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The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08 - The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation by Unknown
page 79 of 511 (15%)
recent centuries, the name of St. Peter has been identified. The earlier
church was full of riches and of great associations, to which the
wonderful St. Peter's we all know can lay claim only as its successor and
supplanter. With its flight of broad steps, its portico and colonnaded
façade crowned with a great tower, it dominated the square, open and
glowing in the sun, without the shelter of the great existing colonnades
or the sparkle of the fountains.

Behind was the little palace begun by Innocent III, to afford a shelter
for the popes in dangerous times, or on occasion to receive the foreign
guests whose object was to visit the shrine of the apostles. Almost
all the buildings then standing have been replaced by greater, yet the
position is the same, the shrine unchanged, though everything else then
existing has faded away, except some portion of the old wall which
enclosed this sacred place in a special sanctity and security, which was
not, however, always respected. The Borgo was the holiest portion of all
the sacred city. It was there that the blood of the martyrs had been
shed, and where from the earliest age of Christianity their memory and
tradition had been preserved. It was not necessary for us to enter into
the question whether St. Peter ever was in Rome, which many writers have
laboriously contested. So far as the record of the Acts of the Apostles
is concerned, there is no evidence at all for or against, but tradition
is all on the side of those who assert it. The position taken by Signor
Lanciani on this point seems to us a very sensible one. "I write about
the monuments of ancient Rome," he says, "from a strictly archaeological
point of view, avoiding questions which pertain, or are supposed to
pertain, to religious controversy.

"For the archaeologist the presence and execution of SS. Peter and Paul in
Rome are facts established beyond a shadow of doubt by purely monumental
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