"S. Stefano Rotondo exhibits, in a series of pictures all round the church, the martyrdoms of the Christians in the so-called persecutions, with a general picture of the most eminent martyrs since the triumph of Christianity. No doubt many of the particular stories thus painted will bear no critical examination; it is likely enough, too, that Gibbon has truly accused the general statements of exaggeration. But this is a thankless labour, such as Lingard and others have undertaken with regard to the St.

Bartholomew massacre, and the Irish massacre of 1642. Divide the sum total of reported martyrs by twenty,--by fifty, if you will,--but after all you have a number of persons of all ages and sexes suffering cruel torments and death for conscience' sake and for Christ's, and by their sufferings manifestly, with God's blessing, ensuring the triumph of Christ's gospel. Neither do I think that we consider the excellence of this martyr-spirit half enough. I do not think pleasure is a sin: the stoics of old, and the ascetic Christians since, who have said so (see the answers of that excellent man, Pope Gregory the Great, to Augustine's questions, as given at length by Bede), have, in saying so, outstepped the simplicity and wisdom of Christian truth. But, though pleasure is not a sin, yet surely the contemplation of suffering for Christ's sake is a thing most needful to us in our days, from whom, in our daily life, suffering seems so far removed.

And, as God's grace enabled rich and delicate persons, women, and even children, to endure all extremities of pain and reproach in times past, so there is the same grace no less mighty now, and if we do not close ourselves against it, it might in us be no less glorified in a time of trial. And that such times of trial will come, my children, in your times, if not in mine, I do believe fully, both from the teaching of man's wisdom and of God's. And therefore pictures of martyrdom are, I think, very wholesome--not to be sneered at, nor yet to be looked on as a mere excitement,--but as a sober reminder to us of what Satan can do to hurt, and what God's grace can enable the weakest of His people to bear. Neither should we forget those who, by their sufferings, were more than conquerors, not for themselves only, but for us, in securing to us the safe and triumphant existence of Christ's blessed faith--in securing to us the possibility, nay, the actual enjoyment, had it not been for the Antichrist of the priesthood--of Christ's holy and glorious ?????s?a, the congregation and commonwealth of Christ's people."--_Arnold's Letters._

"On croit que l'eglise de Saint-Etienne-le-Rond est batie sur l'emplacement du _Macellum Augusti_. S'il en est ainsi, les supplices des martyrs, hideusement representes sur les murs de cette eglise, rappellent ce qu'elle a remplace."--_Ampere, Emp._ i.

270.

The first chapel on the left, dedicated to SS. Primus and Felicianus, contains some delicate small mosaics.

"The mosaics of the small altar of S. Stefano Rotondo, are of A.D.

642--649. A brilliantly-decorated cross is represented between two standing figures of St. Primus and St. Felicianus. On the upper end of the cross (very tastefully introduced) appears a small head of Christ with a nimbus, over which the hand of the Father is extended in benediction."--_Kugler._

In the next chapel is a very beautiful tomb of Bernardino Capella, Canon of St. Peter's, who died 1524.

In a small house, which formerly stood among the gardens in this neighbourhood, Palestrina lived and wrote.

"Sous le regne de Paul IV., Palestrina faisait partie de la chapelle papale; mais il fut oblige de la quitter, parce-qu'il etait marie. Il se retira alors dans une chaumiere perdue au milieu des vignes du Mont Clius, et la, seul, inconnu au monde, il se livra, durant de longs jours, a cette extase de la pensee qui agrandit, au-dela de toute mesure, la puissance creatrice de l'homme. Le desir des Peres du concile lui ayant ete manifeste, il prit aussitot une plume, ecrivit en tete de son cahier, 'Mon Dieu, eclairez-moi,' et se mit a l'uvre avec un saint enthousiasme.

Ses premiers efforts ne repondirent pas a l'ideal que son genie s'etait forme; mais peu a peu ses pensees s'eclaircirent, et les flots de poesie qui inondaient son ame, se repandirent en melodies touchantes. Chaque parole du texte retentissait clairement, allait chercher toutes les consciences, et les exaltait dans une emotion commune. La _messe du pape Marcel_ trancha la question; et Pie IV.

s'ecria, apres l'avoir entendue, qu'il avait cru assister aux concerts des anges."--_Gournerie, Rome Chretienne_, ii. 195.

