Old Saint Peter’s, Rome

Edited by rosamond mckitterick,john osborne, carol m. richardson andjoanna story

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Old Saint Peter’s, Rome / edited by Rosamond McKitterick, John Osborne,

Carol M. Richardson and Joanna Story.

pages cm – (British School at Rome studies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-107-04164-6 (hardback)

1. Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano – History. 2. Vatican City – Antiquities. 3. Vatican City –

Buildings, structures, etc. 4. Church architecture – Vatican City. 5. Church history – Middle

Ages, 600–1500. I. McKitterick, Rosamond, 1949– author, editor of compilation. II. Osborne,

John, 1951– author, editor of compilation. III. Richardson, Carol M., 1969– author, editor of

compilation. IV. Story, Joanna, 1970– author, editor of compilation.

NA5620.S9O43 2013

726.50937ʹ63 – dc23 2013013112

ISBN 978-1-107-04164-6 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of

URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,

and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate

or appropriate.

Contents

List of figures [page x]List of plates [xvii]List of tables [xix]List of contributors [xx]Foreword [xxv]

by nigel bakerAcknowledgements [xxvii]List of Abbreviations [xxviii]

Introduction [1]

rosamond mckitterick, john osborne,

carol m. richardson and joanna story

1 Saint Peter’s and the city of Rome between Late Antiquity and the

early Middle Ages [21]

paolo liverani

2 From Constantine to Constans: the chronology of the

construction of Saint Peter’s basilica [35]

richard gem

3 Spolia in the fourth-century basilica [65]

lex bosman

4 The Early Christian baptistery of Saint Peter’s [81]

olof brandt

5 The representation of Old Saint Peter’s basilica in the Liber

Pontificalis [95]

rosamond mckitterick

6 The mausoleum of Honorius: Late Roman imperial Christianity

and the city of Rome in the fifth century [119]

meaghan mcevoy

7 Popes, emperors and clergy at Old Saint Peter’s from the fourth to

the eighth century [137]

alan thackervii

viii Contents

8 The early liturgy of Saint Peter’s and the Roman liturgical

year [157]

peter jeffery

9 Interactions between liturgy and politics in Old Saint Peter’s,

670–741: John the Archcantor, Sergius I and Gregory III [177]

eamonn o carragain

10 A reconstruction of the oratory of John VII (705–7) [190]

antonella ballardini and paola pogliani

11 Old Saint Peter’s and the Iconoclastic Controversy [214]

charles b. mcclendon

12 The Veronica, the Vultus Christi and the veneration of icons in

medieval Rome [229]

ann van dijk

13 The Carolingians and the oratory of Saint Peter

the Shepherd [257]

joanna story

14 Plus Caesare Petrus: the Vatican obelisk and the approach to

Saint Peter’s [274]

john osborne

15 The Legendary of Saint Peter’s basilica: hagiographic traditions

and innovations in the late eleventh century [287]

carmela vircillo franklin

16 The stucco crucifix of Saint Peter’s reconsidered: textual sources

and visual evidence for the Renaissance copy of a medieval silver

crucifix [306]

katharina christa schuppel

17 Saint Peter’s in the fifteenth century: Paul II, the archpriests and

the case for continuity [324]

carol m. richardson

18 Filarete’s renovation of the Porta Argentea at

Old Saint Peter’s [348]

robert glass

19 The altar of Saint Maurice and the invention

of tradition in Saint Peter’s [371]

catherine fletcher

Contents ix

20 Epilogue. A hybrid history: the antique basilica with a modern

dome [386]

bram kempers

Appendix. Letter of the canons of Saint Peter’s to Paul V concerning thedemolition of the old basilica, 1605 [404]

carol m. richardson and joanna storyBibliography [416]Index [467]

The colour plates will be found between pages 34 and 35.

� Introduction

rosamond mckitterick, john osborne,carol m. richardson and joanna story

The Vatican basilica is arguably the most important church in western

Christendom, and it is among the most significant buildings anywhere in

the world (see Frontispiece a). However, the church that is visible today is a

youthful upstart, only four hundred years old in comparison with the twelve

hundred-year-old church whose site it occupies. A very small proportion

of the original is now extant, entirely covered over by the new basilica, but

enough survives to make reconstruction of the first Saint Peter’s possible.

Consolidation, conservation and ongoing exploration of the present basil-

ica and its surroundings, particularly in the past thirty years, have made

available new evidence about its predecessor which has both excited and

perplexed historians, archaeologists and art historians alike.

Built over a protracted period in the fourth century, the first Saint Peter’s

was a huge edifice designed to enclose and enhance that part of the area of

the Vatican hill where the apostle Peter was reputed to have been buried,

just above the Circus of Nero where he had been executed: the huge obelisk

that now stands in front of the new basilica was quite probably the last

thing he saw, albeit, according to later legend, upside down. The basilica

built later in his honour became the focus of western Christendom for more

than a millennium. However, the history of that first building has been

overshadowed by the story of its protracted demolition and replacement

in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This has become primarily an

architectural history, which has distorted and oversimplified a narrative of

competing demands and furious passions. Old Saint Peter’s is assumed to

have been dispensable, a thing of the past that neither satisfied Renaissance

aesthetic sensibilities nor offered suitable spaces for contemporary liturgy.

As a result the importance of the original is often either ignored or taken

for granted, and its history, form and function remain surprisingly unclear,

unconsidered and indeed controversial. But, as this volume demonstrates,

the new basilica was formed by the traditions established by the old, which

were far more enduring than its brick walls and marble colonnades.

In March of 2010, a group of historians, art historians, archaeologists

and liturgists gathered at the British School at Rome to explore aspects of

the basilica’s history, from its physical fabric to the activities that took place 1

2 r. mckitterick, j. osborne, c. m. richardson and j. story

within its walls. The discussion was greatly enriched by the multidisciplinary

perspectives brought to bear on questions new and old, and this volume

brings together many of the papers presented. The chapters in the volume

reconsider existing evidence, present new material for the first time, and

tackle the complex history and historiography of the site.

Tu es Petrus

The history of the first basilica of Saint Peter is the history of the relationship

of the papacy and the city of Rome. In the years after his victory at the Milvian

Bridge in October 312, the Emperor Constantine and members of his family

began to manifest an interest in the shrines of Christian saints and martyrs

that were situated outside Rome’s Aurelian walls. Constantine’s mother,

Helena, was buried in a mausoleum adjoining the large funerary basilica at

the cemetery of Santi Pietro and Marcellino on the Via Labicana, and his

daughter, Constantina, was similarly laid to rest in a basilica-mausoleum

complex adjacent to the tomb of the martyr Agnes on the Via Nomentana.

