Murder in the Garden of God (36 page)

Chapter 28

The Greatest Pontificate

They will say, “This land that was laid waste has become like the
garden of Eden: the cities that were lying in ruins,
desolate and destroyed, are now fortified and inhabited.”

–
Ezekiel 36: 34-36

L
ong forgotten now are Sixtus’s revenge on his nephew’s murderers and his rigorous efforts to end violence in the Papal States. The most recognizable relic of his short reign is the red granite obelisk that stands in Saint Peter’s Square. Carved for Pharaoh Ramses II, it had been abandoned at the Egyptian holy city of Heliopolis for 1,000 years before it was loaded onto a ship and brought to Rome. Emperor Caligula erected it in the center of the circus on Vatican Hill, which he built about 40 A.D to hold chariot races.

Sometime between 64 and 67 A.D., when the Romans were blaming the great fire of Rome on Nero, the emperor, in turn, blamed that strange new sect, the Christians. Since the Colosseum would not be built for another fifteen years, Nero executed his victims in the Vatican Circus, including a particularly troublesome Judean Christian named Peter, who requested he be crucified upside down. Some of those executed were buried only yards from their place of death, in a simple pagan cemetery outside the circus. In the fourth century, Emperor Constantine erected the first Saint Peter’s Basilica next to and slightly in front of the circus, over Peter’s grave.

With the advent of Christianity, pagan entertainments such as chariot races, gladiator fights, and crucifixions were frowned upon, and the once-magnificent circus fell into disuse. Over the centuries, it became a free quarry as Romans seeking to build churches and houses pried its marble stones loose and carted them away. By the time of Sixtus, it was a pitiful ruin, though the obelisk, which had seen the crucifixion of Saint Peter, stood defiantly erect. Sixtus wanted to move the obelisk to the front of Christendom’s holiest church and plunk a cross on top of it. It was another way of saying,
You may have cast your cold stony gaze on poor, suffering, upside down Peter, but he is now your boss.

In 1450, Pope Nicholas V had first suggested moving the obelisk in front of the basilica. It wasn’t very far away, after all, and would lend some much-needed dignity to the helter-skelter square. Many of his successors, too, looked into the project. But Rome’s top architects – even Michelangelo – declared the task impossible. Sixtus was incensed to think that pagans had brought the thing from Egypt, but the Vicar of Christ couldn’t cart it a mere 277 yards.

The pope hired his favorite architect, Domenico Fontana, to move the obelisk, which would occur in four separate steps – lifting it from its ancient base, lowering it into a horizontal position, dragging it to the new location, and raising it on a new pediment. The date selected for lifting the obelisk was April 30, 1586. Policemen kept the eager crowds behind barricades, and the pope had a gallows built nearby to inspire absolute silence during the procedure. To encourage the workers to do their best, the pope had let it be known that if the obelisk broke, Fontana would pay with his head. But Sixtus had secretly ordered fast horses to be standing ready at the four nearby gates so his old friend could escape before the bailiff arrested him.

Fontana stood in a wooden tower overlooking the area. He had developed a kind of telegraph system using a trumpet; so many blasts meant go, and so many meant stop. The obelisk had been enclosed in matting and boards, and bound with strong bands of iron, to which were attached a number of iron pulleys, and hundreds of yards of rope as thick as a man’s arm. Slowly, using forty winches, 1,907 men, and 65 horses, the obelisk was lifted off its base. The heavy silence was broken only by the blasts of Fontana’s trumpet and the groans and creaks of the ropes. Camilla, decked out in jewels and silks, sat on a special tribune with her family. The poor laundress of Montalto was now a princess who watched her brother raise an obelisk.

At the twelfth pull of the windlasses, the obelisk had been lifted a couple of feet from the ground and was coaxed onto the enormous turret-like wooden platform on which it would later be conveyed to the piazza. The hollow bronze ball which had adorned the top of the obelisk – and which was reputed to contain the ashes of Julius Caesar – had been removed the day before. Sadly, Fontana found it empty, though it did have bullet marks made by Lutherans taking potshots at it during the 1527 Sack of Rome.

