The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08 - The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation by Unknown
page 79 of 511 (15%)
page 79 of 511 (15%)
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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 Almost all the buildings then standing have been replaced by greater, yet the position is the same, the shrine unchanged, though everything else then existing has faded away, except some portion of the old wall which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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