But the largest of these imperial building projects outside the urban periph-

ery in the first half of the fourth century was the basilica constructed on

the right bank of the Tiber, outside the walls of the city and adjacent to the

abandoned Circus of Nero, to mark the spot in a cemetery on the slope of

the Vatican hill where the body of the apostle Peter was venerated by the

Christian faithful.1 This was no small undertaking and, paradoxically, led

eventually to the disappearance of any obvious physical sign of Saint Peter’s

original burial site. Before building could even begin it was first necessary

to bury the southern portion of the existing necropolis, in order to create

a sizeable platform on which to erect the new structure. Work at the site

continued for many decades, although from the mid-320s onwards Euse-

bius and other writers record the throngs of pilgrims who crossed the river

to visit Rome’s most important shrine. Constantine’s name in golden let-

ters appeared prominently in the inscription placed on the triumphal arch

that terminated the nave,2 and it was not long before important Christians

began to choose this site for their own burial, including the prefect of the

city, Junius Bassus, in the year 359.3

1 P. Liverani and G. Spinola, with P. Zander, The Vatican Necropoles (Turnhout, 2010).2 P. Liverani, ‘Saint Peter’s, Leo the Great and the leprosy of Constantine’, PBSR 76 (2008),

155–72, who disagrees with G. W. Bowersock, ‘Peter and Constantine’, in W. Tronzo (ed.), SaintPeter’s in the Vatican (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 5–15. See also Gem, this volume, 35–64.

3 Life 46, LP, I, 232; E. S. Malbon, The Iconography of the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (Princeton,NJ, 1990), 3–4, 139–40.

Introduction 3

The next century witnessed the dramatic withdrawal of the imperial court

from Rome, with secular power shifting to Constantinople and, within Italy,

to Milan and then Ravenna, as well as the shock occasioned by the attacks

on Rome of first the Goths (in 410) and then the Vandals (in 455).4 The

vacuum created by the loss of imperial patronage was increasingly filled

by the city’s bishop, the pope; and while the papal residence and the city’s

official ‘cathedral’ were located at the Lateran, the importance of Peter as the

‘rock’ on which the Christian Church was to be constructed underpinned

ambitious papal claims to broader spiritual authority. This meant that the

physical location of his earthly remains grew in importance as a site of

authority, as well as a major draw for pilgrims. Significantly, Pope Leo I

(440–61), whose sermons developed the ideology of Peter and Paul replacing

Romulus and Remus as Rome’s special guardians, was the first pontiff to

choose Saint Peter’s as his own place of burial, a practice that has continued

with only a few exceptions until the present day.5 Leo I also established the

first monastery at the site, since its growing importance created a need for

resident clergy.

From the second half of the fifth century onwards, the shrine of Peter

was embellished by a series of significant building projects, all sponsored by

popes. One of Leo’s successors, possibly Simplicius (468–83) or Symmachus

(498–514), constructed a covered ‘porticus’, leading to the basilica from

the bridgehead. Symmachus was also responsible for the addition of a

baptistery, various chapels and fountains, and a series of rooms that the

Liber Pontificalis refers to as episcopia.6 Here Symmachus resided during

the years of the Laurentian schism, when the Lateran was controlled by

his rival Laurentius. Symmachus also rebuilt the atrium and its exterior

staircase. The interior of the basilica underwent a major reorganization

in the time of Gregory I (590–604), who introduced the semi-annular

crypt passage.7 This allowed pilgrims to venerate Peter’s remains without

causing interruption to services at the altar above, a model that subsequently

was copied in a number of other shrine churches across western Europe.

The biographies of Gregory’s successors in the seventh, eighth and ninth

centuries are filled with references to the donations of silk curtains and

altar vestments, glittering mosaics, and liturgical objects of gold and silver.

4 See B. Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford, 2005).5 W. Ullmann, ‘Leo I and the theme of papal primacy’, Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 11

(1960), 25–51, reprinted in his The Church and the Law in the Earlier Middle Ages (VariorumCollected Studies Series 38) (London, 1975).

6 Life 53, LP, I, 262; J. D. Alchermes, ‘Petrine politics: Pope Symmachus and the rotunda of SaintAndrew at Old Saint Peter’s’, Catholic Historical Review 81 (1995), 1–40.

7 CBCR, V, 51–191; Blaauw, CD, 530–4, 632–3.

4 r. mckitterick, j. osborne, c. m. richardson and j. story

Many pontiffs also established subsidiary chapels within the church, replete

with the relics of other saints, and intended to function as the sites of papal

tombs.8 One of the best documented of these is the chapel dedicated to

Mary, constructed against the counter-facade of the basilica at its northern

end by Pope John VII (705–7), and intended as his own funerary chapel.

But, as William Tronzo put it, albeit from the perspective of the inevitability

of the new basilica, ‘medieval Christianity shattered the delicate metaphor

of the fourth century by filling Saint Peter’s with the burgeoning material

apparatus of the religion, the holy objects and bodies that were the focus of

devotion and cult . . . At the same time, it diffused its singular focus on the

altar in the apse and the tomb of Saint Peter.’9 Another way to interpret these

accretions, however, was not as confusion or compromise of the original, but

as the continual organic enrichment of a covered cemetery where the rare

possibility of burial ad sanctos was feasible for only a very fortunate few.10

By the seventh century, pilgrimage to the tombs of the saints had become

a major business, and it is probably no coincidence that the first surviving

guidebook for Christian visitors to Rome, the De Locis Sanctis Martyrum,

appears at almost exactly the same moment that Jerusalem fell to the Arabs,

thus rendering pilgrimage to the Holy Land somewhat more difficult.11

It may also have been about this time that the Egyptian obelisk standing

adjacent to the south flank of the basilica, on the site of Nero’s circus, came to

be interpreted as the tomb of Julius Caesar, possibly to act as a foil to the tomb

of Peter.12 The obelisk was one of three pre-Christian monuments believed

to have been tombs of prominent Romans that medieval pilgrims passed en

8 See, for example, J. Story, J. Bunbury, A. C. Felici, et al., ‘Charlemagne’s black marble: theorigin of the epitaph of Pope Hadrian I’, PBSR 73 (2005), 157–90.

9 W. Tronzo, ‘Introduction’, in Tronzo (ed.), Saint Peter’s in the Vatican (above, n. 2), 2.10 Y. Duval, Aupres des saints, corps et ame: l’inhumation ‘ad sanctos’ dans la chretiente d’Orient et

d’Occident du IIIe au VIIe siecle (Paris, 1988); I. Herklotz, ‘Sepulcra’ e ‘monumenta’ del medievo.Studi sull’arte sepolcrale in Italia (Naples, 2001; first published 1985), 48–56.

