95) venne deposto nell'interno della basilica, presso il luogo dove era stato traslato il corpo di Leone I. La sua lastra sepolcrale, in marmo nero delle cave di Sable (Tours), contiene il carme che, come si ritiene, Carlomagno fece scrivere da Alcunio; oggi la lastra è murata nella parete sinistra dell'atrio della nuova basilica. Sempre nell'interno della Basilica fu pure la tomba di Leone III (795-816): (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. christ., II, Roma 1888, p. 201). Nel sec. xii Pasquale II (1099-1118) trasportò il suo corpo insieme con quelli di Leone II e Leone IV dove era il monumento di Leone I. Stefano IV (816-17) fu sepolto, sembra, davanti alla basilica, perché così è indicato nel sec. XII. Di Stefano IV (816-17) non si è conservata memoria della sua tomba, che fu nella basilica. Quanto al sepolcro del suo successore Pasquale I (817-24), il Duchesse ritiene che fosse nell'interno della basilica, in una delle due cappelle da lui fondate o in quella dedicata ai martiri Processo e Martiniano o l'altra dei SS. Sisto e Fabiano, cioè poco lontano dal cancello che conduceva nella cripta (Lib. Pont., II, p. 68). Non si ha notizia circa le sepolture di Eugenio II (824-27), di Vitaliano (827) e di Gregorio IV (827-44). La tomba di Sergio II (844-47) fu posta presso l'altare dei SS. Sisto e Fabiano e Pietro Mallio nel sec. xii ne tramandò il carme sepolcrale (G. B. De Rossi, op. cit., II, p. 213). La tomba primitiva di Leone IV (847-55) è sconosciuta; essa fu riunita nel sec. xii dal papa Pasquale II a quella di Leone II. Benedetto III (855-58) fu sepolto presso la porta principale della basilica, come è accennato nel suo carme sepolcrale copiato da Pietro Mallio nel sec. xii (ibid., II, p. 214). Niccolò I (858-67) fu deposto poco lontano dal suo precedessore, vicino alla porta detta del Giudizio o dei Morti (A. Silvagni, op. cit., tav. 2, 7). Adriano II (IV. 867-72) vicino alla Sacristia e Pietro Mallio ne ha tramandato il carme sepolcrale; come quello di Giovanni VIII (872-82) sepolto il presso (G. B. De Rossi, op. cit., II, 216; A. Silvagni, op. cit., II, p. 8). Marino (882-84) fu sepolto nel portico, tra la Porta Argentea e la Porta Romana: Pietro Mallio che ne copiò il carme ritenne che si trattasse d'un papa di nome Giovanni (G. B. De Rossi, op. cit., II, p. 215). Nel portico fu pure la tomba di Stefano V (885-91) e il testo si conosce da Pietro Mallio (ibid., p. 214).

COPIE. Of the grand sepulchral monument of NICHOLAS V (1447–55), which originally stood in the left nave near the sacristy door, only the sarcophagus remains in the Vatican Grottoes, with the epitaph composed by Pius II (reproduced in vol. VIII, pl. 116). Callistus III (1455–58) had a fine sepulchral monument in the old sacristy of St Peter’s, namely in the first of the round mausolea situated beside the basilica. The monument, a work of Antonio da Binasco, was removed in 1586 for the transport of the obelisk; the Pope’s remains were placed inside the basilica, behind the organs, where they remained together with those of Alexander VI until 1605, when they were transferred to the left nave in a new monument and in 1610 to S. Maria in Monserrato, the Spanish national church.

Pius II (1458–64) was buried in the second left nave of the basilica, near the tabernacle of St Andrew which he had built. His body was moved in 1623 to S. Andrea della Valle. A grand marble monument of Paul II (1464–71), executed by Giovanni Dalmata and Mino da Fiesole, originally stood near the door of the old sacristy, close to the present-day colony of S. Andrea; it was later transferred to the nave called del Sudario, but was dismantled and dispersed; many of its fragments were taken to the Grottoes, then to the Petriano Museum, and finally returned to the Grottoes (reproduced in vol. IX, pl. 54).

Sixtus IV (v.), 1471–84, had the most artistic monument of the old basilica in the bronze tomb by Antonio Pollaiuolo. It stood in the choir chapel built by Sixtus IV himself on the left of the last southern nave of the basilica. It was moved several times; it is now in the Vatican Grottoes.

For Innocent VIII (1484–92) the same Pollaiuolo executed the monument, situated near the pilaster of the triumphal arch, close to the oratory of St Lucy. Removed in 1507 for the construction of the dome piers, it was placed, altered from its original arrangement, in the second left pilaster of the new basilica in 1621, under the care of Prince Alberico Cibo Malaspina.

Alexander VI (1492–1503) was buried in the round mausoleum near St Peter’s Basilica, like his uncle Callistus III, then in S. Maria in Monserrato. Pius III (1503) was buried in the left nave of the old basilica, near the Porta del Giudizio; his remains were transferred to S. Andrea della Valle in 1614.

Julius II (1503–1513) was interred in the choir chapel of Sixtus IV; his tomb was profaned during the sack of Rome in 1527. The monument erected to him by Michelangelo is in S. Pietro in Vincoli.

Leo X (1513–21) was buried in St Peter’s near the ancient altar of St Abbondio, but in 1544 his remains were moved to the church of the Minerva, where Clement VII (1534) was also later transferred.

Popes buried in the new St Peter’s Basilica or in the Grottoes, from Paul III (1539) to Pius XI (1939), all have sumptuous monuments in the basilica (cf. F. Gregorovius, Le tombe dei Papi, Italian ed., 2nd ed. revised and enlarged by Ch. Hülsen, Rome 1931; G. Turcio, La Basilica di S. Pietro, ibid. 1946).

VII. THE CHRISTIAN CEMETERY

Since the Constantinian Basilica was a cemetery basilica, beneath its pavement it had a real cemetery, as in the other cemetery basilicas in the catacombs of S. Paul, S. Lawrence, and S. Agnes. This cemetery reappeared thanks to the work of lowering the level of the Vatican Grottoes, ordered by Pope Pius XII, immediately beneath the pavement of the Constantinian basilica. It consists of either walled *formae* lined with tiles or marble slabs on two or more levels, covered by double-pitched roof tiles, or simple or carved sarcophagi, just like the cemetery described by P. Styger beneath the Basilica Apostolorum in the catacombs (Il monumento apostolico della Via Appia, in Dissertazioni della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, 2nd series, 13 [1918], pp. 9 ff.). Here too, in the sarcophagi, the corpses were wrapped in linen and bound with crossed bandages, resting on a light layer of quicklime; the same use of resinous balsamic essences was also noted.

A. Bosio, reproducing in his *Roma sotterranea* as many as 29 carved sarcophagi or their covers, declares that these, along with the ruins of the Vatican Cemetery (as relics of so great a shipwreck endured), have survived; in addition to those that have been discovered countless times before; and others are still being discovered; and Bosio himself precisely indicates the years of their discovery (1575, 1590, 1592, 1607; *Roma sotterranea*, Rome 1632, p. 105).

To the west of the Apostle’s tomb, the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (v.) was found; he was Prefect of Rome in 359. To the north of the tomb, the inscription of Ebenitus, a consular advocate and governor of Vienne, loyal to Honorius against the usurper Constantine III, who died in Rome in 407, was discovered (Esplorazioni, cit., pp. 172, 192 and pl. 71; H. Marrou, L’épithaphe Vaticane du consulaire de Vienne Eventius, in *Revue des études anciennes*, 54 [1952], pp. 326-31).

Of the sarcophagi discovered at the time of Bosio during the works for the new Basilica, some are in the Lateran Christian Museum, some in the Louvre Museum in Paris; in the Vatican Grottoes are those of Junius Bassus, the former Lateran 174 (reproduced in vol. VI, pl. 18), and also those found in recent explorations, such as the post-Constantinian sarcophagus with the busts of two spouses in the center and the two Princes of the Apostles at the ends (Esplorazioni, cit., pp. 81, 84 and pl. 24 b, 27 b, 28); the sarcophagus leaning against the mausoleum of the Ebuzis with scenes of Jonah and the Three Children on the lid, and in the chest the miracle of the fountain, the announcement of the triple denial with the «signum Christi» (R) in the scroll held by G. Christ, Moses receiving the Law, Daniel and the dragon, the healing of the man born blind, the orant between the two Apostles, the healing of the woman with an issue of blood, the sacrifice of Abraham, the capture of S. Peter who holds the scroll with the same R; the resurrection of Lazarus (Esplorazioni, cit., p. 37, pl.7); inoltre due sarcofagi con oranti, uno con l’orante in un’absidina e i due principi degli Apostoli alle due estremità. Infine il prezioso coperchio di sarcofago di età GIUSEPPE I (v.) Ebreo e l’Epifania con la croce latina dietro la Madonna (riprodotto alla V. CROCE; cf. L. De Bruyne, Importante coperchio di sarcofago crist. scoperto nelle Grotte Vaticane, in Riv. arch. crist., 21 [1944-45], pp. 249-80), il sarcofago degli Anicii, ecc. Le iscrizioni, rinvenute sia ai tempi del Bosio che posteriormente, sono state edite da A. Silvagni (Inscrip- tiones christianae. II, 2, Roma 1935). Da esse si può avere un’idea delle varie categorie di persone che vi furono sepolte. Nel 380 vi fu sepolto «un Eseultius» (v) (claris- simus) (ibid., n. 4166); nel 384 il praefectus urbii Valerio vi depose la moglie «clarissimae memoriae femina» (ibid., n. 4168); nel 452 vi fu sepolta una «Fabiola (clarissima) (femina)» (ibid., n. 4175); in uno degli anni 432, 437, 466 o 454 vi si depose una «Paula in(ustris) fem(ina)» (ibid., n. 4176); una «Caecilia Furia (clarissima) fem(ina)» morta il 19 genn. 414 (A. Ferrus, Lavori e scoperte, in Bull. commun. arch. Govern. di Roma, 1942, p. 96); nel 444 o nel 493 una «Mustila sp(ectabilis) fem(ina)» (Sil- vagni, op. cit., n. 4178); nel 511 una Albina (clarissima) p(uella)» (ibid., n. 4182); nel 516 un «Titianus v(ir) sp(ectabilis)» (ibid., n. 4183); nel 523 un «Petrus Ro- mae ex tribunus voluptatum v(ir) sp(ectabilis) vicarius urbis» per concessione del papa Ormisda e al tempo di Trasmondo presposto della basilica (ibid., n. 4184); inoltre vi furono sepolti una «Gabinia Gaudentia h(onesta) fem- mina)» (ibid., n. 4208); una «Porfirius c(larissima) f(e- mina)» (ibid., n. 4208 A). «Ad sanctum Petrum Apo- stolum ante regia in porticu columna secunda, quomodo intramus sinistra parte virorum» ebbero sepoltura «Lu- cillus et Ianuaria h(onesta) fem(ina)» (ibid., n. 4213); e ancora nel portico fu posto un senatore (ibid., n. 4234). Nel 536 vi fu deposto un «Iohannis v(ir) h(onestus) olo- grafus propine Isidori» (ibid., n. 4185); nel 577 un «Eu- genius notarius» (ibid., n. 4187), un «Iohannis Ali- censis» cioè di Salemi (ibid., n. 4179); una «Helpis dicta fui Sicula regionis alumnae» (ibid., n. 4209), una «Mala requiescet in somno pacis» nel 432, «accepta aput Deum» (ibid., n. 4173). Una «Baleria Latobia h(onesta) f(emina)» (ibid., n. 4226); un «Aelius Felicianus» si fece la sua «domus eternalis» (ibid., n. 4229). Nel 435 vi ebbe sepoltura un'Aurelia Gemina a cura di un diacono Felice (ibid., n. 4174); nel 563 un «Marcellus subdia- conus regionis sexte» per concessione del papa Giovanni III (ibid., 4186); inoltre Eutichete notario della Chiesa romana e un Pietro suddiacono «sancte ecclesiae romane regionis) primae» (ibid., n. 4202). Sepolture cristiane furono calate dalla basilica anche nei mausolei, ad es., in quello dei Matucci. Ivi nella parete di fondo e in quella

di destra vennero praticate tre file di sepolcri fino quasi all'altezza della volta e tre grandi tombe a cappuccina di cui una fu veduta nel 1822 quando fu collocata la statua di Pio VI (G. B. De Rossi, in Bull. arch. crist., 1a serie, 2 [1864], p. 50, n. 4; cf. anche Esplorazioni, cit., pp. 52-53). Ceadavalla re del Wessex, venuto a Roma e battezzato col nomo di Pietro nel 1689 da Sergio I, morto pochi giorni dopo, fu sepolto nell'atrio della basilica (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. christ., II, 1, Roma 1888, p. 70, n. 4). Così pure nell'atrio di s. Pietro (n. 165, F nella pianta di T. Alfarano, a sinistra) fu deposto in un sarcofago di porfido l'imperatore Ottone II m. il 7 dic. 983 (C. M. Kaufmann, Das Kaisergrah. in den Vatikanischen Grotten, Friburgo 1903; H. Grisar, Il sepolcro dell'Imperatore Ottone II nel paradiso dell'antica Basilica Vaticana, in Civ. Catt., 1904, 1, pp. 463-73). Cenciò prefetto di Roma fu sepolto nell'atrio della basilica nel 1077 (H. Grisar, La tomba del prefetto nel Paradiso di S. Pietro, in Civ. Catt., 1904, 11, pp. 202-203). In vari tempi molte tombe furono rinvenute dietro l'attuale basilica nella collina, fin dove sorge il palazzo del Governatorato; G. B. De Rossi a proposito di un'iscrizione del 352 (Silvagni, op. cit., n. 420) attesta che essa fu rinvenuta e ex uno sublicilium sepulcrorum quorum quidem multa vestigia vidi (Inscr. christ., Roma 1857-61, n. 112); dallo stesso luogo proviene la bella epigrafe dogmatica dell'anno 403 di un Quintilianus homo Dei, confirmans Trinitatem, amans castitatem, respuens mundum (Silvagni, op. cit., n. 4202); il celebre cippo trovato nel 1841-42 che documenta il cimitero all'aperto di Licinia con IXOYC ZONTON (pesce dei viventi) e l'ancora tra due pesci ora nel Museo nazionale romano (I. PESCE, A. Marchi, Architettura delle arti primitivo, Roma 1844, p. 70; Silvagni, op. cit., n. 4246); il coperchio del sarcofago di Agapene rinvenuto nel 1843 (ibid., n. 4245); proveniente da una «forma» la grande lastra di una Tertulla rinvenuta nel 1845 ora al Laterano (parte XXII, 10; ibid., n. 4249); il frammento di coperchio di sarcofago di un EPISC (opus) pure al Laterano (O. Marucchi, Monumenti del Museo Lateranense, Milano 1910, tav. 53; Fr. J. Dölger, I X 8 5, I, p. 159; II, p. 573, tav. 48, 2; Silvagni, op. cit., n. 4246); l'iscrizione rinvenuta nel 1841-42 di una Ursa con l'orante, ora al Laterano (O. Marucchi, op. cit., tav. 65, 9; Silvagni, n. 4251) e altre iscrizioni rinvenute nel 1842-45 (O. Marucchi, op. cit., tav. 65, 5, 65, 6; Silvagni, op. cit., n. 4252-55). Infine nel 1950 nelle fondazioni del nuovo edificio per la radio vaticana apparve una «forma» a cappuccina, attestante fin dove si spingeva nella collina l'area cimiteriale cristiana. Anche nel sepolcreto romano presso Porta Angelica fu scoperto un sarcofago cristiano con scene di Giona, oggi nella Gliptoteca Ny-Carlsberg a Copenaghen (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pp. 85, 90, tav. 59, 3).

VIII. ENDOWMENTS, ADMINISTRATION, AND OFFICIAL DUTIES

In the biography of SILVESTER an inventory is given of the properties assigned by CONSTANTINE for the maintenance of the Basilica. This list was certainly drawn from the Church’s archives (Lib. pont., I, pp. 177–78). A. Piganiol has pointed out that the estates situated in the East must have been granted by CONSTANTINE after his victory over LICINIUS and the unification of the Empire. One of the most valuable documents for the rights of the Vatican Basilica over its inalienable domains “nullo nomine nec titulo” is that sent by the three emperors GRATIAN, VALENTINIAN, and THEODOSIUS to FLAVIUS ELEUTHERIUS “urbi praefecto” in one of the years 372, 379, 382, or 383. A copy of it is preserved on a marble slab found in the pavement of the sacellum of Pope JOHN VII (Silvagni, op. cit., no. 4099). A further constitution of ATALARIUS from the time of JOHN III (533–35) was found in a copy before the atrium of the basilica (Cassiodorus, Variae, IX, 15; Silvagni, op. cit., no. 4116 a).

The care of the basilica was entrusted to a prepositus, who was to administer the properties and secure the revenues necessary for the upkeep of the building, its lighting, and divine worship. The sepulchral inscription of a prepositus named TRANSMUNDUS from the year 523 is known (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. christ., I, no. 989). Under his authority were the mansionarii, two of whom, THEODORE and ACONTIUS, are praised by ST. GREGORY THE GREAT (Dialogues, III, 23, 25).

Questo Papa adopera anche il termine custos e di custodes martyrum; nelle biografie di Silvestro e di Leone Magno son detti anche «cubiculari ex clero romano» (Lib. pont., I, pp. 171 e 239). Aumentarono di numero con l'andar del tempo e nel sec. x erano sessanta e si dividevano le varie cappelle della basilica costituendo altrettante schoale. Tra queste la più importante era la schola confessionis. Sono note le schoale di S. Maria in Bironica con l'oratorio di Giovanni VII nel 1018; dell'oratorio di Paolo I, di S. Petronilla, di S. Croce, (L. Schiaparelli, Le carte antiche dell'archiv. cap. di S. Pietro, cit., sotto, nn. 8, 11, 14, 15), di S. Maria in Mediana, cioè dell'oratorio di Gregorio III (L. Allodi-G. Levi, Regestum Sublicense, Roma 1885, p. 138). Ma per gli abusi Gregorio VII le aboli (Lib. pont., II, p. 271). Al tempo di Gregorio III nel 732 erano sette e il Papa affidò loro la cura dell'illuminazione dell'oratorio da lui fondato presso l'arco trionfale a sinistra della confessione, in onore del S. mo Salvatore e della B. Vergine (n. 38 della pianta di T. Alfarano). Il Papa tenne un sinodo nel quale si fissarono anche le orazioni, ora in quattro tavole marmoree viste ancora da Maffeo Vegio «in utroque latere Sanctae Mariae in Cancellis»; i frammenti suprastiti sono ora nelle S. Grotte (Silvagni, in Monumenta epigraphica cristiana, I, Città del Vaticano 1938, tav. 13). Una lastra marmorea pure nelle Grotte ha conservato copia di tre orazioni per l'anima del papa Gregorio III, m. il 28 nov. 741. Recentemente L. Eizenhofer ha edito un esauriente studio del testo dal punto di vista liturgico (Die Marmorenessen Gregor III., in Ephemerides Liturgicae, 67 [1953], pp. 112-28). Il papa Leone IX stabilì che il decimo delle offerte si devolvesse al mantenimento della basilica (L. Schiaparelli, op. cit., n. 19). Nel sec. XI al vescovo di Silva Candida per la sua ufficialura in basilica durante la Settimana Santa andavano le oblazioni dei fedeli durante le sue funzioni (ibid., n. 19). Nel 1138 Innocenzo II concesse ai canonici la metà delle oblazioni lasciate agli oratori di S. Maria «in turre», di S. Gregorio, di S. Giovanni e di S. Petronilla (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 4076, 4110, 4366). Eugenio III lasciò ai canonici la quarta parte di tutte le offerte, ad eccezione di quelle della cappella di S. Leone Magno (L. Fabre, Les offrandes dans la basilique Vaticane, in Mélanges d'arch. et d'hist., 14 [1894], p. 225; L. Schiaparelli, Le carte antiche dell'archivio capitolare di S. Pietro in Vaticano, in Archivio della Soc. rom. di storia patria, 24 [1901], pp. 393-496; 25 [1902], pp. 273-353).

