What pilgrims come to see in Rome is not only works of art, but also the legacy of the Apostles.
Pilgrimage to Rome, in addition to visiting the great basilicas to obtain indulgences, offers the opportunity to enjoy an exceptional artistic and historical heritage. However, there is one visit that holds paramount importance for the Catholic, although it does not dazzle as much as the profusion of marble, gold and mosaics that adorn the Eternal City. It is the Vatican Necropolis.
The visitor is led under St. Peter’s Basilica, beneath the crypt known as the Vatican Grottoes, to explore the remains of an ancient necropolis. These stones, these masonries, but also those few preserved frescoes really speak only to the specialist. But during the visit, a conduit is pointed out, at the end of which a lighted lamp can be distinguished near a red wall. A little later, a small column embedded in a masonry is bound to attract attention. Finally, one comes to a wall perforated by an irregular opening, covered with graffiti. In the opening one can make out, if one has a good eye, some Plexiglas boxes. If the tourist is puzzled, the faithful, on the other hand, kneel down and chant “Tu es Petrus”: these are the relics of the Prince of the Apostles. By venerating these sacred remains, one honors not only the person of the fisherman from Galilee, but also the divine institution of the supreme pontificate in the Church.
The tradition of the presence of St. Peter’s relics in the Vatican had been challenged by Protestants, and no excavation attempt had been completed, perhaps for fear of finding nothing and fueling mockery. It was when Pope Pius XI died, having asked to be buried as close as possible to The Altar of the Confessio of the Vatican basilica, that digging began, not to excavate, but to erect the monument. Rather quickly a burial chamber richly decorated with frescoes was discovered. Providence beckoned to continue.
Pope Pius XII found in George Strake, an American who had providentially made his fortune from oil, a benefactor willing to finance long and uncertain work that had to remain confidential. Excavations were conducted in two campaigns, in the 1940s and 1950s. From what was discovered, and from other studies, some elements of the history of the Apostle’s relics can be drawn.
Upon his death, “a victim of unjust jealousy” according to Pope St. Clement, crucified upside down in the circus of the emperor’s Vatican residence, Peter was buried in the nearby necropolis located on Vatican Hill. No doubt the faithful discreetly honored his burial.
A modest monument was erected in the mid-2nd century, a red wall–the one that still stands out during the visit–perforated by two niches, a tablet supported by two small columns, one of which is still visible. St. Peter’s remains were buried under this monument, called the “trophy of Gaius” because a priest by that name mentions around 200 the “trophies” (monuments) of Apostles Peter and Paul in Rome.
It seems established that in the mid-3rd century, during the persecution of Valerian, the relics were exhumed and moved to the Catacomb of St. Sebastian to avoid desecration. The countless graffiti visible there attest to a special cult of the two Apostles. The relics of St. Peter were brought back to the Vatican at the latest with the advent of Constantine, but placed no longer in the cavity beneath the trophy of Gaius, but as a precaution in a thick wall built along the aedicule, wrapped in rich fabric and sealed. The presence of the relics in this wall seems to have been known, for it is covered with graffiti whose meaning, deciphered in the 20th century, is clearly Christian.
Emperor Constantine then had a mausoleum built around the aedicule to honor St. Peter, and the first basilica dedicated to the Apostle. It was sacked by the Goths in the 6th century, but at the end of the same century, St. Gregory the Great had an altar erected over the monument and the floor of the basilica raised. The same operation was renewed by Callistus II in the 12th century. In the 16th century, the complete reconstruction of the basilica was undertaken and completed in 1612 under Paul V. The floor was finally raised 3 meters above that of Constantine’s basilica, but the altar is located exactly vertical to the first funerary monument of the Apostle.
The visitor approaching the Confessio sees at the level of the Vatican grottoes a niche adorned with a mosaic of the Savior, slightly off center from the axis of symmetry of the whole. The wall adorned with a lamp that causes the displacement is the one containing the Apostle’s relics.
It is this place that is surrounded by the devotion of the Church: not only the faithful, but also the authorities: for example, the pallium, the proper insignia of archbishops, rests one night in a box in this niche, next to the relics of St. Peter, before it is solemnly handed over to the new archbishops on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
The worship of relics does not prevent God from being the God, not of the dead, but of the living.
Bibliography:
John O’Neil: The Fisherman’s Tomb, Artège, 2020.
Margherita Guarducci: Saint Peter rediscovered, Saint-Paul, 1975.
Source: La Porte Latine