11 R. Geyer, O. Cuntz, R. Franceschini, R. Weber, L. Bieler, J. Fraipont and F. Glorie (eds.),Itineraria et Alia Geographica. Itineraria Hierosolymitana. Itineraria Romana. Geographica(CCSL 175) (Turnhout, 1965); Valentini–Zucchetti, I and II for the Sylloges; M. d’Onofrio,Romei e giubilei. Il pellegrinaggio medievale a S. Pietro (350–1350) (Milan, 1999); V. Ortenberg,‘Archbishop Sigeric’s journey to Rome in 990’, Anglo-Saxon England 19 (1990), 197–246;R. B. C. Huygens (ed.), Magister Gregorius: Narracio de Mirabilibus Urbis Romae (Leiden,1970); J. Osborne, The Marvels of Rome (Master Gregorius) (Toronto, 1987); C. Nardello, Ilfascino di Roma nel medioevo. Le meraviglie di Roma di Maestro Gregorio (Rome, 1997; secondedition 2007); D. Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1998); C. Dietz,Wandering Monks, Virgins, Pilgrims: Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World AD 300–800(University Park, PA, 2005); G. Walser, Die Einsiedler Inschriftensammlung und der Pilgerfuhrerdurch Rom (Codex Einsidlensis 326) (Stuttgart, 1987); R. McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past inthe Early Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN, 2006), 35–62.

12 See Osborne, this volume, 274–86.

Introduction 5

route from the Tiber crossing to the basilica. These monuments prefigured

a fourth, greater, tomb, that of Saint Peter himself, and encouraged pilgrims

to contemplate the wider ‘memorial landscape’ of the shrine.

The pilgrims’ path to the obelisk continued into the basilican complex via

the imperial mausolea that lay on its southern flank. As Joanna Story shows,

this route was used in the eighth century and, she argues, formed a via sacra

for the cult of Peter itself. She shows how oratories en route, as described

in a late eighth-century Carolingian manuscript, were patronized by popes

and by the kings of the Franks, especially Charlemagne. The Carolingian

relationship with the basilica was particularly significant and enduring. In

return for their promise to protect the papal territories, Stephen II (752–

7) had declared Saint Petronilla, the purported daughter of Peter him-

self, patroness of the Franks. The westernmost of the two round mausolea

attached to the southern flank of the basilica was rededicated to Petronilla

and embellished with a fresco cycle of the life of Constantine, commis-

sioned by Stephen II’s brother, Paul I (757–67): it was subsequently known

as the Chapel of the Kings of France. Charlemagne himself attended mass

in the rotunda in 773 and his son, Carloman, was baptized there and given

a new name, Pippin, in 781. The chapel of Saint Petronilla later contained

the tombs of Agnes of Aquitaine, wife of the Emperor Henry III (1017–56),

who was crowned with her husband in Saint Peter’s on Christmas Day 1046.

Particularly important in Carolingian Saint Peter’s was the oratory of

Saint Peter the Shepherd, which celebrated the apostle’s pastoral commission

to preach the Gospel and to guard Christ’s flock. This oratory was thus a

key part of the papacy’s claim to authority over the temporal Church, and

complemented the power asserted through its control of the relics of the

apostle. Gifts to the oratory of the Shepherd show that the Carolingian

dynasty understood its doctrinal significance and was able to manipulate

the liturgical topography of the basilica to ensure the eternal presence of the

Carolingian family at the shrine of the apostle.

Saint Peter’s itself, of course, was embellished by successive popes and

the area around the basilica soon became filled with related buildings, not

only monasteries to house the clergy who performed services and provided

pastoral care to the many visitors, but also hospices and hospitals for the

faithful, so many of whom came from the north that the district soon

became known popularly as the ‘burgh’ or ‘borgo’.13 In the ninth century,

following the shock of the Saracen sack of Saint Peter’s in 846, Pope Leo

13 L. Gigli, Rione XIV Borgo (Guide rionale di Roma) (Rome, 1990–4), 15–20; C. J. Goodson, TheRome of Paschal I: Papal Power, Urban Renovation, Church Rebuilding and Relic Translation,817–824 (Cambridge, 2010); F. A. Bauer, Das Bild der Stadt Rom im Fruhmittelalter:

6 r. mckitterick, j. osborne, c. m. richardson and j. story

IV (847–55) enclosed the entire area in a defensive wall that finally brought

the basilica inside the ring of the city walls.14 His ‘Leonine city’ was the

only significant alteration to Rome’s defensive perimeter after the rim of

Aurelian in the late third century. The shrine of Peter had become almost

synonymous with the Christian Church of the Latin rite, and was much too

important to be allowed to remain unprotected.

But the basilica’s continued vulnerability to attack – victim of its signifi-

cance – is made clear by Katharina Christa Schuppel, who reconstructs the

context for a monumental silver cross, one of the many precious objects pre-

sented to the basilica by popes, emperors and kings. The silver cross almost

certainly replaced a golden one given to Saint Peter’s by Leo III (795–816)

but stolen by supporters of the antipope Anacletus II (1130–8) in 1130.

This turbulent period in papal history was the result of tensions between

the pope and Holy Roman Emperor as to which of them had the greater

temporal power. The iconography of the cross marks it as a papal gift and

an assertion of papal primacy, a deliberate gesture as it was displayed in an

area of the basilica associated with the coronation of emperors.

Innocent III (1198–1216) sought to settle the question of papal primacy

once and for all by asserting that the pope was ‘set midway between God

and man, below God but above man’.15 He understood the symbolic power

of Saint Peter’s basilica for his campaign: he had been a canon of the basilica

and, on his election, took the risk of delaying his coronation by almost

two months until 22 February, the feast of Saint Peter’s Chair, when he was

enthroned on the wooden Cathedra Petri believed to have been used by

Peter himself, though in fact a mid-ninth-century artefact, given by the

Frankish king Charles the Bald to Pope John VIII.16 Together, Innocent III

and his cousin, Gregory IX (1227–41), updated the most prestigious and

visible parts of the basilica, the apse and the facade. Innocent III’s portrait

appeared alongside the figure of Ecclesia in the lower portion of the apse

mosaic, declaring in visual form what he preached in his third sermon In

Papststiftungen im Spiegel des Liber Pontificalis von Gregor dem Dritten bis zu Leo dem Dritten(Wiesbaden, 2004).

