altars personified pdf1

8/2/2019 Altars Personified Pdf1

1/22

Altars Personified: The Cult of the Saints and the ChapelSystem in Pope Paschal Is S. Prassede (817819)*Judson J. Emerick Pomona College

* Lee Striker introduced me to the study of Medieval urban architecturaltopography in a graduate seminar on Constantinople at the Universityof Pennsylvania in 1968. Now in gratitude for his teaching, and forfriendship over many years, I dedicate this liturgico-topographical studyof Early Medieval Rome to him.

1 Richard Krautheimer, Spencer Corbett, Wolfgang. Frankl, and Alfred K.Frazer, Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae: The Early ChristianBasilicas of Rome (IVIX Cent.) [CBCR], 5 vols. (Vatican City, Rome, andNew York: 19371977), vol. III (1967), 160; Sible de Blaauw, Cultus etdecor, Liturgia e architettura nella Roma tardoantica e medievale, 2 vols., Studie Testi 355 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1994), 335367.

43

The City as Stage for Papal Leadership

When Pope Sixtus III built S. Maria Maggiore in the 430s

(Figs. 1 and 2),1

he effectively transformed the monumentalChristian topography of Rome. For the first time in the city,a pope built on imperial scale using the full panoply of thescenic Corinthian orders just as emperors had always done,2

and just as the Emperor Constantine had done so memorablya century previously both at the Lateran basilica3 and at theVatican cemetery-basilica.4 Indeed, Sixtus IIIs S. Maria Mag-giore radically adjusted or modified the meaning of these twoleading Constantinian sanctuaries. Since the pope used S.Maria Maggiore as Romes secondcathedral that is, as settingfor a number of high masses that he had formerly celebratedonly at the Lateran, and among them the central feast of theliturgical year at Easter he effectively demoted the firstcathedral in the hierarchy of Roman churches, and drew it,along with Constantines complex at the Vatican, into a newnetwork of sanctuaries in the metropolis where he couldappear more widely as leader of the faithful in worship.5

As popes began to go from church to church in the city tocelebrate the temporal liturgy, moving from station to stationto mark the great events of Christs life, not only did theLateran lose its former status as the principal meeting placefor the pope and people in mass, but the Vatican complexalso took on new prominence as a proper eucharisticchurch.6 Pope Sixtus III almost certainly celebrated masses at

2 S. Maria Maggiores nave elevations had Ionic columns in the lower storyand Corinthian pilasters in the upper, with both orders trabeated, and thelower provided with acanthus vine-scroll ornament (in mosaic in thefrieze). In the clerestory a round-headed window originally appeared between

each pair of pilasters with an archivolt supported on either side (in thejambs) by two Corinthian columns with helical shafts stacked one on topof the other(!). Below each window was a Corinthian aedicula to framethe famous scenes in mosaic from the Old Testament. See the reconstruc-tion by Spencer Corbett in CBCRvol. III (1967), fig. 53, evidence forwhich survived the restoration of S. Maria Maggiores interior that Fer-dinando Fuga carried out after 1747. For the mixing of Doric, Ionic, andCorinthian orders in Ancient Roman Imperial architecture, for the prom-inence there of acanthus vine-scroll ornament, and for the rationale forcalling such colorful and scenic dcor Corinthian see Judson J. Emerick,The Tempietto del Clitunno near Spoleto (University Park: The Pennsylva-nia State University Press, 1998), chaps. 7 and 8. From the reign of Augu-stus onward in the Mediterranean world people saw Corinthian ordersprincipally in great public monuments associated with imperial patronage.

3 CBCRvol. V (1977), 192; de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 109160. Arca-

des with Corinthian columns on pedestals divided the aisles, and two tallorders of columns bearing a straight entablature with a mixture of Ionic,Corinthian, and Composite capitals flanked the nave; see CBCRvol. V(1977), 7783. From Constantines day onward this columnar displayfocused on a huge free-standing fastigium that was located near the topof the nave and comprised four, tall, bronze, Corinthian columns bear-ing an entablature in silver-clad wood featuring an arcuated lintel; seenow de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 117127 and fig. 2 (an isometric recon-struction of the basilica with its fastigium).

4 CBCR vol. V (1977), 165279; de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 451492.Marten van Heemskercks famous drawing of New St. Peters under con-struction in the 1530s shows portions of the impressive Corinthianorders that flanked the Constantinian nave (in the process of being dis-mantled); see CBCRvol. V (1977), fig. 202.

5 On S. Maria Maggiore as co-cathedral, see Victor Saxer, Lutilisation

par la liturgie de lespace urbain et suburbain: Lexample de Rome danslantiquit et le haut moyen ge,Actes du XIe Congrs international dar-chologie chrtienne, Lyon, Vienna, Grenoble, Geneva, and Aosta, 2128September 1986, 3 vols.(Rome: cole franaise de Rome, 1989), vol. II,9171032, esp. 948949; and now also de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 43,5556, 339340, and 415.

6 At the start the Vatican complex had functioned as a monumental Chris-tian cemetery. But during the second half of the fourth century, thepopes moved their Christmas celebrations from the Lateran to the Vati-can. By the early fifth century, moreover, the popes were also comingfrom the Lateran to St. Peters to celebrate the related feast of Epiphany,newly introduced in Rome from the East. See de Blaauw, Cultus et decor,55 and 434 (with sources). St. Peters thus appears to have been the firstsanctuary in Rome to share papal masses with the Lateran, and clearly, a


2/22

44

Titular

Regio I1 S. Balbinae 2 S. Priscae 3 S. Sabinae

Regio II4 SS. Johannis et Pauli5 SS. Quattuor Coronatorum6 S. Xysti

Non-Titular

A Salvatoris q. app. Constantiniana(Lateran basilica)

B S. Mariae ad Praesepem/Genetricisad Praesepem (S. Maria Maggiore)

C S. Petri

D S. Pauli

E S. Laurentii foris murumF SS. Apostolorum in via LataG S. Stephani in Caelio monteH ecclesia Hierusalem quae in Sussurio

est (S. Croce in Gerusalemme)I S. Mariae ad Martyres/Genetricis ad

Martyres (S. Maria Rotonda)

J S. ApollinarisK SS. Marcellini et PetriL S. Laurentii quae ponitur Formonsis

(S. Lorenzo in Panisperna)M SS. Cosmae et Damiani (diaconia)N S. Georgii (diaconia)

Regio III7 S. Clementis 8 S. Eusebii 9 S. Petri ad Vincula

Regio IV10 S. Cyriaci 11 S. Praxedis 12 S. Pudentianae13 S. Silvestri (S. Martino ai Monti)14 S. Susannae15 S. Vitalis

Regio V16 S. Laurentii in Lucina

Regio VI17 S. Anastasiae18 S. Laurentii in Damaso19 S. Marcelli 20 S. Marci

Regio VII21 S. Ceciliae 22 S. Chrysogoni23 S. Maria trans Tiberim


3/22

the Vatican on Christmas, Epiphany, and Pentecost.7 Andwhen he did, very likely he stood in front of the tomb ofPeter, at a portable altar framed by the Constantinian, Corin-

thian, columnar shrine there (Fig. 3).8 Of course, an altarcould have been set up anywhere in St. Peters for a mass.Before the reign of Pope Symmachus (498504), nodocumentary evidence survives to show that one was everset up near the tomb of Peter. Nevertheless, that tomb sat atthe sanctuarys architectural focus, and we may presume thata papal station, a mass meant primarily to display the popeto the faithful in all possible pomp, would have occurredthere.9

Thus Sixtus IIIs S. Maria Maggiore interrupted peoplesexpectations in Rome. If formerly Roman worshipers hadassociated splendid Corinthian scenic displays in large halls

papal stational liturgy was already developing toward the end of thefourth century and the beginning of the fifth.

7 And doubtless others too. By Sixtus IIIs day more than ten stations from

the temporaletook place at St. Peters; see de Blaauw, Cultus et decor,500501 and Tabella 1 (stational calendar for Medieval Rome).8 On Constantines Petrine shrine, see de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 470

485; more recently also, Vittorio Lanzani, Gloriosa confessio, Losplendore del sepolcro di Pietro da Costantino al Rinascimento, in Laconfessione nella basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano, ed. Alfredo Maria Per-golizzi (Cinisello Balsamo [Milan]: Silvana Editoriale, 1999), 1141,esp. 1419. The carving on the rear of the famous ivory casket fromSamagher near Pola in Istria (discovered 1906) provides our best evi-dence for the appearance of this shrine; see my Fig. 3, also Molly Teas-dale Smith, The Development of the Altar Canopy in Rome, Rivistadi Archeologia Cristiana 50 (1974): 379414, esp. 379383.

9 Cf. de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 506507.

45

Fig. 1 Romes 37 stational churches,titular and non-titular, during the thirddecade of the ninth century (map: author)

Fig. 2 Rome, S. Maria Maggiore, northnave elevation (photo: author)

References: Herman Geertman, MoreVeterum, il Liber Pontificalis e gli

edifici ecclesiastici di Roma nella tardaantichit e nellalto medioevo (Gronin-gen: 1975); Victor Saxer, Lutilisation perla liturgie de lespace urbain et suburbain:lexample de Rome dans lantiquit et lehaut moyen ge,Actes du XIe congrsinternational darchologie chrtienne1986 (Vatican: 1989), II, pp. 917-1032;and Sible de Blaauw, Cultus et decor,liturgia e architettura nella Romatardoantica e medievale (Vatican: 1994).


