Old Saint Peter’s, Rome
Edited by rosamond mckitterick,john osborne, carol m. richardson andjoanna story
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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
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
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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.