A few pilgrimages

Before leaving Rhode Island, when I found out that we would be having a four-day weekend here in Rome, I started concocting grand plans. I could go to Croatia! Or Tunis! Or on a tour of the east coast of Italy! But after a couple of weeks getting to know Rome and of spending long days out and about in the sun, I decided it might be just as well to stick around the city over the break, relax a bit, and check a few things off my local rather than my international to-do list.

One benefit of having a couple of days off per week as well as this four-day break is that I have time to acquaint myself with Christian Rome. Of course, inevitably, nearly all of Rome is Christian or Christianized to some extent, but what I mean to say is that I've been able to take the time to view Rome's Christian side in a more focused and less disinterested way than when we're on site as a group doing our best to imagine away a church englobing the remains of a temple, for example.

This weekend, I became a pilgrim as well as a student. On Saturday, I embarked on a major "church crawl," visiting the basilicas of Sta. Maria Maggiore and the nearby Sta. Prassede, and then the basilica of S. Giovanni in Laterano and the nearby Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme. I went first to Sta. Prassede, tucked away just around the corner from Sta. Maria. The plain outside of the church in no way suggests the remarkable interior. The showpiece of the church is the chapel of St. Zeno, which he decorated with beautiful, extensive mosaic work in honor of his mother, Theodora. The mosaic in the apse of the church is equally impressive, as is the floor, decorated in the Cosmatesque style with various bright colors of marble. I went next around the corner to Sta. Maria Maggiore, which has a wonderful founding story. On the night of August 4-5, around 358, the Virgin Mary appeared to a pope and layman of Rome and instructed them to build her a church on the site where they found a covering of snow the next morning. The snow appeared as promised, even in the summer heat, and they built the church. Ever since, a pontifical Mass is held at Sta. Maria on August 5th, during which white rose petals are showed on the congregation, and the city of Rome rents snowblowers to blow fake flakes at the people emerging from the church. Not much visibly remains of the original church, but the (other) Sistine Chapel inside is especially stunning, and the crypt boasts a relic of a piece of the crib of Christ.

After visiting the first two churches, I took a lunch break over by the Pantheon, after which I sampled gelato from Tre Scalini on Piazza Navona, which came highly recommended by Roby and others. Deservedly so: I had pistacchio and mango, both of which were unusually fresh and flavorful. All fueled up, I then headed south to S. Giovanni in Laterano, another papal basilica with extraterritorial status, meaning that it is technically part of the Vatican and not of Italy. I could tell because there was a Vatican post box around back of the church. St. Paul Outside the Walls, the other of the four papal basilicas outside of the Vatican, also has extraterritoriality. The Lateran is frankly the least impressive aesthetically of the basilicas, in my opinion, but its awesome history more than makes up for that. It's the first Christian basilica to be built in Rome, under the direction of Constantine. The confessio is supposed to contain the heads of SS. Peter and Paul, and s. Peter is supposed to have celebrated Mass on the altar enclosed in the current one. It took real concentration for me to take in the significance of all of this history, and I still had a nagging feeling of not quite getting it as I went next door to the baptistery. This, too, was founded by Constantine, and its ancient form survives better. When I approached the building, a man who was just coming out of the door told me that it was closed. I was disappointed, because I'd carefully scheduled my day to suit the finicky opening times of all the churches. I wasn't going to argue, though, and I asked him in Italian for directions to the Scala Santa, where I was headed next. When I asked when I could come back to the baptistery, even though I hadn't protested about its being closed, he repented and told me to come in quickly and leave by the back door because they were getting ready for a wedding inside. Lucky me! I was the only one there not involved in the wedding, and I got to see one of the chapels all decorated for the celebration.

