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Show A MYSTERY OF ST. PETER'S Is the Tomb of the Apostle in Rome Still Intact? Rome, June 15. Pope Pius X has on his desk a sectional plan of St. Peter's tomb in St. Peter's church, a copy of which has been secured to accompany this article. According to this nlan the tomb could be reached from the underground under-ground crypts of the basilica, the greater great-er part of which preserves the original floor of the old church intact. There is a small chapel in the old crypts named for San Salvatorlno, through which archaeologists are convinced con-vinced the original steps leading down into the tomb could be reached. Such an exploration could be easily undertaken under-taken secretly if the pope consented to have removed the doubt as to whether the body of St. Peter has escaped desecration. dese-cration. The doubt has now existed for centuries. cen-turies. The fact that Pius X keeps the plan of St. Peter's tomb on his desk is considered evidence that he has at least given consideration to the proposal to allow a thorough exploration of it to be undertaken. Every year on the eve of the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, June 29, when the Vatican basilica is closed for the night and everything is dark and quiet, the pope, accompanied by his secretary and four noble guards with drawn swords, leaves his private apartment and, crossing many halls and corridors of the great palace, descends by a private pri-vate staircase to the silent and empty church, where he kneels in prayer before the tomb of him whose successor he is. For nearly 2,000 years every pope has knelt and prayed before the shrine of St Peter, the most sacred spot in Rome, and even in the whole Catholic world, outside of Palestine. A great many doubts have arisen concerning the history his-tory of his tomb. One is that relating to the exact locality where St. Peter suffered martyrdom. Ancient authorities are in complete agreement that the place of crucifixion was in the Vatican and close to the tomb where the apostle is burled, but owing to a mistake of antiquarians of the fourteenth century the scene of the martyrdom mar-tyrdom has been transferred to the Church of San Pietro in Montorio on the Janiculum. As a result for some time the true tradition became obscured and no clear knowledge remained in Rome as to the locality in which the martyrdom martyr-dom actually took place. In recent years the doubt on this point has been greatly great-ly diminished and it is now generally admitted that the martyrdom was on the Vatican hill. The records of the story of the burial of the saint and the history of his relics are scant and sometimes even contradictory. contra-dictory. Historians and antiquarians have discussed them at great length for many centuries, but with imperfect results. The undisputed facts are the following: After the martyrdom the body of the apostle, together with that of St. Paul, who was beheaded on the same day, June 28, in eother A. D. 66 or 67, under the persecution of Nero, was taken down by some holy people, who, having washed it, carefully embalmed it, wrapped it in fine linen, placed it In a marble urn and buried It, on the Via Cornelia, close to the Circus of Nero. The place was marked by an inscription. inscrip-tion. St. Anacletus, who had been ordained by St. Peter and who succeeded St. Linus on the papal throne, built a memorial me-morial chapel, memoria or oratory on the apostle's tomb. The bodies of the two saints were not left long undisturbed in their original tamb. In 258 they were removed to the catacombs of St. Sebastian, on the Ap-pian Ap-pian Way. under the Valerian persecutions. persecu-tions. After a short time the body of St. Peter was taken back and again laid in the old tomb at the Vatican, while that of St. Paul was buried close to the place where he was beheaded and where his church, San Palo f uori le Mura, now stands. There is evidence of a second or a previous translation of St. Peter's, remains. re-mains. It seems certain that the tomb was on the point of being destroyed or desecrated on several occasions, notably nota-bly during the third century under the Emperor Heliogabalus, who enlarged the Circus of Nero. Evidence that it was spared is found in the fact that for two centuries the successors of St. Peter Pe-ter in the papacy were buried near his tomb, which from very early times was known as St. Peter's Confession and was regarded as the very heart of the church. It is stated in the "Liber Pontifl-calis" Pontifl-calis" (Chronicle of the Popes) that the Emperor Constantine after his conversion conver-sion caused, about the year 323, the body of the apostle to be exhumed in the presence of Poped Sylvester an placed in a case of silver enclosed within with-in a sarmnhflfin nf hraca " Vi- i he placed a large cross of pure gold weighing 150 pounds, and an inscription recording his name and that of his mother, Helena Augusta. The body was then restored to the original tomb, over which he erected an altar and a vaulted chamber faced inside in-side with plates of gold. He further decorated the tomb with candellabra, silver lamps and plates of gold and silver sil-ver studded with jewels. The erection of the great basilica, commonly known now as Old St. Peter's, was begun by the emperor and two years later it was consecrated by St. Sylvester. The great crisis in the history of St. Peter's tomb was during the Invasion by the Saracens in the year 847. They carried'off all the ornaments and treasures, treas-ures, together with the 'actual altar raised above the tomb, but the body of the apostle does not seem to have been interfered with. In 1527 the imperial troops under the Const;i)le of Bourbon sacked Rome and pillaged the basilica of St. Peter. A letter written by Teodoricus Vafer June 17, 1527, says: "The urn or tomb, in which the bones of the holy Peter and Paul were laid, they (the imperial troops) broke and profaned' the very relics." The testimony of this letter is unsupported; hence the old historians and archaeologists refused to accept it. It is known on the evidence of a certain cer-tain priest, named Torrigo, that in 1594, when the old basilica was being demolished demol-ished and the present one built, the architect Delia Porta opened a hole in the pavement of the confession, through which the tomb of St. Peter became visible. vis-ible. Pope Clement VIII is said to have seen, by torchlight, the urn in which the apostle's body was placed by Constantine, Con-stantine, and on it the gold cross. This would constitute positive proof that the tomb was still Intact, were it not that the conduct of Clement VIII by some Is considered suspicious. He ordered the hole to be closed at once, and he made Delia fill the opening with rubbish and caused the whole matter to be kept secret. It is not likely, say those who doubt that the tomb is still intact, that Clement VIII saw that the urn was empty and, horrified at the sight, had the hole closed and the matter mat-ter hushed up? In 1S92 Father Grlsar, with the pope's i- "'lJ"L"""" "" ' " "7 ' L'""'T permission, investigated the tomb. He ascertained that the hole opened by Del-la Del-la Porta was a passage known as the Cataract, communicating between the floor of the confession in the church and the tomb below, through which it was the custom in the middle ages for pilgrims pil-grims to lower handkerchiefs and other objects and cause them to touch the body of St. Peter. Father Grisar measured meas-ured the Cataract and found it partly filled with rubbish; consequently he could not explore the tomb, but he is convinced that it is still intact. The same opening .investigated by Father Grisar was partially explored on three previous occasions, in 1749, 1799 and 1845, but always with imperfect results. Omaha Bee. |