4/22

with the imperial leader, now, more and more, they came tolink them with the pope. Sixtus III seems to have built S.Maria Maggiore specifically to transform Constantinesarchitectural rhetoric, that is, to take over the first Christianemperors Corinthian stage sets for himself.10 The newchurch provided Sixtus III a lever that permitted him to pryout a monumental, Christian,papalcity from what had for-merly been an imperial one.

When, between 817 and 819, Pope Paschal I built thelarge and imposing church of S. Prassede on the Esquiline inRome11 and likewise filled it with scenic Corinthian orders

10 Please note that throughout this essay when I speak of the popes as build-ers, I do not present them as some kind of originating power, as per-sons, say, whose intentions or ideas were realized by or in their buildings.I rather construe the various forms of authorship associated with a buil-ding project (and especially that of a patron whose renown a buildingmay increase) as aspects of that buildings representational machinery on a par, say, with its decorative apparatus, its furniture, or its place in acivic plan. Patronage in a building project is real; but it is constructed foruse right along with everything else in that project. The issue has beenmuch discussed in Modern literary criticism; see Roland Barthes, TheDeath of the Author (1968) and Michel Foucault, What Is anAuthor? (1969) in Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, ed. DavidLodge (London: Longman, 20002), 146151 and 174187 respectively.

46

Fig. 3 Pola Casket, ca. 400430, ivory relief showing Constantines shrine of Peter at the Vatican with its six-column baldachino (photo: Istitutocentrale per il catalogo e la documentazione, E. 51229)


5/22

of the kind that Romans had seen chiefly in the citys patri-archal basilicas,12 one can see him too as attempting to modi-fy the map of the citys Christian monuments (Fig. 4). Cer-tainly the Paschal presented in the Liber Pontificaliscomesacross in that mode as ambitious builder and his churchof S. Prassede appears there as the first full statement of his

program. For Roman worshipers in the early ninth century,however, this church did not just invoke the principal basili-cas in the city generally, it called to mind St. Peters particu-larly (Figs. 5 and 10).

172455). Since these provide a more precise system of reference to theLPs text than do Duschesnes page numbers (his large pages often com-prise many of Vignolis chapters), I refer to the text in question here bygiving the number and title of the papal biography, then Vignolis chap-ter number(s).] For a convenient summary of Paschals life in the LPhigh-lighting the chronology and dating of his various reported buildingactivities, see now Antonella Ballardini, Dai Gesta di Pasquale I secon-do il Liber PontificalisaiMonumenta iconografici delle basiliche romanedi Santa Prassede, Santa Maria in Domnica e Santa Cecilia in Trastevere(Prima Parte),Archivio della Societ romana di storia patria 122 (1999):568, esp. 2223. During a relatively short reign between 817 and 824,Paschal I erected an elaborate aedicula in St. Peters dedicated to the mar-tyrs, Popes Sixtus II and Fabian, then constructed a large chapel therededicated to the martyrs Processus and Martinianus (c. 5). Next we hearhow he built two other large churches in addition to S. Prassede onededicated to S. Maria in Domnica on the Celio (cc. 1114), and anoth-er dedicated to S. Cecilia in Trastevere (cc. 1421). Finally, in a long pas-sage, we read how he boldly remodeled the patriarchal basilica of S.Maria Maggiore (cc. 3134).

12 S. Prassedes nave, it is true, had only eleven pairs of columns, not 19(like the Lateran), or 20 (like S. Maria Maggiore and S. Paolo fuori lemura) or 22 (like St. Peters), and single, not double aisles at either side.

47

Fig. 4 Rome, S. Prassede, nave looking west to the presbytery (photo: Eugenio Monti)

11 Liber Pontificalis: Texte, introduction et commentaire [LP], ed. LouisDuchesne, 2 vols. (Paris: E. Thorin, 18861892), 100 (V. Paschalis I),cc. 811. [For the convenience of his readers, Duchesne indicated thechapter divisions that Giovanni Vignoli (16631733) provided in hisedition of the Liber pontificalis(Rome: J. B. Bernab and J. Lazzarini,


6/22

St. Peters and S. Prassede

Both St. Peters and S. Prassede had atriums with quadripor-ticuses reached by stairways from the street; both had trabe-ated nave colonnades; both had prominent triumphal archesthat opened the nave to relatively narrow, continuous tran-septs whose ends projected beyond the aisle walls, and whoseroofs were lower than that of the nave; and both had Corin-

thian column screens between the aisles and the transept. Inboth, moreover, the nave colonnades and triumphal archesfocused worshiperss attention scenically on apses at the cen-ter of the transepts.13 It is true that S. Paolo fuori le mura,begun in 384 or 386 at the behest of Emperor Theodosius Iand later modified under Pope Leo I (440461), had nearlyall these same key features, especially the distinctive continu-ous transept.14 But at S. Paolo the transept was much widerand taller than that at St. Peters, and the floor level roseabove that of its attached basilica, again in contrast to St.Peters where floor levels in the transept and basilica were thesame. S. Paolo had nave arcades, not colonnades with straightentablatures like St. Peters, and it had archways with stairsseparating the basilicas aisles from the transept, not colonnadesas at St Peters. S. Paolo also had two huge Ionic columns sup-porting the triumphal arch, while St. Peters did not.15

If S. Paolo was purposely designed to imitate St. Peters, tobecome a sister shrine,16 it nevertheless differed in form fromSt. Peters by having, as already mentioned, a much broader,

taller transept whose floor level rose above that of the nave.17Richard Krautheimer has argued that only at S. Paolo did thegrand, Roman, T-shaped basilica with an atrium take ondefinitive form and become a normalized type.18 But, as faras I can see, S. Prassede does not conform to this type. Most

13 The nave entablatures at S. Prassede were fashioned entirely from reusedparts, but the fanciest blocks available, the ones with carved ornament,were set up next to the triumphal arch to create a scenic crescendo; seemy, Focusing on the Celebrant: The Column Display inside Santa Pras-

sede,Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome, Historical Stud-ies59 (2001): 129159, esp. 133. The orders in St. Peters nave, more-over, had a rhythmic alternation created in the column shafts, groupedaccording to marble type. The alternation started out slowly near theentry to the nave, but speeded up toward the triumphal arch. For more,see Emerick, Tempietto, 217219.

14 CBCRvol. V (1977), 93164.15 Pope Leo I built this triumphal arch in the 440s.16 Providing similarly grand architectural stages in Rome for the cults of

Peter and Paul played into the papally sponsored propaganda campaignto feature Rome as Peters and Pauls city, that is, to redirect peoplesattention away from the monuments of the pagan city to those of theChristian one. Damasus (366384) and Leo I (440461) both memo-rably promoted Rome as Christian in this way. See especially CharlesPietri, Concordia apostolorum et renovatio urbis (culte des martyrs et

propaganda pontificale),Mlange darchologie et dhistoire, 73 (1961):275322. Pietri and others take for granted that the topos played uponpolitical notions of imperium in pagan style, but recently debate hasopened on this topic; see Emerick, Tempietto, 316327, for a summary.

17 To accommodate both the sites topography and pre-existing Paolinememorial; see now Giorgio Filippi and Sible de Blaauw, San Paolo fuorile mura: la disposizione liturgica fino a Gregorio Magno,Mededelingenvan het Nederlands Instituut te Rome, Historical Studies59 (2000): 525.

18 The type, he said, that builders would imitate both in Rome and northof the Alps during the Middle Ages; see CBCRvol. V (1977), 284285.It could only have taken shape very slowly in memory: the atria at bothSt. Peters and S. Paolo, Krautheimer remarked, did not become genuinequadriporticuses until the reign of Pope Symmachus (498514) at theearliest; CBCRvol. V (1977), 159, 267, and 284.

48

Fig. 5 Rome, S. Prassede, authors reconstruction of Pope Pasckal Ischurch of 817819 (adapted from R. Krautheimer, CBCRIII, 1967,

pl. XI)

1. shrine for the 2,300 saints2. chapel in the crypts axial corridor for the 2,300 saints3. chapel for Zeno and two other saints4. possible location of the sacristy dedicated to the Baptist with the

bodies of Maurus and 40 other saints

2

1

3

4


7/22

49

Fig. 6 Plan showing St. Peters under Pope Sixtus III (432440) (adapted from S. de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 1994, Fig. 19)

sacristy

font

imperial mausolea

tomb of Peter


8/22

of its features go back emphatically to St. Peters.19 Suchextensive formal correspondence between two monumentsin the same city could not have been casual. The builders ofS. Prassede must have been harking back directly to St.Peters, and must have expected users of their new church tounderstand the reference. But what St. Peters did S. Pras-sede recall or evoke for Romans in 819? Could it possiblyhave been the St. Peters that Pope Sixtus III created?

The Vatican and the Cult of Relics

In the nearly four centuries that had passed between thereigns of Popes Sixtus III and Paschal I, the Roman peoplesperception of the great church at the Vatican had again changedradically.20 If in the 430s, Sixtus III had used the temporalliturgy, that is, the papal stational liturgy, to transformConstantines old cemetery complex into a full-fledgedchurch in a papal system of churches, then a few generations

later, in the early sixth century, Pope Symmachus exploitedthe rapidly growing cult of the saints, that is, the sanctoralliturgy, in a new attempt to remake St. Peters to make itover into a cathedral.

