Power of Sacred Places

I remember reading some years ago in an Atlantic Monthly about the fuss that kicked up when Padre Antonio Ferrua, a Catholic “grand old man of Christian archaeology” and “known for his intellectual rigor and remarkable scientific output”, announced that after years of searching, the bones of St. Peter were simply not to be found underneath the nave of the Vatican as the Church had always maintained. To counter this “definitive” finding, the Church brought in Margherita Guarducci, an eminent classical epigraphist and another fervent Catholic and she proceeded to “find” evidence from inscriptions that supported the Church’s teaching—that indeed, St Peter’s bones were there. The article described the remarkable and nasty battle that broke out between these two. 

…and while the story of their scholarly dueling was intriguing and somewhat comical in its irony, what captured me in the account, what moved me, what absolutely floored me, was the description of what is to be found under the nave of St. Peter’s. A tour of the underground tunnels dug by Ferrua, revealed that directly under the nave is a pagan cemetery—what the writer described as “stately little mansions of the dead, with two-story façades of thin Roman brick.” Within the walls of this mausoleum that was once open to the sky, are lush frescoes and stuccowork showing an exotic profusion of the old gods, a hot bed of buried myth: falcon headed Horus with his ankh, Venus rising fair from the waves, Dionysus and a drunken rout of nymphs. Just imagine this tour and looking up through the grate to see far overhead the distant luminous ceiling of coffered gold…the ceiling of the nave of the Vatican. And if St. Peter’s bones are indeed under the nave, they are to be found in one of these “little mansions” right in the midst of this pagan neighborhood. 

To me, far more amazing than the finding of St. Peter’s bones under the Vatican, is that the Vatican nave stands over what was once “the swampy region beyond the Tiber, in the eerie borderland of fever and giant snakes. The name “Vatican” refers to the Vates, holy seers who understood the voices of the gods who were said to have been heard speaking from time immemorial in this sacred place. “Pliny writes of an ancient oak that stood there in his day upon which bronze Etruscan letters of religious significance were written. Later, extravagant temples and sacred compounds rose to Eastern deities on the spot.”

It’s amazing to me that while the names of the gods have changed, the nave of the Vatican domes what has always been sacred soil…to perceive that clearly…to see that there are places in the world where age after age the labels may change, but the generated power is the same…power strong enough to be perceived…is miraculous.