1000 Cobblestones

Our tour group passes through narrow side streets, quickly leaving behind the open Piazza Navona in favor of darker, less populated areas.  We are all exhausted, weary of walking and of following the brightly unfit scarf which marks our tour guide with a particular cheer.  The tour, thus far, has been insanely hurried, and one more stop cannot be as eagerly anticipated as the more leisurely visitor might like.  But I follow because I have no choice and because the bus will be waiting shortly after to console my burning feet.

Rounding a corner, I am not disappointed, for there looms the impressive and dark boast of Rome: the Pantheon. 

Inside, it is lit only from light streaming through its clever oculus pointed to the sky from the crest of its lofty dome.  A roof so impressive that it initiated future architects to carry the splendor north to Florence in the flavor of Santa Maria del Fiore.  But how, I wonder, does this archaic masterpiece fit in amidst the prim and holy collection of Rome’s churches?  Was not a pantheon built to regard many gods?  And pagan gods at that, hardly a memorial to be found in the same region as the Pope’s theocentric kingdom.

As I am wondering, we are given a few tidbits of information about the structure, and I begin to notice the saintly sculptures and Madonna-esque paintings adorning the walls of this pagan temple.  “Mass is held here often,” the guide explains when I inquire. “Just yesterday we could not enter because of the mass for Palm Sunday.” 

So, it seems, the building has been redeemed.

The temple was restored from its grim original state under the emperor Hadrian in 125 A.D. and remained steadfast to its many gods until 609 when emperor Phocas presented the building to Pope Boniface IV.  Of course, now that Christianity had been legal for over 300 years and with a pope in residence, a pagan temple just could not do.  So Boniface stripped the Pantheon of its false gods and rechristened it the church of Saint Mary of the Martyrs.  The change was well received and thus spared the Pantheon from complete destruction.  By the 1400’s, paintings of the virgin were commissioned for the inside walls, and the Pantheon’s pagan history had been seemingly forgotten.

There is one glitch, however, in this purge of the gods.  While the church was politely titled in honor of the Christian martyrs of the medieval period, I found no martyrs therein.  It seems they were not of great enough renown.  Instead, curiously, I found Renaissance master-painter Raphael and his fiancée; composer Corelli; architect Peruzzi; Queen Margherita; and two well-known kings: Vittorio Emmanuele II and Umberto I.  A beautiful list and yet… not what I would expect for a church claiming to house the bones of saints.

Yet throughout Rome, not just in the Pantheon, there is this ongoing pattern of reclaiming pagan architecture for the name of Christ.  It is in the preservation of the Christian catacombs, and in the “recycling” of temple foundations into newer, sturdier churches.  It is even in the Colosseum, where the pope erected a tall iron cross to bear witness to the long list of martyred Christians at the hands of bloodthirsty emperors.  This constant effort to redeem the secular and to recognize the overlooked products of man’s sin seems on one hand, cheesy, but then I think about the message the church is trying to send.  It is an apology for those who have been killed, a memorial to Christ and His first reform of the pagan world, and a billboard to modern Christians.  A sign which reads: Don’t forget.  Don’t forget the ground from which man was formed, the sin from which we were redeemed through Christ, the mistakes we have made, and the grace we have been given to prevent those mistakes from repeating.  Through all of Rome’s temples and monuments, there is a crying out for man’s redemption.  Not just for the city, but humankind in general.  By tearing down the idols, they are creating a citywide statement of faith which speaks volumes for those genuinely seeking salvation through Christ.

Some of these efforts may not be perfect, but what human can claim perfection anyway?  Since I am a Christian myself,  I was, at first, irritated by the Romans’ recycling of something obviously not built for the glory of God.  (Why not just completely obliterate it and start over?)  But as I thought about it, I realized that they were doing the best with what they had – melting the golden calf, as it were – to create something that would draw attention to God.  I can’t say that most visitors to the Pantheon are instantly reminded of Christianity,  but a closer look will point them that way.  And for that, the early Christians of Rome have earned my respect.