Symmachus used the church in his struggle to secure thepapal throne from the antipope Lawrence between 498 and506.21 Since Lawrence had possession of the regular papalpalace and cathedral at the Lateran, Symmachus worked toproject his claims from St. Peters at the Vatican where hebuilt a papal residence in the atrium (some rooms called epi-scopia in the LP) and remodeled the late fourth-century bap-tistery in the north transepts exedra as the double of the onethat his rival Lawrence was using at the Lateran. That projectrequired him to set up three separate sacred foci, or confes-sios (confessiones), around the baptisterys font for John theBaptist and John the Evangelist in the exedra, and then in thenorth transept arm, another for the Holy Cross (Fig. 7). Inthe Liber Pontificaliswe read that the confessios were fash-ioned of silver and that they were set up under arches and/orciboria of silver inside cubicula or oratories.22We would callthem chapels.23 But while Symmachus patterned his cubicu-la on the chapels that Pope Hilarus (461468) had built atthe Lateran Baptistery,24 Symmachuss stood right out in thebasilica of St. Peters itself, a genuine first in Rome. More-over, Symmachus converted the easternmost of the two impe-

rial mausolea that had long been attached to St. Peters into abasilica Sancti Andreae apostoli, that is, into a holy place likethe church of St. Peters proper, and then in five of the con-verted mausoleums seven exedrae he set up chapels with con-fessios dedicated to saints, and among them one for Andrew,Peters brother, at the main exedra opposite the entry.25

From the later fifth-century onward, the word confessiowas often used to designate the memoria or tomb of a Chris-tian hero, martyr or other kind of saint.26 Aediculae andother memorials in honor of the dead, heroic or otherwise,had always punctuated the space in the Vatican complex,which had started out as a Christian cemetery. Though the

confessios of the saints that Symmachus erected containedno bones, they probably had contact relics, and could recallfor worshipers real confessios where one found the actualbones of the honored dead, and at this site, of course, theconfessio of Peter at the center of the transept. Symmachusthus exploited the cult of the saints to amplify the solemnityof his cathedral at the Vatican, and by extension to provide amore imposing architectural theater in which to display him-

19 Except for the atrial quadriporticus; see the previous note.20 I frame the question posed by the formal correspondence between S.

Prassede and St. Peters differently from Richard Krautheimer in TheCarolingian Revival of Early Christian Architecture, The Art Bulletin 24(1942): 138 (reprinted twice with postscripts dated 1969 and 1987; seeR. Krautheimer, Studies in Early Christian, Medieval, and Renaissance Art[New York: New York University Press, 1969] and idem, Ausgewhlte

Aufstze zur europischen Kunstgeschichte [Kln: DuMont Buchverlag,1988]). Krautheimer presented the popes between Hadrian I (772795)and Leo IV (844855) as Carolingian, that is, as close supporters ofthe Frankish royal/imperial rulers and their political program to reviveConstantines Christian Empire. S. Prassede in Rome thus referred toConstantinesSt. Peters and became for Krautheimer a prime architectu-ral document of a decades-long Carolingian Renaissance which hadstarted north of the Alps with the building of two great abbey churches King Pepin IIIs and Charlemagnes St.-Denis (754775) and AbbotRatgars St. Bonifatius in Fulda (802819). Long treated by art histori-ans as foundational, the 1942 argument has only recently come up forreview: see inter alia, (1) Werner Jacobsen, Gab es die karolingischeRenaissance in der Baukunst,Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte51 (1988):313347; (2) Charles McClendon, Louis the Pious, Rome, and Const-antinople,Architectural Studies in Memory of Richard Krautheimer, ed.

Cecil L. Striker (Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern, 1996), 103106;(3) Manfred Luchterhandt, Famulus Petri Karl der Groe in denrmischen Mosaikbildern Leos III., 799, Kunst und Kultur der Karolin-gerzeit, Karl der Groe und Papst Leo III. in Paderborn, catalog of theexhibition held in Paderborn, 1999, 3 vols., ed. C. Stiegemann and M.Wemhoff (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1999), III, 5570; (4) Emerick,Focusing on the Celebrant; or (5) Valentino Pace, La felix culpa diRichard Krautheimer: Roma, Santa Prassede e la Rinascenza carolin-gia, in Ecclesiae urbis: Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi sulle chie-se di Roma (IV-X secolo), Rome, 410 September 2000, ed. Federico Gui-dobaldi and Alessandra Guiglia Guidobaldi (Vatican City: PontificioIstituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 2002), 6572.

21 LP53 (V. Symmachi); Jeffrey Richards, The Popes and the Papacy in theEarly Middle Ages, 476752 (London: Routledge, 1979), 6999, 252254.

22 LP53 (V. Symmachi), c. 7; Johannes H. Emminghaus, Die Taufanlagead sellam Petri Confessionis, Rmische Quartalschrift fr christlicheAltertumskunde57 (1962): 78103.

23 I.e., a subordinate place of worship within a larger. Our word, chapel,derives from the Latin capella, but comes closest in meaning to theLatin oratorium; compare inMediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, ed. J. F.Niermeyer and C. Van de Kieft; revised J. W. J. Burgers (Leiden: E. J.Brill, 2002).

24 LP48 (V. Hilari), cc. 25.25 LP53 (V. Symmachi), c. 6; de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 485487, esp. n.

199 on p. 487.26 See confessio inMediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus. In his or her sacrifice

of life, the martyr (= witness in Greek) acknowleges or confesses to thetruth of the Gospels.

50


9/22

51

Fig. 7 Plan showing the chapels that Pope Symmachus (498514) erected in St. Peters (adapted from S. de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 1994, Fig. 19)

sacristy

imperial mausoleum

S. Sossii

S.pollinaris

S. Thomae

S. Andreae

SS. Cassiani,Prothi etHyacinthi

tomb of Peter

S. CrucisS. JohannisEvangelistae

font

S. JohannisBaptistae


10/22

27 De Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 509511. Natalicium = a saints birthday,that is, the day when his or her death is said to have occurred to becommemorated each year with a mass (thus the yearly cycle of feasts inthe sanctoral calendar).

28 See n. 6 above.29 Pierre Jounel, Le culte des saints dans les basiliques du Latran et du Vatican

au douzime sicle(Rome: Collection de lcole Franaise de Rome, 26,1977), 106, 212, 326327. The item, Natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae,tops the list of martyrs birthdays celebrated by the early Roman churchrecorded in the Depositio Martyrum of A.D. 354; see Roberto Valentiniand Giuseppe Zucchetti, ed., Codice topografico della citt di Roma, 4vols. (Rome: R. Istituto Storico Italiano, 194053), vol. II, 17. Of course,the birthday celebrations in question (on December 25 th and January6th) commemorated Christs actual birth, not his martyrdom by cru-cifixion. In the temporal liturgy throughout the Middle Ages, onlyChristmas and Epiphany had fixed calendar dates.

30 The cult of Andrew was introduced in Rome by Pope Simplicius (468483) and was celebrated on November 30th throughout the Mediterra-nean world in the later fifth century (in Rome, Constantinople, Antioch,and Alexandria); see Jounel, Le culte des saints, 158. The writer of the vitaof Pope Leo III (795816) in the LP calls the popes celebration of

Andrew on that day at St. Peters an ancient custom (LP98, cc. 1920); discussed by de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 601. Was the papal mass inhonor of Andrew celebrated in Symmachuss basilica of St. Andrew, orelsewhere in St. Peters? We do not know.

31 The trend, that is, that began in the later fourth century when popescame to St. Peters to officiate at the two chief sanctoralcelebrations ofthe Roman calendar: Christmas and the Feast of Peter and Paul (June29th).

32 For the emergence of the reliquary altar in Rome under papal patronage,see Sible de Blaauw, Laltare nelle chiese di Roma come centro di culto edella committenza papale, Roma nellalto medioevo, 27 April 1 May 2000,Settimana di studio del Centro Italiano Spoletino dellAlto Medioevo 48,(Spoleto: Centro Italiano Spoletino dellAlto Medioevo, 2001), 969989.Here de Blaauw focuses mainly on the archaeological record; he does notlink his account with the rise of the cult of the saints in Rome.

33 Most scholars believe that the combination happened early and spon-taneously; see Joseph Braun, Der christliche Altar in seiner geschichtlichenEntwicklung, 2 vols. (Munich: Guenther Koch, 1924), I, 125 ff; onp. 369, Braun spoke of Symmachus installing altars in his Basilica S.Andreaeat the Vatican. More recently, also de Blaauw, Cultus et decor,485487; but compare now, idem, Laltare, 982.

34 Bruno M. Apollonj Ghetti, Antonio Ferrua, Enrico Josi, EngelbertKirschbaum, Esplorazioni sotto la confessione di San Pietro in Vaticano ese-guite negli anni 19401949 (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana,1951). For an overview of the archaeological finds and their interpreta-tion since the mid twentieth century, see now de Blaauw, Cultus et decor,530566; and idem, Laltare, 978985.