The more dangerous task of lowering the obelisk into a horizontal position took place on May 7, again with winches, horses, and trumpets. It was a complete success. The pope was so happy he pardoned eight condemned criminals, something he had never done before. On June 13, Fontana began to inch forward the fallen giant to Saint Peter’s Square on rollers along an enormous downward-sloping causeway. There another huge wooden scaffold was constructed to raise the obelisk, which was done on September 10.

The vital ceremony of exorcising the obelisk took place on September 26. Today’s Christians might think that ancient gods simply never existed in any form, and that faithful pagans were praying to nothing. Perhaps more heartening is the belief that the one God hears all prayers, even if the people praying got the name and characteristics of God wrong. But Christians into the age of the Enlightenment believed that the invisible beings worshiped by the ancient Romans truly did exist; they were powerful demons who had assisted Romans in war, and who had appeared to them from time to time in the form of Jupiter and Mars, as ancient reports attested. These demons still lived, silently but malignantly, in pagan monuments.

This particular demon-infested monument was privileged to be spiritually scoured by a pope. “I exorcise you, O stone created by God,” Sixtus intoned loudly, “in the name of the Almighty Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, His Son Our Lord, and in the power of the Holy Ghost, that you may be cleansed to bear the image of the Prince of the Apostles, and may remain free from every taint of paganism, and from the enmity of evil spirits.”
¹

The pope had an inscription carved into the obelisk’s base: “Sixtus V Sovereign Pontiff, with great labor transported the obelisk of the Vatican, dedicated by an impious cult to the gods of the people, to the Apostle’s threshold.” In the place of the bronze globe, he set on top a bronze cross in which he placed consecrated bread.

Sixtus was glad that the Vatican obelisk sported no hieroglyphics, as these demonic markings were thought to be incantations sure to hex Christ’s followers. But other obelisks he raised from the mud did have them, and these had to be carefully exorcised before they were resurrected. Two were hauled out of the ancient Circus Maximus, which had been reduced to a public kitchen garden. One of these Sixtus moved in front of the Church of Saint John Lateran; the other one was erected in the square of Rome’s main ceremonial gate, the Piazza del Popolo. The obelisk near the tomb of Emperor Augustus, broken into four pieces, was repaired and set up in front of the Church of Saint Mary Major. Obelisks were the crowning glory of the pope’s new wide streets, serving as beacons for all Christianity to come and pray. The sexually puritanical pope didn’t seem to notice that obelisks were enormous phallic symbols that, unlike their human counterparts, never went limp.

Other pagan monuments also had to be Christianized. Sixtus hoisted Saint Peter on top of the victory column of the pagan Emperor Trajan. Saint Paul replaced the statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. In the Campidoglio, the governmental center of Rome, Sixtus removed Jupiter and Apollo; Minerva was pardoned her pagan sins after a rigorous exorcism only because it was easy to transform her into the Church Triumphant, her sword replaced with a cross. Sixtus made it known that in Rome that there was only one God, the Catholic one.

And then there was the problem of Saint Peter’s unfinished dome. In 1546, at the age of seventy-two, Michelangelo was given the job of chief architect, and only accepted it as penance for his sins. By the time he died in 1564, the dome’s “drum” – the lower section that rose straight up – was completed, but not the curved dome itself. For more than two decades its construction languished, though Gregory XIII vaulted other sections of the church and built the lavish Gregorian chapel.

When Sixtus came to the throne, trees sprouted from the unfinished dome, which greatly embarrassed him. How could Rome claim to be mistress of the world when in eighty years she hadn’t been able to finish the dome of her chief church? Cost was a major deterrent; architects estimated the dome would take ten years to build at a price tag of several million scudi.

Part of the reason for the delay was sheer, unadulterated terror. The trailblazing dome was considered at best a risky architectural venture. If not built correctly, the thing would collapse, signaling great shame to the Holy See and great laughter from the heretics up north. But Sixtus had built the aqueduct and moved the obelisk in short order and at reasonable cost, massive projects that most experts also had warned couldn’t be done. Where other popes feared to tread, Sixtus marched resolutely forward.

