Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1896 — FOUNDING OF ST. PETER’S. [ARTICLE]

FOUNDING OF ST. PETER’S.

A Little Oratory Built Over the Apostle's Tomb. tn the "’deep Mamertine prison, behind the Tabulary of the Forum, it was customary'to put to death only political misdoers; and their bodies- were then thrown down the Gembnian steps. "Vixeriint," said Cicero, grimly, when CaJtiiille and"his fellow cpissplraftWlay there dead; and perhaps: the sword that, was to fall upon his own neck was even then forged. The prison is still intact. The blood of Cataline, of Vercingetorixj and of Sejnnus is on the rocky floor. Men say that St. Peter wa/ imprisoned here. But because he was not of high .degree Nero’s executioners led him out and across the Forum and over * the Sriblician bridge up to the heights of Janiculus. He was then very old and weak, so that he could not carry his cross, as condemned men were made toj do. When they had climbed more than half-way up the height, seeing that,he could not walk much farther, they crucified him- He said that he was not worthy to suffer as the Lord had suffered, and begged them to plant his cross with the head downward in the deep yellow sand. The executioners did so. The Christians who had followed were not many, and they stood apart, weeping. When he was dead, after much torment, and the sentinel soldier had gone away, they took the holy body, and carried it along the hillside, and buried it at night close against the long wall of Nero’s circus, on the north side, near the place where they buried the martyrs killed daily by Nero’s wild beasts arid in other cruel ways. They marked the spot, and went there often to pray. After that, within two years, Nero fell and perished miserably, scarcely able to take his own life in order to escape being beaten to death in the Forum. In little more than a year there were four emeprors in Rome. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius followed one ariother quickly; then came Vespasian, and then Titus, with his wars in Palestine, and then Domitian. At last, nearly thirty years after the apostle, had died on the Janiculus, there was a bishop called Anacletus, who had bedit.ordained priest by St. Peter himself; The times being quieter then, this Anacletus built a little oratory, it very small chapel, in which three or four persons could kneel and pray over the grave. And that was the beginning of St. Peter’s Church. But Anacletus died a martyr, too, and the bishops after him all perished in the same way jip to Eutychlanus, whose name means something like ‘the fortunate one” in barbarous Greek-Latin, and who was indeed fortunate, for he died a natural death. But in the meantime certain Greeks had tried to steal the holy body, so that the Roman Christians carried it away for nineteen months to the catacombs of St. Sebastian, after which they brought it back again and laid It in its place. And again after that, when the new circus was built by Elagabalus, they took it once more to the same catacombs, where it remained in safety for a long time. Now came Constantine, in love with religion and inclined'to think Christianity best, and made a farpous edict in Milan. And it is said that he laid the deep foundations of the old church of St. PeteFs, whjch afterward stood more than eleveii hundred years. He built it over the little oratory of Anacletus, whose chapel stood where the saint's body had lain, under the nearest left-hand pillar of the canopy that covers the high altar as you go pp from,the door. Constantine’s church was found on the south side, within the lines of Nero’s circus, outside of it on the north side, and parallel with its length. Most churches are built with the apse to the east, but Constantine’s, like the present basilica, looked west, because from time immemorial the Bishop of Rome, when consecrating, stood on the farther side of the altar from the people, facing them over it. And the church was consecrated by Pope Sylvester 1., in the year 326.—Century.