35 Apollonj Ghetti et al., Esplorazioni, 178182. True, the reliquary altarsits on top of the Pelagian/Gregorian pavement in the axial corridor and

52

self as leader of the Roman people in worship. Of course, apapal mass had long been celebrated at the Vatican on June29th each year for the natalicium Petri Apostolorum Princi-

pis.27 The papal stational liturgy early comprised someimportant feasts in the sanctoral calendar (not only themoveable feasts of the temporal). By the early fifth century,as we have seen, papal masses on Christmas Day (December25th) and Epiphany (January 6th) were being celebrated at StPeters as well.28 As Pierre Jounel has underlined, Late An-tique and Medieval worshipers saw Christ as the churchs mainand principal martyr, and thus treated the nativitas Domininostri Iesu Christiand the Epiphania Dominias feasts in boththe temporal and the sanctoral liturgies.29 To these papal sta-tions at St. Peters Symmachus very likely established a newone for the natalicium Beati Andreae Apostolion November30th.30 Around 500, then, the temporal and sanctoral litur-gies intertwined underpapalleadership most strikingly at St.Peters.

By distinguishing St. Peters both architecturally and litur-

gically as the preeminent sanctuary in Rome for the papalsanctoral liturgy, Symmachus reinforced a developing trendand provided future popes with special opportunities.31 Asthe cult of the saints burgeoned in the city during the nextcenturies, and as popes sought to direct and even controlsuch worship for their own advantage, they turned again andagain to St. Peters for the purpose. And the tool they usedthere was the altar.32

Nowhere in the written record treating Symmachusschapels at St. Peters do we read of altars in connection withthe saints confessios. The confessios must have had altars ofcourse, because the masses performed for the saintss nataliciarequired them. But around 500, such altars were secondaryitems. Roman builders came only slowly to make them theprimary focus of a sanctuary by combining the mensa andconfessio in one single, sacred, architectural form, that is, ina permanent altar-block made of masonry.33 Between 588and 604, Popes Pelagius II and Gregory I took a giant step inthis direction when they magnified the grave of Peter at themain focus of the Vatican complex (Figs. 8 and 9).34 Theyerected an altar on top of Peters grave to create a tower-liketwo-story structure at the chord of the apse. Priests served at thealtar above by standing upon a more or less high podium thatfilled the apse behind the altar-grave. The grave below wasaccessible in front via afenestella confessionis, and in back via

an annular crypt buried in the high podium. Apergola of sixCorinthian columns standing on the transept floor in frontof the altar-grave, and a ciborium with four more suchcolumns rising over the altar, both focused worshipers atten-tion dramatically during the mass on the celebrants standingat the front of the podium or seated upon the synthronon andcathedra at the back. This mise-en-scne put the tomb ofPeter beyond the easy reach of worshipers, forcing them toapproach it from in front via a narrow vestibule framed by acolumn screen, or from behind through a dark and narrowring-crypt and a somewhat less narrow axial corridor insidethe podium. Moreover, during mass this stage set separated

and elevated the clergy both actually and figuratively fromlay participants gathered on the transept and nave floor.

The axial corridor in its turn had an altar analogous tothat visible from outside at the focus of the ensemble. It toowas made of solid masonry set up permanently on its site andlike the altar-grave out front, combined mensa and confessio,with receptacles for relics in the altar-block itself. This reli-quary altar, which historians can confidently date and recon-struct from the data provided by archaeologists, is one of theearliest and best documented such examples in Rome.35 It


11/22

53

Fig. 8 Plan showing the chapels in St. Peters under Pope Gregory I (590604) (adapted from S. de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 1994, Fig. 19)

sacristy

imperial mausoleum

S. Sossii

S.ollinaris

S. Thomae

S. Andreae

SS. Cassiani,Prothi etHyacinthi

tomb of Peter S. CrucisS. JohannisEvangelistae

font

S. JohannisBaptistae


12/22

transformed the axial corridor into a proper chapel, that is,into another autonomous sanctuary focused on relics. Boththe famous altar-grave at the focus of the transept and thischapel buried in its apse were devices for the papal/priestlycontrol of the worship of the saints.

Indeed, this entire system with its two special altarsresponded to a new, radically changed conception of themass.36 During the Early Middle Ages, the church, repre-sented by the priest, came to insist on its power to recreatethe body and blood of Christ on the altar, and came to presentthat eucharistic act as its offeringto the Father. Here a reli-gious image of the gift and counter-gift came into play an

image as old as the northern Germanic sagas or as ancient asthe Roman Republican notion of sacrifice summed up in thephrase, do ut des(I give so that you give).37 Thus during themass, the Early Medieval church saw God as receiving a giftor offering that He would be constrained to reciprocate bygranting a gift of like value in return. This opened the wayfor the so-called votive mass. Such a missa specialis, celebratedad hoc at the request of an individual who was seeking tointensify his or her plea for some specific hoped-for futureoutcome, contrasted with the traditional missa publica thatthe faithful celebrated corporately on a regular, predeter-mined schedule to reconfirm their union with God. Indeed

the missa specialis took on a definite apotropaic function.Early Medieval sacramentaries are full of votive masses meant

could be either an integral feature of the shrine or a later addition to it.The altars surviving stump looks very roughly made. It has a trapezoi-dal, not rectangular plan, and it has irregular courses of reused brick setin high mortar beds (all once stucco clad?). This roughness inducedApollonj Ghetti and the other writers of the Esplorazioni to designate ita later addition to the Pelagian/Gregorian shrine (though an EarlyMedieval one to be sure). In CBCRvol. V (1977), 197, Richard Kraut-heimer pointed out that the altars masonry was adequate for an

architectural element that had no weight-bearing role. Since the Pelagian/Gregorian shrine generally has a rough fabric that incorporates many illfitting, reused parts in walls, balustrades, and pavements theroughness of the reliquary altar from the axial corridor does not reallystand out. It could well be an integral part of the original shrine.

36 Albert Hussling,Mnchskonvent und Eucharistiefeier, Eine Studie berdie Messe in der abendlndischen Klosterliturgie des frhen Mittelalters undzur Geschichte der Mehufigkeit (Mnster, Westfalen: Aschendorff,1973), 226297 (with the basic bibliography). For an up-to-date sum-mary of the issues, see Arnold Angenendt, Das Frhmittelalter, Dieabendlndische Christenheit von 400 bis 900 (Stuttgart, Berlin, Kln: W.Kohlhammer, 1990), 331334 and passim.

37 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in ArchaicSocieties, tr. W. D. Halls (London: Routledge, 1990).

54

Fig. 9 Longitudinal section of the Pelagian/Gregorian shrine to Peter at the Vatican around 600 (adapted from S. de Blaauw, Cultus et decor,1994, Fig. 24)

cathedra

synthronon

ring crypt

chapel in the axial corridor

altar

confessio of Peter

Peters gravereliquary altar


13/22

to protect and/or obtain this-worldly favors for an individualin all possible emergencies. In them, intercession and pro-pitiation came to the fore as the masss purpose, and thisdevelopment quickly colored and transformed the meaningof the missa publica as well. If in Early Christian times themass gave concrete form to the idea that God dwells amonghis people, and if the priest performed at the altar as oneamong the celebrants, then during the Early Middle Ages asthe mass took on a more intercessory aspect, the priest cameto the fore as the main focus of the ceremony, as thecelebrantwhom the faithful now followed at a certain distance and nolonger quite as equals or as co-celebrants. To join with Godin eucharistic celebration, that is, to obtain favors and inter-cessions from Him or to appease and conciliate Him, thefaithful now sought first to join with the priest, the sacrificerwho offered the churchs greatest gift to God. The massbecame a peculiarly clerical affair, the priests sacrificing forthe faithful and becoming thereby mediators between them(the faithful) and God, or rather, between them and the

saints who sponsored them in Gods heavenly court.38Thus as Early Medieval pilgrims approached the tomb ofPeter in the axial corridor inside St. Peters apsidal podium,they found the way quite barred by the meter-high reliquaryaltar which stood out in the space immediately in front of thememorial. Prayers for Peters intercession at this site, or atleast the kind that the votive mass made efficacious, requiredpriestly mediation. The Pelagian/Gregorian liturgical stageset at St. Peters helped put priests, and by extension popes,in control of a worshipers access to the holy.

The Vatican Complex: Many Churches in One

St. Peters under Symmachus had already become a churchwith a main memorial to Peter accompanied by a number ofsimilar, supplementary memorials to other saints. In all ofthe latter, one may suppose, liturgical furniture was sooninstalled that permitted strict clerical direction and control ofworship. Were the chapels that Symmachus built soon re-equipped with permanent reliquary altars in masonry? We donot know, but in 688, a century after the Pelagian/Gregorianaltar-grave was installed, documents show that Pope SergiusI established a new chapel in the transept on the south sideof Peters shrine, where apparently he set up an altar over a

tomb into which he translated the body of the confessor PopeLeo I from its former resting place at the entry to the sacris-ty (Fig. 10).39 In the Liber Pontificalis, moreover, we readhow, in the 730s, Gregory III established a chapel to theSavior, His Mother, and All the Saints in the southwest cor-ner of St. Peters nave, and set up a reliquary altar therebehind a column-screen or pergola.40

In the 750s, Stephen II transformed the imperial mauso-leum at the churchs southwest corner into a basilica for St.Petronilla, Peters legendary daughter; in the 760s Paul Itranslated the body of Petronilla there from her tomb on theVia Appia.41 Since the Liber Pontificalissays that Leo III en-

shrined Petronillas altar with a silver-clad ciborium on por-phyry columns,42we may suppose that Paul had already pro-vided it with the requisite liturgical furniture for the displayof the celebrant at mass. In 7834 Pope Hadrian translatedrelics of some unknown saints into the chapel that Pope JohnVII (705707) had erected in honor of Mary which waslocated at the back of the basilicas north outer aisle. Verylikely Hadrian put the relics in question inside the altar thatJohn VII had already provided at the chapels eastern focus,which stood beneath a deep arch whose west end stood on apair of fancy helical columns, and whose east end buttedagainst (and was supported by) the chapels rear east wall.Thus if John VII did not set up a reliquary altar here, Ha-drian apparently did.43 Hadrian also erected a chapel in

38 Angenendt, Das Frhmittelalter, presented this fourth- through ninth-

century process in the Western church in terms of loss and retreat. As thepublic civic society of the Ancient Roman Empire disappeared, he said,and a ruralized western Europe reverted to a society based on person-to-person bonds secured by oath and by the age-old communal form of thegiving and receiving of gifts, religion reverted at the same time to morerigid and simpler, that is, archaic forms. But see the 1979 article byPatrick Geary, Coercion of Saints in Medieval Religious Practice,reprinted in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1994), 116124. Such pejorative assessments of theworkings of reciprocity in Medieval forms of piety, he argued, may high-light or even underpin Modern religious values, but they (the pejorativeassessments) begged the historical question.