Following the lane of S. Stefano Rotondo--skirted by broken fragments of Nero's aqueduct--almost to its debouchment near St. J. Lateran, and then turning to the left, we reach the quaint fortress like church and convent of the _Santi Quattro Incoronati_ crowned by a stumpy campanile of 1112. The full title of this church is "I Santi quattro Pittori Incoronati e i cinque Scultori Martiri," the names which the Church attributes to the painters being Severus, Severianus, Carpoforus, and Vittorinus; and those of the sculptors Claudius, Nicostratus, Sinforianus, Castorius, and Simplicius,--who all suffered for refusing to carve and paint idols for Diocletian. Their festa is kept on Nov. 8.

This church was founded on the site of a temple of Diana by Honorius I., A.D. 622; rebuilt by Leo IV. A.D. 850; and again rebuilt in its present form by Paschal II., who consecrated it afresh in A.D. 1111. It is approached through a double court, in which are many ancient columns,--perhaps remains of the temple. Some antiquaries suppose that the church itself was once of larger size, and that the pillars which now form its atrium were once included in the nave. The interior is arranged on the English plan with a triforium and a clerestory, the triforium being occupied by the nuns of the adjoining convent. The aisles are groined, but the nave has a wooden ceiling. Behind the tribune is a vaulted passage, partly subterranean. The tribune contains a marble throne, and is adorned with frescoes by _Giovanni di San Giovanni_.[168] In the right aisle are preserved some of the verses of Pope Damasus. Another inscription tells of the restoration of the church in the fifteenth century, and describes the state of desolation into which it had fallen.

"Haec quaecumque vides veteri prostrata ruina Obruta verberis, ederis, dumisque jacebant."

Opening out of the court in front of the church is the little _Chapel of S. Sylvestro_, built by Innocent II. in 1140. It contains a series of very curious frescoes.

"Showing the influence of Byzantine upon Roman art is the little chapel of S. Silvestro, detailing the history of the conversion of Constantine with a navete which, with the exception of a certain dignity in some of the figures, constitutes their sole attraction.

They are indeed little better than Chinese paintings; the last of the series, representing Constantine leading Pope Sylvester's horse by the bridle, walking beside him in his long flowing robe, with a chattah held over his head by an attendant, has quite an Asiatic character."--_Lord Lindsay's Christian Art._

"Here, as in so many instances, legend is the genuine reflex, not of the external, but the moral part of history. In this series of curious wall-paintings, we see Constantine dismissing, consoled and laden with gifts, the mothers whose children were to be slaughtered to provide a bath of blood, the remedy prescribed--but which he humanely rejected--for his leprosy, his punishment for persecuting the Church while he yet lingered in the darkness of paganism; we see the vision of St. Peter and St. Paul, who appear to him in his dreams, and prescribe the infallible cure for both physical and moral disease through the waters of baptism; we see the mounted emissaries, sent by the emperor to seek St. Sylvester, finding that pontiff concealed in a cavern on Mount Soracte; we see that saint before the emperor, exhibiting to him the authentic portraits of the two apostles (said to be still preserved at St. Peter's), pictures in which Constantine at once recognises the forms seen in his vision, assuming them to be gods entitled to his worship; we see the imperial baptism, with a background of fantastic architecture, the rite administered both by immersion (the neophyte standing in an ample font) and affusion; we see the pope on a throne, before which the emperor is kneeling, to offer him a tiara--no doubt the artist intended thus to imply the immediate bestowal of temporal sovereignty (very generally believed the act of Constantine in the first flush of his gratitude and neophyte zeal) upon the papacy; lastly, we see the pontiff riding into Rome in triumph, Constantine himself leading his horse, and other mitred bishops following on horseback. Another picture--evidently by the same hand--quaintly represents the finding of the true cross by St.

Helena, and the miracle by which it was distinguished from the crosses of the two thieves,--a subject here introduced because a portion of that revered relic was among treasures deposited in this chapel, as an old inscription, on one side, records. The largest composition on these walls, which completes the series, represents the Saviour enthroned amidst angels and apostles. This chapel is now only used for the devotions of a guild of marble-cutters, and open for mass on but one Sunday--the last--in every month."--_Hemans Mediaeval Christian Art._

In the fresco of the Crucifixion in this chapel an angel is represented taking off the crown of thorns and putting on a real crown, an incident nowhere else introduced in art.

The castellated Convent of the Santi Quattro was built by Paschal II. at the same time as the church, and was used as a papal palace while the Lateran was in ruins, hence its defensive aspect, suited to the troublous times of the anti-popes. It is now inhabited by Augustinian Nuns.

At the foot of the Clian beneath the Incoronati, and in the street leading from the Coliseum to the Lateran, is the _Church of S.