The papal liturgy took place from the 4th century on 22 February: “Natale Petri de Cathedra,” on 29 June the nativity of the two Apostles Peter and Paul, and on 25 December the Nativity of the Lord. Pope Simplicius (468–83) assigned to the titular priests of the 6th ecclesiastical region (Campo Marzio, namely of Lucina or Cecilia, Marco and Damaso) and to those of the 7th (Trastevere, namely Giulio, Crisogono, Callisto) the duty of serving weekly “propter penitentes et baptismum” (Lib. pont., I, p. 249). L. Duchesne held that the regular celebration of the Holy Mass in the two cemetery basilicas of the Vatican and Ostiense was instituted by St Gregory (Lib. pont., I, p. 312; id., Vaticana XII, in Mél. d'arch. et d'hist., 34 [1915], p. 213). In the time of Paschal I (817–24) for the feast of the Apostle the nocturnal diligentia was performed with the washing of the confessio and the placing of a censer in the small pit immediately above the sepulchre (Lib. pont., II, p. 33). M. Andrieu, publishing the text of an “ordo qualiter diligentia agitur Romae in ecclesia sancti Petri,” deemed the archetype of this ordo much earlier than the 9th century (La cérémonie appellée diligentia au début du IXe siècle, in Revue des sciences religieuses, 1921, pp. 62–63). In the 12th century the papal liturgical stations were those of the Saturdays of the Ember weeks, the Sundays of Quinquagesima and of Passion Sunday, the Monday after Easter, the Second Sunday after Easter, 23 April for the Litania maior, the dedication day 18 November and 22 February. In the 12th century nocturnal stations were held: the Sunday Gaudete (third of Advent), Epiphany, Ascension, Pentecost, 29 June and its octave (6 July).
IX. BASILICA OF ST. VINCENT. — In the description of the 8th-century basilica, the bed in which St. Gregory had died is indicated in this place (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. Christ., II, p. 227); at the end of the 9th century, in the biography of Stephen V (Lib. pont., II, p. 196), mention is made of an oratory of St. Gregory with eleven altars where his bed was preserved. It is only in the 12th century that the basilica of St. Vincent (the deacon martyr) is mentioned; P. Mallio places it near the north side of St. Peter’s portico (a a, in the plan of T. Alfarano). It is listed among the churches of the Borgo by Cencio Camerario; oriented like the Vatican Basilica, it had three naves divided by two rows of nine marble columns each, 4.40 m high; traces of ancient paintings, perhaps depicting episodes from the life of St. Vincent, were visible on the walls, but ruined by damp (A. Severano, Memorie delle Settimane, Roma 1653, p. 67; F. Martinelli, Roma ex ethnica sacra, 1630, p. 353). It had a Chapter, of which Benedict XI in 1304 appointed Cardinal Matteo Orsini as administrator (Bull. Vat., t. III, app. p. 6). Pope Nicholas V, by a bull of 23 December 1549, suppressed the Chapter and transferred its revenues to the canons of St. Peter (Bullarium Vat., II, p. 130). The church was later reduced to a wine storehouse; then Paul III divided it into two floors; the upper one was used for the tributes and censuses collected by the Apostolic Chamber on the day of St. Peter; the walls were frescoed with paintings depicting the tributary princes of the Church, not one with an inscription. Paul V had it demolished in 1611, and the columns were reused in the chapels built along the extension by Maderno.
X. EDIFICI INTORNO A S. PIETRO. — Ben presto intorno alla Basilica Vaticana sorsero degli alloggi («accubita») sopra una specie di portico («tignum»). Il papa Simacco (498-514) fece costruire a destra e a sinistra della basilica due «episcopia», e a sinistra alloggi per i poveri (Lib. pont., I, pp. 262-63), che vennero restaurati dal papa Sergio (687-711; ibid., I, p. 375), Gregorio III (ibid., I, p. 420) e da Leone III (ibid., II, p. 27).

Nella biografia di Leone III si ricorda un triclinio maiore da lui costruito «iuxa ecclesiam beati Petri magnificamente decorato e con abside maggiore rivestita di musica, mentre le due minori splendevano di marmo e di pitture. Questa costruzione viene indicata «in Acoli» (Lib. pont., II, p. 8); termine che ritorna nella vita di Gregorio IV il quale «iuxa Acoli» fece un piccolo ospizio ben decorato di pitture «pro quietitudine pontificis», cioè per il riposo del papa dopo le funzioni del mattutino o dopo le Messe solenni (ibid., II, p. 143). Nell'edificio di Leone III fu ricevuto l'imperatore Ludovico II e il suo seguito da Leone IV (ibid., II, p. 134). Maffeo Vegio vince ancora al suo tempo le vestigia della due absidi minori mentre la maggiore esisteva ancora. L. Duchesne riconobbe la «domus Acoli» nel termine «domus Angliae» usato nel Liber Censuum (ed. Fabre-Duchesne, I, p. 269) per indicare l'edificio dove il Papa con la sua corte veniva dal Laterano ad alloggiare per le solenni funzioni della vigilia in S. Pietro (ibid., II, p. 143). Vicino alla basilica, a sud, fu costruito un bagno per i pellegrini, dove al tempo delle diaconie erano condotti ogni giovedì i poveri. I Longobardi tagliarono nel 756 l'acquedotto «forma Sabbatina» che venne riparato da Adriano I (Lib. pont., I, pp. 503, 506). Duchesne ritiene che il «palatium S. Petri» dove nel sec. IX risiedeva il «missus» imperiale, stava sul luogo della diaconia di S. Sergio, anzi non sarebbe stato che la trasformazione della diaconia stessa (Lib. pont., II, p. 43); sarebbe il «S. Sergius palatii Caruli» della lista di Cencio (C. Hülsen, Le chiese di Roma, p. 11, n. 63).

XI. LE CHIESE FILIALI

Le chiese filiali a S. Pietro nei secc. XI-XII furono: SS. Giovanni e Paolo, S. Martino, S. Stefano maggiore, S. Stefano minore, S. Salvatore in Terrione, S. Giustino in monte Saccorum, S. Pellegrino extra civitatem Leoninam, S. Maria in Palatiolo, S. Maria in Caterina, S. Maria in Turri (L. Schiaparelli, art. cit., in Arch. della Soc. rom. di St. Patria, 24 [1901], p. 477, n. 18; 25 [1902], p. 279, n. 37; p. 296 n. 471, p. 331, n. 70; P. Fr. Kehr, Italia Pontificia, I, Berlino 1906, pp. 139, 141-43).

Le filiali nel sec. XIV furono: S. Giacomo in Septignano, S. Leonardo, S. Maria in Saxia, S. Maria in Palatiolo, S. Maria e Caterina, S. Maria in Traspadina, S. Michele, S. Lorenzo de Piscibus, S. Martinello, S. Maria de Virgariis, S. Gregorio de Cortina, S. Stefano de Ungaris, S. Salvatore de Ossibus, S. Zenone (Fr. Ehrle, Ricerche, ecc., in Dissert. della P. Accad. rom. di arch., 2ª serie, X [1907], p. 40). S. Maria de Palatiolo, situata nel contrafforte del Gianicolo che si protende verso S. Pietro, cioè dove è oggi il convento degli Agostiniani di S. Monica, è ricordata ancora nei cataloghi delle chiese di Roma, di Parigi, di Torino e del Signorili; poi scompare. G. Grimaldi la indica distrutta quando si edificò la villa Cesi o Vercelli (L. Schiaparelli, in Arch. soc. rom. st. patria, 25 [1903], p. 310). S. Gregorio de Cortina fu tra l'attuale obelisco e l'estremità occidentale del portico Berniniano nel lato sud; è ricordata dalla bolla di Innocenzo III del 13 ott. 1205 e di Gregorio IX del 1228. S. Maria de Vergariis o Virgariis: al principio della portica di S. Pietro presso il luogo dove ora sorge l'obelisco, è ricordata nella bolla di Leone IX del 20 marzo 1053 (F. P. Kehr, Italia pontif., I, p. 146, n. 4); fu filiale di S. Pietro fin dalla bolla di Adriano IV del 10 febbr. 1058 (ibid., p. 542, n. 42). La denominazione di «virgari» deriva dalle verghe di argento che erano le insegne dei cantori addetti a S. Pietro (P. Adinolfi, La portica di S. Pietro, pp. 126 sg.). La chiesa di S. Maria de Armenis era nel borgo di S. Pietro, al fianco orientale del palazzo del S. Uffizio nell'isola già esistente tra questo e il Collegio Agostiniano di S. Monica, a sud-est della Basilica Vaticana (Fr. Ehrle, op. cit., p. 32 sg.; Ch. Hülsen, Le Chiese di Roma nel medioevo, p. 313). S. Zenone fu soggetta al monastero di S. Martino con le bolle di Leone IV del 10 ag. 854 (L. Schiaparelli, op. cit., p. 432, n. 2) e di Leone IX del 31 marzo 1053 (op. cit., p. 407, n. 16). Era molto vicina a S. Salvatore in Terrione dove è ora il S. Uffizio e fu demolita dal card. Pucci per il suo Palazzo tra il 1513-31 (Fr. Ehrle, op. cit., p. 35).

Four oratories were established under the four porticoes surrounding the garden or paradise of the basilica. On the left was S. Maria in turri, on the right in the corner S. Apollinare; in front of the ancient sacristy was S. Maria called della Febbre, where previously there had been the oratory of S. Gregorio near the tomb of this pope. S. Maria in Turri or in turribus was at the entrance of the “paradisus” of S. Peter, between the two bell towers erected by Stephen II and Adrian II; it is first mentioned in the bull of John XIX of December 1026 (P. F. Kehr, Italia Pontificia, I, p. 139, no. 18; II, p. 26, no. 3); it was among the dependencies of S. Peter (bull of Innocent II of May 23, 1138); it appears for the last time in the bull of Innocent VI of 1355 (Bullarium Vaticanum, I, pp. 356); Alfaranò in his plan marks its location at no. 141.

S. Apollinare: it was founded by Honorius (625–38) and enriched with gifts by him (Lib. Pont., I, p. 323). It was on the left side of the basilica. It was demolished during the works for the new façade (J. A. F. Orbaan, Der Abbruch Alt-St. Peters 1605–15, in Jahrbuch der k. preuss. Kunstsammlungen, 39 [1919], pp. 58–59, no. 86–87, p. 103).

XII. THE MONASTERIES

Monasteries soon arose around the Basilica to serve II. The oldest of these is mentioned in the biography of Leo I (440–61) in the *Liber Pontificalis* (I, p. 239); and an ancient interpolation gives its name: the SS. John and Paul. It is still mentioned in the catalogues of Turin of the churches of Rome and in the Signorili of the time of Martin V, but no longer by Maffeo Vegio. When the north side of the transept was built, its remains were seen, along with museum representations of the two martyrs John and Paul. It is not known who founded the monastery of St Martin; from here, at the time of Pope Agatho, the "archantor" of St Peter John set out for England to instruct the monks of Benedict Biscop in Roman chant (*Liber Pontificalis*, I, p. 417; Bede: PL 94, 717). On 10 Aug. 854, Leo IV restored its buildings and granted the monastery the churches of the four *schoale* and St Zeno (L. Schiaparelli, op. cit., n. 2; a 12th-century copy); on 21 Mar. 1053, Leo IX confirmed its privileges (ibid., n. 16). In the Middle Ages, the monastery served for the consecration of bishops and for the ceremony of the washing of feet on Holy Thursday. It was seen being demolished by Maffeo Vegio under Nicholas V; even then a chapel with some cells was still visible.

la curva dell'abside costantiniana e il muro occidente del transetto, dove è oggi il pilastro detto della Veronica. Si sa che vi era una porta nel muro esterno della Basilica vicino alla cappella di S. Leone. Ivi verso la metà del sec. XV si conservava la statua in bronzo di S. Pietro trasportata sotto Paolo V a destra della navata centrale della Basilica (H. Grisar, Della statua in bronzo di S. Pietro apostolo nella Basilica Vaticana, in Analecta Romana, I, Roma 1899, p. 631 sgg.). Alla fine del sec. VI Galla, patrizia dell'aristocrazia romana, figlia del console Simacco, visse in un monastero di S. Stefano, presso S. Pietro, che nell'VIII e IX sec. fu spesso detto «cata Galla patricia». Quel monastero, detto di S. Stefano maggiore, poi passò a monaci, perché nel 732 il papa Gregorio III stabilì un regolamento per i tre monasteri «illic servientes» (Lib. Pont., I, pp. 417, 422). Esso fu dotato da Pasquale I (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 4293). La sua chiesa fu restaurata al tempo di Leone III; il monastero era cadente nel sec. XV, quando vi dimorò Maffeo Vegio; poi vi abitarono religiosi abissini donde il titolo di S. Stefano dei Mori; fu ancora restaurata la chiesa da Clemente XI nel 1706 e da Pio XI (G. Giovannoni, La chiesa vaticana di S. Stefano Maggiore, in Memorie della Pont. Accad. rom. di arch., 1934). Il papa Stefano III (752-57) aggiunse un quarto monastero detto di S. Stefano minore (Lib. Pont., I, p. 451). La chiesa al tempo di S. Pio V aveva preso il nome di «S. Stefano minore della natzione degli Ungari». Fu demolita per la costruzione della nuova Sacrestia; una lapide ne indica il luogo. Più tardi nacquero lotte fra i monasteri che furono riordinati e restaurati da Adriano I e da Leone III (Lib. Pont., I, p. 501; II, p. 28). Il monastero di S. Martino fu affidato al presbitero romano Pasquale, poi papa (817-24; Lib. Pont., II, pp. 52, 59); vi fu poi educato Leone IV (847-55) che lo restaurò e lo dotò (ibid., II, p. 133). Il monastero ebbe le tre schiole dei Franchi, dei Frisoni e dei Sassoni con le chiese di S. Salvatore, di S. Michele e di S. Maria ed edifici annessi, tra cui le chiese di S. Zenone, di S. Nicola, di S. Maria de Palatiolo, di S. Salvatore de Bordonia. Al monastero di S. Stefano maggiore appartenero nel sec. XI la chiesa e l'ospedale di S. Pellegrino e terrò tra la Valle dell'Inferno e le mura di Leone IV; la chiesa di S. Maria in Turri presso l'atrio della Basilica Vaticana e quella di S. Giustino a nord del portico con la schola dei Langobardi e relativo cimitero. Nel sec. X però non si trovano più monaci. Leone IX nominò un unico arciprete al quale sottomise tutti (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 4292-94). È noto nel 1083 il card. Bonussenior (Schiaparelli, op. cit., n. 102). Sotto Pasquale II in un atto del 1104 si menziona l'arciprete di S. Pietro assistito dai quattro rettori dei monasteri i quali ultimi si incontrano ancora in atti di Clemente III (P. Fr. Kehr, Italia Pontif., I, Berlino 1906, p. 146). A poco a poco però i monasteri furono abbandonati e si costruì ivi presso la Canonica feretta da Nicolò III (1277-80) sul lato sud della basilica, presso l'attuale (è nella pianta di Alfarano, tav. 2, ed. Cerrati); poi nel sec. XV, i canonici si dispersero in città (L. Duchesne, V., in Mél. d'arch. et d'hist., 34 [1914], p. 323).

XIII. Diaconie

Intorno alla Basilica vaticana si ebbero cinque diaconie: la prima, dei SS. Sergio e Bacco, sembra anteriore a Gregorio III (731-41; Lib. pont., I, p. 420). Nel 1192 si chiamò S. Sergio «de palatio Caruli» cioè l'edificio abitato dai Carolingi nella venuta a Roma; dovette esser demolita nel sec. XIII perché non figura nei cataloghi delle chiese di Roma. Era situata nel lato nord della basilica.

La seconda diaconia è quella di S. Maria in Caput Portici, ricordata nella biografia di papa Stefano II (752-57; Lib. pont., I, p. 441) dove egli fece uno xenodochio; è ricordata anche nelle biografie di Adriano I (ibid., I, p. 506) e di Leone III (ibid., II, p. 19); nel privilegio di Leone IV del 10 ag. 854 per il monastero di S. Martino è indicata «S. Maria in oratorio quae est in capo de portico» (L. Schiaparelli, in Arch., soc. rom. st. patria, 24 [1901], p. 432, n. 2; P. Fr. Kehr, Italia Pontificia, I, Berlino 1906, p. 145, n. 1); fu detta anche «S. Maria Virgariorum in fine cortinare»; venne ab

battuta da Pio IV per ingrandire la piazza; si trovava presso a poco dove ora sorge l'obelisco (T. Alfarano, ed. M. Cerrati, cit. [Studi e testi, 26], Roma 1914, p. 23).

La terza diaconia è quella di S. Silvestro «iuxa hospitale S. Gregorio», menzionata nelle biografie di Stefano III (Lib. pont., I, pp. 411, 456); è collegata con lo xenodochio detto di S. Gregorio nella vita di Adriano I (ibid., I, p. 506); ebbe doni da Leone III (ibid., II, p. 22). Dovette essere vicino a S. Maria «in caput portici»; fu anch'essa demolita sotto Pio IV.
La quarta diaconia, detta «In Hadrianum», cioè presso il mausoleo di Adriano, poco lontano dal ponte, nel sec. IX fu denominata di S. Maria Trasportina o in Traspadina e durò fino al sec. XV. L. Duchesne ritenne che il termine fosse derivato da una confraternita di persone venute d'oltre Po. La chiesa fu demolita sotto Pio IV. L'attuale S. Maria in Trasportina sorge più ad occidente.

La quinta diaconia è quella di S. Martino vicino alle due di «S. Maria in caput portici» e di S. Silvestro; e fu detta de curina, iuxta porticum, de porticu nei cataloghi antichi delle chiese di Roma; «S. Martinelli de portico» in una bolla di Bonifacio IX del 6 apr. 1400; di S. Martino nel palazzo del priore di Roma perché divenuto l'oratorio del priorato dei cavalieri di S. Giovanni; scomparve nel sec. XVII.

XIV. The “Schola Pergerinorum.” — Around the Basilica there arose special hospices or scholia where pilgrims also found spiritual assistance from clergy of their own nation. The first mention of them occurs in the biography of Pope Sergius II, when on 23 August 846 the Romans sent against the Saracens at Porto “Saxi et Frisones et schola qui dicitur Francorum” (Lib. pont., II, p. 100). Leo III, on his return to Rome on 29 November 799, was welcomed at the Milvian Bridge by the clergy, the Roman people, and all the “scholae peregrinorum, namely the Franks, Frisians, Saxons and Lombards” (Lib. Pont., II, p. 6).

The oldest of these scholia is the “schola Saxonum,” that is, the hospice of the Saxons, founded by King Ine of Wessex, according to Matthew Paris, about 727–30; while William of Malmesbury attributes it to Offa, king of Mercia, about 794 (Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. W. Stubbs, I, London 1883, p. 109). From the area of the Circus of Nero as far as the Tiber, the whole district took the name “Vicus Saxonum.” The appellation Borgo (Borgo S. Spirito, S. Angelo, Vecchio, Nuovo) likewise derives from the English “bourg.” Under Paschal I the burgus Saxonum was devastated.

da un incendio (Lib. pont., II, p. 53) e più tardi sotto Leone IV. Centro della Schola Francorum fu la chiesa di S. Salvatore poi detta de Terriore, super Terriorem o iuxta Terriores, ricordata nelle bolle di Leone IX del 21 marzo 1053, di Adriano IV del 10 febb. 1158 e di Urbano III del 13 giugno 1186. Venne restaurata da Nicolò V; fu in parte demolita dalla costruzione del palazzo del S. Uffizio. La schola Francorum si divise in due: il ramo germanico, con S. Maria dell'Anima e Campo Santo dei Tedeschi e Fiamminghi, sec. XIV; il ramo francese in S. Luigi de' Francesi (P. La Croix, Mémorie historique sur les donations de France à Rome, Parigi 1868). Innocenzo VIII (1484-92) assegnò il luogo dell'antica schola a un corpo di guardie del corpo dette cavalleggeri o lanci spazzate, milites levis armaturae, fino all'occupazione napoleonica; ora oratorio di S. Pietro. Della Schola Langobardorum si attribuisce la fondazione ad Ansa moglie del re Desiderio prima del 774; infatti se ne ha un accenno nel suo epitalio dettato da Paolo Diacono (MGH, Scriptores rerum Langobard., p. 192). Il card. Erhle riconobbe il luogo dove sorgeva la chiesa di S. Giustino, centro della schola. In un documento si legge che Carlomagno, il 22 dic. 797, avrebbe stabilito che la chiesa di S. Salvatore fosse ospizio dei pellegrini oltremontani e luogo di sepoltura per quelli che morissero a Roma; ma si tratta di un falso del sec. XI (cf. L. Schiaparelli, art. cit., 24 [1901], pp. 426-32). Della Schola Frisonum sussiste la chiesa oggi detta dei SS. Michèle e Magno, in alto, sulla sinistra del colonnato del Bernini. In detta chiesa sono ancora i frammenti dell'epitafio di un tale «Hebi geere Frisonorum» del tempo di papa Giovanni XVIII 001-1009). La chiesa fu concessa il 4 genn. 1447 a meo Roverella arcivescovo di Ravenna che l'aveva restaurata. A queste quattro scholia, che decadero dopo l'invasione saracena, si aggiunse più tardi quella degli Ungheresi fondata al principio del sec. XI dal re s. Stefano presso S. Stefano minore, detto anche de Agulia. La bolla di Benedetto X dell'8 maggio 1058 stabilì che gli Ungheresi giunti a Roma «causa orationis aut legationis» dovevano prendere alloggio solo presso S. Stefano minore e che i beni degli Ungheresi deceduti a Roma dovevano essere devoluti all'ospizio (A. De Waal, La schola Francorum e l'ospizio Teutonico dal campo Santo, Roma 1897; id., Der Campo Santo der Deutschen zu Rom, Friburgo in Br. 1896; J. Zettinger, Die Berichte über Rompliger aus dem Frankenreich bis zum Jahr 800, in Röm. Quartalschrift, Suppl., 11, Roma 1900; P. J. Block, Le antiche memorie dei Frisoni in Roma, in Bull. della Commissione archeol. comunale, 34 [1906], pp. 40-60; P. M. Baumgarten, Cartularum vetus Campi Santi Teutonicorum de Urbe, Roma 1908; W. Kroke, The national establishments of England in Medieval Rome, in Dublin Review, 23 [1918], pp. 94-106, 305-17; M. Vaes, Les fondations hospitalières flamandes à Rome du XVe au XVIIIe siècle, in Bulletin historique belge à Rome, I [1919], pp. 170-371; A. Gaspuet, The history of the venerable English College at Rome, Londra 1920; Fr. Ehrle, L'oratorio di S. Pietro nel sito dell'antica scuola dei Franchi, Roma 1924; W. J. Moore, The Saxon pilgrims to Rome and the Schola Saxo-num, Friburgo in Sv. 1939; G. J. Hoogewerff, Friezen, Franken en Saksen te Rome, in Mededeelingen van het Nederlandsch Historisch Institute te Rome, 15 [1947], p. 13 sgg.; F. Banfi, Santo Stefano degli Ungari. La chiesa e l'ospizio della nazione ungherese a Roma, in Capitolium, 27 [1952], pp. 27-39).

