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Day Five: Churches & Poets

San Giovanni in Laterano (Archbasilica of St. John Lateran)

The full title of this magnificent cathedral is “Major Papal, Patriarchal and Roman Archbasilica Cathedral of the Most Holy Savior and Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist in Lateran, Mother and Head of All Churches in Rome and in the World.” It is the oldest and highest ranking of the four major papal basilicas and houses the cathedra (or seat) of the Roman bishop. As the Cathedral of the Pope as Bishop of Rome, it actually ranks superior to all other churches of the Roman Catholic Church, including St. Peter's Basilica.

Since this is a lesser-known fact, it avoids the same tourist-clogged treatment of St. Peter’s, (in my personal opinion) making it a better church to spend more time in.

St. Peter’s Basilica

Designed principally by Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Carlo Maderno, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, St. Peter's is the largest church in the world, and a popular site for tourists and pilgrims alike. It is believed in the Catholic tradition that this is the burial site of Saint Peter (and under the high altar, you can see into the supposed tomb of Saint Peter), thus earning it the title of Papal Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican.

If you noticed, we went to the Vatican Museums on a different day than we went to St. Peter’s, incorrectly assuming another day (other than the day the museums were free) would be less crowded. When we arrived in the square, we found a long, long line—but don’t be discouraged. The line moved surprisingly fast, and though we started about three-quarters wrapped around the square, it only took us about thirty or forty minutes to get inside. Honestly, the worst part about the wait was the couple of young, rude Americans who cut in line by standing and walking beside it, eventually weaseling their way in behind us. They then proceeded to insult all Irish people, the country itself, and question why two Americans who met in Ireland would want to get married there and then boasted about how they knew the Santorum family. If you’re reading this, you weird snobby Americans, you suck.

Luckily, after waiting behind a bunch of old people taking off the largest amount of jewelry I’ve ever seen to go through the metal detector, we finally made it inside the basilica.

The first thing that strikes you is the light. The high windows let angled beams slant down as if from the heavens, setting the marble and gold ablaze. Then, there is the sheer magnitude of it all. You are dwarfed by the ornate ceilings, the gargantuan sculptures, the canopy over the Papal Altar, carved by Bernini. Ralph Waldo Emerson once described St. Peter's as "an ornament of the earth. . .the sublime of the beautiful."

Turn right from the entrance, and you find yourself face to face with Michelangelo’s Pietà. This work of monumental importance depicts the body of Jesus on his mother Mary’s lap—it is as deeply religiously significant as it is emotionally compelling. And if you journey below the basilica, you find the tomb of the popes, where 91 popes are interred. It is impossible to deny the strength of papal tradition when confronted with the reality of their long lineage, and I felt a sense of solemnity beneath the hum of tourists above.

It was easy to be mesmerized by the weight of history, the beauty of light and shadow, the solidity of this religious institution. It was easy to rest in a sense of awe in a place like this.

Keats-Shelley House

Again retracing our steps from the previous days, we returned to the Spanish Steps to visit the Keats-Shelley House, a museum in Keats’ former Rome residence now dedicated to the two English Romantic poets, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Shelley had a complicated life. He studied at Oxford but was expelled for writings on atheism. He eloped to Scotland with Harriet Westbrook, then just three years later met and fell in love with Mary Godwin (daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft). Harriet had a child with Shelley, and so did Mary. On a sailing trip with Lord Byron, Mary conceived the idea of Frankenstein. Then, just five years after they married, Harriet committed suicide by drowning herself in a lake. Mary and Shelley married three weeks later, traveling and living across Italy. One might see it as a ghost story that Shelley died in 1822, just before his thirtieth birthday, by drowning.

As for Keats, the tragedies in his life were less self-inflicted. By the time he was 14, both of his parents had died of natural causes, leaving he and his three siblings orphans. In 1818, his brother Tom died of tuberculosis, and Keats was also exposed to the illness. His poetry was given poor reviews, and his sickness and lack of financial stability prevented his marriage to Fanny Brawne. By 1820, his doctors advised him to leave England for a warmer climate, and he traveled to Rome, knowing he would never see Fanny again. He moved to a house adjacent the Spanish Steps, where he could watch the bustle of people outside the window from his bed. In his last letter, Keats wrote, “I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.”

Keats’ last request was to be buried under a tombstone bearing no name or date, only the words, “Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water.” Keats believed he would be consigned to obscurity after his death, his poetry having left no mark on the world. Now, he is considered one of England’s most beloved poets.

Villa Borghese

For our last evening in Rome, we took a walk through Villa Borghese, a large public park. Strolling under the umbrella pines, we were sad to be leaving such a beautiful place, but we know we’ll be back one day.

I’ll leave you with some lines from Shelley’s Adonais, written to commemorate the loss of his friend Keats:

“Go thou to Rome,—at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness. . .
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. . .
Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.”

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