39 LP86 (V. Sergii I), c. 12. De Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 568569, notedthat, in 1607, the sarcophagus of Leo I came to light beneath a morerecent reliquary and the foundations of an older altar; from their place-

ment in the chapel, the sarcophagus and altar look to go back to the timeof Sergius I. In LP98 (V. Leonis III), cc. 84 and 87, one reads that LeoIII embellished both an altar and a confessio of Leo I in St. Peters.

40 LP92 (V. Gregorii III), cc. 67: In quo faciens pergolam . . . et faciemaltaris et confessionem cum regiolis vestivit argento . . .

41 LP94 (V. Stephani II), c. 52; and LP95 (V. Pauli), c. 3.42 LP98 (V. Leonis III), c. 60.43 See LP88 (V. Johannis VII), cc. 1 and 6 for the founding of Pope John

VIIs chapel; originally the chapel enshrined an icon of Mary, and not,apparently, any relics. But compare de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 573, whonoted that the guide for pilgrims to St. Peters in the Notitia Ecclesiarum(in its eighth-century redaction) named John VIIs chapel, ad Praesepe:Couldnt the chapel, he asked, have enshrined relics of the stable and/ormanger of Christs Nativity? However this may be, an historic inscrip-tion, cut crudely in marble, which came from the chapels north wall,

and is now preserved in the Capella di S. Maria delle Febbri (or Parto-rienti) in the Vatican Grottoes, tells that, during the reign of Pope Hadri-an I, relics of the saints were stashed in this chapel on November 22 ofindiction VII (i.e, in 783784); the inscription also names a fenced-invineyard located in Septimianus, probably to insure that all its reve-nue, in integro, would go to the support of offices in the chapel (possi-bly for lighting?):+ TEMPORIBVsD N HADRIANIPAPAE HIC RECVNDITA SVM (sunt) RELIQViAS (reliquiae) SANCTOR INMESE NOBEBRiIN D XXII IND SEPTIMA.. BINE

55


14/22

56

Fig. 10 Plan showing the major chapels in St. Peters under Pope Paschal I (817824) (adapted from S. de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 1994, Fig. 25)

sacristy

S. Martini (?)

S. Sossii

S.Apollinaris

S. Thomae

S. Andreae

S. Cassiani

tomb of PeterS. Crucis

font

S.

Johannis

S. Viti

S. Laurentii

Salvatoris

S.Petronillae

S. Mariae

S. Anastasiae

AltareSalvatoris

AltareS. Michaelis

OratoriumS. Mariaeof Paul I

S. Hadriani S. Leonis

SS. Processi et Martiniani

SS. Xystiet Fabiani

S. Mariaeof John VII

S. Gregorii

SalvatorisGenetriciset omniumSanctorum

of Gregory III

S. Theodori


15/22

honor of his patron saint, Hadrian of Nicomedia, in thetransepts southwestern corner (next to the exedra) and seemsvery likely to have focused it on a reliquary altar.44

In 805806, as we can deduce from the report in the LiberPontificalis, Leo III remodeled Symmachuss chapel of theHoly Cross and likewise set up a ciborium over a silver-cladaltar provided with many rich decorations. Did this altarcontain a cross relic?45 In 807808, Leo III clad the tomb ofGregory I in the narthex with silver which shows that it hadbecome a proper altar.46 Moreover, in 817, at very nearlythe moment that he began work at S. Prassede, Paschal Ibuilt two important chapels in St. Peters transept, one small,and one large. He translated the bodies of the third-centurypapal martyrs, Sixtus II and Fabian, into the smaller, locatedjust south of the Petrine shrine; and translated the bodies ofthe Roman protomartyrs Processus and Martinianus, Petersjailors, into the larger, located in the southeast corner of thetransepts south exedra. These too seem to have been outfit-ted with reliquary altars for the display of the celebrant in the

new, Early Medieval fashion.47At the same time that the Early Medieval popes installedall this new liturgical furniture in St. Peters, they undertookto enhance the Pelagian/Gregorian altar-grave at the churchsmain focus that is, they kept remodeling it to bring moredignity and attention to the celebrant there. Thus PopeHonorius I (625638) embellished Peters confessio with sil-ver,48 and Sergius (687701) lifted a silver ciborium over thecathedra at the back of the apse.49 In the 730s, Gregory III setup a second pergola of six columns in front of the shrine, acolumn screen that further distanced the celebrant from thefaithful while heightening the worshiperss focus upon him(and further dramatizing the celebrants special status duringthe mass).50

Hadrian (772795) outdid all his predecessors in dignify-ing the altar-grave as a special place. He paved the confessiosvestibule with silver, clad the confessio, the front of the altar,and the crypt with hundreds of pounds of gold, put silverrailings around the area in front of the podium, and providedmany images, in the round and in relief, which glinted ingold.51 He also suspended a huge cross-shaped lamp with1365 candles over thepresbyterium.52 His successor Leo IIIwent even further.53 He enlarged the apsidal podium to pro-vide more space for liturgical movement, extending it east-ward, which required him to suppress the two frontal Pela-

gian/Gregorian stairways and set up new ones which ran per-pendicular to the longitudinal axis of the confessiosvestibule. In the process, Leo III took care to preserve andreuse the striking porphyry steps from the Pelagian/Gregori-an shrine. The resulting flat, front face of the podium wasluxuriously clad with porphyry slabs to match the (reused)steps in the new stairway. Leo III also dismantled the origi-nal ciborium over the altar-grave and set up a much largerone clad with gilded silver, raised on four tall porphyrycolumns, also clad in silver. As for the altar-grave that rose atthe center of this composition, Leo III re-clad it in gold frombottom to top, thus improving on his predecessors effort

here. He entirely fenced off the space in front of the podiumwith railings in silver to restrict the movement of worshipersin front of Peters shrine. He also covered the entablatures ofthe two imposing six-column pergolas to the east of the altar-grave with silver sheets. Finally, he set up a huge silver archover the central intercolumniation of the easternmost pergo-la in front of the apsidal podium, a focusing devicepar excel-lence.

Thus during the course of the seventh and eighth century,but mostly in the eighth, the popes used a new liturgical tool,the reliquary altar, to transform St. Peters into a church fo-cused on the worship of the saints, a church that had a mainshrine to Peter and many secondary ones to other importantsaints in side chapels, and a church in which the peoplesaccess to the sacred in all the shrines was under clerical,indeed papal, mediation.54

A (vinea) CLVSVRA IN iNTEGRO q P (quae ponitur) InSEPTIMIANVsFor the location of the inscription, see the drawing by Giacomo Gri-maldi (15681623) in Barb. Lat. 2733 fols. 94v-95r, whicn shows thechapels north wall, reproduced in G. Grimaldi, Descrizione della basili-ca antica di S. Pietro in Vaticano: Codice Barberini latino 2733, ed. RetoNiggl (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1972), 126127.Grimaldis Ms. dates 16191620; Pope Paul V hired Grimaldi to recordthe antiquities of the nave of Old St Peters before it was knocked downto build the nave of New St Peters. For a photograph of the inscription,see D. Dufresne, Les cryptes vaticanes (Paris: Descle, Lefebvre, 1902),21. I thank Ann van Dijk for discussing this inscription with me; see A.van Dijk, The Oratory of Pope John VII (705707) in Old St. Peters(John

Hopkins University: Ph.D. diss., 1995), 17f, 27f, and 3133.44 De Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 570 (with an analysis of the complex docu-

mentary record).45 LP98 (V. Leonis III), c. 66. When the chapel was demolished in 1455

1456, a niche with a cross relic was found at the back of its apse(coveredover with a mosaic representing a cross). Was this the arrangement inLeo IIIs day? Discussed by de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 568.

46 LP98 (V. Leonis III), c. 84.47 LP100 (V. Paschalis I), cc. 5, 6, tells that Paschal set up an altar for

Sixtus II and Fabian, and in a similar mode, an oratorium for Pro-cessus and Martinianis. Concerning the altar in the latter, the LPs com-piler wrote that Paschal decorated its propitiatorium (its front) and itsconfessio, inside and out, with sheets of silver. An altar with a confessio= a reliquary altar.

48 LP72 (V. Honorii), c. 1.49 LP86 (V. Sergii I), c. 11.50 LP92 (V. Gregorii III), c. 5. The central intercolumniation of both per-

golas was wider than the two at either side.51 LP97 (V. Hadriani I), cc. 45, 83, 84, 87, and 93; also LP98 (V. Leonis

III), c. 3, for activity at the confessio undertaken on Hadrians behalf bythe priest who became Pope Leo III.