XV. HOSPITALS AND HOSPICES

S. Pellegrino: during the time of Leo III (795–816) there existed the *domnicum* hospice at the Naumachia* with an oratory dedicated to S. Pellegrino, the first bishop of Auxerre; the said Pope rebuilt the hospital and oratory, dedicating them to St Peter (Lib. Pont., II, pp. 25, 28). Paschal I (817–24) reorganized everything and entrusted its administration to the monks whom he had placed in S. Cecilia in Trastevere (ibid., II, p. 57). The church stood outside the Leonine city on the road leading to the Porta Aurea or Viridaria, near the Swiss barracks (Fr. Ehrle, *Ricerche su alcune antiche chiese del Borgo di S. Pietro*, in *Dissert. della Pont. accad. rom. di archeol.*, 2nd ser., X, 1 [1907], pp. 22 ff.).

Eugenius IV, by a bull of the year 1446, adapted some old buildings between the Campo Santo and the obelisk for a women’s hospital; others were used by Nicholas V for the distributions of the Apostolic almonry. The xenodochium of Stephen II (752–57), later turned into the hospital of S. Gregorio, was situated near the diaconia of S. Sylvester and the present obelisk, to the left of one facing the basilica. It was destroyed under Pius IV (T. Alfarano, op. cit., ed. Cerrati, p. 23).

XVI. LA CITTA LEONINA

Fino dall'846 l'impraatore Lotario, subito dopo l'invasione saracena, in cui «ecclesia beati Petri hoc anno a pagania vastata est et dicta», aveva dato ordini «ut murus firmissimus circa aecclesiam beati Petri construitur» (MGH, Capitul., II, p. 66). Il Duchesne ritenne che la morte di papa Sergio II ne ritardasse l'esecuzione e che Leone IV abbia insistito presso l'Imperatore, mentre la prima idea viene assegnata a Leone III (Lib. pont., II, pp. 123, c. 137, n. 46). I lavori dell'erezione delle mura vennero eseguiti con operai forniti dalle singole città vicine, dai monasteri e dalle «domus cultae» (v.). Due iscrizioni documentano i lavori compiuti dalle «militiae Capracorum» della domus culta omonima (Lib. pont., I, p. 518, n. 52) e dalla «militia Saltisina» (ibid., II, p. 137, n. 47). Esse sono incastrate nelle mura del corridoio di Borgo, sulla fascia esterna dell'arco sotto il quale passa la Via di Porta Angelica. Ma anche prigionieri saraceni vennero adibiti a tale costruzione (ibid., II, p. 119), cominciata nell'84 e terminata nell'85; però le tre iscrizioni poste sulle mura stesse sono anteriori al 6 apr. 850, data della morte di Lotario; esse infatti non menzionano il suo successore Ludovico II. Il Lib. pont. dà la descrizione della cerimonia solenne avvenuta il 27 giugno 852, con la quale lo stesso Pontefice inaugurò con una processione il nuovo recinto e recitò tre orazioni sulle nuove mura; i testi delle tre orazioni sono inseriti nella sua biografia (Lib. Pont., II, p. 124). Le mura avevano una lunghezza di due miglia e mezzo ed erano munite di 48 torri. La parte più intatta è nei giardini vaticani con la torre della specola vaticana, che come quella presso il Casino di Pio IV fu detta spesso Torrione di S. Leone; la torre della specola ha 16 m. di diametro e mura di m. 4,50 alla base (oggi compresa nel complesso della stazione radio); l'altra, detta Torre Leonina, misura m. 12,80 di diametro e uguale spessore; il muro prosegue con orientazione ovest-est. Il corridoio di Borgo è molto restaurato e modificato. Sopra ciascuna delle tre porte venne posta una iscrizione, il testo delle prime due venne trasmesso dalla silloge, da A. Silvagni assegnata a Poggio Bracciolini e datata al 1409 (Inscr. chr. urb. Rom., nuova serie, I, 1922, pp. XXX-XXXI). La terza epigrafe venne trascritta da Maffeo Vegio (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. christ., Roma 1888, p. 347).

Di recente vennero in luce due frammenti marmorei che uniti danno il lato estremo destro d'una epigrafe che fu almeno di 15 righe; accennò all'opera di Leone (extracta Leonis); a Roma ([R]oma tibi tulerat*), al sangue dei Martiri («[martyr]rum sanguine cretus»). A. Prandi ha ritenuto possa trattarsi degli avanzi dell'epigrafe posta alla posteula Saxonum (A. Prandi, Un'iscrizione frammentaria di Leone IV recentemente scoperta, in Archivio della Soc. rom. di Storia patria, 74 [1941], pp. 149-59).

XVII. THE NEW BASILICA

The name of NICHOLAS V (1447–55) is linked to the project of constructing a new basilica, for the old one had fallen into a truly ruinous state; the building was leaning dangerously. Leon Battista Alberti wrote that the southern wall jutted outward by three braccia (about 1.75 m). Further proof is found in the testimony of Grimaldi, who witnessed the final moments of the old basilica and the demolition of its eastern section; he calculated that the walls of the central nave on the south side had an inclination of five palmi (1.11 m), adding that the paintings adorning them were no longer visible due to the dust covering them. In 1452, Nicholas V commissioned Bernardo Rossellino to construct a new and grand apse further to the west. However, when the pope died, the new walls had only reached a height of two meters.

In 1452, during the excavation of the foundations, the mausoleum of the Anicii was uncovered; the sumptuous sarcophagus of Anicius Probus was found, which for some time served as a baptistery and is now back beneath St. Peter’s in the Grottoes. The scholar Maffio Vegio copied the musical inscription placed by Faltonia Proba to Anicius, as well as others (A. Silvagni, op. cit., 4219–22). The mausoleum resembled a small three-aisled basilica, but everything was destroyed; however, from the violated tombs so much gold was recovered that the pope could have a chalice made and distribute rich gifts to the workers who had found and delivered II. The mausoleum was found to have been built above a pagan sepulcher filled with urns containing cremated bones.

In 1470, Paul II had the work continued, entrusting it to the architect Giuliano da Sangallo; but the work proceeded with extreme slowness. In 1479, Sixtus IV had a new ciborium erected, utilizing the four porphyry columns that stood there—columns which are either those from the time of Honorius III or, more likely, those from the elevated altar of Callistus II. Of these four columns, later removed by Bernini during the reign of Urban VIII, two are now at the altar of SS. Simon and Jude, and two at that of the martyrs Processus and Martinian. The tabernacle was enriched with bas-reliefs by Roman masters, which A. Venturi considers not independent of Paolo di Mariano. The bas-reliefs depicted Christ handing the keys to Peter, Peter healing the lame man, the fall of Simon Magus, Peter and Paul freed from prison, the Crucifixion of St. Peter, and the beheading of St. Paul.

XVIII. The New Basilica

Pope Julius II, who in March 1505 had sought to build a chapel near the old Vatican Basilica to erect his mausoleum, in April of the same year wished to resume the works according to the plans of his predecessors Nicholas V and Paul II. However, by summer he had resolved to rebuild the basilica on new and more grandiose designs. Between the two opposing tendencies—the Urbino-Lombard one with Bramante and the Florentine one with Giuliano da Sangallo—the first prevailed. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence preserves about 900 sheets containing studies and sketches for the new St. Peter’s Basilica, many by Bramante himself, others by his pupils, especially Baldassarre Peruzzi and Antonio da Sangallo. The new building was to surpass all other churches in magnificence and grandeur, as Julius II himself would declare in his bull of 19 February 1513. Bramante had declared his intention to place the dome of the Pantheon above the vaults of the Temple of Peace, as the Constantinian basilica in the Roman Forum was then called. The plan for the basilica in the form of a Greek cross would have occupied an area of 24,000 square meters, though later, in execution, Michelangelo limited it to 14,500 square meters. Against the bold project of Pope Julius II, opposition arose, as the Augustinian Onofrio Panvinio recounts (*De rebus antiquis basilicae S. Petri*); several satires also circulated around the city. But Julius II did not waver in his resolve, taken in response to the wretched static conditions of the old building, which threatened ruin. With a decree of 10 November 1505, the Pope allocated an inheritance for the construction of the new basilica. On 6 January 1506, he wrote to the King, the bishops, and the nobles of England and to other Christian sovereigns, requesting their aid in so arduous an undertaking. On Low Sunday, 18 April 1506, Julius II descended to lay the first stone at a depth of 25 feet below the floor of the old basilica, where the pillar known today as the "Veronica" stands. On the white marble stone was inscribed: “Pope Julius II of Liguria in the year 1506, the third of his pontificate, caused this basilica, now greatly dilapidated, to be rebuilt.” A clay vase brought by the celebrated goldsmith Caradossos was deposited within, containing two gold medals of tombs and ten of bronze; on the obverse was an effigy of Julius II, on the reverse the design of the new basilica. Upon his return from his journey to Bologna, the Pope visited the works, where 2,500 workers were employed in demolishing the old basilica, so much so that Bramante earned the nickname "Ruinante." Indeed, Bramante went so far as to propose to Pope Julius II that the position of the new basilica be shifted, the tomb of St. Peter moved, and the façade arranged to face south, so that Caligula’s obelisk would stand before the entrance of the basilica. But Julius II resolutely opposed this (cf. Pastor, III, p. 904). On 16 April 1507, the archbishop of Taranto, E. Bruni, laid the first stone for the other three piers of the dome. During the pontificate of Julius II, the papal registers show that 70,653 gold ducats were spent on constructing the four piers. To protect the presbytery and the confessio, which remained open to the sky following the demolition, Bramante built a masonry structure that completely enclosed them, including the apse to the west, and extended eastward to the base of the external pergola where the first row of columns stood. The construction rested directly on the floor of the Constantinian basilica with foundations of Alban stone (peperino) and featured three arches to the east, while to the north and south

It had only one opening. Above, over the entablature resting on the arches, ran a cornice and the attic with a wall that supported the roof, as seen in the drawings by Maarten van Heemskerk, datable between 1532 and 1535 (B. M. Apollonj Ghetti, A. Ferrua, E. Josi, E. Kirschbaum, *Esplorazioni ecc.*, cit., pp. 205 ff. and figs. 155–161). This structure was demolished only once the dome was completed, together with the ancient Constantinian apse, namely in 1592. Bramante had his masons copy, enlarging their proportions, the Corinthian capitals of the pronaos of the Pantheon; in 1513 he had already raised the walls for the provisional choir, using the foundations of Nicholas V, while proceeding in the southern transept to take advantage of the external rotunda of the imperial mausoleum then called the rotunda of St Protinilla or the chapel of the kings of France.

About a year after the death of Julius II (21 Feb. 1513) followed that of Bramante (11 Apr. 1514). Under Leo X, who succeeded him, the direction of the work passed to Fra Giocondo, Raphael Sanzio, and Giuliano da Sangallo. Fra Giocondo died soon after in 1516; Giuliano da Sangallo left for Florence, and Raphael, left alone, was assisted by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. Meanwhile, it had been decided to abandon Bramante’s plan of a Greek cross in favor of a Latin cross; indeed, a project even emerged to alter the arrangement with a three-aisled basilica supported by pillars. However, after Raphael’s death (1520), the Greek cross plan was resumed under Antonio da Sangallo, Baldassarre Peruzzi, and Andrea Sansovino.

Leo X had allocated 60,000 scudi annually for the works, but these funds were diverted to consolidating the foundations and completed structures; the relevant accounts were lost in the Sack of Rome in 1527. Only summary accounts of payments made between 1521 and 1526 to a single contractor, Giuliano Leno, are known, amounting to about 69,000 ducats. The death of Leo X (1521) and the Sack of Rome in 1527 halted the works, which were only resumed with renewed vigor after the election of Paul III in 1534. The new pope entrusted the direction to Antonio da Sangallo, who returned to Bramante’s Greek cross design and presented the Pope with a wooden model.

In 1538, Sangallo built a dividing wall between the part of the old basilica—specifically the eleventh intercolumniation—and the point where the new Greek cross basilica would terminate. This allowed services to continue in the first section during construction, while the remainder was used for the new building (cf. Esplorazioni, cit., pp. 207 ff. and figs. 162–67). Sangallo had involved all his relatives in the enterprise, forming what the contemporary painter Giorgio Vasari called the “Sangallo sect,” which later caused considerable trouble for Michelangelo Buonarroti. Called by the Pope in 1546 at the age of 72, Michelangelo was appointed to take charge of the works.

Michelangelo obtained from Paul III a brief dated 1 Jan. 1547 granting him the power to wall, reform, and enlarge or reduce the basilica’s design as he saw fit, with full discretion even regarding personnel. On 11 Oct. 1549, Paul III appointed Michelangelo lifelong architect of the Fabbrica. He revitalized the works, with annual expenses of about 30,000 ducats. It is estimated that from 1 Jan. 1547 to 8 May 1551, 121,554 ducats were spent. However, after the death of Paul III (10 Nov. 1549), the pace of work did not continue at the same rate. Under Julius III (1551–1555), Michelangelo’s enemies complained to the Pope about his allegedly despotic conduct in directing the works. Yet on 23 Jan. 1552, Julius III fully confirmed Paul III’s motu proprio of 1549.

The dwindling financial resources of the papacy led to a reduction in construction activity. Whereas in the first five months of 1551, 121,554 scudi had been spent, from that date to 1554 only half that amount was expended, to the point that Michelangelo considered leaving Rome to return to Florence. He was persuaded to stay by Paul IV, who on 24 June 1555 confirmed the privileges for the Fabbrica of St. Peter.

Pius IV (1559–1565) assigned monthly subsidies for the basilica’s works.

Ticana who visited on 28 March 1561 (Pastor, VII, p. 615). He confirmed Michelangelo as director of the works and in April 1561 gave him 200 gold scudi. He appointed Francesco da Cortona as Michelangelo’s substitute, but rejected all the accusations made against Michelangelo by Nanni Bigio. At Michelangelo’s death (18 Feb. 1564) the drum of the dome was almost finished, and the transept on the south side had already been completed, as a contemporary print shows, while that on the north side was nearly done. In August 1564 Pope Pius IV named Pirro Ligorio first architect of St Peter’s and in the autumn of the same year Giacomo Barozzi, called Vignola, as second architect. Both, however, were dismissed the following year; on 28 April 1565 the Pope convened all the deputies for the fabric to discuss the work of vaulting the dome, and it was decided to seek the judgment of the best architects both in Italy and abroad. Pope St Pius V (1566–72) likewise took care that the works, especially the vaulting of the dome, be completed; in 1567 he summoned Giorgio Vasari to Rome, lodging him in the Vatican, and the artist boasted of having persuaded Pius V to adhere entirely to Michelangelo’s plans. Vignola was confirmed as head of the architects, first alone and then assisted by his son Giacinto. Gregory XIII (1572–85), after Vignola’s death (7 July 1573), appointed his pupil Giacomo della Porta head of the fabric and strove to provide the necessary means, especially for the construction of the chapel called the Gregorian, for which the Pope disbursed over 80,000 ducats. Many discoveries of sarcophagi occurred precisely around the years 1575 and following; in 1580 the Pope transferred the relics of St Gregory Nazianzen from the church of S. Maria in Campo Marzio to the Gregorian chapel, which had been finished two years earlier. From a Roman Avviso of 2 June 1584 it appears that, to close the dome, the Pope had promised Cardinal Farnese a personal offering of 100,000 ducats. From Naples alone, between 1576 and 1586, offerings amounting to about 65,000 ducats arrived.

Pope Sixtus V (1585–90) succeeded, through his indomitable will and energy, in completing the dome, overcoming every obstacle. Giacomo della Porta was confirmed as head of the architects; he had already demolished Bramante’s temporary choir and built the new apse. On 15 July 1588 work began to vault the dome. Sixtus V wished to be informed daily of the progress of the work and assigned a sum of 1,500 scudi per week. Some 800 workers labored both day and night, while in Rome it was rumored that the undertaking would last at least ten years and require not less than a million ducats (Bonanni, *Numismata templi Vaticani*, Rome 1700, p. 76). Yet on 21 May 1590 the vault of the dome was finished, and on 14 May the keystone was laid (Avvisi di Roma of 12 and 19 May 1590), at a total cost of 50,000 ducats. Before his death (27 Aug. 1590), Sixtus V was thus able to admire from the Quirinal Palace the giant dome rising into the sky; only the lantern, the external lead covering, and the internal decoration remained unfinished. The perfect spherical calotte that forms the inner dome measures 42.34 m in diameter. Sixtus V’s achievement is commemorated in the musical inscription in golden letters on the lantern: “In glory of St Peter, Sixtus V, Supreme Pontiff, in the year 1590.”

Another grand work of Sixtus V was the transport of Caligula’s obelisk from the southern flank of the basilica to the center of St Peter’s Square. Already Nicholas V had entertained such an idea. Four months after Sixtus V’s election, the Avviso di Roma of 24 Aug. 1585 reported that a wooden model of the obelisk had been erected in the middle of St Peter’s Square. Sixtus V entrusted architect Domenico Fontana with the transport and erection. The former took place on 30 Apr. 1586 and the latter on 10 Sept., at a cost of 37,975 scudi defrayed by the Pope himself. Pope Gregory XIV (1590–91) had the lantern completed. His successor, Clement VIII, for the fabric of St Peter’s employed Giovanni Fontana but preferred Giacomo della Porta, and, after della Porta’s death (1602), replaced him with Carlo Maderno.

Given the difference in level between the new basilica and the old—about 3.20 m—it was impossible to maintain the height of the ancient raised presbytery, and the medieval altar of Callixtus II (1123) appeared too modest. As for the laying of the new pavement and the consequent construction of supporting pillars and vaults within the central nave, this must be placed between 1575 and 1592. Indeed, the new pavement is certainly later than 1574, as is shown by Tiberio Alfarano’s description of the ancient basilica; moreover, it could not have been completed before the demolition of the brick casing built by Bramante. Perhaps it began after 1574, which would explain the numerous sarcophagi that Bosio describes as uncovered in 1575; yet one must bear in mind that the same author also illustrates sarcophagi discovered in 1592.

As soon as he was elected pope, Clement VIII (1592–1605) ordered Della Porta to demolish the old apse and the protective walls of Bramante’s presbyterium. This made it necessary to erect a new papal altar. The architect placed the new altar over the altar of Callistus II, using a single slab of white marble, twenty palms long and nine wide, extracted from the Forum of Nerva. The altar stands on seven steps, approached from the apse side.

During the work, a report collected by Francesco Maria Torrigio circulated that Della Porta had discovered, through a crack, an earlier altar beneath that of Callistus II, presumed to be that of Sylvester with the pope’s seal and the golden cross of Constantine and Helena placed over the tomb of St Peter. Pope Clement VIII, informed of this, is said to have descended with Cardinals Bellarmine and Sfondrati, examined the find through the small opening, and then had everything removed in his presence. But as Cerrati pointed out, the crack could only have revealed the ancient presbyterial altar, already enclosed within Callistus II’s structure, and Della Porta simply built the new altar over that of Callistus II.
Clement VIII himself celebrated Mass solemnly at the new altar for the first time on 26 June 1594, without any consecration, as Monsignor Mucanzio, master of papal ceremonies, noted in his diary.

Once the new papal altar was built, it was necessary to adapt the semi-circular confessio, since the raised presbyterium had been removed. Della Porta began by lowering the floor and, in 1597, uncovered near St Peter’s tomb the grand two-tiered sarcophagus in which, on 24 July 1599, the neophyte Junius Bassus (v.), prefect of Rome, was laid to rest. The new confessio was made larger than before, and the adjacent chapel was adorned with polychrome marbles and gilded stuccoes.

Clement VIII also had an underground passage built so that he could go undisturbed to pray directly at St Peter’s tomb; it ran from the papal palace to the confessio through the basilica’s crypts.

The pope completed the work above the dome: in 1592 he had the great bronze ball cast (large enough to seat sixteen people, with a diameter of 2.50 m), by Sebastiano Torrigiani; above it rises a cross five metres high, whose uppermost point is 136.57 m above the basilica floor. The work was finished on 18 November 1593. The dome itself was also clad in lead sheets held together by seven casings of gilded bronze.

Clement VIII entrusted the mosaic decoration of the interior of the dome to Giuseppe Cesari, called Cavalier d’Arpino, whereas the Fabbrica di S. Pietro had assigned the work to Cristofano Roncalli. Cavalier d’Arpino was assisted by a host of artists including Giovanni Vecchi and Cesare Nebbia, who prepared the cartoons for the large mosaics of the four Evangelists in the spandrels of the enormous piers, each medallion measuring 8.50 m in diameter; the pen held by St Matthew is 2.50 m long. Altogether there are sixty-six figures, starting from the bottom with the popes buried in the basilica, then the great figures of Christ, the Virgin, St John the Baptist, St Paul and the other Apostles, followed by angels with the instruments of the Passion, higher up cherub heads, adoring angels and seraphim, and at the summit of the lantern the Eternal Father. Contemporaries described the work as “a temple set upon a church.” The decoration, however, was completed under Clement VIII’s successor.

