Under St. Peter's
IT was early in August, 1944. about two months after the Allied entry into Rome, that I was invited by the Papal authorities to visit the excavations under St. Peter's. These had by now been going on for the past five years. With great courage and scholarly zeal the Pope had taken advantage of the opportunity presented by the wish of his predecessor to be buried in the crypt near to the tomb of Pius X, to make a thorough investigation of the whole area beneath the High Altar of St. Peter's. The truth of the tradition which placed the burial place of the Apostle there was to be tested. I was accompanied by Professor Enrico Josi, and as we entered the excavations by the little door that led from the lower church, it was clear that the excavators had already overcome great engineering as well as archwological difficulties. The working area was very restricted, and almost everywhere obstructed by the foundations of the Constantinian church. There was always some danger of disturbance to the vast masonry of the church above. Dominating the eerie scene was the row of magnificent house-tombs of the second and third centuries which had once flanked the Via Cornelia as it led out of Rome up the slopes of the ancient Mons Vaticanus. Some of these tombs had not yet been cleared completely and it was there- fore possible to look closely at the methods of excavation. To anyone with even slight experience of archleology in this country the result was not altogether reassuring. The dig was untidy where it need not have been. In the tombs where the archaeologists had a fairly clear field, one did not see those carefully dug specimen sections and the labelling of levels that one might expect in an excavation in which stratigraphy was all important. The impression was confusing. All this suggested that the final results might be open to argument and must in any case be treated with some caution. In the circum- stances, the policy of keeping the actual operations to a small circle of Vatican experts was not wise. After the war. there was little reason for failing to call in scholars from else- where, including representatives perhaps of other Christian communions.
This account* as presented by the joint authors fits the need for caution and reserve exactly. Well balanced, lucid and scholarly, and at the same time beautifully illustrated, it describes this immensely complicated excavation in a way which anyone who is interested may follow. The problem of St. Peter's shrine is placed within the context of the site as a whole. It is no accident that half the book is devoted to the tombs of the pagan cemetery. This is an outstanding contribu- tion to the study of the art and beliefs of the middle class in Rome in the second and third centuries, and throws a very interesting light on the gradual penetration of Christianity among them.
When they come to exam* the now famous Aedicula or shrine in the Red Wall in the pagan cemetery they tell the story as it strikes them as scholars and archaeologists. It would be hard to disagree with their views. The evidence seems conclusive that the little shrine that formed the focal point of Constantine's church in honour of St. Peter was built about AD 160-170, and that it had been located in order to mark some particular spot. Moreover, simple inhumation burials near this spot and underlying the later tombs here would appear to date to between AD 80 and 140—quite a time later, however, than the Neronian persecution of 64 in which St. Peter may have perished. There were no inscriptions on these tombs, and they could be those of the poorer classes in Rome or of Jews or of Christians. There is no means at present of saying. What seems to be clear, however, is that by the end of the second century Christians in Rome associated a certain place among the tombs along the Via Cornelia with the death of St. Peter. The shrine they built there may have been the 'trophy' (mean- ing possibly 'cenotaph') on the Vatican to which the Roman presbyter Gaius alluded in his debate with the Montanist Proclus about AD 200. (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History ii. 25.) Further than that the existing evidence does not take us. But even though all the sanguine hopes of those engaged in the investigation have not been fulfilled, the search for new light on the Petrine tradition has been thoroughly rewarding.
• THE SHRINE OF ST. PETER AND THE VATICAN EXCAVATIONS. By Jocelyn Toynbee and John Ward Perkins. (Longmans, 42s.)
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