Clemente_, to which recent discoveries, have given an extraordinary interest.

The upper church, in spite of modernizations under Clement XI. in the last century, retains more of the details belonging to primitive ecclesiastical architecture than any other building in Rome. It was consecrated in memory of Clement, the fellow-labourer of St Paul, and the third bishop of Rome, upon the site of his family house. It was already important in the time of Gregory the Great, who here read his thirty-third and thirty-eighth homilies. It was altered by Adrian I. in A.D. 772, and by John VIII. in A.D. 800, and again restored in A.D. 1099 by Paschal II., who had been cardinal of the church, and who was elected to the papacy within its walls. The greater part of the existing building is thus either of the ninth or the twelfth century.

At the west end a porch supported by two columns, and attributed to the eighth century, leads into the _quadriporticus_, from which is the entrance to the nave, separated from its aisles by sixteen columns evidently plundered from pagan buildings. Raised above the nave and protected by a low marble wall is the _cancellum_, preserving its ancient pavement, ambones, altar, and episcopal throne.

"In S. Clemente, built on the site of his paternal mansion, and restored at the beginning of the twelfth century, an example is still to be seen, in perfect preservation, of the primitive church; everything remains in statu quo--the court, the portico, the cancellum, the ambones, paschal candlestick, crypt, and ciborium--virgin and intact; the wooden roof has unfortunately disappeared, and a small chapel, dedicated to St. Catherine, has been added, yet even this is atoned for by the lovely frescoes of Masaccio. I most especially recommend this relic of early Christianity to your affectionate and tender admiration. Yet the beauty of S. Clemente is internal only, outwardly it is little more than a barn."--_Lord Lindsay._

On the left of the side entrance is the Chapel of the Passion, clothed with frescoes of _Masaccio_, which, though restored, are very beautiful--over the altar is the Crucifixion, on the side walls the stories of St. Clement and St Catherine.

"The celebrated series relating to St. Catherine is still most striking in the grace and refinement of its principal figures:

"1. St. Catherine (cousin of the Emperor Constantine) refuses to worship idols.

"2. She converts the empress of Maximin. She is seen through a window seated inside a prison, and the empress is seated outside the prison, opposite to her, in a graceful listening attitude.

"3. The empress is beheaded, and her soul is carried to heaven by an angel.

"4. Catherine disputes with the pagan philosophers. She is standing in the midst of a hall, the forefinger of one hand laid on the other, as in the act of demonstrating. She is represented fair and girlish, dressed with great simplicity in a tunic and girdle,--no crown, nor any other attribute. The sages are ranged on each side, some lost in thought, others in astonishment, the tyrant (Maximin) is seen behind, as if watching the conference, while through an open window we behold the fire kindled for the converted philosophers, and the scene of their execution.

"5. Catherine is delivered from the wheels, which are broken by an angel.

"6. She is beheaded. In the background three angels lay her in a sarcophagus on the summit of Mount Sinai."--See _Jameson's Sacred Art_, p. 491.

"'Masaccio,' says Vasari, 'whose enthusiasm for art would not allow him to rest contentedly at Florence, resolved to go to Rome, that he might learn there to surpass every other painter.' It was during this journey, which, in fact, added much to his renown, that he painted, in the Church of San Clemente--the chapel which now so usually disappoints the expectations of the traveller, on account of the successive restorations by which his work has been disfigured.... The heavy brush which has passed over each compartment has spared neither the delicacy of the outline, the roundness of the forms, nor the play of light and shade: in a word, nothing which constitutes the peculiar merit of Masaccio."--_Rio, Poetry of Christian Art._

At the end of the right aisle is the beautiful tomb of Cardinal Rovarella, ob. 1476. A statue of St. John the Baptist is by Simone, brother of Donatello. Beneath the altar repose the relics of St.

Clement, St. Ignatius of Antioch--martyred in the Coliseum, St. Cyril, and St. Servulus.

"'The Fathers are in dust, yet live to God:'

So says the Truth; as if the motionless clay Still held the seeds of life beneath the sod, Smouldering and struggling till the judgment-day.

"And hence we learn with reverence to esteem Of these frail houses, though the grave confines: Sophist may urge his cunning tests, and deem That they are earth;--but they are heavenly shrines."

_J. H. Newman_, 1833.

