“All roads lead to Rome …”
While no one really
knows who first coined the statement, there has always been a collective
awareness within all European civilizations since the days of the Roman Empire
of the universality and omnipresence of the Eternal
City. It was no different in the days of
the medieval pilgrim and their fighting equivalents, the crusaders. Rome, as the seat of the Catholic pope – the
Successor of St. Peter and the Vicar of Christ on Earth – was a place of gravest
importance to the medieval pilgrim, topped only by Jerusalem herself. As the former capitol of perhaps one of the
greatest empires ever seen in the West, Rome also played a pivotal role in the
spread of Christianity throughout the known world and – after its elevation to
state religion under Constantine – became the seat of the first truly global
institution in world history. What the
Empire had failed to accomplish, the Church in Rome would. As the first principle city of Christianity
(all others came after), relics and treasures of the faith would find their way
there to be enshrined for the inspiration of generations of faithful. In the medieval era, when the faith and its
practice took on an intensely physical nature, these relics were of prime
importance to the waves of pilgrims who would arrive there – as was the chance
to receive a blessing from the Successor of St. Peter himself.
The thousands of
crusaders who passed through Rome on their way to complete their vows in the
Holy Land would have been no different – in fact, many deliberately sought out
the blessings to be had in Rome to steel themselves for the long journey and
hard fighting to come. We know from the
accounts of the First Crusade that thousands of fighters came in through Rome
on their way to Bari on the south coast of Italy, to include Robert of Normandy
and Stephen of Blois to rendezvous with their kinsman, Bohemond of
Taranto. Other greats of subsequent
crusades would make a point of stopping in Rome – Philip Augustus during the
Third Crusade would be among them as would St. Louis IX on multiple
occasions. Not much commemorates the
visits of these pilgrims, great or small, but Rome was simply a way-stop
(albeit, an important one) on the way towards a far more important destination
for them.
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| The Via dei Normanni near San Clemente in Rome - allegedly near the route that Robert Guiscard and his Normans "peacefully" passed through the Eternal City in 1084. |
One key exception are
the vast amounts of important Christian relics that, without the Crusades,
would never have made their way to Europe.
In the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, as the name implies, are
housed many of the most important relics of Christ’s Passion and Death that
originally came from the Levant. Many of
these actually came to Rome centuries prior to the Crusades and the medieval
period – when the queen-mother of Emperor Constantine, St. Helena, led a royal
expedition to the Levant to retrieve the physical remains of the most important
event in Christian history. Her efforts
yielded fragments of the Cross, the nails, the “titulus Crucis” (the fragment
of the sign Pontius Pilate had fixed to the Cross), the beam of St. Dysmas’
(the “good thief”) cross, and many others.
Most of these relics she brought back to Rome, installing them in a
church built on loads of soil from Jerusalem that would later become the Santa
Croce found in Rome today.
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| Sadly, this is as far as I was permitted to continue taking pictures - no photography is permitted in the relic chapel. |
However, some found here
did come to Rome by way of the Crusades along with a few others. In a small gold reliquary now behind glass in
the relatively modern relic chapel in Santa Croce are two thorns from the Crown
of Thorns. The entire crown was once
enshrined in Constantinople, but after the problematic seizure of the city by
crusaders in 1204 and the establishment of the “Latin” Empire in the East, this
relic came to France, where it ended up in Notre Dame in Paris. That great crusader king, St. Louis IX, had
an intense personal devotion to the relic and sent these two thorns to Rome as
a gesture of his piety.
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| http://www.rosaryworkshop.com/ROME-Pilgrimage-Crx.html |
Other relics of
Christ’s life that came to Rome by way of crusaders returning from the East are
the Manger of Bethlehem (housed today in Santa Maria Maggiore) and the famous
Shroud (usually kept in the city of Turin, but is often brought to Rome for
special occasions).
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| The Manger in Santa Maria Maggiore |
The numbers of other
relics brought out of the East into Christendom by the Crusades would probably
be too many to list here and, while the authenticity of many Christian relics
from the medieval period are still subjects of intense historical and
archeological controversy, most of the principal relics have endured
considerable scientific research and investigative scrutiny in recent decades
and been found to be surprisingly genuine.
Of course, Rome would
not have achieved the status it did within Christianity had it not also served as
the earthly residence of the popes themselves (except for a brief and
troublesome hiatus in Avignon, France).
The tombs of popes, both the great and the relatively unknown, litter
the Eternal City in nearly every corner.
Many are sadly unmarked, especially those of the popes from the earliest
days of the Church (with the notable exception of St. Peter himself). Even more were tragically lost in the various
renovation and construction projects during the Renaissance – several tombs of
early and medieval popes that once were beneath the old Constantinian basilica
of St. Peter’s were destroyed and their remains consolidated under other tombs
during the construction of the current basilica in the 16th
Century. Perhaps the most painful for
Crusades enthusiasts is the knowledge that among them were those of Blessed
Pope Urban II, architect of the Crusading phenomenon, whose remains were
allegedly reinterred within the vicinity of the extant tomb of Adrian I. As disappointing as that seems, one can rest
assured that he is still remembered in the eternal manner that truly counts and
that is more valuable than any earthly memorial.
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| Pope Innocent III's tomb in the Lateran Basilica - right across from that of Leo XIII (1878-1903) who had this tomb commissioned. |
One papal tomb that is
still very much with us and certainly pays homage to the Crusades is that of
Innocent III in the Lateran Basilica.
Reigning at a time when many regard the temporal power of the Papacy to
have been at its height, Pope Innocent was perhaps one of the most active
crusading popes in Church history – spending his entire tenure (1198-1216)
calling for multiple crusades to the Holy Land, Spain, and (for the first time)
against heretics within Europe. Many of
his crusades were sadly remembered for their problematic outcomes – especially
the Fourth Crusade that ended in the unfortunate sacking of Constantinople and
the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars in Southern France. However, it is hard to accuse Innocent of
having ignoble intentions – perhaps just a lack of foresight and possibly pure
bad luck. In either case, his tomb
(commissioned by Pope Leo XIII at the turn of the 20th Century after
the original fell into disrepair) pays a touching tribute to his devotion to
the ideal of crusading – beneath his tomb, in silent vigilance, stands a knight
bearing the Cross. Sometimes, it’s the
small things that make for the most touching reminders of the humanity – great
and small, evil and virtuous – that lies at the heart of this grand and often
overwhelming thing called history.
Stay tuned for my next stop – the Center of the World itself. Deus
vult!
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