14 S. Gibson and B. Ward-Perkins, ‘The surviving remains of the Leonine wall’, PBSR 47 (1979),30–57, and ‘The surviving remains of the Leonine wall, part II: the passetto’, PBSR 51 (1983),222–39; J.-C. Picard, ‘Etude sur l’emplacement des tombes des papes du IIIe au Xe siecle’, MAH81 (1969), 725–82; R. Ivaldi, Le mura di Roma: alla ricerca dell’itinerario completo di unmonumento unico al mondo le cui vicende hanno accompagnato la storia millenaria della Cittaeterna (Rome, 2005), 511–39.

15 See the essays in J. M. Powell (ed.), Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World?(Washington, DC, 1994).

16 L. Nees, A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court(Philadelphia, PA, 1991), 147 and 169 (n. 5).

Introduction 7

Consecratione Pontificis – that the pope is the Vicar of Christ, not just the

Vicar of Peter. No longer merely a donor figure, he was depicted literally

between God in the upper part of the mosaic and man in the basilica itself.17

Gregory IX’s mosaic on the facade replaced the apocalyptic scheme of

Leo the Great (440–61) with one that again stressed the papacy’s direct

commission by Christ. In this case the donor-pope was represented kneeling

at Christ’s right.18 The titulus added to the facade mosaic declared that Saint

Peter’s, the Ecclesia Romana, shone like the sun, radiating the authority of

the Church:

As when the heavenly orb of the sun burns, and shines on everything, and gleams

like gold above every other metal, thus, this haven of peace built of stone is filled

with fervor by doctrine and by faith and expands its power everywhere.19

For a period of roughly twelve hundred years, ‘Old’ Saint Peter’s was the

most significant religious site in western Europe, and in terms of archi-

tecture it was the continent’s most influential building.20 Restoration and

embellishment of the already venerable building kept Old Saint Peter’s ‘alive

and up-to-date, but always recognizable, ancient and modern at the same

time’.21 It was also an important site for the development of Christian

liturgy.

As well as a major draw for pilgrims, Saint Peter’s was also a stage on

which many of the most important political dramas of the Middle Ages

were enacted. One of the most ideologically resonant was the coronation of

Charlemagne as emperor on Christmas Day 800.22 At Old Saint Peter’s this

culminated with the coronation of Frederick III in 1452.23 When, in 1530,

17 A. Iacobini, ‘Est haec sacra principis aedes: the Vatican basilica from Innocent III to GregoryIX (1198–1241)’, in Tronzo, Saint Peter’s in the Vatican, 50–1 (above, n. 2).

18 Iacobini, ‘Est haec sacra principis aedes’ (above, n. 17), 60.19 Grimaldi, 163: ‘Ceu sol fervescit sidus super omne nitescit/Et velut est aurum rutillans super

omne metallum/Doctrina atque fide calet et sic pollet ubique/Ista domus petram suprafabricata quietam’; translated in Iacobini, ‘Est haec sacra principis aedes’ (above, n. 17), 61.

20 J. Emerick, ‘Building more romano in Francia during the third quarter of the eighth century:the abbey church of Saint-Denis and its model’, in C. Bolgia, R. McKitterick and J. Osborne(eds.), Rome across Time and Space, c. 500–1400: Cultural Transmission and the Exchange ofIdeas (Cambridge, 2011), 127–50; R. Krautheimer, ‘The Carolingian revival of Early Christianarchitecture’, The Art Bulletin 24 (1942), 1–38, reprinted with a postscript in R. Krautheimer,Studies in Early Christian, Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York, 1969), 203–56;R. Krautheimer, Rome: Profile of a City, 312–1308 (Princeton, 1980); McKitterick, Perceptionsof the Past (above, n. 11), 106 n. 31.

21 Iacobini, ‘Est haec sacra principis aedes’ (above, n. 17), 48.22 See especially the section ‘Renovatio imperii’ in C. Stiegemann and M. Wemhoff (eds.), 799:

Kunst und Kultur der Karolingerzeit. Karl der Große und Papst Leo III. in Paderborn (Mainz,1999), 35–123.

23 See Fletcher and Glass, this volume, 371–85 and 348–70.

8 r. mckitterick, j. osborne, c. m. richardson and j. story

Charles V, the last Holy Roman Emperor to be anointed by the pope, was

crowned in Bologna, a plan of Saint Peter’s had been sent, along with four

canons to provide continuity by proxy, to aid preparations and ensure the

same positions were used by the main protagonists.24

The story of the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s is often traced back to the

poor state into which the old basilica had fallen by the beginning of the

fifteenth century, thanks to the exile of the papacy in Avignon which lasted

from 1304 to 1374. But the Vatican basilica and its attached palace were in

a better condition than many of the other basilicas and churches of Rome,

including the Lateran and San Paolo fuori le mura.25 Earthquakes and civil

strife had all but destroyed other sites while Saint Peter’s survived relatively

well. Despite the absence of the pope throughout most of the fourteenth

century, there were resident clergy at the basilica. The visits and donations

of pilgrims and other devotees continued apace, and cardinals, canons and

bishops continued to be buried at Saint Peter’s. Even the lack of a pope

in Rome could not distract from the pull of the Vatican basilica and the

shrine of the apostle. A particularly important patron was Jacopo Caetani

Stefaneschi (c. 1260–1341), first of all as a canon of Saint Peter’s and then

as a cardinal, who commissioned the huge double-sided altarpiece and the

fresco of the navicella from Giotto, had the tribune redecorated, and much

else besides, spending the huge sum of 2,200 florins.26 Even though he died

in Avignon in 1341, Stefaneschi’s remains were returned to Rome so that

he could be buried in Saint Peter’s.27 The local population also continued

to look after Saint Peter’s, and may have taken advantage of the pope’s

absence to develop a greater presence there. Roman clans, among them the

Stefaneschi, the Tebaldeschi, and, most importantly, the Orsini, appear to

have thought of Saint Peter’s as their own in the same way that the Colonna

held sway at the Lateran. And, as has been suggested for other urban centres

in the Italian peninsula, the Black Death of 1348 did not deprive affected

24 See Appendix, this volume, section 5, 410–13.25 P. Silvan, ‘S. Pietro senza papa: testimonianze del periodo avignonese’, in A. Tomei (ed.), Roma,

Napoli, Avignone: arte di curia, arte di corte 1300–1377 (Turin, 1996), 229–30.26 J. Gardner, ‘The Stefaneschi altarpiece: a reconsideration’, Journal of the Warburg and

Courtauld Institutes 37 (1974), 57–103; B. Kempers and S. de Blaauw, ‘Jacopo Stefaneschi,patron and liturgist: a new hypothesis regarding the date, iconography, authorship andfunction of his altarpiece for Old Saint Peter’s’, Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut teRome n.s. 12–47 (1987), 83–113; M. Lisner, ‘Giotto und die Auftrage des Kardinals JacopoStefaneschi fur Alt-St. Peter: 1. das Mosaik der Navicella in der Kopie des Francesco Beretta’,RJBH 29 (1994), 45–95; M. Lisner, ‘Giotto und die Auftrage des Kardinals Jacopo Stefaneschifur Alt-St. Peter: 2. der Stefaneschi-Altar; Giotto und seine Werkstatt in Rom; das Altarwerkund der verlorene Christuszyklus in der Petersapsis’, RJBH 30 (1995), 59–133.