"St. Gregoire raconte que de son temps on voyait dans le vestibule de l'eglise Saint Clement un pauvre paralytique, priant et mendiant, sans que jamais une plainte sortit de sa bouche, malgre les vives douleurs qu'il endurait. Chaque fidele lui donnait, et le paralytique distribuait a son tour, aux malheureux ce qu'il avait recu de la compassion publique. Lorsqu'il mourut, son corps fut place pres de celui de Saint Clement, pape, et de Saint Ignace d'Antioche, et son nom fut inscrit au martyrologe. On le venere dans l'Eglise sous le nom de Saint Servulus."--_Une Chretienne a Rome._

The mosaics in the tribune are well worth examination.

"There are few Christian mosaics in which mystic meaning and poetic imagination are more felicitous than in those on the apse of S.

Clemente, where the crucifix, and a wide-spreading vine-tree (allusive to His words, who said 'I am the True Vine'), spring from the same stem; twelve doves, emblems of the apostles, being on the cross with the Divine Sufferer; the Mother and St. John beside it, the usual hand stretched out in glory above, with a crown; the four doctors of the Church, also other small figures, men and birds, introduced amidst the mazy vine-foliage; and at the basement, the four mystic rivers, with stags and peacocks drinking at their streams. The figure of St. Dominic is a modern addition. It seems evident, from characteristics of style, that the other mosaics here, above the apsidal arch, and at the spandrils, are more ancient, perhaps by about a century; these latter representing the Saviour in benediction, the four Evangelic emblems, St. Peter and St. Clement, St. Paul and St. Laurence seated; the two apostles designated by their names, with the Greek 'hagios' in Latin letters. The later art-work was ordered (see the Latin inscription below) in 1299, by a cardinal titular of S. Clemente, nephew to Boniface VIII.; the same who also bestowed the beautiful gothic tabernacle for the holy oils, with a relief representing the donor presented by St. Dominic to the Virgin and Child--set against the wall near the tribune, an admirable, though but an accessorial, object of mediaeval art."--_Hemans' Mediaeval Art._

From the sacristy a staircase leads to the _Lower Church_ (occasionally illuminated for the public) first discovered in 1857. Here, there are several pillars of the rarest marbles in perfect preservation, and a very curious series of frescoes of the eighth and ninth centuries, parts of which are still clear and almost uninjured. These include--the Crucifixion, with the Virgin and St. John standing by the cross,--the earliest example in Rome of this well-known subject; the Ascension, sometimes called by Romanists (in preparation for their dogma of 1870), "the Assumption of the Virgin," because the figure of the Virgin is elevated above the other apostles, though she is evidently intent on watching the retreating figure of her divine Son--in this fresco the figure of a pope is introduced (with the square nimbus, showing that it was painted in his lifetime), and the inscription "Sanctissimus dominus, Leo Papa Romanus," probably Leo III. or Leo IV.; the Maries at the sepulchre; the descent into Hades; the Marriage of Cana; the Funeral of St. Cyril with Pope Nicholas I. (858--67) walking in the procession; and, the most interesting of all--probably of somewhat later date, the story of S. Clemente, and that of S. Alexis, whose adventures are described in the account of his church on the Aventine. An altar of Mithras was discovered during the excavations here. Beneath this crypt is still a third structure, discovered 1867,--probably the very house of St. Clement,--(decorated with rich stucco ornament)--sometimes supposed to be the 'cavern near S. Clemente' to which the Emperor Otho III., who died at the age of twenty-two, retired in A.D. 999 with his confessor, and where he spent fourteen days in penitential retirement.

According to the Acts of the Martyrs, the Prefect Mamertinus ordered the arrest of Pope Clement, and intended to put him to death, but was deterred by a tumult of the people, who cried with one voice, "What evil has he done, or rather what good has he not done?" Clement was then condemned to exile in the Chersonese, and Mamertinus, touched by his submission and courage, dismissed him with the words--"May the God you worship bring you relief in the place of your banishment."

In his exile Clement received into the Church more than two hundred Christians who had been waiting for baptism, and miraculously discovered water for their support in a barren rock, to which he was directed by a Lamb, in whose form he recognised the guidance of the Son of God. The enthusiasm which these marvels excited led Trajan to send executioners, by whom he was tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea. But his disciples, kneeling on the shore, prayed that his relics might be given up to them, when the waves retired, and disclosed a marble chapel, built by unearthly hands--over the tomb of the saint. From the Chersonese the remains of St. Clement were brought back to Rome by St. Cyril, the Apostle of the Slavonians, who, dying here himself, was buried by his side.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE AVENTINE.

Jewish Burial-ground--Sta. Sabina--S. Alessio--The Priorato--Sta.

Prisca--The Vigna dei Gesuiti--S. Sabba--Sta. Balbina.