52 LP97 (V. Hadriani I), c. 46. The lamp was to be lit four times a year, onChristmas, Easter, the feast of Peter and Paul, and the anniversary ofHadrians elevation to the papal throne.

53 See especially de Blaauw, Cultus et decor, 541545, 550553, 557559,for a cogent analysis of the relevant material in LP98 (V. Leonis III), cc.28, 53, 54, 64, 86, and 87.

54 In his stimulating new study, La frammentazione liturgica nella chiesaromana del primo medioevo, Rivista di archeologia cristiana 75 (1999):

57


16/22

The Petrine Sacred Machinery Put to Work at

S. Prassede

In a recent publication I argued that Paschal put exactly thesame kind of liturgical furniture into S. Prassede as wasfound at St. Peters. The isometric drawing in Fig. 11 sum-marizes my reconstruction of Paschal Is presbytery, which Ibased upon an inspection of its remains and on a closereading of both Paschals vita in the Liber Pontificalisand aneye-witness account of an eighteenth-century excavation atthis site.55 The pope clearly built an altar-grave in the EarlyMedieval Petrine mode and put it at the focus of a churchthat, as I argue above, was planned to recall or evoke St.Peters (compare Figs. 5 and 10). Moreover, just as at St.Peters, at S. Prassede a chapel focused on a reliquary altar wasset out beneath the apsidal podium in the crypts axial corri-dor.56 The Liber Pontificalis says that Paschal translatedmany bodies of saints into his church. Thanks to the con-temporary account of that translation inscribed in a marble

plaque still preserved at S. Prassede, we know that Paschalspecifically distributed these bodies in various memorialsthere some 2000 plus bodies in the main shrine at the apse,with its chapel under the apsidal podium, then the body ofZeno and two other saints in a chapel dedicated to Zenoattached to the right aisle, and finally the bodies of Maurusand forty others in the sacristy dedicated to the Baptist onthe left side of the church.57

No side altars survive; they, like the main shrine in S. Pras-sedes apse, have all disappeared during the churchs numer-ous remodeling campaigns. Moreover, from the originalarray of chapels, only the Zeno Chapel survives (or survives

in large part). But by analogy to the reliquary altar that canbe reconstructed for the chapel beneath S. Prassedes apsidalpodium, we can safely presume that the altars in the ZenoChapel and the sacristy were similar, and thus also similar tothose in the side chapels at St. Peters.58 S. Prassede, like St.Peters, was a church conceived as a family of saintssmemorials.59 Goodson has shown how Pope Paschal I re-

step process culminating in the period between 600 and 800 when theworship of the saints became linked indissolubly with the celebrationof the eucharist: I reason that as long as priests are required for worshipof a saint (at his or her confessio understood as a reliquary altar), anindividual worshiper has no direct contact with that saint. Whetherstanding in a presbytery or a chapel, the reliquary altar puts a priest instrict control of the peoples access to the holy.

55 Emerick, Focusing on the Celebrant. S. Prassedes original presbytery

furniture, much of which survived down to the early eighteenth centu-ry, was destroyed between 1728 and 1734 when the present chancel wasconstructed. Benigno Aloisi, prior of the monastery at S. Prassede, whoparticipated in this project and in the exploratory excavations at the sitethat preceded the chancels remodeling, kept a record of what was foundin his Relazione Della Fabrica del nuovo Altare Maggiore della Venera-bile Chiesa di S. Prassede di Roma . . ., 1729. Aloisis manuscript, oncepreserved in the monastery at Vallombrosa, was lost in the 1970s. TheBibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, has a photocopy (partial) and the monast-ery library at S. Prassede has a transcription made in 1881 (apparentlycomplete). For a new edition based on both the photocopy and thetranscription, see now Caterina-Giovanna Coda, Duemilatrecento corpidi martiri (Rome: Miscellanea della Societ Romana di Storia Patria,XLVI, 2004), 1778.

56 For the altar there, see especially Bruno M. Apollonj Ghetti, Santa Pras-

sede(Rome: Le Chiese di Roma Illustrate, 1961), 4448, who providesa cogent sequel to his earlier pages on the reliquary altar from the Pela-gian/Gregorian liturgical stage set at the Vatican (see his Esplorazionicited in n. 34 above). Apollonj Ghetti cited excerpts from Aloisismanuscript (see previous note) in which Aloisi described the blockaltar he saw inside the chapel below S. Prassedes apsidal podium. Sincethat altar so closely resembled the Pelagian/Gregorian one that ApollonjGhetti had found at the Vatican in the 1940s, he judged that the altarthat Aloisi saw must have been the one that Paschal had installed there.

57 See now (1) Coda, Duemilatrecento corpi di martiri, Appendix I, and (2)Caroline Goodson, The Relic Translations of Paschal I (817824):Transforming Cult and City, a paper read at the conference, RomanBodies: Metamorphoses, Mutilation, and Martyrdom, organized byAndrew Hopkins at the British School at Rome, 2931 March 2001. Ithank Caroline Goodson for generously allowing me to read her paper

before its publication in the acts of the conference (forthcoming in avolume from the British School entitled The Body of Rome edited byAndrew Hopkins and Maria Wyke). As this paper went to press, Good-son also completed her Ph.D. thesis, The Basilicas of Pope Paschal I (817824): Tradition and Transformation in Early Medieval Rome (ColumbiaUniversity, 2004).

58 The Zeno Chapel, oriented to the north, opened off the north aisleabout halfway down. The chapel to the 2000 saints, oriented to the east,was located beneath the apsidal podium. But where was S. Prassedessacristy, the Chapel dedicated to the Baptist (and Maurus and fortyothers)? I suggest that it was located at the basilicas southeast corner, andthat it had a western orientation in a manner similar to the sacristy at StPeters in Paschal Is day. See my hypothetical reconstruction of S.Prassedes original plan in Fig. 5 (compare Fig. 10; see de Blaauw, Cultuset decor, 469470, for the location of the original sacristy at St. Peters).

Benigno Davanzati, Notizie al pellegrino della basilica di Santa Prassede(Rome: Antonio de Rossi, 1725), 393394, judged that the sacristy inPaschal Is S. Prassede must have been located near the altar of S. CarloBorromeo in the chapel dedicated to him that stood (and still stands)near the southeast corner of the basilica of S. Prassede. He wrote thatvestiges of an old chapel, ruined by the passage of time, were visible thereimmediately behind the altar: Ma possiamo credere, che fosse (thesacristy), dove al presente lAltare di S. Carlo, poiche dietro appunto almedesimo si vedono le vestigie duna Cappella rovinata dal tempo . . .For the location of the chapel of S. Carlo Borromeo see the convenientplan in Apollonj Ghetti, Santa Prassede (fold-out plate). Davanzati,p. 237, also recorded that the altar of S.Carlo had been restored in 1710.Were the historic vestiges in question observed at that time?

59 For the concept of theMemorialkirchenfamilie, so called, see Hussling,

58

385446, Franz Alto Bauer argued that the reliquary altar made itsimpact liturgically in two very different ways. On one hand, it helpedorganize, indeed focus the presbytery in an early medieval Roman

church, a site where an ever more solemn and elaborate clerical officeunfolded, which lay people could follow only at a great distance. On theother, in a churchs various chapels, the reliquary altar also focused thepopular cult of relics and provided ordinary worshipers with that moreimmediate contact with the holy (with the bodies of the saints) that theysought enthusiastically. The Notitia Ecclesiarum Urbis Romae, a seventh-and eighth-century pilgrims guide, provided the chief evidence for Bau-ers theory. He cited especially the Notitia Ecclesiarumsitinerary for a pil-grim to St. Peters that dilated on how such a visitor might make direct,individual contact with the saints as he or she passed from one of thegreat churchs side altars to another (including the altar in the axial cor-ridor under the apsidal podium). Nevertheless, I am arguing here thataccess to the holy even at the side altars in St. Peters was mediated.Hussling,Mnchskonvent, chap. VI, pp. 174297, details the step-by-


17/22

moved the bodies of saints from cemeteries on every majorroad leading out from the city, often intervening in placeswhere for hundreds of years previously worshipers hadhonored their memoriae.60 By gathering all these saints at S.Prassede and by installing their remains in reliquary altars atthe focus of ceremonial spaces, Paschal I put them beyondthe immediate reach of worshipers and thus made worshipersdepend much more on priests for access to them. Paschal I,too, was using the burgeoning cult of the saints to bringmore attention and luster to the Roman priesthood.

If by the second decade of the ninth century St. Petershad made papal control of the sanctoral liturgy real and con-crete for worshipers in Rome, why was Paschal putting thisPetrine sacred machinery to work at S. Prassede? What washe trying to do besides control peoples great interest in thecult of the saints? I will argue here that by shaping or de-signing S. Prassede as he did, Paschal I could effectively inter-vene in the citys monumental Christian topography toenhance his role as leader, and in effect, create a papal city

all his own.