The pope began the project to finish Saint Peter’s dome on December 22, 1588, with 800 construction workers laboring day and night. It was completed in May 1590, except for the lead sheeting. Sheer willpower – aided by threats of physical violence to slack workers and financial rewards to energetic ones – had accomplished in a matter of months what other popes hadn’t accomplished in several decades.

Sixtus turned his attention to building new living accommodations for the Vicars of Christ. Gregory had rented Cardinal d’Este’s Roman villa, known as the Quirinal or Monte Cavallo, for use as a papal summer residence. On a breezy hill, the palace offered a location in the center of Rome removed from the hot air and malarial mosquitoes of the low-lying Vatican. In 1587, Sixtus purchased it and added new wings to accommodate papal servants. Then he enhanced its gardens and fountains.

In the spring of 1589, Sixtus decided to erect a new section of the Vatican palace in front of the old one built a century earlier. The old palace was much like a stage with elaborate backdrops and impressive sets where the chief actors declaimed. It was a place of luxurious pageantry, solemn ceremony, and breathtaking art that made known the crushing power of the papacy. But it was not a place of comfort. There was no cozy spot where the pope could curl up with a good book.

The papal apartments were the gloomiest of all. Despite their glorious frescoes, the Borgia rooms and Raphael’s
stanze
resembled huge dark cubes where popes lived uneasily. Even worse, ghostly torches were seen at night, held by invisible hands. No ghostly presences invaded Sixtus’s comfortable, light-filled new wing.

The pope encouraged scholarship. The Vatican Library had been founded in 1447 by Pope Nicholas V to imitate the great ancient library of Alexandria, yet it was located in a damp area on the ground floor of the old Vatican Palace. To better house the priceless documents, in 1587 Sixtus constructed a bright new wing cutting across the huge Belvedere courtyard, which had been designed by Donato Bramante in 1505. Many decried the ruination of the glorious space, but Sixtus wanted to make sure that popes would no longer be able to hold bull fights there, as he considered animal sacrifices pagan.

To stuff his new library with additional volumes, Sixtus sent out twelve researchers across Europe and the Middle East to search for rare manuscripts and hired dozens of scribes to copy crumbling ones already housed in the collection. Scholars were invited from across Europe to do research in the Vatican library.

In 1587, Sixtus set up the Vatican press to print devotional and educational Catholic books in a variety of European languages. Protestant presses worked non-stop producing books to convert Catholics and inspire Protestants. Now a Catholic press, overseen by the pope himself, would do the same for the Catholic religion. One of the first books to be printed on the pope’s spanking new Vatican printing press was an Italian translation of the Bible. For decades, Protestants had read the Holy Scripture in their native tongue, while the Catholic Bible remained in Latin, which most people did not understand.

Sixtus wanted Catholics to be able to read the Bible in their own language. God’s word was not reserved for Latin-reading, highly educated people, he believed, but should be available to all who could read their native tongue. The pope himself translated the Latin Bible into Italian. Many cardinals felt his translation a bit cavalier in places. Cardinal Antonio Caraffa told Sixtus that even a pope could not take liberties with Holy Scripture. In response, the pope threatened to hand him over to the Inquisition. Meanwhile, up north the heretics were laughing that the pope was rewriting the Bible.

Spain was appalled to hear of any translation, cavalier or not. Philip II feared than an Italian Bible – or Spanish, or French – smacked of Martin Luther. Uneducated people should not be able to understand the Bible; they would start coming up with their own opinions about what the texts meant and split off into splinter groups, as the Protestants had done. No, it was far better to have priests explain the meaning of the Bible stories, according to doctrine and dogma approved by the Church. Philip was especially concerned with the effects of Sixtus’s Italian Bible in the Spanish realm of Naples. Perhaps it would cause heretical movements to sprout like mushrooms.

Philip II instructed his ambassador to deliver the most vehement protests regarding the translation. When Count Olivares made known that he wanted to speak to Sixtus about his Italian Bible, the pope replied, “It is because of your ignoramuses who don’t understand Latin that I made this translation into Italian.”
²

The ambassador then delivered a long harangue about the folly of such a translation and all the evils that would follow from people reading the Bible. Philip II, his court, and all the clerics of Spain were scandalized by the publication. He paused periodically, waiting for Sixtus to speak. But the pope didn’t say a word and just glared at him.