Pope PAUL V (1605–21), immediately upon his election, confirmed the cardinalate congregation that LEO XI had set up during his very brief pontificate for all matters relating to the basilica of St Peter, and appointed eight cardinals to serve on II. The same architects remained in place: GIOVANNI FONTANA and his nephew CARLO MADERNO. The new basilica was still separated from the first part of the ancient Constantinian structure by the dividing wall erected by PAUL III in 1538. In September 1605 a large block of marble fell near the altar of the Madonna called della Colonna, causing great alarm among the faithful who were attending Mass, but all escaped unharmed. Cardinal Archpriest PALLOTTA reported the incident at the consistory of 26 September 1605. The Pope, having examined the proposal of the College of Cardinals to demolish the upper part of the Constantinian basilica, approved it, at the same time ordering that the sepulchral monuments be preserved, especially certain precious ones such as the ciborium for Veronica (v.), the museums of GREGORY XI, and the labyrinth of JOHN VII. Of the greatest utility was the presence of the archivist of the Chapter of St Peter, GIACOMO GRIMALDI, during the demolition work, when he kept a careful inventory of the monuments. Demolition began at the end of September 1605 with the removal of the altars’ relics. In 1606 the Pope appointed a commission to ensure the preservation of the monuments of the popes. PAUL V invited the most renowned architects to submit designs, whether to follow the plans of BRAMANTE or MICHELANGELO or to extend the naves. Opinions were sought not only from GIOVANNI FONTANA and CARLO MADERNO but also from FLAMINIO PONZIO, GIROLAMO RAIMONDO, DOMENICO FONTANA, GIOVANNI ANTONIO BOSIO, NICCOLÒ BRACONIO, OTTAVIO TURRIANI, GIAN PAOLO MAGGI, PAOLO RUGHESI, and others. Some argued for retaining the Greek-cross design, others for enlarging it into a Latin cross; among the latter was CARLO MADERNO, whose project was approved by PAUL V, overcoming the objections raised by Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, later URBAN VIII.
The work for the extension began on March 8, 1607; on November 5 of the same year the foundations for the new façade and atrium were laid. The Pope ordered the preservation of the museum of Giotto, called della Navicella, which Cardinal Giacomo Gaetano Stefaneschi had commissioned at the end of the 13th century. The work proceeded so rapidly that 700 workers were employed day and night; by February 29, 1612, the façade, 115 meters long and 46 meters high, was completed, bearing the inscription: "In honorem Principis Apostolorum Paulus V Borghesius Romanus Pont. Max. anno Domini 1612. Pont. VII." On November 22, 1614, the coffered vault of the atrium, 71 meters long, 13 meters wide, and 20 meters high, was finished. In February 1615, the demolition of the dividing wall of Paul III began, and on Palm Sunday, April 12, 1615, the entire Basilica was revealed to the admiration of the faithful. From the door to the apse, the Basilica measured 186.86 meters in length.

Meanwhile, from 1606 to 1617, Pope Paul V had the most important monuments salvaged from the old Basilica and the tombs of the popes transferred to the underground chambers of the Basilica. However, many precious parts were dispersed not only to churches in Rome but also abroad, such as to Poli, Florence, and Assisi. For example, the museum with the Adoration of the Magi from the tabernacle of John VII ended up in Santa Maria in Cosmedin; a medallion in the museum with an angel from Giotto’s Navicella (v.), a cross in profile, a bas-relief, and two representations of the Princes of the Apostles were taken to Boville Ernica; an image in the museum of the Madonna Mediatrix went to San Marco in Florence, and so on. Paul V also had the open confessio built in front of the papal altar and decorated the front of the confessio itself with precious marbles and bronze statues of the apostles Peter and Paul (works by Ambrogio Bonvicino), at a total cost of 12,000 scudi. The great exedra, the double staircase, and the revetment of precious marbles mixed with bronze were the work of Maderno and Ferrabosco. During these works, ancient tombs were also discovered beneath the floor, which F. M. Torrigio described briefly and Drei depicted in an engraving; at the time, it was believed these were sarcophagi of ancient popes, based on the pontifical vestments that were thought to be identifiable. As early as 1618, Francesco Maria Torrigio, with piety far exceeding his scholarship, composed a description of the monuments arranged by Pope Paul V in the underground chambers of the Basilica, for the first time giving the name "Old Grottos" to that underground area obtained by means of the supporting vaults of the floor in the central nave and calling the underground confessio created by Clement VIII the "New Grottos." In the eighth pontifical reign (1623–44), Gian Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned to erect a baldachin over the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica. Work began on June 19, 1626 (v. infra, the article "SEPOLCRETO ROMANO").

The bronze acquired in Venice and Livorno was not sufficient, and at the suggestion of Bernini himself, Urban VIII removed the bronze beams still present in the Pantheon’s portico. The Romans grumbled, and the papal physician Giulio Marini composed the epigram: «Quod non fecerunt Barbari fecerunt Barberini». The bronze ribs of the dome were also removed and replaced with lead. The bronze obtained was so plentiful that, in addition to completing the baldachin of St Peter’s, no fewer than eighty cannons were cast for Castel Sant’Angelo. The four fluted columns of gilded bronze, modeled after those of Constantine, rise to a height of 20 m and support a gilded bronze baldachin adorned with fringes and tassels, surmounted by a cross reaching 28 m in height; the solemnity of the ensemble is emphasized by four colossal angels and by the repeated coats of arms of Pope Urban VIII. The casting was executed by Gregorio de’ Rossi under Bernini’s direct supervision. Each column, including its capital and base, weighed 27,948 pounds, and the baldachin as a whole weighed 186,392 pounds.

Work began in 1626 and was solemnly inaugurated on 29 June 1633. The total cost amounted to 200,000 scudi. Bernini received 10,000 scudi and, following the death of the architect Carlo Maderno (5 Feb 1629), was appointed architect of the Fabbrica of St Peter’s. As M. von Böhn rightly observed in his biography of Bernini, the Confession of St Peter, covered by the baldachin, is the spiritual center of the vast construction (Lorenzo Bernini, seine Zeit, sein Leben, sein Werk, Bielefeld 1922, p. 58).

Bernini clad the internal piers supporting the arches and the counter-piers of the two side aisles in polychrome marbles, adding forty oval medallions depicting the early popes, each upheld by winged figures and the dove from the arms of Innocent X; in the curve of the arches he placed twenty-eight allegories of the virtues. The Pope commissioned Bernini to design the basilica’s pavement. The artist also executed the colossal equestrian statue of Constantine. Innocent X’s successor, Alexander VII (1655–67), on the very day of his elevation to the papacy, entrusted Bernini with the construction of the porticoes. Bernini conceived the two famous porticoes with four rows of travertine columns (284 in all) and, on the attic, 140 statues of martyrs and confessors; their two outstretched arms were meant «to receive gently the Catholics to confirm them in the faith, the heretics to reunite them with the Church, and the infidels to enlighten them in the true faith» (Cod. Chig. Vat., H. II, 22).

The laying of the first stone took place on 28 August 1657; the work was completed and solemnly inaugurated in 1666. The last grand work of Bernini in St Peter’s is the majestic gilded bronze cathedra at the far end of the apse of the basilica, supported by four Doctors of the Church. The work, begun in 1657, was finished on 17 January 1666. From the great central window a glory of angels in flight hovers around the luminous dove of the Holy Spirit. On four marble pedestals stand four gilded bronze colossi, two Doctors of the Latin Church (Augustine and Ambrose) and two of the Greek Church (Athanasius and John Chrysostom), symbolising the unity of the Church; they support the Chair of Peter (q.v.), inspired by the Holy Spirit.

The first mention of the oak cathedra, with ivory panels, does not antedate 1217 (G. B. De Rossi, in Bull. arch. crist., 1867, pp. 34 ff.; id., Inscr. christ., II, Rome 1888, pp. 226, 348 ff.). Duchesne pointed out that in the 12th century Peter Mallius, who wrote to extol the importance of the Vatican Basilica against the canons of the Lateran, makes no mention of it (Notes sur la topographie de Rome au moyen-âge, XI, in Mél. d'arch. et d'hist., 22 [1902], pp. 395–96, no. 5). The ivory panels depicting the Labours of Hercules do not seem to be earlier than the 9th century. Duchesne held that the cathedra was not situated in the 4th century in the Vatican baptistery. At the time of Maffio Vegio (Acta SS. Hynni, VII, p. 74*) and of Peter Sabinus (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. christ., II, p. 411) the cathedra stood in the old basilica in the chapel of St Andrew (marked no. 15 on the plan of T. Alfarano); under Julius II it was transferred to the rotunda of St Andrew, in the chapel of St Thomas (Alfarano, op. cit., no. 169); Paul V had it moved to that of St Apollinaris (ibid., no. 168).

Between the obelisk and the Berninian colonnades are two fountains; in place of the one on the right erected by Bernini there had already been another since the time of Innocent VIII; the one on the left was set up by Clement X in 1670 and is the work of C. Fontana. The water comes from Bracciano via the Trajanic aqueduct, restored several times, especially by Paul V and Clement X. — See plates XCVI–CII.

pianta rettangolare, occupava lo spazio intorno al Cor-tile del Pappagallo, inserendosi, a sud, nei più antichi fabbricati di Innocenzo III, ai piedi della collina, e comunicando a sud-ovest, con una grande cappella sostituita, nel sec. XV, dalla Sistina. Era probabilmente difeso da torri angolari, e comprendeva inoltre un vasto giardino, o *pomerium*, chiuso in un recinto (al posto dell'attuale Cortile di Belvedere) come attesta la citata iscrizione capitolina.

Nei 168 anni decorrenti dalla morte di Niccolò III alla creazione di Niccolò V, e che abbracciano il lungo periodo dei papi di Avignone (1390-77), il V. non fu abitato dai pontefici se non di rado e saltuariamente, sicché non vi si fecero costruzioni importanti, ma solo lavori di adattamento e di restauro.

NICHOLAS V, Parentucelli (1447-55), not driven by «vain desire for glory» — as he himself said at the point of death — but to increase the authority of the Apostolic See, conceived a grand plan for urban renewal (described by Giannozzo Manetti in the biography of this Pope), intended to rebuild, in keeping with the new taste of the Renaissance, the Leonine City, the Vatican (v.) and the basilica of St Peter. Death cut short his undertakings, perhaps presented by Manetti with some exaggeration. In the Vatican Nicholas had the northern and western wings of the ancient residence of Pope Orsini demolished and rebuilt from the foundations, except in the former for the part corresponding to the two superimposed halls of the Popes and of Constantine. These latter then preserved their beam ceilings (the present false vaults date from the 16th century), while the others, namely the ground-floor rooms (where the Vatican Library, which he founded, was housed), those on the first and second floors, later known by the names of the Borgia Apartment and Raphael’s Rooms, are covered with sail vaults, in the Florentine manner. Of the fortification works with which this Pope wished to enclose the Vatican there remain to this day the east-west and north-south stretches of a powerful wall, which depart from the massive round tower (near the Porta di S. Anna), known precisely as Nicholas V’s Tower. His architects were Leon Battista Alberti, Bernardo Rossellino, Aristotele di Fioravante, Giacomo di Pietrasanta and Antonio di Francesco, granted the title of palatine architect as early as 1447. Many fresco and stained-glass painters were employed by him, but almost all their works have disappeared, except for the *Stories of St Stephen and St Lawrence*, ANGELICI (v.) between 1447 and 1450 in the *upper small chapel*. The frescoes by the same artist in that of the Most Holy Sacrament, adjoining the first hall (now the western stretch of the Sala Ducale), were instead destroyed along with the entire chapel to make way for the widening of the staircase called the Scala del Mare-sciallo under Paul III.
The immediate successors of Nicholas V, namely Callistus III, Borgia (1455-58) and Pius II, Piccolomini (1458-1464), carried out no notable works in the Vatican, except for the latter who added a fine marble communicating door between the Cortile del Maresciallo and that of the Parrot, still in place. Of the constructions of Paul II, Barbaro (1464-71), only some internal adaptations remain (in the southern wing of the Palace some money-boxes with coins and medals of his pontificate have recently been found), and the narrow staircase added to the right of the passage arch from the Cortile del Pappagallo to that of S. Damaso. Of a loggia of his, which closed the Cortile del Maresciallo to the south, some travertine capitals and arches still remain, reinstalled there by Paul III in the same courtyard.

With Sixtus IV of the della Rovere family (1471–83), the Vatican acquired another monumental building: the Sistine Chapel, constructed by Giovanni de' Dolci of Florence, roughly between the years 1475 and 1483, in place of the older one walled up by Nicholas III. As the structure of the upper part, equipped with battlements, demonstrates, it served not only for the religious functions of the papal court but also for the defense of the Apostolic Palaces. The following artists worked on its pictorial decoration: Perugino, Pinturicchio, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Signorelli, Cosimo Rosselli and their assistants (among whom were Piero di Cosimo and Bartolomeo della Gatta), who executed on the walls the two cycles of frescoes depicting *Scenes from the Life of Moses* (on the Gospel side) and *of Christ* (on the Epistle side), as well as the series of the *Early Popes* in the painted niches between the windows. The author of the marble screen and the cantoria was Mino da Fiesole, assisted perhaps by Andrea Bregno and Giovanni Dalmata. To Sixtus IV is also due the systematic arrangement and painting (already begun under Nicholas V) of the Vatican Library (on the ground floor of the north wing), where, among other things, he had executed the famous fresco representing him granting an audience to Platina (now in the Vatican Pinacoteca), Melozzo da Forlì (v.), renowned for its portraits and perspective.

Innocent VIII, Cibo (1484–92), rebuilt according to a new design the lower palace between St. Peter’s and the Cortile del Maresciallo, which from him took the name of Curia Innocentiana. This was later demolished by Bernini for the reorganization of the Square, but its imposing façade is well known from prints, drawings, and paintings, especially of the 16th century (a fresco by Vasari in the Sala Regia). The same Pontiff also enriched the Vatican with a summer residence, the Palazzetto di Belvedere, erected on the northern edge of the hill. The battlemented building, of rectangular plan, was walled by Giacomo da Pietrasanta, reportedly according to a design by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, the sculptor favored by the Pope. Its original appearance was later somewhat altered by additions and modifications, to which, unfortunately, were sacrificed at the end of the 18th century the chapel of St. John the Baptist, frescoed by Mantegna (1490), and the views of Italian cities, attributed to Pinturicchio, in the elegant loggia (now closed), to make way for the present-day Gallery of Statues, desired by Clement XIV and Pius VI.
To Alexander VI, Borgia (1492–1503), is owed the massive tower that bears his name, built to protect the northwest corner of the Apostolic Palace, as well as the new arrangement of the rooms on the first floor of the north wing, which he sumptuously adorned with gilded stuccoes and had frescoed by Pinturicchio and his collaborators (the present-day Borgia Apartment).

After the very brief reign of Pius III, Piccolomini (1503), Julius II of the della Rovere family (1503–13), nephew of Sixtus IV, ascended the throne, and with him a new era opened in the building history of the Vatican, dominated by the name of Donato Bramante. This architect, worthy in bold genius of his patron, conceived a grand design for the arrangement of the vast space between the old Palace and the Belvedere, to which he added the famous spiral staircase still preserved today and bearing his name. These residences were to be connected by two long corridors with open loggias facing inward, while the Palazzetto of Innocent VIII, on the side facing the new courtyard, was to be covered by a façade adorned with a large central niche. Two monumental staircases were to overcome the differences in level between the southern part of the terrain, lower down, where jousts and other spectacles were to be held, the middle section intended for spectators, and the uppermost part laid out as a garden. Of this design Bramante executed only the eastern corridor (much altered later), where today are found the Chiaramonti and Lapidary Galleries. Also his work—up to the second and then final floor—was the new façade of the Vatican Palace facing Rome, the so-called Logge, formed by two tiers of galleries, in addition to the ground floor, which was later enclosed by Sangallo for reasons of stability. This construction, intended to conceal the medieval façade of Nicholas III, was more extensive than the Palace it covered, and in the part projecting southward contained the "Papal Staircase" (as Vasari calls it) with its cordonata, later transformed into its present form under Pius VII. Both these works were completed, with a new design, after Bramante’s death (1514), by Raphael, who added to the Logge a third gallery with a peristyle and to the staircase a final flight corresponding to a new and final floor. Continuing the work of his uncle, Julius II had Michelangelo fresco the vault of the Sistine Chapel (1508–12) with the *Stories of Creation*, and Raphael the Rooms of the Segnatura and of Heliodorus (1508–1513), the latter completed under Leo X. Among his other lesser constructions in the Vatican, Vasari also mentions a now-destroyed "aviary."

Under Leo X of the Medici (1513–21), Raphael, who in 1514 had succeeded Bramante as architect of the Apostolic Palaces, completed the two works mentioned above, built and had frescoed under his direction the Loggetta overlooking the Cortile del Maresciallo (c. 1516), brought to light and restored in 1943, and the famous “stufetta” or bathroom of Cardinal Bibbiena (1516). Largely by his own hand, he adorned the latter with mythological and “grotesque” paintings in the antique manner, which served as a model for his assistants and pupils (Giovanni da Udine, Pierin del Vaga, Giulio Romano and Francesco Penni) for the painting, executed under his guidance, of the Loggetta and the Loggia. The latter was enriched with stuccowork modeled in the classical Roman manner by Giovanni da Udine, who, assisted by Pierin del Vaga, also adorned the vault of the Scala dei Pontefici in the Borgia Apartment. To the same Medici pope is owed the building facing St Peter’s Square, leaning southward against the spur of the Logge, almost entirely rebuilt (especially the façade) under Paul V. Leo X also had the frescoes of the Stanze di Eliodoro and the Incendio (1514–17) continued and finished by Raphael and his school; the latter was consecrated, as it were, to the pontificates of two great popes of his name, Leo III and IV, with an evident allusion to himself.

To the Dutchman Adrian VI of Utrecht (1522–23), who took little interest in art, succeeded Clement VII of the Medici (1523–34), the pope of the Sack of Rome (1527), who had the frescoes of the Sala di Costantino completed by Raphael’s disciples, begun already in the time of Leo X. To him is owed also a “stufetta” with graceful pictorial decoration recently discovered (walled up and filled with rubble) in the building adjoining the Scala papale (or della Floeria, as it is now called) toward St Peter’s Square.

With Paul III Farnese (1534–49), intense building activity resumed in the Sacred Palaces, specifically in their oldest part, which unfortunately also entailed the destruction of valuable works from the past. Antonio da Sangallo the Younger was entrusted with the work, giving the present appearance to the Sala Regia with its broad barrel vault adorned with elegant stuccoes by Pierin del Vaga, while the frescoes are by Vasari, the Zuccari, G. Salviati, and other mannerists, and the wall stuccoes are mainly by Daniele da Volterra, Guglielmo and Giacomo Della Porta. The work continued until 1573. To provide a worthy access to that hall, intended for royal receptions (as its name indicates), Sangallo widened the staircase leading to it from the Cortile del Maresciallo, thereby sacrificing the 14th-century Cappella del Santissimo Sacramento, entirely frescoed by the Blessed Angelico. In its place he built the Cappella Paolina, with an entrance from the Sala Regia, where are the last two frescoes by Michelangelo: the Conversion of Saul and the Martyrdom of St. Peter (1542–50).

Between 1535 and 1541, at the order of Paul III, Michelangelo painted the Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, a work already commissioned (ca. 1533) by Clement VII, perhaps in memory of the Sack of Rome, while Pope Farnese made it the grand manifesto of the upcoming Council, as shown by many allusive details regarding the then-debated issues (faith and works, the primacy of Peter, the cult of the Madonna, etc.) in polemic with Lutheran heresy. Other works by Antonio da Sangallo in this regard are the two loggias of the Cortile del Maresciallo, built with elements from one of Paul II (whose arms are still visible on the capitals, while the keystones bear the Farnese lilies) and the fortified bastion whose northwest corner is adorned with the coat of arms of Paul III (year VIII, 1542–43).

GIULIO III, Del Monte (1550-55), MARCELLO II, Cervini (1555) and PAUL IV, Caraffa (1555-59) contributed little in this regard (of the latter Pope one recalls the grotesque painting on the vault of the Sala Ducale in its eastern section [1555] and some new rooms in the Belvedere), whereas with PIUS IV, de’ Medici (1559-65), an era rich in building works recommences. Chiefly for him worked Pirro Ligorio and Sallustio Peruzzi (son of Baldassarre). During this pontificate the western wing of the Belvedere corridor was completed, according to Bramante’s plan, with a design by Pirro Ligorio, who also planned the new façade of the Palazzetto of Innocent VIII on the same courtyard, with the famous “nicchione,” as well as the Casina of Pius IV in the Vatican gardens, his masterpiece, begun already under Paul IV in 1558 but resumed by the Medici Pope in 1560 and finished in 1562. This villa, a precious example of Mannerist architecture, adorned with very rich antique-style stuccoes and frescoes by Barocci, Federico Zuccari and Santi di Tito, is today the seat of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. For Pius IV, Giovanni da Udine decorated between 1560 and 1562 the third Loggia (also called of Cosmography), built under Leo X by Raffaello d’Urbino, and a group of Mannerists led by L. Sabbatini painted the vault of the western section of the Sala Ducale.

