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Italy,
Rome, St. Peter's Basilica |Description
Professor Dale Kinney
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St.
Peter's was built on the slope of the Vatican Hill (Mons
Vaticanus), in a cemetery which had grown up around the ruins
of the Circus of Nero. Legend had it that Peter was martyred
with other Christians in this circus in 64, in retribution for
the famous fire that burned much of Rome. By the third century
CE, a modest tomb below a wall in the cemetery was venerated
by Christians as Peter's.
The huge basilica constructed in the fourth century obliterated
much of the cemetery, leaving only the wall marking Peter's
grave.
Italy, Rome, Circus of Caligula and Nero,
model |
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Italy, Rome, Old St. Peter's, plan (Krautheimer) |
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Italy, Rome, Old St. Peter's, reconstruction of longitudinal
cross-section (Arbeiter, 1988) |
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The fragmentary
remains of Peter's grave were encased in copper and a shrine
above it became the focal point of the new building, standing
just in front of the apse. The apse pointed west, so that the
rising sun would shine in through the doors at the east (later
churches would reverse this orientation). Because of its size
the basilica had four aisles rather than the usual two, and
it was made still larger by inserting a transverse space (the
transept) between the nave and the apse.
Italy, Rome, Old St. Peters, plan of west end showing
transept located between nave and apse (Jongkees, 1966)
The total length of St. Peter's from entrance to apse was about
123 m. (403 1/2 ft.); the nave alone was as long as an American
football field (298 ft.). The combined width of nave and aisles
was about 63.4 m. (208 ft.). The colonnades separating the five
parallel spaces of nave and aisles had 22 columns each, for
a total of 88 columns; there were also two columns at the end
of each aisle (4 X 2 = 8) and two more at each end of the transept,
to make the total of 100 columns for which St. Peter's was famous
as we know from Gregory
of Tours.
The nave elevation was like that of the Lateran cathedral, with
a colonnade supporting a tall wall pierced by large windows;
a similar elevation appeared between the aisles.
Italy, Rome, Old St. Peter's, Reconstructed cross-section
(Bannister) |
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Italy, Rome, San Giovanni in Laterano,Basilica,
Reconstruction |
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Italy,
Rome, Old
St. Peter's (right) compared to Chârtres Cathedral |
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The height
of the nave from the pavement to the peak of the roof was nearly
38 m. (124 1/2 ft.), taller than the nave of Chartres Cathedral.
Compare
the plan of Old St. Peter's with the Romanesque Cathedral in
Durham located in northern England.
From the pavement to the horizontal roof beams the height was
about 104 ft., with a ratio of colonnade to wall of 2:3 (in
other words, the colonnade with its entablature rose to 43 ft.,
and the wall rose 61 ft. above that). To be supported by columns
with the open spaces between them, the wall had to be very thin
(.92 m., less than 3 ft.).
Italy, Rome, Old St. Peters, nave wall, drawing by Grimaldi |
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Italy, Rome, Old St. Peter's, drawing by Grimaldi, c.
1608
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This was a daring construction, contrary to normal Roman practice
(which favored extra-thick walls) and to basic concepts of engineering.
The Renaissance architect Leon
Battista Alberti severely criticized the design around the
middle of the fifteenth century, when he found the upper walls
leaning out of plumb; but by then they were already 1100 years
old.
Windows in the outer aisle walls filtered light into the nave,
but the principal natural illumination came from the nave clerestory:
eleven windows on each side, piercing the wall above the colonnade.
Theoretically eleven windows could have been aligned with alternate
intercolumniations [with 22 columns, there were 23 intercolumniations],
but it is not certain that this was so. If not, fenestration
and colonnades followed two slightly different rhythms in the
nave. There were also a number of windows in the walls of the
transept.
The reconstruction of ceilings and roofs remains uncertain.
Two texts from around 400 use the term lacunar, which means
coffered
ceiling, with reference to the transept (and nave?), but if
such a ceiling existed it was forgotten by the later middle
ages. The south-north section made around 1608 by Grimaldi shows
open timber roofs over the nave and aisles.
If such a roof was visible originally, its beams would have
been gilded. Since the span of the nave was more than 87 ft.
(ca. 23.6 m.), those beams there were enormous. Pope
Honorius I had to replace 16 of them in the seventh century,
and the new beams were gilded as well. The same pope received
permission from the emperor to take bronze roof tiles from the
Temple of Venus and Rome in the Roman
Forum to put on the roof of St. Peter's. Over the aisles,
the 17th-century section shows a single continuous roof; if
this is accepted as the original arrangement, one has to explain
the purpose of the semi-circular openings in the inner aisle
walls. For this reason some scholars prefer to reconstruct a
stepped profile, with the roof over the outer aisles about 18
ft. lower than the one over the inner aisles, and the openings
functioning as windows between them.
The height of the transept also is not known for certain; many
scholars believe that it was not as tall as the nave.
Italy, Rome, Old. St. Peters, alternative reconstruction
of transept height (Arbeiter, 1988) |
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Italy, Rome, Old St. Peter's, reconstruction showing the
transept height lower than the nave (Christern and Thiersch,
1969) |
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Fifty years
after St. Peter's was built, the designers of St. Paul's basilica
[link to related images, St.
Pauls, would make the transept higher and broader, so that
the cruciform silhouette was more emphatic; but the cross-shape
was latent in the transept from the start, and symbolism was
likely one of the motivating factors behind the invention of
the transept at St. Peter's.
All of the columns in Old St. Peter's were spoils (spolia),
that is, elements made for earlier buildings, and reused. Reuse
of architectural ornament was a widespread practice in Rome
by the end of the third century, when a dramatic collapse of
the industrial and transportation infrastructure made it impossible
produce new elements and ship them to Rome from the quarries.
Like the Arch of Constantine,
decorated with reliefs taken from various second-century monuments,
Constantine's basilicas all were built with reused columns and
capitals.
Those in St. Peter's were unusual in the diversity of their
materials, and therefore of color. Sixteenth-century records
indicate that the column shafts in the nave colonnades were
of at least 5 different materials: red granite (from Aswan,
in Upper Egypt); gray granite (also from Egypt); cipollino,
a green-veined marble from Greece; portasanta, a mottled, reddish
marble from the island of Chios; and africano, another mixed-color
(red, black, white) marble from the coast of modern Turkey.
Samples
of marble showing the variety of colors and textures available
in the ancient world, from Enciclopedia dell'arte antica,
III, Rome 1995 |
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These stones
were all very expensive in the fourth century, and their use
reflects an aesthetic preference for color and precious materials.
Coloristic diversity, opulence of materials, and gleaming, polished
surfaces were essential elements of the architecture of St.
Peter's and of all high-status public buildings in late antiquity
and the early Christian period. These qualities were still valued
a millennium later. The Renaissance Pope
Paul II (1464–1471) is reported to have said that two
of St. Peter's columns were worth "more than the whole
city of Venice".
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