Paschal Is Rome: A City of Martyrs and

Confessors

Paschal I translated the wide-flung, Roman, extramuralmemoriaedramaticallyinsidethe city, to S. Prassede, to makethem a feature of regular worship there. But we should notconsider this act an entirely new departure. Indeed, Paschalsgesture was the culmination of a process, underway since theseventh century, by which the temporal and sanctoral litur-gies came to intertwine upon the mensaeof the intramuralchurches. This happened notably in the citys twenty plustituli including S. Prassede (Fig. 1). By the early ninthcentury, these intramural churches had mostly taken overfrom the extramural memoriae as foci for the peoplesworship of the saints.61

We do not usually view the Roman tituliin this way. Untila short while ago, scholars saw them principally as witnessesto the citys pre-Constantinian parochial system; they werethought to be Romes earliest parish churches.62 But recentlyFederico Guidobaldi has argued cogently that the citys titulicame only very slowly to underpin the parochial organizationof the Roman church, say between 400 and 600, and fur-

thermore that, between about 600 and 800, they took on awholly new life in the city when their users dedicated themto Early Christian martyrs.63We do well to heed these start-ling Roman Early Medieval developments. By Leo IIIs reignthe titulihad eclipsed the ancient martyria outside the cityswalls as the sites where Romans celebrated the saintss natali-cia. Or all but eclipsed them.

To be sure, the titulinever took over in this way from theextramural martyria of Peter, Paul, and Lawrence. Between600 and 800, the latter became the leading Roman sanctua-ries for the sanctoral liturgy, and St. Peters chief amongthem.64 Moreover, during this time, owing to the rapid deve-

lopment of the papal stational liturgy, St. Peters, St. Pauls,and S. Lorenzo also became the prime foci, with S. MariaMaggiore and the Lateran, for the temporal liturgy. In otherwords, if the sanctuaries at the tombs of Peter, Paul, andLawrence had started out as sites for the sanctoral liturgy andhad also become, during the Early Middle Ages regularchurches, the tituliin their turn had started out as regularchurches and during the Early Middle Ages had becomemartyria of a sort.

As Johann Kirsch has explained, the citys titular priestsled worship of the saints from the start both at their tituliandat the saintss tombs in the specific extramural cemeterieslinked with their intramural tituli. The martyrss shrines inthe thirty-six cemeteries outside Romes walls never had theirown regular clergy; the titular priests administered them.65

As time went on, however, the titular priests lost their imme-diate links with the cemeteries. The Liber Pontificalis saysthat before his elevation as pope and while he was serving as

Mnchskonvent, 201213, especially 213. For the idea of the Early Chris-tian and Early Medieval Kirchenfamilie, of which the Early MedievalMemorialkirchenfamilieis a variety, see the art historian Edgar Lehmann(extensive bibliography in Hussling, Mnchskonvent, 201202). Theperfect example (Musterstck, said Hussling) of theMemorialkirchen-familiein the Latin West was St. Peters. Some of the reliquary altars thatfocused worship there, it is true, featured members of an actual fami-ly, namely Peter and his brother Andrew, and his daughter Petronilla.But St. Peters many altars also enshrined the relics of Peters saintedpapal successors, his Roman jailors (Processus and Martinianus), theRoman protomartyr Lawrence, and even All the Saints in the chapel

dedicated by Gregory III (see my Fig. 10). The family in question ismore spiritual than anything else, something ad hoc at this special site.

60 Goodson, Relic Translations.61 But of course they did not take over from the great extramural churches

built in honor of Peter, Paul, or Lawrence. I speak more about this keyissue just below.

62 Johann P. Kirsch, Die rmischen Titelkirchen im Altertum (Paderborn:Verlag Schningh, 1918), 127137, esp. 133.

63 Federico Guidobaldi, Linserimento delle chiese titolari di Roma neltessuto urbano preesistente: osservazioni ed implicazioni, in Quaeriturinventus colitur, Miscellanea in onore di Padre Umberto Maria Fasola,Barnabita (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana,1989), 2 vols., I, 383396; and idem, Lorganizzazione dei titulinellospazio romano, in Christiana Loca, Lo spazio cristiano nella Roma delprimo millennio, 2 vols., ed. Letizia Pani Ermini, Rome, 5 September-15November 2000, Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali, Comples-so di S. Michele (Rome: Fratelli Palombi, 2000), I, 123129. Also F.Guidobaldi, Spazio urbano e organizzazione ecclesiastica a Roma nel VIe VII secolo,Acta XIII Congressus Internationalis Archaeologiae Christia-nae, Split/Porec, 25 September-1 October 1994 (Vatican City: PontificioIstituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1998), pp. 2954, esp. 2932.

64 Jounel, Le culte des saints, 398399, concluded his study arguing that,already by the end of the eighth century, the popes had made St. Petersinto the Roman center of the cult of the saints.

65 Kirsch, Die rmischen Titelkirchen, pp. 200201 and 208219; andidem, Die Grabsttten der rmischen Mrtyrer und ihre Stellung imliturgischen Mrtyrkultus, Rmische Quartalschrift38 (1930): pp. 107131; also Charles Pietri, Roma christiana, 2 vols. (Rome: cole franaisede Rome, 1976), I, 595667.

59


18/22

60

Fig. 11 Rome, S. Prassede, authors re-construction of Pope Paschal Is choir andpresbytery of 817819 (isometric drawing adap-ted from R. Krautheimer, CBCRvol. III,1967, fig. 226, by Johannes Knoops)


19/22

S. Susannas titular priest, Sergius I (687701) had celebrat-ed mass energetically (impigre) in the different cemeteries(per cymiteria diversa), from which we may deduce that, a-round 700 in Rome, a titular priest had no regularly assignedduties in the cemeteries.66 Moreover, when Pope Gregory III(731741) decreed that vigils and masses for the saintssnatalicia be observed in the extramural cemeteries, he alsohad to appoint priests to these dutiespro tempore.67 Ordina-ry or regular celebrations of the saints in the cemeteries hadclearly lapsed.68 That the Lateran curia had to organize suchworship ad hoc in the extramural cemeteries during the laterseventh and early eighth centuries probably shows how seriouswas its (the curias) collapse following Romes dereliction in theaftermath of Justinians disastrous Reconquest of Italy.

Nevertheless, as the city recovered in the seventh century,and indeed, burgeoned as capital of the Republic of St. Peterin the eighth, the Lateran did not attempt to bring the extra-mural shrines into play liturgically in any ordinary way, thatis, as they had been prior to the Reconquest. Hadrian I

(772795) and Leo III (795816) might restore ruinedcemetery basilicas, but they gave them few or no liturgicalvessels.69 By the last third of the eighth century and the firstdecade of the ninth, any regular offices in honor of the saintstook place either at the three great extramural basilicas (ofPeter, Paul, and Lawrence) or in the intramural churches,especially the tituli. Pilgrims still visited the extramural shrines(that is, the other ones besides those of Peter, Paul, andLawrence), but the translations of the bodies they had longvenerated there into churches located inside the citys wallsgreatly lessened the appeal of these cemeteries for pious visi-tors.70 If the popes first undertook to mediate worshiperssaccess to the relics of the saints at St. Peters in the seventhand eighth centuries by installing reliquary altars in chapelsthere, at the end of the eighth and in the early ninth centu-ries they decisively undertook to do the same in the tituli.

The Liber Pontificaliss report that Pope Paul (757767)removed the bodies of the saints from the ruined extramuralcemeteries and buried them with all honor (cum condecentistuduit recondi honore) inside the city, some in the tituliandothers in the diaconiae, monasteries, and other churches,helps show how the process started.71 Presumably the bodiesin question went into the new reliquary altars. But it wasunder Leo III (795816) that the Lateran curia seems to havefully understood how to use such altars to good effect in

churches inside the city, especially in the tituli. That is how Iwould understand Pope Leo IIIs building of two imposingnew churches at the ancient tituli of S. Susanna near theBaths of Diocletian72 and SS. Nereo e Achilleo near the Bathsof Caracalla (Fig 1).73 While it is true that only S. Susannaamong these two sanctuaries retained its full titular status inLeos day, the other having become, sometime between 600and 776, a deaconry,74 and while it is also true that SS. Nereoe Achilleo had lost its place in the papal stational liturgy in theprocess,75 the new deaconry could not help but retain forninth-century worshipers some aura of its old titular status.76

Since ab origineneither titulus had a large meeting hall,

both were soon eclipsed as places for regular worship byother nearby properties or titulithat did have that essentialamenity and could serve efficiently as parish churches. S.Susanna languished over the centuries while the nearbytitu-lus Cyriaci (later titulus S. Ciriaco in Thermis) thrived; SS.Nereo e Achilleo sank in importance as the nearby titulusCrescentiae(later titulus S. Xysti) took over.77 With Romesdepopulation in the mid-sixth century and slow recovery inthe seventh and eighth, worshipers all but abandoned S.Susanna and SS. Nereo e Achilleo. Thus when Leo III rebuiltthem, he did so not so much to house parishioners (S. Susan-na) or provide charity (SS. Nereo e Achilleo) as to feature thealtars inside dedicated to saints. The Liber Pontificalisrecordsthat at S. Susanna, Leo III built the altars confessio of finesilver,78 and that at SS. Nereo e Achilleo, he presented a sil-ver canopy.79 Clearly at both sanctuaries he set up imposingreliquary altars.80 In both Leo III worked to further the deve-loping trend that saw important intramural churches andespeciallytituliin Rome take on more and more the aspect

66 LP86 (V. Sergii I), c. 1.67 LP92 (V. Gregorii III), c. 17.68 For analysis of both passages in the LP, see Duchesne in LP, I, 373, n. 3

(citing G. B. De Rossi); also Kirsch, Die rmischen Titelkirchen, 211,218219.