ST. PIUS V, Ghislieri (1566-72), completed various works begun by his predecessor and erected a new building contiguous to the Borgia Apartment, with three superimposed chapels (one for each floor), dedicated to St Stephen, St Peter Martyr and St Michael the Archangel, frescoed by Vasari and adorned with stuccoes by Guglielmo Della Porta. He also ordered the construction of the little church of SS. Martin and Sebastian in front of the bastion of Nicholas V (toward St Peter’s Square) for the Swiss Guards, who still use it, with paintings by Giulio Mazzoni and Daniele da Volterra.

GREGORY XIII, Buoncompagni (1572-85), occupies an important place in the building history of the Vatican. His architects were Vignola and, after the untimely death of the latter, the Roman Giacomo Della Porta, who may be considered one of the initiators of the Baroque style. During his pontificate the decoration of the Sala Regia (by Vasari and Sabbatini) and that of the Cappella Paolina (by Sabbatini and Federico Zuccari) were completed (1573); the Sala di Costantino was given a false ceiling painted by Tommaso Laureti (to the detriment of the wall frescoes); and the Loggia of Cosmography and the Chapel of Nicholas V were restored, though with serious damage to the paintings of Fra Angelico. Gregory XIII also had built the palace (begun under Pius IV) which closes the Cortile di S. Damaso on the north, continuing Bramante’s and Raphael’s Logge with a second wing, where a team of Mannerist artists of great decorative talent (among them Antonio Tempesta and Matteo Bril) gave new form to the art of grotesques (1575). In this hall, Lorenzo Sabbatini, Ottaviano Mascherino, and the Alberti brothers frescoed the so-called Sala Bologna with a monumental plan of the Pope’s native city and another of its surroundings, the latter only recently brought to light. Another important work of his pontificate was the construction of the Galleria delle Carte geografiche (by Ottaviano Mascherino), surmounted by the Torre dei Venti, the Vatican’s first astronomical observatory, decorated by Nicola delle Pomarancie and Matteo Bril (1581). This gallery takes its name from the maps of the Italian regions (restored under Urban VIII), executed in fresco from designs by the Dominican cosmographer Ignazio Danti, and may be considered the greatest cartographic monument of the late Renaissance.

SIXTUS V, Peretti (1585-90), the restorer of Rome, had Domenico Fontana build the new papal palace on the east side of the Cortile di S. Damaso (still the papal residence today), thus closing that courtyard with the continuation of Raphael’s Logge; he cut through the Cortile del Belvedere with the wing of the Vatican Library, where the Sistine Hall is located, intended for the display of relics (1588); he had the so-called Old Room of the Scribes frescoed by M. Bril and others (1588), as well as a section of the present Museo Profano (1589); and he quickly completed the painting of the vault of the Sala di Costantino.

The three popes who succeeded him—Urban VII, Castagna (1590), Gregory XIV, Sfondrati (1590-91), and Innocent IX, Facchinetti (1591)—reigned for only a few years and left no construction in the Vatican worthy of note.

A few inscriptions recording transformations and restorations in the Vatican bear the name of Urban VIII, and among these works the partial rebuilding that somewhat altered the sixteenth-century appearance of the Galleria delle Carte geografiche and the construction of the lowered vault in the Bramantesque Galleria Lapidaria are particularly noteworthy.

INNOCENT X, PAMPHILY (1644-55), added nothing to the Vatican buildings, but adorned the Cortile di S. Damaso with a graceful fountain, featuring a bas-relief by Algardi.

The Scala Regia, famous for its perspective that corrects the defects of the space into which it is inserted, is adorned with the coat of arms of Alexander VII, Chigi (1655-1667), who commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to create this architectural masterpiece (1663-67). The same artist also united into a single hall the two that now form the present Sala Ducale. By means of a stucco drapery raised by genii, that is, an irregular opening between the two halls, Bernini brilliantly concealed the asymmetry between their divergent axes.

Of little significance, mostly adaptations and restorations, were the works carried out in the Apostolic Palaces during the subsequent pontificates of Clement IX, Rospigliosi (1667-1669), Clement X, Altieri (1670-76), Innocent XI, Odescalchi (1676-89), Alexander VIII, Ottoboni (1689-91), and Innocent XII, Pignatelli (1691-1700).

The 18th century, crucial for the building history of the Vatican, begins with the reign of Clement XI, Albani (1700-21), the first to conceive the grand complex of the Pontifical Museums, later realized by his successors. His coat of arms is displayed in the Nicchione of the Belvedere, which he had given its present decoration.

Innocent XIII, Conti (1721-24), and Benedict XIII, Orsini (1724-30), did not commission any construction worthy of note in the Apostolic Palaces, but Clement XII, Corsini (1730-40), in 1732, expanded the Library with a new wing, adjoining the one decorated with frescoes under Paul V.
Benedict XIV, Lambertini (1740-58), founded the Christian Museum of the Vatican and, in 1756, united it with the Apostolic Library, which he greatly favored.

In 1767, Clement XIII, Rezzonico (1758-69), completed—albeit in a form different from the original—the grand idea of Bramante by finishing the second floor of the western wing of the Belvedere Corridor (now the Gallery of the Candelabra).

The final important phase in the building history of the Vatican occurred with the construction of the grand complex of the Museum known as the Pio-Clementino, named after its founders: Clement XIV, Ganganelli (1769–74), and his immediate successor, Pius VI, Braschi (1775–99). Since space was lacking in the Capitoline Museums to house the finest examples of ancient sculpture being unearthed in Rome—works that the restrictive laws of Benedict XIV did not permit to be exported—Clement XIV commissioned the architects Michelangelo Simonetti and Giuseppe Camporesi to draw up plans for a new museum within the Vatican. By adapting or demolishing parts of ancient structures, they created, over about fifteen years of work, the elegant halls that connect the western wing of the Belvedere Corridor—occupied by the profane Museum of the Library—with the Palazzetto of Innocent VIII. These halls included: the atrium known as the Quattro Cancelli, a small masterpiece of graceful yet unpretentious 18th-century architecture by G. Camporesi; the Simonetti Staircase (1789), monumental despite its modest dimensions; the Greek-Cross Hall; the Rotunda, with its dome inspired by that of the Pantheon; the Hall of the Muses, decorated with frescoes by Tommaso Conca; the Hall of Animals; and finally the Octagonal Courtyard, adapted from the ancient Courtyard of Statues of the Palazzetto of Innocent VIII. A portion of this building, extensively renovated, was incorporated into the new Pio-Clementino Museum complex and now bears the names Gallery of Statues, Room of Busts, Cabinet of Masks (with paintings by D. De Angelis), and Open Loggia.

To this new and undoubtedly impressive arrangement, there was no hesitation in sacrificing—without leaving any trace or graphic record—the Chapel dedicated to St. George by Pope Cibo, entirely painted by Mantegna, which had stood in the corner between the Hall of Animals and the Gallery of Statues.

Pius VII, Chiaramonti (1800–23), continued the work of Pope Braschi despite the political upheavals of the Napoleonic era, his own exile, and the removal to France of many works from the pontifical art collections, which were later returned (though not all) after the fall of the Empire. To display the Vatican’s sculptures fittingly, he installed the Chiaramonti Museum in the eastern section of Bramante’s Corridor, specifically between the Torso Atrium and the Lapidary Gallery, and commissioned Raffaello Stern (1818) to design the so-called New Wing, completed in 1822 by Pasquale Belli. This wing, parallel to the one added by Sixtus V to the Vatican Library, once again cuts through the Belvedere Courtyard, thus forming the Library Courtyard. The works and events of this pontificate were depicted in a series of mediocre frescoes by De Angelis (1818) in the Profane Museum.

Vaticano - Scala Regia of the Vatican Palace, built by Bernini during the pontificate of Alexander VII (1653–67).

No important construction was carried out in the complex of the Sacri Palazzi during the subsequent pontificates of LEO XII of the Genga (1823–29), PIUS VIII, Castiglioni (1829–30), and GREGORY XVI, Cappellari (1831–46), who were content with adaptation and decoration works of little significance, including those necessitated by the installation of the new Gregorian-Etruscan and Egyptian Museums in the building that closes off to the north the Cortile della Pigna.

To PIUS IX, Mastai-Ferretti (1846–78), instead, we owe the new monumental staircase that, replacing the ancient cordonata, provides more convenient access from the Bronze Door to the Cortile di S. Damaso. He also had the three galleries of the eastern wing of the Logge di S. Damaso decorated by the painter Alessandro Mantovani (1870–1877) and created in the Torre Borgia the large Sala dell’Immacolata Concezione, adorned with frescoes recalling the proclamation of that dogma, a work by Francesco Podesti (1858), noteworthy especially for the numerous and faithful portraits of contemporary figures.

The coat of arms of LEO XIII, Pecci (1878–1903), adorns the Galleria dei Candelabri, added by this Pope to the Museum of Sculptures and decorated with frescoes by Lodovico Seitz and others (1884); the blessed PIUS X, Sarto (1903–14), had constructed the tunnel passage between the so-called Grotone (beneath the western wing of the Corridoio di Belvedere) and the Vatican gardens, as well as the staircase that bears his name, between the Viale di Belvedere and the Cortile del S. Uffizio, and gave a new home to the Pinacoteca (until then housed in the Sala Bologna) in the first ground-floor section of the western wing of the Corridoio di Belvedere (now part of the Archivio Segreto), with an entrance from the Stradone dei Musei.

Of little importance were the works carried out under BENEDICT XV, della Chiesa (1914–22), while PIUS XI, Ratti (1922–39), the Pope of the Conciliation (1929), brought to completion a grand building program. He had Marconi construct the Radio Station Bridge (1931); Beltrami the new seat of the Vatican Pinacoteca (1932), with its admired helical staircase of two independent and parallel flights, a work by the architect Momo (1932); he added a new wing to the Casina di Pio IV, then restored and destined to house the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which he founded; he arranged the Gardens; he provided a model equipment for the Library and the Archivio Segreto; he founded the Vatican Laboratory for the restoration of works of art (on the initiative of B. Biagetti, in 1922); and he provided his small State with other buildings necessary for its administration, such as those of the Governatorato, the Post Office, the Courts, and the Center of mechanical workshops.

Pius XII, Pacelli, during his glorious reign, continued the work of his predecessor, giving the City of the Vatican its present-day appearance. To him are owed the new seat of the Secretariat of State, the television station, and a radical and rational restoration of the oldest parts of the Apostolic Palaces, carried out by the technical services of the Governorate in collaboration with the General Directorate of the Vatican Museums and the Laboratory for the Restoration of Artworks. This work led to interesting discoveries, such as those of Raphael’s Loggias, the Tower of Innocent III, the cubicle of Nicholas V, and the stove-room of Clement VII.
— See plates CIII–CVI.

— See Pontifical Museums and Galleries.

I. Historical Notes

With the age of Humanism, the first proper art collections began to take shape.

It is well known that the oldest public collection still in existence, namely the Capitoline Museum, was established by Sixtus IV in 1471 for the benefit of the Roman people; shortly thereafter the popes desired that others be formed for themselves in their own palace, to whose splendor, moreover, the work of many artists had already greatly contributed. With the famous statue of Apollo which Julius II had transported from his cardinal residence of St. Peter in Chains to the Belvedere and placed in the square courtyard adjacent to the Palazzetto di Belvedere, it may be said that, virtually, the Vatican Museums had begun. For although the proper museums appeared later, the passion for art collections which Giuliano de’ Medici, a typical son of the Renaissance, brought with him to the Apostolic See, then indeed flared up in that sacred place and in fact has never since been extinguished. To the Apollo of the Belvedere were added other famous statues which, in the square courtyard where they were placed, justified the name of the “Antiquarium of Statues,” and from there the throng of ancient marbles spread over the staircases and into the loggias of the great

VATICAN

The Nicchione, the Antiquario delle Statue, and Bramante’s Tower from an engraving by Marius Kartarus (1574).

The Cortile del Belvedere, conceived by Bramante, and even in Raphael’s Loggia, at the behest of Leo X, housed the papal collections of antiquities. Although access to the collection was restricted to a privileged few, its pagan character could not fail to provoke reactions. Thus it came about that under St Pius V, the stern pontiff steeped in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, not only was the Antiquario delle Statue closed but most of the statues were banished from the Vatican and went to enrich the Capitoline Museum and private collections such as those of Maximilian II and Francesco de’ Medici. Yet this hostility was short-lived. Already under Clement IX the situation had changed. For some time the Vatican Library had been accumulating a quantity of minor objects (inscriptions, vases, bronzes, coins, pottery, arms, glassware, etc.) to illustrate and comment on literary works. The moment had now come to bring order to this material. Benedict XIV, following the path traced by his immediate predecessors, decided in 1756 to found the first properly so-called Vatican Museum, which, in homage to its location, was the Museum of Christian Antiquities. Placed at the southern end of the western wing of the Cortile di Belvedere, it was entrusted to the direction of the antiquarian collector Francesco Vettori, who may thus be considered the first director of the Vatican Museums. To the same pope is also due the first formation of the collection of inscriptions in the Lapidary Gallery, which, from the northern section of Bramante’s Corridor, its first home, was transferred under Pius VII to the southern section, where it now stands.

In 1767 Clement XIII, with the collaboration of Cardinal Albani and perhaps also of Winckelmann, established the Profane Museum, a typical medallion museum, which found its place in the same western wing, at the northern end. All these collections had originated from the Library, but the time was now ripe for other museums to be formed independently of it and according to what may be termed a modern criterion. The great harvest of ancient sculptures yielded by the new excavations conducted on the territory of the Papal States, now supervised and regulated, induced Clement XIV in 1770 to found a proper sculpture museum, the Clementine Museum, which, continued and enlarged by his successor Pius VI, took the name of Pio-Clementino. New buildings, in the neoclassical style then in vogue, were constructed for this purpose on the other

Four Gates to the Hall of the Greek Cross, to the Rotunda, to the Hall of the Muses, and others were renewed in the ancient Palazzetto of Innocent VIII, where were created the Hall of the Animals, the Gallery of Statues and Busts, the Cabinet of Masks, the Open Loggia, the Round Vestibule, the Cabinet of the Apoxyomenos, the Artic of the Torso; the same old Antiquary of the Statues was, from square as it was, reduced to an octagon with the addition of a portico and four pavilions at the corners. On an upper floor was the Hall of the Biga in the building of the Four Gates, and in the adjacent stretch of the western arm of the Belvedere Courtyard, the Gallery of the Candelabra.

Well known are the events of the spoliations that occurred at the end of the century during the Franco-Napoleonic occupation, which struck not only the Pio-Clementine Museum but also, and more gravely, the Profane. Nevertheless, in 1807 Pius VII was able to begin a new Museum of sculpture, named after him Chiaramonti, consisting of the eponymous Gallery and the New Wing expressly built to contain perhaps the most grandiose and majestic hall of ancient sculpture in existence. To Pius VII is also due the establishment of the first Picture Gallery (which was later to change location several times, until the present one under Pius XI), and of the Vatican Medagliere.

Special fervor and rapidity of execution is shown by Gregory XVI, who within the space of a few years enriched the already considerable artistic patrimony with three new Museums: the Etruscan in 1837, the Egyptian in 1839 (a first collection is attested under Pius VII), both situated in the rooms adjacent to the Niches of the Pine Cone, and the Lateran Profane (now there was no more room in the Vatican) in 1844; already before, in 1836, he had established the Gallery of Tapestries, following that of the Candelabra, and in 1837 the Hall of the Aldobrandine Wedding (on the same floor, further toward the Papal Palace); no other sovereign, it is to be believed, ever did as much in this field. Pius IX not only added to the Lateran Profane two halls dedicated to Ostian monuments, which had come to light in the excavations he promoted, but also wished to have his own museum, the Lateran Christian Museum, inaugurated in 1854; a collection of truly exceptional importance for the documentation of the first centuries of Christianity.

After a long interval, in 1926, another museum was added to the Lateran Palace, through the work of Pius XI: the Ethnological Missionary Museum; and with it closes the not brief series of pontifical collections. Notable recent additions are the Guglielmi Hall in the Etruscan Museum, of 1937, and the Grassi Hall of the Egyptian Museum, just now established and opened (1953) to the public, not to mention the many and important works that have been gradually added to one and the other collection.

Finally, it must be recalled here that even those rooms of the papal palace which were exclusively reserved for the sovereign and the court, and in which the greatest Renaissance artists lavished their art, were increasingly opened to the public, especially after 1870, eventually becoming regularly included in the visits to the museums and galleries. The last to be opened, in chronological order, were the Borgia Apartment in 1897 and the Gallery of Maps in 1906.

follows aesthetic criteria, with some groupings by type, e.g., the Gallery of Busts, the Hall of the Muses, with its characteristic ceiling painted by T. Conca, suited to its content (the Hellenistic group of the Muses), and that of the Animals, perhaps unique of its kind, for its singular aspect of a marble zoo.

Throughout, but especially in the newly constructed rooms, there is lavish use of fine marbles and a solemn decorum in the spirit of the age. The chronological limits of the collection range from the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD. Among the Greek originals of the 5th century BC, mention may be made of a head of Athena from an acrolith, the stele known as the Palestra Stele, three fragments from the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon; from the Hellenistic period are two portraits of the Diadochi and the celebrated Laocoön. Among the most important copies are the Girl Running in a Race, the Discobolus by Myron and that by Naukydes, the Amazon by Phidias, all from 5th-century BC originals; from 4th-century BC originals: the Apollo Belvedere, progenitor of all Vatican statues and universally known, the Eros of Centocelle, the Cnidian Aphrodite, the Sauroctonus and the Resting Satyr by Praxiteles, the Apoxyomenos by Lysippos, the sole precious replica of this masterpiece; from Hellenistic originals: the Tyche of Antioch, the Boy with a Goose by Boethos of Chalcedon, several figures of the Niobids, a Persian Warrior from the dedication of Attalus, the Aphrodite of Diodalsas. Finally, the Belvedere Torso, whose glory would suffice in having been the model and inspiration of Raphael and Michelangelo, is perhaps one of the most distinguished examples of Hellenistic reworking of an earlier work.

Among the works that are distinctly Roman, in addition to numerous portraits housed especially in the Gallery of Busts, where the group known as Cato and Porcia stands out for its fame, one should recall the historical reliefs of the Ara Pacis Augustae, of the Vicomagistri from the Claudian age, of the Cancelleria from the Domitianic age, the altar of Augustus from the Belvedere, the altar of the Lares from the Hall of the Muses, the Casali altar, and numerous other altars, most of them funerary, in which Roman decorative art triumphs. Finally, there is the series of sarcophagi, which can boast on one hand the truly venerable one of Lucius Scipio Barbatus, and on the other the two monumental porphyry sarcophagi of St. Helena and Constantina: the latter monument (also called that of St. Constance), of truly capital importance, also for its splendid preservation, for the transition from classical to Byzantine art. Also worthy of note are the marble candelabra, from the neo-Attic Barberini (the largest existing), to the collection that gives its name to the Gallery of Candelabra. Alongside sculpture, the Pio-Clementine Museum also contains not a few paintings, especially in color: suffice it to recall the "basket of flowers" from the Via Appia, a exquisite work of the 2nd century A.D., the exquisite small panels from Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli in the Hall of Animals and in the Cabinet of Masks, and the grand pavement of the Rotunda Hall from the baths of Orticoli (1st century A.D.), certainly one of the largest and most complete that antiquity has bequeathed.

III. MUSEO CHIARAMONTI

Made up of the long, monotonous Gallery, overloaded with sculptures and modestly decorated with frescoes painted during the pontificate of its founder Pius VII, and of the New Wing, which is on the contrary a very successful work by R. Stern, it overall repeats the characteristics of the Pio-Clementino, of which it was the necessary complement. In the Gallery, among other minor originals, are a fragment of a Boeotian relief with a horseman from the 5th century B.C., a replica of the Eros by Thespis of Lysippus (4th century B.C.), portrait statues of Tiberius and Antoninus Pius, and numerous Roman portraits of every age, as well as numerous and valuable altars. In the New Wing are replicas of the Amazons by Polycleitus and Cresilas and of a Caryatid from the Erechtheum (5th century B.C.), the Athena Giustiniani from an original of the 4th century B.C., the replica of the Demosthenes by Polyector (3rd century B.C.), the most famous Nile from a Hellenistic original of the 2nd century B.C., the portrait statues of Augustus from Prima Porta, justly celebrated, of Titus, of Domitian, of Julia, daughter of Titus, and various busts including those of Caesar, of Ptolemy of Numidia, of Philip the Arab, the so-called Sulla; also noteworthy are a group of funerary cippi from the area of the Vatican and an alabaster cinerary urn attributed to Livilla, daughter of Germanicus; in the floor are inserted black-and-white mosaics (notable among them one representing Ulysses and the Sirens) and one in color, all from the 2nd century A.D.

IV. COURTYARD OF THE PINE CONE

It takes its name from the famous bronze pine cone, a probable fountain finial from the 1st century AD, brought here in 1615 under the niche of the ancient Constantinian basilica of St Peter, together with the two gilded bronze peacocks that still surround it and which come from the Mausoleum of Hadrian (2nd century AD). Another important monument placed in the same niche is the grand marble base adorned with reliefs of the Column of Antoninus Pius.