27 Silvan, ‘S. Pietro senza papa’ (above, n. 25), 229–30.

Introduction 9

areas of patrons but rather increased the amount of money available to be

spent on pious works.28 Even the popes in Avignon continued to pay for the

basilica’s upkeep, especially the roof and campanile, which were damaged

by storms and earthquakes. Then in 1378, with the start of the papal schism,

Saint Peter’s became a particularly valuable propaganda tool: Urban VI was

buried there in a sarcophagus bearing a representation of his receipt of the

keys from Saint Peter himself, a powerful rebuff to his competitor pope in

Avignon (see Fig. 17.2). Indeed, if Saint Peter’s was neglected during the

fourteenth century because the pope resided in Avignon, the pattern merely

mirrored the habits of the previous century, for the papal court had been

largely itinerant since the twelfth century.29

With the return of the papacy to Rome under Martin V in 1420, the

Vatican also became the primary papal residence, making Saint Peter’s the

papal chapel par excellence that it remains today. It was this fact and its

increased symbolic importance that made the resumption of papal patron-

age inevitable, some of it involving single altars, some of it substantial

parts of the architecture. Every one of Martin V’s successors was buried in

the basilica, reviving a tradition that had fallen out of favour in the ninth

century.30

From the middle of the fifteenth century the history of Saint Peter’s

is dominated by the inevitability of the ‘slow (though logical) process of

growth from west to east, from the choir of Nicholas V and Bramante’s

crossing, to Maderno’s nave and Bernini’s colonnade’.31 Important work

by Christof Thoenes and Christoph Frommel has established what can be

known for certain about Nicholas V’s project, described in fulsome terms

by the Florentine humanist Gianozzo Manetti, who captured the pope’s

(suspiciously coherent) deathbed oration.32 Accounts for the years 1452–

4 show that work on a new tribune or choir – for which a number of the

original structures in the area of the apse and transept were demolished –

was at least started and foundations laid. These were captured in Bramante’s

plan (Uffizi 20A, see Fig. 20.1), which laid down his own proposals for a

new domed crossing, firmly establishing the precedent for the subsequent

28 M. Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton, NJ, 1979); but seealso H. B. J. Maginnis, Painting in the Age of Giotto: a Historical Re-evaluation (University Park,PA, 1997).

29 B. Bolton, ‘A new Rome in a small place? Imitation and re-creation in the patrimony of SaintPeter’, in Bolgia et al., Rome across Time and Space (above, n. 20), 305–22.

30 See Richardson, this volume, 324–47.31 C. Thoenes, ‘Renaissance Saint Peter’s’, in Tronzo (ed.), Saint Peter’s in the Vatican (above, n.

2), 89. See also the review of this book in The Art Bulletin 89/1 (2007), 162–4, by L. Bosman.32 Thoenes, ‘Renaissance Saint Peter’s’ (above, n. 31), 65–71.

10 r. mckitterick, j. osborne, c. m. richardson and j. story

rebuilding.33 A substantial part of the old basilica was demolished to make

way for the massive piers required to support the dome. But none of this area

had been carefully documented. When Tiberio Alfarano, Clerico Benefitiato

of Saint Peter’s from 1567, brought together what was remembered of the

old structure in plans (1571, 1576 and 1582) and notes that led to the

important publication in 1582 on which so many of the chapters in this

volume rely, his challenge was enormous.34 There had been no careful

inventory of the kind supervised by Giacomo Grimaldi (1568–1623) in the

first decade of the seventeenth century when the remaining sections of the

old building were torn down.35 This, in large part, explains why details of

even the most important sites in the old basilica, such as the baptistery, are

uncertain.

From the moment of Bramante’s intervention, Saint Peter’s became an

enormous, multidimensional jigsaw puzzle. Its reconstruction in the six-

teenth century is dominated by the story of great Renaissance architects

devising great architectural schemes. The view that the old basilica was

not worth keeping was reinforced by influential authors such as Giorgio

Vasari (1511–74), writing in the middle of the sixteenth century, who had

been born after the demise of the original crossing. He suggests that only

the classical remains had any value, that ‘the temple of the Prince of the

Apostles in the Vatican was not rich except for the columns, bases, cap-

itals, architraves, cornices, doors, and other revetments and ornaments,

which had all been taken from . . . buildings erected earlier with great

magnificence’.36

This neat story has been questioned in recent years.37 It occupies the

domain of architectural history at the expense of all else. Even the canons

of Saint Peter’s who wrote to Paul V in 1605 (in a letter published at the end

of this volume), bemoaning the demolition of what was left of the old nave,

warned that over-emphasis on the architecture had resulted in the loss of

some of the basilica’s most important monuments and altars: Julius II and

his associates had ‘demonstrated that they had more regard for the exterior

33 See Kempers, this volume, 386–403.34 Alfarano, DBVS, xi–xlii.35 R. Niggl, ‘Giacomo Grimaldi (1568–1623): Leben und Werk des Romischen Archaologen und

Historikers’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Munich, 1971).36 Vasari, Lives of the Artists, discussed in D. Kinney, ‘Spolia’, in Tronzo (ed.), Saint Peter’s in the

Vatican (above, n. 2), 16–47.37 B. Kempers, ‘Diverging perspectives – new Saint Peter’s: artistic ambitions, liturgical

requirements, financial limitations and historical interpretations’, Mededelingen van hetNederlands Instituut te Rome 55 (1996), 213–51; L. Rice, ‘La coesistenza delle due basiliche’, inG. Spagnesi (ed.), L’architettura della basilica di San Pietro: storia e costruzione (Rome, 1997),255–60.

