Part 12

[25] A detailed description of the “Memoria” of Anacletus and the tomb or crypt of S. Peter, the “mother” of all the crypts since constructed, will be found in the following chapter, pp. 106-124.

[26] There was no difficulty raised in the early days of Christianity in getting possession of the bodies of martyrs. The custom of the Roman Government was in every case to give over the bodies of those who had been put to death, to those who had loved them in life. This we see in the case of our Lord when the sacred body was at once given to Nicodemus and the friends of Jesus.

It was only at a later date, when Christianity became a real terror to the Roman Government, that this favour was taken away, and when every effort was made by the authorities to prevent the Christians from obtaining possession of the relics of their martyrs.

[27] It was of this ancient church of Constantine that Bishop Creighton in his eloquent _History of the Papacy_, thus writes of its demolition under Pope Julius II, _circa_ A.D. 1506--

“The basilica of S. Peter’s had been for ages the object of pilgrimage from every land; outside it gleamed with mosaics; inside its pavement was a marvel of mosaic art; its monuments told the history of the Roman Church for centuries. Men may praise at the present day the magnificence of the (New) S. Peter’s; they forget what was destroyed to make room for it. No more wanton or barbarous act of destruction was ever deliberately committed.”

[28] These details have been worked out by Mgr. Barnes in his elaborate and exhaustive work on the _Tomb of S. Peter_, who gives in his scholarly and able book many more particulars of the sacred spot.

No words of praise are sufficient to express the thanks of the historian and archæologist, who is interested in this most famous of Christian sanctuaries, to Mgr. Barnes for his labours here.

[29] Durandus, Bishop of Mende (Mimatensis) in Languedoc--born A.D. 1230 and died A.D. 1296--was a most distinguished Canonist. He filled various ecclesiastical dignities, amongst them the Deanery of Chartres, and was largely consulted by the popes of his time. In later life he declined the archbishopric of Ravenna. He was the author of various works which had an enduring success. Amongst these the _Rationale_ above quoted, a vast and exhaustive compilation, is the best. During the early years of printing, this, the greatest of mediæval liturgical treatises, was printed and reprinted more often than any book (excepting, of course, the Holy Scriptures). It is computed that more than ninety printed editions in different languages of the _Rationale_ appeared between the second half of the fifteenth century and the close of the seventeenth.

Viollet le Duc, in his _Dict. de l’Architecture_ (“Architecture”), thus sums up his estimate of the _Rationale_: “Que l’on ne saurait trop lire et méditer, lorseque qu’on veut connaitre le moyen age catholique.”

Dom Guéranger of Solesmes calls it “le dernier mot du age sur le mystique du culte divin.”

[30] The etymological difficulty suggested by Lightfoot can hardly be pressed, considering the very free and rough way in which the Latin tongue was treated at a comparatively early date in the story of the Roman Empire, when grammar, spelling and prosody were frequently more or less disregarded, save in highly cultured circles. This striking disregard of all rules is very conspicuous in the numberless inscriptions and epitaphs found in the Roman Catacombs.

The early entries in the so-called _Liber Pontificalis_ show the same utter disregard of grammar and spelling.

Transcriber’s Notes.

Italic text is indicated with _underscores_, bold text with =equals=. Small/mixed capitals have been replaced with ALL CAPITALS.

Evident typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected silently. Inconsistent spelling/hyphenation has been normalised.

The usage of Jumiéges (Jumièges) and Sant (Sant’) is the author’s.

A new sub-heading “Norman-Romanesque” has been introduced at page 33 to reflect the table of contents.

Half-titles and reiterations of chapter titles have been discarded.

End of page footnotes have been sequentially numbered and relocated to the end of the book.

Index references to “note” have been modified to include the relevant note number.

At the index entry for Diaconus, a duplicate footnote reference (19 note) has been discarded.

Illustration captions have been relocated between paragraphs.