V. GALLERIA LAPIDARIA

Although it is not strictly part of the museums and galleries, this grand collection (which is, moreover, always open to scholars) of some 3,000 Latin and Greek, pagan and Christian inscriptions cannot be passed over in silence. It was arranged by G. MARIANO, (v.).

In the first section, towards the Galleria Chiaramonti, almost as a continuation of the Sculpture Museum, are grouped Roman sarcophagi from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD; towards the middle are two long pine beams, which are the most considerable remains of the wooden structure of Caligula’s famous ships in Lake Nemi.

The large and small bronzes and the goldsmiths’ work are grouped in the great Sala III. Noteworthy are the *Marte* of Todi, with its Umbrian-Latin dedication, from the 3rd–4th century BC; a chariot, probably votive, from the 5th or 4th century BC; the tripod from Vulci of the 6th century BC; and then a quantity of statuettes and utensils: vases, lamps, candelabra, censers, mirrors, cistae, braziers, bosses, etc., even a pair of sandals; and further, weapons of offence and defence, among which must be mentioned a lituus, or military trumpet, which seems to be the only surviving specimen. In almost all these objects the elegance of form and the fantasy and refinement of decoration justify the fame for excellence that Etruscan bronzes enjoyed even in Greece. Good taste and skilful technique also distinguish not a few of the goldsmiths’ works: especially noteworthy for the fineness of execution are three bullae with repoussé figured scenes, a clasp in silver and bronze of “Daedalic” art from the 7th century BC, and some figured amber pieces. Among the Roman objects preserved here are fragments of a large statue from the 1st century BC, a portrait head from the 3rd century AD, and various bronzes, gold objects, and bones: among the latter a doll and figured tokens for attending circus races, from the 4th century AD.

In Hall IV, or the Hall of Terracottas, objects of various materials are also preserved, including urns in sandstone, marble, alabaster, etc., and various glassware, most of which are of Roman date. The terracottas (sarcophagi, friezes, revetments, antefixes, statues and statuettes, ex-votos, vases, lamps) span from the 7th century B.C. to the 3rd–4th century A.D.

Ancient vases occupy several halls and are arranged chronologically. From the crude products of the early Iron Age (cremation urns, Villanovan, hut-shaped urns from Latium) and bucchero ware, one proceeds to the rich and select documentation of Greek ceramic art, especially represented by Attic vases with black and red figures by renowned artists such as Exekias, Brygos, Douris, and many other masters whose names have been supplied by modern criticism. Among the rarities is a white-ground krater of the 5th century. Finally, there is Italian pottery, including large vessels (e.g., funerary amphorae from Taranto), and Etruscan ware. A notable series of bucchero and painted pottery, mainly Greek, is displayed alongside Etruscan bronzes in the Guglielmi Hall.

VII. Museo Gregoriano Egizio

A typical museum arranged by the Egyptologist Fr. Luigi M. Ungarelli, a disciple of J. F. Champollion, in rooms decorated in Egyptian style by the then director of the Pontifical Museums, G. De Fabris. Though unable to rival the largest collections of this kind in Italy and abroad, it is nonetheless worthy of special consideration, especially for the so-called Hall of Imitations, where are gathered not a few sculptures, mostly from the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D., which were indeed executed by Roman artists in the Pharaonic style, catering to a particular taste of the time. Most of these come from the Iseo Campense and Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli; noteworthy is a statue of *Antinoüs* in Egyptian attire.

Among the Pharaonic monuments gathered in the other rooms, particular mention should be made of the sandstone head of a Pharaoh Menthotpe of the 12th Dynasty (2054–2008 B.C.), the colossal statue of Queen Tuya, mother of Ramesses II, in grey granite (19th Dynasty, c. 1280 B.C.), two crouching lions in grey granite from a monument of Pharaoh Nectanebo I (30th Dynasty, 378–361 B.C.), the green basalt statuette of the naophorous priest Udjeharresne, with its famous long inscription, the only Egyptian document of the Persian Cambyses’ conquest of Egypt in 525 B.C. and thus of exceptional historical importance. Also noteworthy is the series of anthropoid sarcophagi in painted stone and polychrome wood from the 9th to the 3rd century B.C., as well as those of funerary stelae and papyri containing various recensions of the *Book of the Dead* (15th–2nd centuries B.C.). From the standpoint of religious iconography, particular importance attaches to the bronze figurines depicting deities and sacred animals, especially those in the new Sala Grassi, which also contains Hellenistic bronze and terracotta works.

From the Ptolemaic age, mention should be made of the colossal statue of Ptolemy II Philadelphus.

Vatican – Lapidary Gallery, formerly part of the corridor built by D. Bramante during the pontificate of Julius II (1503–13).

A new building constructed in the gardens to a design by L. Beltrami houses the offices of the General Direction, the Laboratory for the Restoration of Artworks, and the Depositories, which may be consulted by scholars on request. The arrangement of the paintings follows an approximately chronological and stylistic order, so as to give the visitor an idea of the evolution of painting in Italy from the late Byzantine period to the early 19th century.

The paintings on display number about 460, among which some of universal fame, such as Raphael’s *Incoronazione della Vergine*, the *Madonna di Foligno* and the *Trasfigurazione*, Leonardo’s *S. Girolamo*, Giotto’s *Trittico Stefaneschi* with assistants, several panels by Fra Angelico, etc. In the great hall, entirely dedicated to Raphael, there is also the splendid series of tapestries depicting scenes from the *Acts of the Apostles*, woven in Brussels by P. Van Aelst from cartoons by Sanzio for the decoration of the Sistine Chapel.

These are rooms in the former Papal Palace adapted for the display of the few modern paintings in the Vatican Museums, which do not claim to form an organic collection or to be of great artistic interest. In the Sala delle Dame, whose ceiling is frescoed by Guido Reni, there is preserved in a most ornate glass case a collection of sumptuously bound volumes that were presented to Pius IX on the occasion of the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception.

The proper Galleria dei Quadri Moderni consists of part of the corridor that follows the Galleria delle Carte Geografiche, built and frescoed during the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572–83).

In two small rooms are gathered some canvases by 19th-century painters. The best-known names are those of Lodovico Seitz (*Adorazione dei Pastori*, monochrome watercolor drawing), Francesco Paolo Michetti (*Ritratto ideale di Innocenzo XI*, which is in fact a self-portrait of the artist), Domenico Morelli (*S. Gennaro receives the blessing from S. Pietro*), and Cesare Fracassini (*S. Pietro Canisio and Ferdinando d’Ungheria*).

In the adjoining room, known as the Sala del Sobieski, are displayed the famous *Martiri di Gorkum* and the vast canvas by Jan Matejko, the greatest Polish painter of the late 19th century, depicting *The Victory of Sobieski over the Turks at Vienna*, as well as the much-admired *S. Alessandro* by Loverini, which attracts many tourists. Of the Sala dell’Immacolata, with its frescoes by Podesti, we have already spoken in connection with the building history of the Apostolic Palaces.

XII. Stanze di Raffaello: V. Raffaello Sanzio.

XIII. Sala dei Chiaroscuri (or dei Palafrenieri)

This room has a magnificent carved and gilded ceiling adorned with Medici emblems around the arms of Leo X. In place of the present chiaroscuro paintings there were once others by Raphael representing apostles and saints, of which a memory survives in the engravings of Marcantonio and a faint copy in the church of the Tre Fontane; these precious works were destroyed under Paul IV, not “to make certain of his little rooms into cubbyholes,” as Vasari claims, but to consolidate the masonry, as recent restorations have revealed. The figures of apostles and saints now seen here are by Taddeo and Federico Zuccari, while the decorative elements are by Giovanni and Cherubino Alberti. The new decoration dates, according to the inscription, from

The Chapel of NICHOLAS V. — The little Chapel of Nicholas V, also known as the Chapel of the Blessed Angelico (q.v.), was painted by the great Dominican artist between 1448 and 1450 with two superimposed cycles of frescoes representing episodes from the lives of St Stephen (upper zone) and St Lawrence (lower zone). Recent restorations have revealed, beneath the repaintings carried out in the time of Gregory XIII, the original painted socle, consisting of carpets with decorative motifs of differing colour and design for each fresco in the lower cycle. Of the many works executed by the Blessed Angelico in the Vatican this is the only one that has survived. In it the friar-painter seeks to reconcile, without betraying it, his mystical religious spirit (still almost medieval) with the new spirit of the Renaissance and Humanism, to produce a work pleasing to a pope who was himself one of the greatest humanists when he was still Tommaso Parentucelli of Sarzana. Many of the figures evoked by the Angelico’s brush are unforgettable, but especially that of the blind man advancing towards St Lawrence to beg alms. The painter’s mystical taste for celestial colours, such as azure and pink, is so remarkable that he paints the Roman relief with the eagle, preserved in the atrium of the SS. Apostoli in Rome, pink, and places it on the throne of the Emperor who judges the deacon Lawrence, and he clothes the pope and his ecclesiastical court in azure—a colour unknown in liturgy—in the scene of the Delivery of the Chalice to St Lawrence. A work of this kind cannot be explained by critical and stylistic analysis alone, but must be understood through a profound knowledge, indeed a feeling, for the religious content that animates II. This is why the initiative taken by the authorities of the Holy See, after the recent restorations, to reinclude the Chapel of Nicholas V among the Palatine Papal Chapels (q.V. illustrations at q.V. BEATO ANGELICO; TIARA) has been praised.

XV. RAFFAELLO’S LOGGIE

Raffaello’s Loggie form part of the new façade ordered by Julius II from Bramante around 1512, to cover the medieval façade of Nicholas III’s palace facing the city. The second gallery was completed, following Bramante’s designs, by Raphael, his successor as architect of the Papal Palaces and of the basilica of St Peter. The decoration of small frescoes, painted grotesques and stuccoes was executed by Raphael’s school under his personal direction and represents perhaps the most successful attempt of Renaissance efforts to revive the spirit of ancient art. The painters who worked under the Umbrian master were chiefly Giulio Romano, Francesco Penni, Pierin del Vaga and Giovanni da Udine. To the last-named are due the most graceful stuccoes modelled in the classical Roman technique, which he had rediscovered by studying the ancient specimens then brought to light, especially in the excavations of Nero’s Domus Aurea. Typical of the Renaissance spirit is the freedom with which the artists here mingled sacred motifs, drawn mostly from the Old Testament (especially in the frescoes of the vault, whose series is known precisely as Raphael’s Bible), and profane iconographic elements, which only their common artistic excellence succeeds in uniting. The Loggia was intended for the walks of Leo X, who kept there the most precious part of his collection of “antiquities,” as documents of the time attest. Recently, beneath a walling-up by Paul III, two painted and gilded half-pilasters have been discovered in a state of almost perfect preservation. These two elements, carefully restored but not repainted, give an idea of the brilliance which the colours and gildings of the Loggia must once have possessed before the Sack of Rome, the Revolution, visitors, restorers and the natural action of centuries reduced its decoration to that pale shadow which today can barely preserve a memory of II.

Its pictorial decoration (planned by the builder, who minimized the relief parts inside and personally directed the work of the painters) is divided into three phases, corresponding to the reigns of Sixtus IV, Julius II, and Paul III. The first, drawing inspiration from the decorative schemes of ancient Roman basilicas, had a group of highly skilled artists (such as Perugino, Pinturicchio, Signorelli, Botticelli, Cosimo Rosselli, and Piero di Cosimo, assisted by their pupils) paint the two cycles depicting episodes from the Life of Moses, on the side of the Gospel, and the Life of Christ, on the side of the Epistle, as well as, in the lunettes, the iconographic series of the first popes. Julius II had Michelangelo paint on the vault the Story of the Creation, from the "Fiat lux" up to the Flood and the renewal of life on earth in the surviving family of Noah. Finally, Paul III, taking up an idea of Clement VII, ordered the elderly Michelangelo to fresco the Last Judgment on the altar wall. Thus, in this sacred space, one finds not only

It is a grand summary of world history, from its origins to the end of the ages (prehistory on the vault, the world of the Old Law in the cycle of Moses, the world of Grace in the scenes of Christ’s life, and the final conclusion in the African of the Last Judgment), but also a clear panoramic view of the evolution of Italian Renaissance painting, from its adolescence in the Quattrocento, through its full flowering in the Cinquecento, characterized by the perfect accord, in the figures of the vault, between formal and expressive demands, until the beginning of the decline of the aesthetic and classical ideal, manifest in the tormented forms of the figures in the Last Judgment, where the expressive necessity of the impassioned ethical content counts for far more than any formal concern. It truly seems that Divine Providence guided the succession of these three phases so as to link them with such consequentiality, as if they had followed a preordained plan from the beginning. Indeed, when Julius II, Clement VII, and Paul III commissioned the frescoes of the vault and the altar wall, none of the three pontiffs thought to connect them to the Quattrocento ideal already painted on the walls. The first had ordered the sculptor Michelangelo, despite his initial resistance, to paint the Twelve Apostles on the vault, and it was Buonarroti himself who proposed to fresco the scenes of Genesis there, while Clement VII saw in the Last Judgment, which he ordered for the altar wall (contrary to the usual iconographic placement, which places it at the entrance of churches), simply a memorial of the Sack of Rome, which in 1527 had frustrated his pontificate, and Paul III, who took up and realized the idea, made of that terrible painting the summons for the awaited Council for the Catholic reform of the Church (v. illustrations at V. MICHELANGELO, vol. VI, pl. 53 [Judgment]; VII, pl. 29 [interior]).

XVII. BORGIA APARTMENT

This famous apartment takes its name from the house of Alexander VI, Borgia, who had it decorated with frescoes and rich gilded stuccoes by Pinturicchio (q.v.) and his collaborators and assistants (such as Piemme and d'Amelia and Antonio da Viterbo, known as Il Pastura), between 1492 and 1495, and lived there until his death.

The last hall of the apartment, called the Hall of the Popes, was decorated only in the time of Leo X by Pierin del Vaga and Giovanni da Udine, pupils of Raphael. The pictorial decoration of the individual rooms, called those of the Sibyls, of the Creed, of the Liberal Arts (q.v.), of the Life of the Saints and of the Mysteries of the Faith, reflects an iconographic programme still largely medieval in spirit, albeit in the new form of Renaissance art. This form is that of the Umbrian style, of which the greatest representative was Perugino and its most effective popularizer was Pinturicchio himself. It is a style rich in decorative values rather than in lofty aesthetic qualities, and it is easy to understand why it was chosen by the Spanish Pope, for whom the Renaissance was an artistic phenomenon foreign to his cultural world and therefore more easily assimilated in that plain exposition which Pinturicchio provides. Worthy of particular note among these frescoes, which count above all for their overall effect in the various rooms, is the portrait of Alexander VI (q.v.) in the Resurrection

N.S., an image of extraordinary expressiveness and certainly not unworthy of a Piero della Francesca, though far above the average level of Pinturicchiesque art, which reaches another of its not many peaks in the great fresco with the Disputation of St. Catherine of Alexandria: a joyous miniature enlarged to the proportions of a lunette, interesting also for the portraits it contains.

In Hall III, or of Addresses, are preserved
VATICANO - House of the Spirits and Initiations for Male Youth on the River Lepik (New Guinea) - Pontifical Missionary Ethnological Museum of the Lateran.

Mostly furnishings and liturgical objects in metal, enamel, ivory, and leather, dating from the Middle Ages to modern times. Noteworthy are: a chalice of St. Jerome from the 9th century, a cross from Chianciano from around 1400, another from Muri from around 1300, and one from Kreuzlingen from 1557, a golden rose from the 19th century; enamels, especially by Ligomegos, rock crystals by V. Belli (1468–1546); ivories from the 9th–15th centuries, including the famous Rambona diptych from around 900; and also Renaissance ceramics and plaques, some fresco fragments from the catacombs of the 3rd and 4th centuries, and two apostolic heads in music by Ticlinio Lateranense from the 9th century.

Passing through the Chapel of St. Pius V, decorated by G. Zucchi (1541–90) from designs by Vasari and containing sacred paintings by A. Allori (1535–1607) woven as tapestries, one enters Hall IV, where more liturgical vestments are displayed, including a notable English cope from the 13th century and a chasuble from the Caetani family of the 16th century. Halls V and VI follow, displaying objects of Christian Oriental art and reliquaries from the Sancta Sanctorum of the Lateran, along with other artifacts.

material that had recently come to light, including notable donations, such as the statue of Sophocles found at Terracina, donated by the Counts Antonelli. The Museum occupied fourteen rooms on the ground floor, while a series of paintings and museums were arranged in some rooms on the main floor. Pius IX entrusted Fr. Marchi and G. B. De Rossi in 1850 with the task of constructing in the grand staircase and loggias a Museum of Christian Antiquities, which was inaugurated in 1854. It collected the most notable Christian sarcophagi, scattered in churches, palaces, or recently unearthed; G. B. De Rossi arranged in the walls of the loggias on the first floor an imposing collection of Christian inscriptions, organized according to their content, that is, first public monuments of Christian worship, then some Damasian poems, either original or copies, in honor of the Roman martyrs; followed by sepulchral inscriptions beginning with those bearing a certain date, then dogmatic ones, including the notable fragments of the original cippus of Albericus (q.v.); then inscriptions relating to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, homeland, family, civil or military offices, trades; inscriptions with representations of Christian symbols or alluding to the civil life of the deceased, epigraphs with special phrases. Some panels contain a collection of Christian inscriptions arranged according to their provenance from various cemeteries. Both the profane Gregorian Museum and the Christian Pio-Lateran Museum have undergone considerable expansions since their founding, while the paintings were returned to the Vatican. O. Marucchi, who succeeded G. B. De Rossi in the direction of these Museums, added a collection of Jewish antiquities, in which many of the inscriptions found in the Jewish cemetery of Monteverde on the Via Portuense were arranged.

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**XXIII. Pontifical Missionary Ethnological Museum of the Lateran.** – It was established by Pius XI with the *motu proprio* *Quoniam tam praeclara* of 12 Nov. 1926 in order to document, from the perspectives of missiology and ethnology, the stages of the missionary expansion throughout the world, assigning as its splendid seat the Apostolic Palace of the Lateran, built by Sixtus V according to designs by Domenico Fontana (1586–90), not as a papal residence but as a commemorative monument of the ancient patriarchate. And so greatly did that Pontiff desire “that in this same Papal Palace, beside the Church, mother of all churches, the dawn of faith among today’s unbelievers might stand in correspondence to the dawn that once illuminated pagan Rome,” that is, so that the new Museum might crown the cycle of historical and archaeological documentation of Christian Rome begun there by Gregory XVI with the Profane Museum (see above) and developed by Pius IX (1854) with the Christian Museum (see above). Not without reason did the same Pius XI decree that precisely in the place of the vanished patriarchate, near its cathedral, among rare relics and precious furnishings from mission lands—with evident reference to the Constantinian Edict of 313—the new peace between Church and State be sealed in the Lateran Pacts (11 Feb. 1929).

The Museum’s collections, some fifty thousand objects, derive in large part from the Vatican Missionary Exposition of 1925, to which 185 vicariates, 71 prefectures, 78 missions, 51 dioceses, and 16 archdioceses contributed, as well as the *prelature nullius*, that is, almost all the world’s missionary circumscriptions, together with 163 religious orders and missionary institutes, 13 indigenous religious communities, various learned societies, and numerous private donors. To these were added important collections formerly belonging to the unfortunately dispersed holdings of the famous Borgia Museum of Propaganda Fide (18th–19th centuries) and of the Vatican Exposition for the Jubilee of Leo XIII. Subsequently the Museum, which occupies 26 large halls and 5 galleries with a total surface area of 6,000 square meters, has been notably enriched by entire collections of great value and rare relics from every part of the world, thanks to the uninterrupted papal munificence, purchases, and donations.

Vatican – The Dying Te-Cum-Sch, Chief of the League of the Indian Tribes of the West, who died during the Battle of Tames (1813), by Ferdinand Pettrich (clay sculpture) – Missionary Ethnological Museum of the Lateran

The technical organization, conservation, and critical cataloguing of the material is entrusted to the scientific direction of the Museum, initially headed by the renowned scientist Fr. Guglielmo Schmidt S.V.D.; this scientific direction, as envisaged by the founding Pontiff, also constitutes, with the aid of a rich specialized library and an appropriate archival fund, an institute dedicated to the comparative study of different cultures in accordance with the modern trends of historical-cultural ethnology. This is particularly true of that positive science which, more than any other, has contributed in the last fifty years to demolishing the insidious and unscientific a priori assumptions of evolutionism. Thus, the Museum has also quickly become a well-known and lively centre for contacts, relations, and scholarly exchanges with similar institutes throughout the world and with illustrious personalities in the world of scholarship; these relations have grown so intense as to make necessary a special periodical publication, the Annali Lateranensi (q.v.), intended since 1937 to include, amid ever-wider support and collaboration, the authoritative voice of the Lateran research centre within the concert of cultural history studies.

Since 1948, a systematic and patient work of reorganization of the collections has been underway, aimed at making them, both in their display and in their content, more responsive to new scientific and aesthetic criteria, and at the same time more didactically useful and attractive to the general public, while better highlighting the truly exceptional, and often unique, importance of collections such as the Persian and Mesopotamian ceramics and porcelains, Chinese bronzes, ceramics and porcelains, the ethnographic collections from the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, the Bororos of Brazil, the indigenous peoples of Paraguay, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, as well as the negroes of the Belgian Congo. Special prominence is given to the sculptures of the Pellirose by the sculptor Pettrich (q.v.) and to the individual collections of indigenous sacred art.