Introduction 11

of the structure than for the spiritual and divine cult of the interior’.38 The

chapters that make up this volume bring some of the remaining fragments

back together again, emphasizing in particular the parts that have been

excluded by the predominantly architectural history. As scholars such as

Ann van Dijk and Lex Bosman have demonstrated in recent years, this

reappropriation of the old started as soon as the superstructure of the

old basilica physically disappeared. The reuse of the decorative schemes

of chapels as significant as the oratory of John VII lent the new basilica

and other sites in Rome some of the aura, mystique and raw power of the

original.39

Old Saint Peter’s – new histories

The chapters in this volume are multidisciplinary, representing the fields

of archaeology, art and architectural history, and liturgical history. They

focus in turn on the fabric of Old Saint Peter’s, its relationship with the

city of Rome and the ceremonial and liturgical uses of its spaces. The range

of evidence used by the contributions is as diverse and scattered as the

remains of the basilica itself. The architectural evidence throws into relief

both the sheer ambition of the basilica’s construction and the difficulty

of interpreting the archaeological and documentary material relating to

particular details. Richard Gem reconsiders the fourth-century chronology

of the basilica and the sequence of its construction. Laying out the archi-

tectural, archaeological, epigraphic and narrative sources, he argues that

building work at the Vatican began after Constantine’s victory at the bat-

tle of Chrysopolis in September 324, with the embellishment of the tomb

monument that nevertheless remained for some years within an open air

courtyard. Meanwhile, work began further to the south and east on the mas-

sive platform and foundations of the basilica. During Constantine’s reign,

Gem argues, efforts focused on the construction of the huge nave, which

functioned (in the traditional way) as a meeting place and as a civic work

of high imperial prestige. The decision to arrange space around the tomb

monument within a covered transept was also taken during Constantine’s

38 See Appendix, this volume, 404–15.39 A. van Dijk, ‘The afterlife of an early medieval chapel: Giovanni Battista Ricci and perceptions

of the Christian past in post-Tridentine Rome’, Renaissance Studies 19 (2005), 686–98; A. vanDijk, ‘Reading medieval mosaics in the seventeenth century: the preserved fragments fromPope John VII’s oratory in Old Saint Peter’s’, Word and Image 22 (2006), 285–91; L. Bosman,The Power of Tradition: Spolia in the Architecture of Saint Peter’s in the Vatican (Hilversum,2004).

12 r. mckitterick, j. osborne, c. m. richardson and j. story

reign but it was not completed (by the construction of the apse) until after

the accession of his son Constans (337–50), at which time the atrium was

also built. Gem’s interpretation of the diverse evidence thus offers a novel

solution to the vexed questions regarding the date when construction com-

menced, the length of time that it took to complete this massive building,

and the extent of Constantine’s involvement in the project. In contrast to

Krautheimer, who argued that the complex was built before 333, in perhaps

as little as eight years, Gem’s analysis proposes a chronology of nearer three

decades commencing only after 324, when Constantine had secured victory

in the east.40

The ostentatious use of scarce resources was a key part of imperial dis-

play – at Saint Peter’s as elsewhere. Lex Bosman shows how the majority of

the coloured marble columns used in the fourth-century basilica could in

fact be classed as spolia even before they were reused in the new building

erected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As Bosman proposes,

however, the reuse of building materials in the fourth century, whether

in stockpiles in builders’ yards or embedded in derelict buildings, can be

interpreted in a number of different ways, and not necessarily as a signal

of economic decline or the replacement of classical with Christian antiq-

uity. Continuity with past emperors and comparison with the scale, effect

and ambition of their projects was more important than any thought of

establishing a new Christian aesthetic.

As Olof Brandt demonstrates, it is even uncertain when the baptistery

of Saint Peter’s was built, and where. Brandt deploys both literary and

archaeological information to make a strong case for the baptistery originally

having been an independent building north of the north transept, while

the north transept itself acted as a vestibule for that external structure. A

baptistery inside the basilica, as indicated by the famous sixteenth-century

plan of Alfarano, may have been only a twelfth-century development. Paolo

Liverani, on the other hand, reminds us of the social role of Saint Peter’s

in the urban history of Rome as a whole, not least as a focus for the care

of the poor and for pilgrimage, and the topographical, monumental and

functional consequences for the basilica itself, with new approach roads,

the bridges that connected it to the rest of the city, and the development of

the settlement around it.

The liturgical sources provide a rich resource for investigation both into

the role of Saint Peter’s in promoting particular aspects of the liturgy in the

40 CBCR, V, 276; R. Krautheimer, ‘The building inscriptions and the dates of construction of OldSaint Peter’s: a reconsideration’, RJBH 25 (1989), 22.

Introduction 13

Roman and early medieval Church more widely, and in the performance

of liturgy in Saint Peter’s itself. Eamonn O Carragain considers the liturgi-

cal innovations associated with Saint Peter’s and the degree to which they

reflected liturgical innovations elsewhere in the Christian world, and dis-

cusses the ways in which papal Rome asserted its intellectual and political

independence from imperial Constantinople. He documents, for example,

the introduction from Byzantium in the seventh century of the new feast

of the Annunciation (25 March), which enhanced the importance already

attached to festivities at Saint Peter’s related to Christmas and the birth of

Christ. He explains how a special theological rationale, the ‘Annunciation

of the Lord and his Passion’, was developed for the feast of the Annuncia-

tion to counteract the fact that the feast invariably fell in Lent. He further

suggests that the special mass developed for this feast could have been

inspired also by developments in Gaul (specifically at Tours) in the sixth

and seventh centuries. Another instance is the feast of the Exaltation of the

Cross (14 September), which also originated in Constantinople, but which

is linked in the Liber Pontificalis with the finding of a relic of the Cross by

Pope Sergius I (687–701) in the late seventh century and Pope Sergius’s

explanation for the new feast in terms of an implied ancient Roman cult of

the Cross at Saint Peter’s.

Alan Thacker reconsiders the question of who was responsible for litur-

gical celebration, the administration of the basilica, and the guardianship

of the cults that were housed in Saint Peter’s between the fourth and eighth

centuries. As well as a study of the evidence for the emergence of the

office of the archchantor and liturgical developments that can be associated

with Saint Peter’s in the late seventh and eighth centuries, he considers the

foundational role of the mid-fourth-century custos at Saint Peter’s and his

relations with Pope Liberius and the emperor in particular. The question of

to whom the custos was responsible and how he related to the urban clergy

and the imperial bureaucracy is considered in relation to the changing for-

tunes and eventual disappearance of that bureaucracy, notably during the

period of Pope Symmachus’s residence at the Vatican in the sixth century.