69 Hermann Geertman,More veterum, Il Liber Pontificalis e gli edifici eccle-siastici di Roma nella tarda antichit e nellalto medioevo (Groningen: H.D. Tjeenk Willink, 1975), 9899 and 105106.

70 John Osborne, The Roman Catacombs in the Middle Ages, Papers of

the British School at Rome53 (1985): 278328.71 LP95 (V. Pauli), c. 4.72 LP98 (V. Leonis III), c. 9; CBCR, vol. IV (1970), pp. 254278. S. Su-

sanna = the former titulus Gaii; see Kirsch, Die rmischen Titelkirchen,7074. Leo had been titular priest here before his elevation as pope.

73 LP98 (V. Leonis III), c. 111; CBCRvol. III (1967), 135152. S. Nereoe Achilleo = the former titulus Fasciolae; see Kirsch, Die rmischen Titel-kirchen, 9094.

74 Called diaconia in LP98 (V. Leonis III), cc. 29, 75, and 112; see Geert-mann,More veterum, 64, 69, and 106.

75 The papal station for mass on Monday of Holy week each year, which hadlong occurred at the titulus SS. Nerei et Achilleimoved to the titulus Pra-xedison the Esquiline sometime during the eighth century; see Geertman,More veterum, 164; also Saxer, Lutilisation, 1001 and n. 58 on 1004.

76 The redactors of Leo IIIs life in the Liber Pontificalis credit the popewith various donations to the deaconry of SS. Nereo e Achilleo (cc. 25,75, 112), but when they record Leos reconstruction of the sanctuary(c. 111), they call it a church. Did they do so intentionally? To enhanceLeos credit by acknowledging SS. Nereo e Achilleos ancient role in thecity? See Raymond Davis, The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes (LiberPontificalis) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992), p. 230. SS.Nereo e Achilleo was the only titular church in Rome ever to be trans-formed into a deaconry; Geertman,More veterum, 164, n. 2.

77 Guidobaldi, Linserimento, esp. 390396; Guidobaldi, Lorganizza-zione dei tituli, esp. 128129.

78 LP98 (v. Leonis III), c. 29.79 Ibid., c. 111.80 With either actual saints bodies, or parts of their bodies, or with contact

relics.

61


20/22

of martyria. By treating altars as supremely holy objects,81 bytreating them as personifications of the saints,82 and by en-shrining them in regular churches inside the citys walls,Leo III hoped to frame, organize, and mediate the sanctoralliturgy in the city.

Paschal took over this project in 817 where Leo III left offand heightened it in every way he could. By rebuilding an-other of the little-used and minor tituli, S. Prassede,83 in theimage of the citys greatest papal shrine to the saints, and fill-ing its multiple memorial altars with thousands of holybodies, he found an even more effective way to take controlof and mediate the Roman peoples engagement with the cultof the saints. Like Sixtus III or Symmachus before him,Paschal hoped to conjure with St. Peters image in Rome. Butnow the game had become more complex, with much moreat stake for those who knew how to manipulate the religiousstage machinery. By building S. Prassede, Paschal nowappears to have been trying to blur the distinctions Romansusually made between the great patriarchal basilica at the

Vatican (the main place where the popes mediated theRoman peoples access to the saints) and the citys regularchurches, especially the tituli(where Paschal was hoping hemight also appear effectively as such a mediator). This is, strik-ingly, how Leo III had acted just previously when he bothenhanced the altar-grave of Peter at the Vatican and set upprominent reliquary altars at the titulusof S. Susanna and theformer titulus, then deaconry of SS. Nereo e Achilleo.Paschal, Leo IIIs protg,84 must have learned early on howthe intertwining of the temporal and sanctoral liturgies uponthe altars insidethe city offered new opportunities for creat-ing architectural images.

Federico Marazzi has argued that Paschals building pro-gram all but constituted an attempt to set up a new papalcity much as Gregory IV would do in the early 840s whenhe founded Gregoriopolisat the mouth of the Tiber, or as LeoIV would do in the early 850s when he set up the Civitas Leo-niana at the Vatican.85 Indeed, such ambition, even megalo-mania, seems to be an earmark of the Carolingian popes.That Paschals predecessors Leo III and Hadrian I might seekto put their stamp on the city much as Gregory IV and LeoIV put their names on Roman satellite cities, seems to be themessage of the famous Einsiedeln Itinerary, which recentstudy shows was no pilgrims guide, but a more curious andsubtler monument a kind of literary portrait of the city

concocted during the reign Leo III.86 By giving equal weightto the pagan, Antique monuments andthe Christian ones,early and late, the Itinerary re-wrote the city as an integralChristian whole. It pictured a papal city, an entity that injust these years had taken shape politically as well. Duringthe eighth century an autonomous state under papal rule hademerged from the old Byzantine duchy of Rome.87 Thus Isee Paschals building program as an effort by the ruler of thisnew theocracy, the Republic of St. Peter, to make his cityvisible, to use the cult of the saints to give it a shape, and inthe process, to establish his control over Peters people there.

But the control that Paschal sought in this way looks now

to have also comprised a specific, Christian, dogmatic claim no less than a claim to papal primacy. Here I would arguewe might extend to Paschals building program the assess-ment that Erik Thun has made of Paschals political imag-ery in two elaborate cross reliquaries that the pope gave tothe Lateran and stashed inside a cypress wood box commis-sioned by Leo III.88 Although the reliquaries were hiddenaway and seen by very few, Thun found them fascinatingnevertheless for the light they threw on the iconography ofPaschals great public art commissions, namely the mosaics inthe chancels of S. Prassede, S. Maria in Domnica, and S.Cecilia. All these, he argued, implicated a papal doctrine onthe role of images in human salvation that Leo III, Paschalsold protector and papal forbear, had first promoted.

Thun noted that when the Byzantine Emperor Leo Vreinstated Iconoclasm in 815, Pope Leo III (795816) seizedthe chance to magnify himself by castigating the emperor asa heretic and presenting himself as Christendoms one trueorthodox leader, that is, as an iconodule. The Danish scholar

deduced this mainly from study of the iconography of themosaics that Leo installed in his new church, SS. Nereo eAchilleo, a project datable to about 815 and thus framed bythe reopening of the image controversy.89 The decoration,now lost, can be reconstructed from old records: a gemmedcross loomed in the apse conch, Christ Transfigured ap-peared on the apsidal arch directly above the cross, and twoicons of the Virgin enthroned bracketed the composition inthe spandrels. Not only did it explore issues of Gods visibil-ity as the Greek icondules propounded them, said Thun,it also summed up apapaldoctrine on images. Leo claimedto play a role in Gods plan to save humankind, that is, tomediate between the terrestial and the heavenly, the material

81 De Blaauw, Laltare, 988, observed that from the vita of Leo III (c. 4)onward in the LP, the compilers called altars sacred or sacrosanct.

82 Cf. Bauer, La Frammentazione liturgica, 437.83 From the start, the titulus S. Praxediswas eclipsed by the better equip-

ped, nearbytitulus Equitii(later titulus sancti Silvestri et Martini, then S.Martino ai Monti); see Guidobaldi, Lorganizzazione dei tituli.

84 LP100 (V. Paschalis I), c. 2: Leo III early noticed the priest Paschal andmade him abbot of a monastery at the Vatican near St. Peters.

85 Federico Marazzi, Le citt nuove pontificie e linsediamento laziale nelIX secolo in La storia dellAlto Medioevo Italian (VIX secolo) alla lucedellarcheologia = acts of the Convegno Internazionale at Siena, 26dicembre 1992, ed. Riccardo Francovich and Ghislaine Noy (Florence:Edizioni allInsegna del Giglio, 1994), 251277, esp. 264265. ForGregoriopolis, see LP103 (V. Gregorii IV), cc. 3940; for the LeonineCity, see LP105 (V. Leonis IV), cc. 3840 and 6874.

86 Franz Alto Bauer, Das Bild der Stadt Rom in karolingischer Zeit: DerAnonymus Einsiedlensis, Rmische Quatalschrift fr christliche Alter-tumskunde und Kirchengeschichte92 (1997): 190228.

87 Thomas F. X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter, The Birth of the PapalState, 680825(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvnaia Press, 1984).

88 Erik Thun, Image and Relic, Mediating the Sacred in Early MedievalRome(Rome: LErma di Bretschneider, 2002), 166171.

89 Ibid, chap. 6.

62


21/22

and the immaterial, as high priest, indeed as Peters successor,the Christ-appointed binder and looser of matters spiritualon earth. Thus Leo posed, to be sure, as offerer of theeucharist at mass, but also as the main and most efficientprovider of other salvific objects, namely the relics of thesaints (including the wood of the cross) and images (ofChrist and Mary).90 Thun concluded that Paschal, Leosmost assiduous successor, restated this theme emphatically inhis Lateran cross reliquaries and great public mosaic de-corations.91As Leo III had done before him, Paschal I soughtto display himself as pope as the primary (priestly) mediatorof a worshipers access to sacred objects.

Paschal I did not just find new ways to illustrate this papaldogma (in mosaics, say), he found new ways, first at S. Pras-sede, to stage it architecturally as well. In this instance tooPaschal developed and magnified initiatives of his predeces-sor, Leo III.

90 Ibid., 148149, for a pithy summary. The way, during the Early MiddleAges, that the priest took the leading role in eucharistic celebration as thecelebrant among celebrants, already discussed, resonates here; see n. 38above.

91 Ibid., chap. 7.

63


22/22

altars personified pdf1

Documents