**

**XXIV. Study of the Museum of the Rev. Fabbrica of St. Peter.** - The great emphasis placed, in the decoration of the basilica of St. Peter, on the art of mosaic—an art least susceptible to the injuries of time—led to the establishment, under the Rev. Fabbrica, of a well-equipped workshop. This workshop was also intended to preserve the mosaics themselves. The favored subject under Sixtus V, who may well be considered its founder, was endowed as early as 1585 with a well-stocked storehouse of enamels, comprising about 17,000 shades. Once the decorative work on the basilica was completed, the workshop, now flourishing, began to undertake the mosaic reproduction of altarpieces, although the first attempt of this kind, carried out in 1620 by Giovanni Battista Clandra, cannot be considered particularly successful.
VATICAN – A gallery of the storeroom of the Studio of the Musacino.

Later, the successive wonderful compositions by Fabio Cristofari and his son Pietro Paolo, such as the paintings reproduced *St. Petronilla* by Guercino and *The Communion of St. Jerome* by Domenichino, bear witness to the other technical perfection that it attained, so much so that in 1727, reorganized and arranged in a stable manner, still under the jurisdiction of the Rev. Fabbrica, it acquired the true character of a Studio, of which Cristofari himself became the first superintendent.

Initially housed in various premises of the Fabbrica, with the French occupation it was removed from the jurisdiction of the Rev. Fabbrica and named the “Imperial Studio of Mosaic”; in 1814 Pius VII installed it in the Palazzo Girolamo in Borgo; in 1825 it was then transferred again to the Vatican by Leo XII; in 1931 it moved into the purpose-built single-storey building constructed by Pius XI in the rear part of St. Peter’s Basilica. The series of coloured enamels, rich in about 30,000 varieties, is preserved in 9,000 metal drawers.

From the Studio have come forth fine works that adorn, besides the Vatican Basilica, the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, for which the series of portraits of the Roman Pontiffs was executed, ordered by Pius IX with the brief *Quum artes optimae* of 14 May 1847, the Sanctuary of Loreto, other churches, etc. Famous remains the reproduction of the shield of Achilles, described in the *Iliad*, offered by Leo XII to King Charles X of France. – See pl. CXII.

V. BIBLIOTECA.

I. HISTORICAL NOTES

Library and archival collections belonging to and used by the Apostolic See were formed and dispersed on several occasions, with even interrupted material succession, throughout the thousand-year history of the Roman Church. The history of the earliest papal libraries is fragmentary and largely conjectural, since direct documents, and in particular inventories, are lacking. From the testimonies of writers of different ages it is reasonable to presume that the documentary and literary heritage of the Roman Church must have been abundant in the early centuries and during the Middle Ages, even though in antiquity the concept of separate archivists prevailed, generally attached to individual churches.

Archaeological remains of a library of Pope Agapito (535–36) and of the ancient Lateran library have recently been discovered; but of these early libraries up to the time of Honorius III (1216–27), all the contents have perished, except for the registers of his predecessor Innocent III (1198–1216). Of the library reconstituted by the popes of the 13th century and found by Boniface VIII, the inventories from the years 1295, 1327, and 1339 remain; first taken to Perugia, then to Assisi between 1312 and 1319, it was largely dispersed. Of the Avignon library, formed after 1305, several inventories survive, particularly important those of 1369 and 1375, and substantial book remains now in the Vatican (Borghesian codices) and in Paris. Another library was reconstituted upon the return of the popes to Rome and was placed in the Vatican, but it too suffered serious losses during the upheavals of the Great Schism. In 1447, Eugenius IV transmitted 350 Latin, some Greek and Arabic, codices to his successor Nicholas V. It was this pope (d. 1455) who was the true creator of the last papal library, the modern Vatican Library, which has remained substantially intact and progressively enlarged over five centuries of existence; for through a large purchase made by emissaries and the work of scribes, he increased the number of codices to 1,160. By 1475 these had already more than doubled (2,537) and tripled by 1481 (ca. 3,500). A proper seat for the library, adorned by famous painters of the time (Domenico and Davide Ghirlandaio, Melozzo da Forlì, Antoniazzo Romano), was built by Sixtus IV (1471–84) on the ground floor of Nicholas V’s palace, with an entrance on the Cortile del Pappagallo; its four halls respectively housed Latin and Greek books, the most precious books, and papal registers (bibliotheca latina, graeca, secreta, pontificia). The librarian at this time was Bartolomeo Platina (d. 1481), and in this setting the library was accessible to scholars, and especially to curial officials, with lending widely practiced (loan registers survive from 1475 to 1547). After about a century, as the collections of books grew—especially with the influx of printed works—and the location proved unhealthy, Sixtus V built between 1587 and 1589 a new seat, erecting above the steps of the vast Cortile di Belvedere the building that still houses the Vatican Library; to it he also gave stricter regulations governing its use. From the mid-16th century, with the institution of the cardinal librarian, it had been assigned a permanent protector: the first in the series was Marcello Cervini (1548–50), later Pope Marcellus II. VATICANO - Panel of the cabinets of the library of Sixtus IV (1471-84) - Vatican Library.

Among the later librarians of that same century were the distinguished Guglielmo Sirlet (1572-85) and Cesare Baronio (1597-1607); and subsequently, to mention only a few other names, Girolamo Casanate (1693-1700), Angelo Maria Querini (1730-55), Domenico Passionei (1755-61), Angelo Mai (1853-54), Alfonso Capecelatro (1890-1912), Francis Aidan Gasquet (1919-29), Franz Ehrle (1929-34), Giovanni Mercati (thirty-eighth in the series, from 1936). During the 17th century notable collections were added, and up to the present other fonds and entire libraries have been gradually incorporated into the original holdings, generally remaining separate and distinct under their historical names. The Vatican manuscript fonds proper were organized by subject towards the end of the 16th century by the custodian Domenico Ranaldi; and the complete printed cataloguing of the codices was planned, though only partially completed, around the mid-18th century by the custodians of Lebanese origin Giuseppe Simonio Assemani and his nephew Evodio. Towards the end of that century the Vatican Library too had to contribute to the war tribute imposed by French arms in 1797 and '98, delivering 500 precious manuscripts, as well as incunabula, prints and other relics; not all were returned in 1815.

The transformation of the Vatican Library, which had remained substantially an aristocratic and palatine institution, into a modern library took place progressively beginning with the pontificate of Leo XIII, in connection with the opening of the Vatican Secret Archive to researchers (1883). Through the work especially of the prefect Fr. Franz Ehrle, SJ (1895-1914), more spacious study rooms and a modern metal-shelved repository for manuscripts were prepared; the new scientific printed description of the codices, photographic reproductions of the most precious among them, and the collection Studi e testi were undertaken, and the printed collections were expanded, particularly to form a modern reference collection. Already as its prefect, Pius XI further developed the life of the Vatican Library, increased the number of librarians, built a large six-storey repository with metal shelving for printed works, and similarly renovated the consultation room. Under article 18 of the Concordat with the Italian State (1929), access was guaranteed to scholars, as had in any case been broadly granted, while the Holy See retained full freedom of regulation. During the Second World War, and in particular in 1943 and '44, the Vatican Library actively participated in the saving work of the Holy See, housing all or part of the most important material from libraries and archives of Rome, Latium and Campania, including the collections of Montecassino.

II. COLLECTIONS AND HISTORICAL FUNDS

a) Manuscripts. The Vatican Library now possesses in total about 60,000 manuscripts, 7,000 incunabula, 700,000 other printed works, 100,000 engravings and geographical maps, and many thousands of volumes and archival bundles. Codices and printed works are grouped into funds that are properly Vatican-owned or held in ownership, and into deposit funds, generally constituted on a permanent basis. The fund of Vatican codices, which remains open to new additions, is subdivided into sixteen linguistic groups, each with its own progressive numbering: Latin, including other languages with the Latin alphabet (about 15,000), Greek (2,607); Arabic (1,622), Armenian (40), Coptic (103), Hebrew (613), Far East (49), Ethiopic (276), Georgian (2), Indian (46), Persian (163), Romanian (9), Samaritan (3), Syriac (623), Slavonic (64), Turkish (374). Other manuscript funds held in ownership are, in the historical order of their acquisition: the Palatine from Heidelberg, 1622 (2,028 Latin and 432 Greek, and in addition Hebrew manuscripts that were inserted into the respective Vatican fund; from the city of origin, 847 German, 26 Greek, and 10 Latin were returned by order of Pius VII); the Urbinate, acquired under Alexander VII (1,779 Latin, 165 Greek, and 59 Hebrew); the Reginense, formerly belonging to Queen Christina of Sweden, acquired under Alexander VIII (1,211 Latin and 190 Greek, to which are now added another 55 Greek manuscripts, coming from Pius II); the Ottobonian, 1740 (3,394 Latin and 473 Greek); the Capponian, 1746 (289 Latin and Italian); the Borghesian, 1891 (387 Latin); Notarial Acts of Orange (413); Rolls (288); Incomes and Expenditures (88); the Barberinian, 1902 (10,041

The various kinds of objects belonging to Christian antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance: ivories and bones, enamels, textiles, glass, hardstones, bronzes, etc.

Vatican — Seat of the "Index of Christian Art" at the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology — Rome.

In 1761 Clement XI ordered the establishment of the Museo Profano, where Greek and Roman antiquities from the collections that had come to the Vatican were placed separately: in particular cameos, hardstones, bronzes, ivories from the aforementioned Carpegna collection, the precious Albani collection of imperial medallions, and other notable numismatic series. A characteristic setting with cabinets made of rare woods was prepared for II. But almost total was the spoliation carried out by the French in 1798: all the Albani medallions, more than 200 ancient cameos, and other relics were removed. The collection subsequently reconstituted, though far from its original splendor, includes notable Etruscan and Roman objects from excavations and purchases: ivories and hardstones, glass, musical instruments, marble reliefs, mirrors, vases, bronze weapons, some cameos and gems. A reorganization was carried out after 1936, and on that occasion the medieval and Renaissance works, already conserved in the Museum, were transferred to the Borgia apartment, also under the custody of the Vatican Library.

The first Vatican Medagliere, housed in the museums founded by Benedict XIV and Clement XIII, contained 21,293 coins and medals, of which 13,562 were ancient; but it was almost entirely dispersed in 1798. The new one, reconstituted later, grew through the acquisition of entire collections: Vitali, 1807 (3,888 Roman and colonial coins), Tomassini, Belli, Sibilio, Randi, 1901 (15,000 coins); Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide (12,000 coins and medals, mostly Oriental); Pizzamaglia (4,579 papal medals, dies, and lead seals) and Celati (4,000 papal coins). Two large collections of coins from the Holy Land and of ancient and medieval Sicilian coins were added through the munificence of Pius XI; and 1,900 Roman imperial, papal, and medieval coins from various European states, found in new excavations conducted beneath St. Peter’s Basilica (1940–49), were added to the collection by order of Pius XII. In 1940, the Medagliere contained in total 100,967 pieces, distributed as follows: 3,588 in gold, 28,925 in silver, 50,211 in bronze, 12,000 in marble, 4,018 lead, 2,013 dies, seals, stones; 10,712 paper, glass, casts. The Roman series, rich in specimens and rarities, and the papal series, valued for the quantity and rarity of its specimens as the most important collection of its kind, stand out particularly.

e) Index of Christian Art. — A large repertory for the study of Christian art and antiquity, a copy of the Index of Christian Art of Princeton University (U.S.A.), was placed in 1952, as a detached section of the Vatican Library, at the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology in Rome. This catalogue of monuments, subjects, and bibliography of artistic works of Christian inspiration prior to the year 1400 comprises an iconographic index on cards and another index of photographs of monuments; it will be progressively expanded with the most recent references and discoveries.
### III. SCHOOL OF LIBRARIANSHIP. LABORATORIES. - a) A School of Librarianship was established in 1934 at the Vatican Library, with the aim of instructing primarily ecclesiastics and religious in modern methods of organizing and managing libraries and of promoting the use of common cataloguing rules (the relevant code, *Norme per il catalogo degli stampati*, has also been translated into French, English, Portuguese, and Spanish). The teaching, which is both practical and historical in nature, currently comprises five disciplines.

b) Restoration and Photographic Laboratories. - To ensure the preservation and restoration of the vast and ancient parchment, papyrus, paper, bindings, etc., of the Vatican Library and Archive, Prefect Ehrle, who in 1898 promoted a conference in St. Gallen of the leading European librarians and bookbinders to address these issues, established a special laboratory. This laboratory carries out, with techniques sometimes of extreme delicacy, all the necessary operations to repair damage caused by time, climate, and other adverse environmental conditions, as well as various mechanical and accidental causes.

As early as 1890, the Vatican Library decided to establish a laboratory for the photographic reproduction of its manuscripts and printed works, initially entrusted to external photographers. In 1937, its own laboratory was created, equipped with all the apparatus for various processes: black on white, direct positive, microfilm, plates and films of different sizes; ultraviolet rays are used for the reproduction of palimpsests. In this laboratory, expanded to meet new needs, microfilming of the principal collection of manuscripts of the Vatican Library has been carried out since 1952 for the use of the Catholic University of St. Louis in Missouri, which, by papal concession, becomes the depository of the copy. Furthermore, scholars have recently been provided with a room at the Vatican Library equipped with various microfilm reading devices and quartz lamps for reading palimpsests and faded writings.

IV. PUBLICATIONS

Over the centuries, numerous works were published under the initiative or auspices of the Vatican Library. However, it was especially the renewal promoted by Leo XIII in the life of the Institute that gave rise to several scholarly series, which have continued to grow ever since. First and foremost are the new catalogues of manuscripts, *Codices manuscripti recensiti*, of which about thirty volumes have appeared to date. These describe the following groups of codices: Vatican Latin 1–678 (M. Vattasso and P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri; 1902), 679–1134 (A. Pelzer; 1931–33), 1461–2059 (B. Nogara; 1912), 9852–10300 (M. Vattasso and E. Carusi; 1914), 10,301–10,700 (M. Vattasso and E. Carusi; 1920), 10,701–10,875 (G. B. Borino; 1947); Vatican Greek 1–329 (G. Mercati and P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri; 1923), 330–603 (R. Devreesse; 1937), 604–866 (R. Devreesse; 1950), 1485–1683 (C. Giannelli; 1950); Palatine Latin 1–920 (H. Stevenson; 1886); Palatine Greek (H. Stevenson; 1885); Urbinate Latin (C. Stornajolo; 1902–21); Urbinate Greek (C. Stornajolo; 1895); Reginensis Latin 1–500 (A. Wilmart; 1937–45); Reginensis Greek and of Pius II (H. Stevenson; 1888); Capponi (G. Salvo Cozzo; 1897); Ottoboni Greek (E. Feron and F. Battaglini; 1893); Chigi and Borgia Greek (P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri; 1927); Ferrajoli 1–736 (L. Berra; 1939–47); Ethiopian codices (S. Grébaut and E. Tisserant; 1935–36); Armenian codices (F. C. Conybeare and E. Tisserant; 1927); Coptic codices (A. Hebbelynck and A. van Lantschoot; 1937–47); Egyptian papyri (O. Marucchi; 1891); Latin papyri (O. Marucchi; 1895).

In 1902, the series *Studi e testi* (q.v.) was begun, intended for the edition and illustration of material of particular scholarly interest, drawn mainly from the holdings of the Vatican Library and Archive.

The series of phototype reproductions, Codices e Vaticani seletti quali simillime expressi, also initiated by Ehrle, with the aim of preserving and disseminating in multiplied photomechanical images the most precious codices, now comprises about thirty volumes, including the Geography of Ptolemy (Urb. gr. 82), the Roman Histories of Cassius Dio (Vat. gr. 1288), Cicero’s De republica (Vat. lat. 5757), the Vigne di Vaticano (Vat. lat. 3225), Romano (Vat. lat. 3867), Palazzo (Pal. lat. 1631), and Augusteo (Vat. lat. 3256), Terence’s Comedies (Vat. lat. 3868), the fragments of Fronto (Vat. lat. 5750), the Greek Bible, B (Vat. gr. 1209), the Joshua Roll (Pal. gr. 431), the Menologion of Basil (Vat. gr. 1613), the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes (Vat. gr. 699), the Convivio (Barber. lat. 4086), Dante’s Monarchia and Epistles (Pal. lat. 1729), the Canzoniere (Vat. lat. 3195), and other autograph fragments of Petrarch (Vat. lat. 3196), and the book of drawings by Giuliano da Sangallo (Barber. lat. 4424). A separate series, devoted to facsimile reproductions of notable codices belonging to ecclesiastical libraries in Italy, now numbers seven volumes.

Other scholarly collections published by the Vatican Library include the Major Plans of Rome from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries reproduced in phototype (1911–36), Studies and Documents on the History of the Vatican Palace (ongoing since 1933), the Catalogue of the Sacred Museum (begun in 1936), and the Monumenta cartografica Vaticana, edited by R. Almagià (ongoing since 1944). Finally, some monumental standalone publications should be noted, such as the Roman Pontifical Diplomas on Papyrus Preserved in the Archives of Spain, Italy, and Germany, phototypically reproduced (1929), and the Chinese World Map of Fr. Matteo Ricci, S.J., edited by P. D’Elia (1938). Vedi tav. CXIII–CXV.

VATICANO — Rooms on the first floor of the Secret Archive, adjacent to the Sistine Hall, frescoed under Paul V (1610–12).

Handbuch der Bibliothekswiss., III: Gesch. der Bibliotheken, Lipsia 1940. Inoltre, il capitolo di A. Mercati, La Biblioteca Apost. e l'Arch. segreto Vatic., nel vol. Vaticano, Firenze [1946], pp. 469-93. Ampi riferimenti bibliografici sono dati in tutte queste opere. B) Fondamentale sulle biblioteche. Bonifaciana e Avignonese rimane F. Ehrle, Hist. biblioth. Roman. Pontif. tum Bonifatianae tum Avenionensis, I. Roma 1890, ora con Addenda et emendanda, di A. Pelzer, Città del Vaticano 1947 (anche in questo ult. vol. copiose indicaz. bibliogr.). Altri inventari antichi di libri dell'Avignonese, in H. Hoberg, Die Inventare des papstl. Schatzes in Avignon, 1914-76, Città del Vaticano 1944. — c) Per la storia della moderna Vaticana, in particolare: E. Muntz - P. Fabre, La biblioth. du Vat. au XVe siècle d'après des docum. ind., Paris 1887; su Niccolò V, cf. Pastor, I. pp. 498-504; su Sisto IV, J. W. Clark, On the Vat. library of Sixtus IV, Cambridge 1899 e The care of books, 1912, pp. 201-27. Sec. XVI; E. Muntz, La Biblioth. du Vat. au XVe siècle, Paris 1886; P. Batiffol, La Vaticana de Paul III à Paul V, Paris 1886. Per Sisto V, oltre agli autori contemporanei J. B. Cardona, M. Pansa e A. Rocca, Pastor, X, pp. 486-93 e A. Dupont, Art et contre-réforme. Les fresques de la biblioth. de Sixt. Quint, in Mél. d'archéol. et d'hist., 48 (1931), pp. 282-307. Sec. XVII: Pastor, sotto i vari pontificati: G. Mercati, Per la stor. della Biblioth. apost. bibliotecario C. Baronio, in Opere Minori, III, Città del Vaticano 1937, pp. 201-75. Sec. XVIII, fine: E. Muntz, La biblioth. du Vat. pendant la révolution franc., in Mél. Julien Havet, Paris 1895, pp. 579-91 e, specialmente per la sorte delle collezioni numismatiche, il saggio stor. di S. Le Grelle, premesso al vol. I dell'opera di C. Serafini, Le monete e le bolle plumbe del Medaglire Vatic., Milano 1910. — d) Per il rinnovamento di Leo-nie XIII: le due raccolte collettive Di alcuni lavori ed acquisti della Biblioth. Vat. nel pontif. di Leone XIII, Roma 1892, e Nel giubileo episc. di Leone XIII, omaggio della Biblioth. Vat., 1913; F. Ehrle, Bibliotheketchnisches aus der Vatikana, in Zentralbl. für Bibliothekswesen, 33 (1916), ristampato a parte, Lipsia 1933; E. Carusi, Le innovas. della Biblioth. Vat. dal 1883, in Accad. e biblioth. d'Italia, 5 (1931-32), pp. 208-14. — e) Per i lavori compiuti sotto Pio XI: G. Borghezio, Pio XI e la Biblioth. Vat., in La Biblioth. 31 (1929), pp. 210-31; E. Tisserant, Pius XI et librarian, in Library quarterly, 9 (1939), pp. 389-403 (con bibl.); L. Castelli, Quel tanto di territorio Roma 1940, passim; M. Luella, Eugène card. Tisserant, in Library quarterly, 22 (1932), pp. 214-22. — f) Per gli anni dell'ultima guerra: Biblioth. ospiti della Vat. nella sec. guerra mondiale, Città del Vaticano 1945. — g) Bibl. delle pubblicaz. I libri editi dalla Biblioth. Vat., MDCCCLXXXV-MCMXLVI: catal. ragionato e illustrato, Città del Vaticano 1947. Nello Vian.

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that were used to be deposited and preserved at the tomb of St. Peter, while in the Sancta Sanctorum at the Lateran there is only a small papyrus fragment of an imperial donation (9th century).