Peter Jeffery explores the possibilities of the office and in particular the

extant evidence for the degree to which the structuring and sequence of

readings during the liturgical year at Saint Peter’s during the eighth century

set a standard for Rome for the biblical readings associated with the office of

the monasteries established to serve the Roman basilicas. He suggests that a

fourfold liturgical year centred on Saint Peter’s began to give way to a new

sequence organized around the twelve months associated with the person

of the pope himself. Carmela Vircillo Franklin recovers the three oldest

14 r. mckitterick, j. osborne, c. m. richardson and j. story

volumes of hagiographic readings from the basilica’s collection, dating to

the end of the eleventh century. These three volumes of the Saint Peter’s

Legendary comprise a compilation of saints’ lives marked for reading in

services. Their production and subsequent annotation between the twelfth

and fourteenth centuries offers a unique insight into the range of creative

activity at Saint Peter’s. Important examples of the books produced within

the basilica’s precincts with increasing impetus from the eleventh century,

they are indicative also of the reform of the basilica’s resident canons in

response to papal dictat that urged a return to the ideals of the early Church

and the ways in which these manuscripts can inform our understanding of

actual liturgical practice in the medieval Church.

Other chapters throw into relief the way in which the popes themselves

appear to have used, even manipulated, Saint Peter’s as a setting for the cel-

ebration and promotion of papal authority. Mosaics, frescoes, tomb monu-

ments and other artefacts movable and immovable are put in their political,

ceremonial and art historical context. With reference to the iconoclastic

controversy, for example, Charles McClendon argues that in the eighth and

ninth centuries Saint Peter’s and the recorded use of many religious images

within the basilica served as a symbol of papal orthodoxy. He reinforces

Eamonn O Carragain’s suggestion that the new chapel of All Saints within

Saint Peter’s offered a visual and liturgical image of the communion of saints

and an eloquent refutation of iconoclasm. This complements Joanna Story’s

analysis of the oratory of Saint Peter the Shepherd, and her discussion of

the use of the basilica and its liturgical fittings as a theatre for the display

of papal power. McClendon stresses, moreover, that the attention lavished

on Saint Peter’s by the popes in the eighth and ninth centuries needs to be

seen in the wider context of rebuilding and decoration of many churches

in Rome, not least the sophisticated use of religious imagery at San Marco

(elucidated by Claudia Bolgia in a seminal article in 2006) and the Roman

revival of Early Christian architecture.41 The numerous surviving fragments

of sculpture and mosaic decoration in the chapel dedicated to Saint Mary

constructed by Pope John VII are studied by Antonella Ballardini and Paola

Pogliani. In later centuries, the chapel of John VII would also house one

of Christianity’s most venerated relics, the ‘Veronica’, as documented by

Ann van Dijk.

In her chapter on a sixteenth-century stucco copy of a twelfth-century

silver cross, Katharina Christa Schuppel offers a tantalizing glimpse into the

riches that once adorned the old basilica. The cross had been melted down to

41 C. Bolgia, ‘The mosaics of Gregory IV at S. Marco, Rome: papal response to Venice,Byzantium, and the Carolingians’, Speculum 81 (2006), 1–34.

Introduction 15

provide materials to make vestments, even though it had survived the Sack

of Rome in 1527, but, until now, it has been unclear what the original object

was, when it was commissioned and where it was located. The fact that the

copy was made at all is suggestive of its significance – although it also makes

its destruction all the more shocking – and its iconography, which includes

Peter and Paul, was a forceful statement of papal primacy over the emperor.

Indeed the crucifix was incorporated into papal and imperial coronations in

the old basilica until at least the twelfth century. The subsequent history of

the coronation ceremonies, particularly of the Holy Roman Emperor, is the

focus of Catherine Fletcher’s chapter, which considers the invention of a late

tradition associating the ceremonies with a specific site, the altar of Saint

Maurice. The significance of Saint Peter’s as a stage for the public expression

of the relationship between pinnacles of secular and religious power in

western Christendom was modified by the separation of sites relevant to

pope and emperor: emphasis on the imperial coronation was subtly shifted

to the altar of Saint Maurice, away from the shrine of Saint Peter, which

was reserved to the popes. The ceremonial function of the central doors

commissioned by Eugenius IV from the Florentine artist Filarete in the

1430s, one of the few monuments from the old basilica transplanted to

perform the same function in the new, is the subject of the contribution by

Robert Glass. The doors also featured in the coronation of emperors, which,

he argues, accounts for their complex iconography, distinguished by rich

textures and luxurious objects.

In her study of the representation of Saint Peter’s basilica in the Liber

Pontificalis, Rosamond McKitterick tackles another major text concerning

the early medieval papacy. She builds on earlier work in which she has

argued that the history of Rome itself was Christianized and reshaped in the

Liber Pontificalis, not just by setting it within a new chronological framework

from the time of Saint Peter, but also by appropriating the original Roman

historiographical genre of serial biography. As Christian and Christianized

Roman history, the Liber Pontificalis was designed to re-orient perceptions

of Rome and its past, and construct the popes as the rulers of Rome, replacing

the emperors. This remarkable text was constantly concerned with the popes

and their claims to political and spiritual status within Rome. The various

functions of Saint Peter’s as one key focus for the stational liturgy, as a venue

for councils, a pilgrimage site, art treasure and holy place, are deployed by

the Liber Pontificalis authors to enhance and promote papal authority, but

many of these were very slow to develop and many were not recorded in the

papal biographies until the eighth and ninth centuries. Yet this extraordinary

text offers a skilful representation and documentation of the essential link

between Saint Peter, prince of the apostles, and his successors in Rome.

16 r. mckitterick, j. osborne, c. m. richardson and j. story

The chapter focuses in particular on the burial places of popes, claimed at

first as part of a narrative strategy but then translated into reality. A proud

tradition emerged with a concentration of burials at Saint Peter’s after an

earlier attempt to establish a papal necropolis on the Via Appia whence

Saint Peter was supposedly translated.

The popes also made Saint Peter’s serve as a papal mausoleum to coun-

teract any imperial mausolea and imperial claims to a special relationship

with the prince of the apostles. It was a move possibly precipitated by the

building of the mausoleum of Honorius, which was later rededicated to

Saint Petronilla. A potential context of competition with the construction

of this imperial mausoleum and its political motivation is elucidated by

Meaghan McEvoy in a complementary chapter to that of McKitterick. She

establishes how potent a symbol of Christian imperial rule this mausoleum

was. Erected most probably to house the remains of the western imperial

family, between 400 and 408, and apparently first used for the astonishingly

lavish burial of the Empress Maria in 407/8, it neatly expresses both the

fifth-century imperial interest in the city of Rome and the imperial function

of religious piety. The mausoleum was part of a concerted programme of

imperial benefactions to Rome’s churches in the fifth century more gener-

ally. McEvoy links the particular proximity of the mausoleum to the basilica

of Saint Peter’s with a desire for association with the apostles in death also

apparent in eastern imperial mausoleum building in the later fourth and

fifth centuries, and suggests that the mausoleum itself needs to be recog-

nized as an important aspect of the Christianization of the imperial office

in Late Antiquity.