Next, I went to perhaps the most moving stop on Saturday's church tour: the Scala Santa, or Sacred Stairs. Legend has it that St. Helen, Constantine's mother, brought back from the Holy Land the steps which Christ descended after being condemned by Pilate. The 28 marble steps are now covered in oak for protection and set up in a church, and pilgrims are allowed to climb them on their knees only, slowly and prayerfully. When I got there, 25 or so people were ascending, and I joined the ranks. It was a hot, sweaty journey, but a powerful and worthwhile one. I've been thinking a lot about the value of relics lately because I've seen so many, and ultimately, I think it's OK that I'm not always as affected by them as I think I should be. At base, a relic really is just a nail, a piece of bone, or a chunk of wood (whose identification is not always completely secure); but it can be a useful and powerful tool for meditative prayer, and as such, it is a good thing to have relics respectfully enshrined in churches. I found that the intensity of the relic experience at the Scala Santa -- the opportunity to be truly physically uncomfortable and surrounded by people really exerting themselves to put themselves in Christ's shoes -- made it more valuable than simply standing in front of a reliquary and thinking about it in the comfort of a cool, quiet church.

My last stop on my church tour was the relic-heavy Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme. This basilica boasts more of the fruits of Helen's efforts in the Holy Land, including supposed pieces and nails of the True Cross, along with four other relics. After visiting the chapel of the relics, it was time to head home, partly by means of a very long walk back to Sta. Maria. It was a long, hot, sweaty day, but I liked it that way. It was worthwhile to expend a little extra effort as I thought about the sacrifices of Christ and the martyrs and saints of the early Church.

I had a similar but completely secular pilgrimage experience, rather inadvertently, on Sunday. After spending most of the day reading at the Centro, I decided to take my book on the road and head back to Fatamorgana, home of the most amazing gelato in Rome and maybe the world -- recall the chocolate-and-tobacco experience! I made it to the right bus stop after an hour of traveling, but from there, I got terribly disorientated and spent 45 minutes wandering around in the intense heat in the thin flip-flops I stupidly wore, unable to find the place for the life of me and fearing it would be closed by the time I did. At long last, I picked up the right path and -- oh, the joy! -- began to see people walking past with ice cream cones. I had to be close. Soon I did indeed arrive to find the place open, and I was able to marvel again at the wacky range of flavor options before me. Finally, I settled on my old favorite, the chocolate-and-tobacco, and two new ones: apple-almond-cinnamon and black rice-rosebud. "Black rice-rosebud?!" you may be saying -- and I was, too! I had never even heard of black rice, and I don't know why you would want to eat a rosebud (much like tobacco). But I had faith, and it was delicious. Totally worth the sweaty, circuitous hike.

One more pilgrimage story before I leave you. Yesterday, I was well-rested enough for another expedition, this time out to the catacomb complexes on the old Appian Way, one of Rome's most ancient roads. Getting out there by public transportation is a bit of a project, so I was happy to meet another catacomb-goer on the last leg of the journey, a very nice South Korean student with whom I walked the road from the bus stop to the S. Sebastiano catacombs and went through them. Later, I also went through the S. Callisto complex. The bad side of the experience: admission to both sites was overpriced, the tour was pretty canned, and the guides were somewhat discouraging of questions and eager to run the group through in the least possible amount of time. Still, though, overall, I was blown away by the catacombs. First, the sheer magnitude of them: S. Callisto, the larger, had half a million people buried there, and it has over ten miles of tunnels. Imagining the process of hollowing out multiple stories and so many tunnels out of the rock (tufa) just blew my mind. So did walking through the rows of tombs, imagining how in every niche once lay a body, wrapped loosely in linen and enclosed by a stone slab. Many of the niches were small, for children: 45% of the population died in childhood at the time the catacombs were being used, c. 150 - 450 A.D. Although it was smaller, I think the S. Sebastiano complex was my favorite, for its special devotion to the saint. We saw the little underground chapel where his remains originally lay, and then their current location in the basilica above ground, one of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome.

So that's the long version of my weekend -- I apologize if it's been a bit of a trek for you to get through the whole story! I also have plenty of pictures from the past week, which I'm working on getting on my Picasa site. I'll let you know when they're up!