Although Innocent III began the regular series of surviving documents, further transfers and losses occurred later: in 1245 the papal archive was in Lyon, then followed the Curia to Viterbo, Anagni, Perugia, Avignon, from where it returned to Rome on several occasions. The papal archive suffered further damage during the sack of Rome in 1527 and the French occupation of 1798, but especially when in 1810, by order of Napoleon, it was entirely transported to Paris, where it remained until 1815. However, until the 16th century, ancient volumes and documents were partly kept in the offices of the Chancellery and the Apostolic Chamber, and partly in other parts of the Vatican Palace, in the Guardaroba and in the Bibliotheca secreta. The need was then felt to establish a proper institution for the custody of the archives, and it began with the creation in 1597 of the Archive of Castel Sant’Angelo for the most precious documents, the privileges of the Roman Church; in reality this was not an archive in the modern sense of the word, but rather the ‘tresor des chartes’, kept in the safest room of the Castle together with the papal treasure.

The foundation of the Vatican Archive by Paul V marked the beginning of the central archive of the Church. Some rooms adjacent to the grand Sistine Hall of the Library were designated as its seat, which still today display on the ancient poplar wood cabinets and on the frescoed vaults the coat of arms of the founder. Soon after, other rooms on the upper floor were added to house the diplomatic correspondence of the Secretariat of State; in 1784 the part of the papal archive that still remained in Avignon was brought to Rome, with the registers of letters known as ‘Avignonese’; in 1798 the Archive of Castel Sant’Angelo was transferred to the Vatican. The subsequent growth of the material made new expansions necessary: the rooms of the Tower of the Winds in three floors, the long attic gallery that extends along the entire western side of the Belvedere Courtyard, the rooms on the ground floor of the Library Courtyard and finally, in 1930, the rooms of the old Picture Gallery. In 1933 the ground-floor premises were equipped with metal shelving for a linear development of over 13,000 m²; in 1951 a similar shelving system was installed on the floor of the ancient attics for a further 9,000 m².

A decisive event in the history of the Archive was its opening to free consultation by scholars in 1881, at the behest of Pope Leo XIII; it thus became the most important center for historical research in the world, leading to the establishment in Rome of various national historical institutes. While internal work on organization and cataloguing multiplied to meet new demands, it was now recognized as expedient to consolidate there the Archives of the Curia and to gather also external archives that had a bearing on the history of the Papacy. In 1892 the Archive of the Apostolic Datary was transferred from the Lateran, together with its two important series of Lateran registers (papal letters) and registers of petitions; between 1904 and 1908 the Lateran brevia, the Archive of the Sacred Congregation of the Consistory, and the registers of the Secretariat of Briefs; numerous other fonds have been added especially in recent decades, including the Archives of the Sacred Roman Rota, of the Sacred Congregations of the Council, of Rites, and of Sacraments, of the apostolic nunciatures abroad, of the Vicariate of Rome, and of Roman confraternities. Special mention should be made of the Archives of Roman families, rich in documents relating to ecclesiastical history: Borghese, Boncompagni, Della Valle-Del Bufalo, Patrizi-Montoro, Rospigliosi, and Ruspoli. Housed in the Vatican Archive is

the card index of the census of ecclesiastical archives in Italy conducted in 1942, containing information on the contents of individual episcopal, chapter, and parish archives, etc.

II. CONTENT

The arrangement of the Vatican Archives reflects its historical formation, in which the deposits of the various fonds occurred at different times and without a pre-established plan. It is therefore impossible, without going into details, to offer a complete organic picture of the archival material by following the classification of the offices from which the documents originated: it suffices to note that the very important series of Vatican registers was constituted in the 16th century by assembling in chronological order volumes of different provenance, namely from the Chancery, the Camera, the common secretaries and the domestic secretaries. Only in recent accessions has the principle of provenance been rigorously respected.

Nevertheless, it is possible to gain a general idea of the extent of the material from the following outline, referring to the descriptive guide by Fink (v. BIBLICA) for more precise information:

I. Registers of papal letters, of the Chancery and of the Apostolic Camera (v. REGISTRI PONTIFICI).

II. Apostolic Camera: Introitus et Exitus, 565 vols. from 1279 to 1524; Collectoriae, 504 vols. from 1274; Obligationes et Solutiones, 61 vols. from 1295 to 1555; Diversa Cameralia, 253 vols. from 1389 to 1572; Indulgentiae, 222 vols. from 1470 to 1796; and many other series relating to various functions of the Apostolic Camera up to the 19th century.

III. Concistoro, from the 15th to the 19th century.

IV. College of Cardinals, with information on the conclaves from the 15th century.

V. Apostolic Datary, among the most important series: Lateran brevia, 852 vols. from 1490 to 1800; drafts, approx. 30,000 from 1523 to 1599; registers of supplications, 7,365 vols. from 1342 to 1899; processes, 166 vols. from 1622 to 1800.

VI. Secretariat of State; the correspondence from the 16th century to the end of the 18th is arranged according to the quality of the recipients (cardinals, bishops, princes, private individuals, soldiers) and according to numbering and legations; from 1816 onwards according to the original rubricary. To the Archive of the Secretariat of State must be added the Archives of the apostolic nunciatures transferred to V. in recent years.

VII. Other Secretariats: of Briefs (5,660 vols. from 1566 to 1846); of Briefs to Princes (252 vols. from 1560 to 1836); of Latin letters; of memorials.

VIII. Former Sacred Congregations: of the S. Consulta, of Bishops and Regulars, of Avignon, of the Laurentian patrimony, of the Economy, of Vigilance, of Boundaries. Still existing: Consistorial, of the Sacraments, of the Council, of Religious, of Rites, of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, of the Rev. Fabbrica of St. Peter.

IX. Tribunals: Sacred Roman Rota, Segnatura.

X. Special collections and additional archives: in the guide by Fink, 75 collections are listed, among which some of great importance such as the Archives of the Apostolic Palace, the Vicariate of Rome (including the archives of the parishes) and those of Roman patrician families (v. above). Some series have the character of a collection and contain various materials; e.g.: the Santini Collection includes, among other things, 10 volumes of matriculation records of Roman notaries; the Spada Collection includes 418 volumes with newspapers, prints, edicts and engravings relating to the Roman Revolution of 1849.

One may also consider in this group the important Miscellanea collection compiled in the 17th century with manuscript volumes of diverse origin, generally important for Church history, including, for example, Liber Censuum (v.) and the Liber Diurnus (v.).

XI. Diplomatic Archive. There is no single collection of charters, but various groups of differing importance and provenance, in addition to the Archive of Castel S. Angelo, which will be discussed separately. The Instrumenta Miscellanea consist of over 800 documents from the 9th century onwards, and over 3,000 charters are distributed in smaller groups; to these must be added 16,712 charters (from the 9th century) from suppressed monasteries in the Veneto and Tuscany, which came with the Archive of the Venetian Nunciature.

XII. The Archive of Castel S. Angelo (v. above) contains the oldest and most precious documents preserved by the Roman Church; privileges and diplomas of emperors, sovereign letters and in general writings of particular historical interest. Among the most precious are: the purple diploma of Otto I of 962 written in gold letters, which is a unique document of its kind; the rolls of Lyon, solemn copies of sovereign privileges bearing the papal seal and those of 40 other cardinals and bishops present at the Council of Lyon in 1245, which were used in the trial for the excommunication of Frederick II; the 78 sovereign diplomas with gold seals, the most important collection in the world, from Frederick Barbarossa (1164) to Napoleon (silver-gilt cap, 1803), including a seal of Philip II of Spain (1555) weighing 820 grams. Many other documents are of singular interest, e.g.: three letters in the form of rolls sent to the Pope by the Eastern emperors John and Manuel Comnenus (in 1124, 1127 and 1146), written in gold and finely decorated; a diploma of the Grand Khan of Persia from 1246; three letters from Mongol khans of the years 1267 (or 1279), 1290 and 1302; the petition sent to Pope Clement VII by the English Parliament in 1530 for the dissolution of the marriage of King Henry VIII, with 49 seals; two letters on silk sent to Innocent X in 1644 by a Chinese empress converted to Catholicism; the abdication of Queen Christina of Sweden (1654), with 306 seals; the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) and the Napoleonic Concordat (1801).

Current Constitution. — The Vatican Archives, property of the Supreme Pontiff, are governed by a cardinal who holds the title of Archivist (q.v.) of the Holy Roman Church.

The administration of the office is entrusted to the Prefect; he is assisted by a Vice-Prefect, 4 archivists, and 2 pontifical scribes. Scholars of every nation, without distinction of faith, are admitted to public consultation upon presentation of an application accompanied by suitable recommendations; photographic reproduction of documents is permitted.

The restoration of parchments and papers is carried out in the special laboratory established at the Vatican Library.

Attached to the Archives is the Pontifical School of Palaeography, Diplomatics, and Archival Science (q.

V. below)

See plates CXV-CXVI.

Instruction lasts two years, at the end of which, upon passing the prescribed examinations, a diploma in paleography and archival science is awarded; the examining board is presided over by the Cardinal Archivist of the Holy Roman Church. The diploma of the Vatican School is a title of preference in the hiring of archivists for ecclesiastical dicasteries and, in particular, is recognized by the Italian State under Article 40 of the Concordat.

The first holder of the Chair at the School was Msgr. Isidoro Ca-

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Vatican. He was to supply the texts to be printed and the proofreaders.

This first Vatican Printing House lasted about twenty years and was later merged with the Camerale Printing House, which inherited its typefaces and for some time bore the combined name. Almost simultaneously, in direct service of the apostolate in mission countries—entrusted by Gregory XV in 1622 to the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith—there arose near the Congregation a “polyglot printing house,” officially founded in 1626, with oriental typefaces obtained from various sources; it operated for nearly three centuries. It produced countless editions, especially of Scripture and religious works, in a wide variety of languages and scripts (in 1873 it possessed typefaces for printing in 180 languages). Learned superintendents and skilled printers, among them the young Bodoni, worked there until, in 1909, this historic printing house ceased to exist as a separate entity.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the Sistine printing house of Sixtus V, the Vatican Library continued to be a repository of typefaces and to promote the publication of learned works. In the Vatican (v.), and later at the Quirinal, there were also occasionally in operation “secret” or private presses, for the direct use of the popes. In 1825, Leo XII revived the Tipografia Vaticana, equipping it with excellent presses and typefaces, especially of English manufacture; among other things, two critical editions by Cardinal Mai were printed there. Around 1837, its activity ceased, owing to the concurrent existence of the Camerale and Propaganda presses. But after the occupation of Rome in 1870, a printing office in the Vatican became necessary. Expanding the “secret” press of Pius IX, Leo XIII restored the Tipografia Vaticana in 1884, in the same premises used by Sixtus V; in 1909, by order of Pius X, it moved into a new building, which it still occupies today. About this time, the ancient printing house of Propaganda was merged with the Vatican press, which also took the name of Poliglotta, inheriting its numerous exotic typefaces. The building was further enlarged by Benedict XV in 1921, and under this pope and his successors the machinery and equipment were continually augmented, so that the Tipografia Vaticana is now one of the largest and most modernly equipped, printing all the official editions and acts of the papal government and of the Sacred Congregations; it also prints countless other works on behalf of private individuals. One section of it prints L’Osservatore Romano (v.) and its illustrated weekly. Since August 1937, the administration and technical direction of the Tipografia Vaticana have been entrusted to the Salesians.

rini. Nell'ordinamento degli studi originario, il primo anno comprendeva nozioni generali di paleografia latina, diplomatica, critica storica e cronologia, e il secondo era dedicato all'applicazione pratica e all'esame dei documenti più importanti per l

rettore della Specola V. dal 1891 al 1894.

(da G. Stein-G.Junkers, La Specola Vaticana,
Città dei V. 1822, tav. contro p. 25)
2) P. Giuseppe Lais dell'Oratorio, vice-
direttore della Specola V. dal 1891 al 1921.

(per cortesia della Specola Vaticana)
3) P. J. G. Hagen, S. J., direttore
della Specola V. dal 1906 al 1930.

424: [A. Battandier], Imprimerie Vat., in Ann. pontif. cath., V. Parigi 1902, pp. 473-78; L. Huetter, Minuscula Vat., nel vol. V. Firenze (1946), pp. 680-86.

IX. Specola e Radio Vaticana.

I. La Specola Vaticana

Denominazione ufficiale del Pontificio Osservatorio Astronomico, trasferito dal V. a Castel Gandolfo nel 1923 e accresciuto da un laboratorio astrofisico.

In the upper loggia of the Torre dei Venti, built at the behest of Gregory XIII in 1579, the learned Dominican Ignazio Danti constructed an anemoscope and the famous meridian, by means of which, according to tradition, the necessity of the reform of the calendar was demonstrated to the Pope. Subsequently, the loggia was transformed into a room (by Urban VIII) for use as a library. However, Cardinal Zelada, librarian from 1780, wished to restore scientific studies in this memorable place; he was dissuaded from doing so by G. Calandrelli, then professor of astronomy at the Collegio Romano. At the insistence of Monsignor F. L. Gilii, Pius VI consented in 1797 to the necessary restorations and entrusted Gilii with the care and direction of the Specola Pontificia Vaticana, as it was first called. With instruments, partly donated by Cardinal Zelada and partly purchased at his own expense, he carried out regular meteorological, geophysical, and astronomical observations until 1821, the year of his death, after which all further scientific activity ceased in this place.

When, in 1879, the Pontifical Observatory of the Collegio Romano, following the events of 1870, passed into the administration of the Italian government, thoughts turned to the possible revival of the Specola Vaticana. The opportunity presented itself in 1888, when, among the gifts presented to Leo XIII on the occasion of his sacerdotal jubilee, there was a collection of scientific instruments offered by the scholars of the Italian clergy, assembled and arranged by the renowned meteorologist and founder of the Italian Meteorological Society, Fr. Denza, Barnabite, and by his faithful collaborator, Fr. G. Lais, Oratorian. At the proposal of the organizers, the Pope had these instruments placed for scientific use in the abandoned Torre dei Venti and entrusted their direction to Fr. Denza. When, in 1889, Fr. Denza, commissioned by the Pontiff, took part in the meeting of the Permanent Committee for the formation of the photographic chart of the sky in Paris, he ensured that a zone of the sky (+50° to +64°) was also assigned to the new Specola. He therefore ordered from Gautier of Paris a normal astrograph, which was placed atop one of the massive towers of the fortification of Leo IV on the Vatican Hill. The photographic work was entrusted to the vice-director, Fr. Lais. Thus, the memorable motu proprio Ut mysticum of March 14, 1891, was issued by Leo XIII, definitively establishing the constitution of the Specola Vaticana, whose activities then included, in addition to astronomy and astrophotography, meteorology, geophysics, and seismology. After Fr. Denza, who died in 1894, Fr. A. Rodriguez, an Augustinian and renowned meteorologist of the Escursale, succeeded him in the directorship in 1898, though he concerned himself almost exclusively with the meteorological aspect.

In 1904 Pius X appointed Mgr P. Maffi, Archbishop of Pisa and later Cardinal, as director of the Specola. A scientist of repute himself, he wished the astronomical character of the institute to be its primary focus. In 1905 Fr Rodriguez was recalled by his superiors and Pius X appointed Fr J. G. Hagen SJ (q.v.) as director of the Specola; he was then director of the Georgetown College Observatory and a renowned scholar of variable stars. Later the Pope assigned the second Torre Leonina to the installation of a large equatorial telescope for visual observations, and the adjoining summer villa of Leo XIII to offices and living quarters for the astronomers.

While Fr Lais continued until his death in 1921 the photographic work for the catalogue and chart of the sky, Fr Hagen undertook the arduous task of measuring the 1,040 plates, assisted by three sisters and a secretary, and succeeded in publishing the Astrographic Catalogue in 1928. Instead of the 540 charts planned, only 120 had been issued by his death in 1930. From the outset he pursued his studies of variable stars and published two further volumes of his famous Atlas stellarum variabilium, and, in collaboration with Fr Stein SJ, a comprehensive two-volume encyclopedia on variables (1924). Notable are his experiments to provide mechanical proof of the Earth’s rotation, carried out with the isotomeograph he constructed, and his observations of dark nebulae. He died in 1930 at the age of 83, still at work.

His successor, Fr J. W. Stein SJ (q.v.), who had been his assistant from 1906 to 1910, soon realised that to keep the institute at the level envisaged by its founder it needed modern equipment and a site less troubled by night-time illumination. Pius XI took a keen interest in the new plans and immediately placed his summer palace at Castel Gandolfo at the disposal of the Specola. On the terraces of the palace were installed a large visual refractor and a double astrograph consisting of a mirror and a quadruple-lens photographic refractor, supplied together with their rotating domes by the firm of Zeiss of Jena. The instrumental outfit was completed with the most modern measuring and photometric devices. Under the direction of Fr Gatterer SJ, an astrophysics laboratory was added, equipped with powerful spectrographs and other installations necessary for astrophysical and spectrochemical research, especially with a view to future analysis of the numerous meteorites in the very large collection assembled by the engineer Marquis de Mauroy and donated, after his death, by his widow to the Pope in 1935. On 29 September 1935 Pius XI personally inaugurated the new institute in a most solemn ceremony.

P. Stein completò l'Atlante del p. Hagen con la edizione postuma del vol. VIII e compilando l'ultimo, il IX. Continuò energicamente la carta fotografica del cielo, introducendo un nuovo procedimento fotografico e proponendo a Pio XI il trasferimento a Castel Gandolfo anche del vecchio astrografo, ciò che si effettuò sotto Pio XII nel 1942. I suoi assistenti, con i nuovi strumenti, cominciarono una ricerca sistematica della struttura della galassia con studi spettrali-statistici e di stelle variabili molto deboli. Per agevolare questi studi, ed anche per aggiornare lo strumentario della specola, il p. Stein propone a Pio XII l'acquisto di un nuovo telescopio del tipo Schmidt, attualmente (1953) ancora in costruzione. Nel laboratorio astrofisico si cominciarono presto le ricerche spettrochimiche, di cui un primo frutto fu la compilazione di vari atlanti spettrali, apprezzatissimi dai periti. In seguito il laboratorio diventò un rinomato centro di studi spettroscopici, al quale la Casa editrice Springer di Berlino affidò nei difficili tempi del dopoguerra l'edizione del vol. III della rivista scientifica internazionale Spetrochimica Acta, e l'Unione Astronomica internazionale nel 1948 la compilazione di un atlante di spettri molecolari di interesse astrofisico, lavoro che ancora (1953) è in corso. Gli studi scientifici di minore ampiezza vennero pubblicati in due riviste proprie: astronomiche (dal 1939) e Ricerche spettroscopiche (dal 1938).

P. Stein moriva alla fine del 1951 all'età di quasi 81 anni e Pio XII nominò nel 1952 come suo successore il p. D. O'Connell S. J., direttore dell'Osservatorio astronomico del Riverview College, Sydney, Australia. - Vedi tav. CXVII.

II. RADIO VATICAN

Radio Vaticana Station was established on 12 Feb. 1931, in the Vatican Gardens, by the will of Pius XI, who wished it to be an expression of the sovereignty of the new State of the City of the Vatican. From the very beginning it was intended not as an official or unofficial interpreter of the Holy See, but as an organ seated in the Vatican with the purpose of echoing the voice of the Pope, reflecting the life of Rome and of the entire Church.

Initially, only a Marconi transmitter (18 kws.) on short waves was used, prepared and inaugurated personally by Marconi himself; the services were not regular. In 1937 a Telefunken transmitter (25 kws.) was added; later three Marconi transmitters (5 kws.) and, finally, on 12 Feb. 1952, a more powerful Marconi transmitter (50-60 kws.). By this date there were also two medium-wave transmitters, an R.C.A. (5 kws.) and a Safar (2 kws.).

The studios have undergone a similar evolution. They were first housed in the transmitter building, but were later moved to the Old Vatican Observatory, where they have recently been expanded and equipped with the most modern and abundant means for transmission, control, and recording. With these means, Radio Vaticana now provides, after a similar evolution in its programs, various services: 1) All the radiotelegraphic traffic of the Vatican City State; 2) A regular radio broadcasting service in 25 languages, which includes two main groups of transmissions: a) the I.R. Vat. news bulletin, after midday, daily in six languages; b) a series of talks, lectures, etc., in the evening; 3) Special transmissions, such as papal radio messages, solemnities, and particular Vatican events. During the last war, its contribution to the humanitarian work of the Holy See in the search for prisoners and missing persons was notable; 4) Auxiliary services within the State of the Vatican City for recordings, loudspeakers at audiences and solemnities, etc. Notable is the sound system installed in the basilica and in St. Peter’s Square.

Radio Vaticana’s transmissions last from ten to twelve hours daily; the languages regularly used today are: Italian, French, English, Spanish, German, Polish, Portuguese, etc., Hungarian, Slovak, Latin, Croatian, Lithuanian, Slovene, Romanian, Dutch, Latvian, Albanian, Russian, Arabic, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Ethiopian, Chinese. Other languages are used on special occasions.

Radio Vaticana may be said to have exhausted its possibilities for development within the City of the Vatican. To improve its services, it plans to expand its facilities near Rome, in two locations that have been granted extraterritoriality by the Italian government, with an agreement ratified on 24 July 1952.

The first director of Vatican Radio was Fr. G. Gianfranceschi SJ, followed by Fr. F. Soccorsi SJ, to whom the principal credit for all the present-day expansions is due; the current director is Fr. A. Stefanizzi SJ. - See pl. CXVIII.