Carol M. Richardson takes the story of papal burials started by Rosamond

McKitterick to the end of the fifteenth century. She also locates Nicholas

V’s apparent interventions within the longer trajectory of the career of the

cardinal archpriest, Pietro Barbo, who became Paul II in 1464. Looking

forward, she proposes that the facade of the new basilica, emblazoned with

the name of Paul V, references the entrance into Old Saint Peter’s that had

displayed the name of Paul I (757–67). Thus continuity and tradition are

again found to transcend all other concerns, a theme that Bram Kempers

confirms and transmits to the history of the new church in the last chapter

in the volume. His important, and indeed controversial, reconsideration of

the history of the rebuilding of the basilica has reopened what might have

been presumed to be a closed narrative.42 Here he looks for the point in

the sixteenth century at which the total reconstruction of Saint Peter’s was

42 Kempers, ‘Diverging perspectives’ (above, n. 37).

Introduction 17

first mooted and finds it much later than the papacy of Julius II. Without

the benefit of hindsight, the history of Old Saint Peter’s, its traditions and

physical legacy is brought to a conclusion perhaps more appropriate for such

a significant building, shrine and symbol. The decision to replace did not

come suddenly, but gradually, out of almost a century of restoration. The

implications of Kempers’s argument consolidate one of the implications of

this volume as a whole, that continuity and the preservation of venerable

tradition should balance any sense of ‘convulsive change’ in the history of

the new basilica.43

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Paul V finally decided

that what remained of the old nave should be demolished, the canons of

the basilica wrote begging the pope to reconsider his decision and urging

him to put in place measures that would ensure that Old Saint Peter’s and

what it represented would endure. Their letter is reproduced in transcript

and translation at the end of the volume, but it seems appropriate to end

with their warning as if it were addressed to all those who consider the new

at the expense of the old:

[We beseech you] that all that is possible is maintained of the ancient veneration and

adornment of that church, and [therefore] of the devotion of the people and of all

of Christianity, since it is an example to which all the others turn, . . . the universal

example [in which] one may see things organized and set out to conform to the

sacred ecclesiastical rites and ancient traditions of the Fathers . . . [which]maintain

in the people the ancient devotions written and printed in so many books that are

widespread in all Christendom.

A note about the use of English/Italian names for churchesand basilicas

Saint Peter’s basilica, with its attendant monasteries, chapels and ora-

tories, is referred to throughout by its English name; this includes the

four basilical monasteries that served Saint Peter’s in the eighth century

that were dedicated to Saint Martin, Saints John and Paul, and to Saint

Stephen (twice). Of these monasteries, only Saint Stephen Major survives

and has been known since the late fifteenth century as Santo Stefano degli

Abissini. All other churches and basilicas in Rome are given their Italian

names.

43 Tronzo, ‘Introduction’ (above, n. 9), 3.

18 r. mckitterick, j. osborne, c. m. richardson and j. story

N

Frontispiece a. Stylized plan of Saint Peter’s showing the broad phasing

of the structures.

A note about plans used in this volume

Much of our knowledge of the architecture and liturgical arrangement of

Saint Peter’s basilica is based on a plan that was made by Tiberio Alfarano

Introduction 19

Frontispiece b. Alfarano’s 1590 plan of Saint Peter’s, detail.

in 1571, which shows the old basilica superimposed over the new structure

that eventually replaced it. Alfarano had been a member of the clergy of

the basilica since 1569 and probably had been associated with the church

since the 1540s.44 When he compiled his drawing much of the western

44 Alfarano, DBVS, xii–xiv. On Alfarano’s life and work, see also M. Bury, The Print in Italy1550–1620 (London, 2001), 101–2, no. 63.

20 r. mckitterick, j. osborne, c. m. richardson and j. story

part of the Constantinian basilica had gone, and so for that part he relied

on received wisdom and oral tradition for much of the detail about the

architectural structure and the location of particular oratories. At one level,

therefore, Alfarano provides us with an impressionistic interpretation of

the old basilica rather than a structurally precise ground plan, albeit a well-

informed one. His hand-drawn plan (known as the Ichnographia) survives

in the archive of the Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro, but it is much better

known through the etching made of it by Natale Bonifacio in 1590, which

was supplied with a list of the oratories and altars that corresponds to features

numbered on the plan.45 The etching was also updated with changes made

since the original plan had been drawn, and some architectural features were

not transferred from drawing to etching (for example, the large claustral

complex west of the southern arm of the transept; only a chapel in its

northeast corner was copied on to the 1590 etching with a label that may

have been intended for the whole zone, ‘Monasterium Sancti Martini’).

Alfarano’s plan is iconic and is a seminal source for all studies of Old Saint

Peter’s, but it is not infallible. Scholars have modified some of his data

through examination of a variety of other sources, including early texts and

plans as well as the results of limited excavation of parts of the old basilica –

especially that which was undertaken in the late 1930s and ’40s.46 This

additional information has informed others’ interpretations of the ground

plan of the basilica, and our plans in this volume draw on this extended

historiography.47

The 1590 etching of Alfarano’s plan is reproduced here and it is the

basis for the stylized plan of Saint Peter’s showing the broad phasing of

structures (frontispieces a and b, Plate 1) as well as the detailed figures that

introduce the chapters of this book. Each of these detailed figures focuses

on the section of the basilica under scrutiny in the chapter that follows, and

each one shows the main liturgical elements that are relevant for the period

under discussion. It is hoped that these figures will help readers to navigate

the architectural features and liturgical topography of the basilica.

45 Alfarano, DBVS, xxvii–xxviii, pl. II.46 B. Apollonj Ghetti, A. Ferrua, E. Jossi and E. Kirschbaum, Esplorazioni sotto la confessione di San

Pietro in Vaticano eseguite negli anni 1940–1949, 2 vols. (Vatican City, 1951). See also J. Toynbeeand J. Ward-Perkins, The Shrine of St Peter and the Vatican Excavations (London, 1956).

47 Especially important are: W. N. Schumacher, ‘Das Baptisterium von Alt-St. Peter und seineProbleme’, in O. Feld and U. Peschlow (eds.), Studien zur Spatantiken und Byzantinischen KunstF. W. Deichmann Gewidmet, 3 vols. (Bonn, 1986), I, 215–33; A. Arbeiter, Alt-St. Peter inGeschichte und Wissenschaft, Abfolge der Bauten. Rekonstruktion. Architekturprogramm (Berlin,1988); Blaauw, CD, 451–756.