Nicholas V Rebuilds Rome

This series has three easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: The Heart and Center of Christendom.

This selection is from Makers of Modern Rome by Mrs. Margaret Oliphant published in 1895. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Mrs. Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897) was a Scottish novelist and historical writer

Time: 1447-1455
Place: Rome

Of those pontiffs who are called the pride of modern Rome — through whom the city “rose most gloriously from her ashes” — Nicholas V (Tommaso Parentucelli) was the first. He was born at Sarzana, in the republic of Genoa, about 1398, was ordained priest at the age of twenty-five, became Archbishop of Bologna, and in 1447 was elevated to the papal chair. His election was largely due to the influential part he had taken at the councils of Basel, 1431-1449, and Ferrara-Florence, 1438-1445. In 1449, by prevailing upon the Antipope, Felix V, to abdicate, he restored the peace of the Church. He endeavored, but in vain, to arouse Europe to its duty of succoring the Greek empire.

Although the coming Reformation was already casting its shadow before, Nicholas stood calm in face of the inevitable event, devoting himself to the spiritual welfare of the Church and to the interests of learning and the arts. But he is chiefly remembered as the first pope to conceive a systematic plan for the reconstruction and permanent restoration of Rome. He died before that purpose could be executed in accordance with his great designs; but others, entering into his labors, carried his work to a fuller accomplishment.

It was to the center of ecclesiastical Rome, the shrine of the apostles, the chief church of Christendom and its adjacent buildings, that the care of the Builder-pope was first directed. The Leonine City of Borgo, as it is more familiarly called, is that portion of Rome which lies on the right side of the Tiber, and which extends from the castle of St. Angelo to the boundary of the Vatican gardens — enclosing the Church of St. Peter, the Vatican palace with all its wealth, and the great Hospital of Santo Spirito, surrounded and intersected by many little streets, and joining to the other portions of the city by the bridge of St. Angelo.

Behind the mass of picture-galleries, museums, and collections of all kinds, which now fill up the endless halls and corridors of the papal palace, comes a sweep of noble gardens full of shade and shelter from the Roman sun, such a resort for the

learnèd leisure Which in trim gardens takes its pleasure”

as it would be difficult to surpass. In this fine extent of wood and verdure the Pope’s villa or casino, now the only summer palace which the existing Pontiff chooses to permit himself, stands as in a domain, small yet perfect. Almost everything within these walls has been built or completely transformed since the days of Nicholas. But, then as now, here was the heart and center of Christendom, the supreme shrine of the Catholic faith, the home of the spiritual ruler whose sway reaches over the whole earth. When Nicholas began his reign, the old Church of St. Peter was the church of the Western world, then, as now, classical in form, a stately basilica without the picturesqueness and romantic variety, and also, as we think, without the majesty and grandeur, of a Gothic cathedral, yet more picturesque if less stupendous in size and construction, than the present great edifice, so majestic in its own grave and splendid way, with which, through all the agitations of the recent centuries, the name of St. Peter has been identified. The earlier church was full of riches and of great associations, to which the wonderful St. Peter’s we all know can lay claim only as its successor and supplanter. With its flight of broad steps, its portico and colonnaded façade crowned with a great tower, it dominated the square, open and glowing in the sun, without the shelter of the great existing colonnades or the sparkle of the fountains.

Behind was the little palace begun by Innocent III, to afford a shelter for the popes in dangerous times, or on occasion to receive the foreign guests whose object was to visit the shrine of the apostles. Almost all the buildings then standing have been replaced by greater, yet the position is the same, the shrine unchanged, though everything else then existing has faded away, except some portion of the old wall which enclosed this sacred place in a special sanctity and security, which was not, however, always respected. The Borgo was the holiest portion of all the sacred city. It was there that the blood of the martyrs had been shed, and where from the earliest age of Christianity their memory and tradition had been preserved. It was not necessary for us to enter into the question whether St. Peter ever was in Rome, which many writers have laboriously contested. So far as the record of the Acts of the Apostles is concerned, there is no evidence at all for or against, but tradition is all on the side of those who assert it. The position taken by Signor Lanciani on this point seems to us a very sensible one. “I write about the monuments of ancient Rome,” he says, “from a strictly archaeological point of view, avoiding questions which pertain, or are supposed to pertain, to religious controversy.

For the archaeologist the presence and execution of SS. Peter and Paul in Rome are facts established beyond a shadow of doubt by purely monumental evidence. There was a time when persons belonging to different creeds made it almost a case of conscience to affirm or deny a priori those facts, according to their acceptance or rejection of the tradition of any particular church. This state of feeling is a matter of the past, at least for those who have followed the progress of recent discoveries and of critical literature. There is no event of the Imperial age and of Imperial Rome which is attested by so many noble structures, all of which point to the same conclusion — the presence and execution of the apostles in the capital of the Empire. When Constantine raised the monumental basilicas over their tombs on the Via Cornelia and the Via Ostiensis; when Eudoxia built the Church ad Vincula; when Damascus put a memorial tablet in the Platonia and Catacombos; when the houses of Pudens and Aquila and Prisca were turned into oratories; when the name of Nymphae Sancti Petri was given to the springs in the catacombs of the Via Nomentana; when the 29th of June was accepted as the anniversary of St. Peter’s execution; when sculptors, painters, medallists, goldsmiths, workers in glass and enamel, and engravers of precious stones all began to reproduce in Rome the likeness of the apostle at the beginning of the second century, and continued to do so till the fall of the Empire — must we consider them as laboring under a delusion, or conspiring in the commission of a gigantic fraud? Why were such proceedings accepted without protest from whatever city, whatever community — if there were any other — which claimed to own the genuine tombs of SS. Peter and Paul? These arguments gain more value from the fact that the evidence on the other side is purely negative.”

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