A Marytyred Apostle’s Shrine – The basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls was built over the tomb of the missionary Apostle Paul, founder – along with St. Peter – of the Roman Church. His memory has been honoured in this basilica as St. Peter’s in his – throughout two millennia of Christian history.
A CONTINUOUS TRADITION
The Liber Pontificalis (biographies of the early Popes) tells us that the Emperor Constantine ordered basilicas to be built over the cellae memoriae which marked both St. Paul’s and St. Peter’s tombs. Furthermore, the Acts of St. Sylvester record the consecration of the basilica of St. Paul by Pope Sylvester (314–35) on 18 November 324, as well as Constantine’s generous donations throughout the following years.
Several Emperors who jointly ruled the Roman Empire in the late fourth century – Valentinian II (375–92), Theodosius (375–95), Arcadius (377–408), and Honorius (395–423) – decreed that the church should be enlarged in accordance with its importance to pilgrims. That church, built with five aisles, eighty columns, and a huge porch, was completed in the early fifth century (as we are informed by an inscription on the triumphal arch inside). Many Popes restored and embellished St. Paul’s, and in time the basilica became the largest and most beautiful church in Rome, surpassing even St. Peter’s.
St. Paul Outside the Walls continued through the Middle Ages as the largest Christian church in the world, until the new St. Peter’s was built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The basilica was a protagonist in centuries of agitated Church history. Pope St. Leo the Great (440–61) commissioned additional mosaics; Pope St. Gregory the Great (590–604) endowed the basilica with extensive lands. The Saracens attacked the church in 846, and in the late ninth century Pope John VIII (872–82) made it the centre of his new fortified town, Giovannopolis.
In the eleventh century the Emperor Henry IV (1050–1106) besieged St. Paul’s and destroyed its famous portico; the basilica’s abbot, who became Henry’s nemesis as Gregory VII (1072–85), restored the church and transformed it into a powerful monastery. During the later Middle Ages, until the time of the transference of the Papal residence to Avignon, St. Paul’s was beautified with some of Christendom’s most magnificent art. Later enrichments included early and High Renaissance paintings and seventeenth-century chapels.
During the night of 15 July 1823, a terrible fire, set off by some careless workmen on the roof, reduced to rubble the ancient basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, along with much of its rich artistic and historical patrimony.
The basilica was rebuilt quickly (it was finally reconsecrated in 1854) and the entire world assisted in its reconstruction. Mohammed Ali of Egypt sent over the six huge alabaster columns which flank the inside entrance. Tsar Nicholas I of Russia underwrote malachite and lapis lazuli decorations for altars in the right and left transepts. Collections were taken up on every continent for restorations of the mosaics.
Excerpt from Hager, June. Pilgrimage: A Chronicle of Christianity Through the Churches of Rome. (Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London), 1999.
We will be going to visit the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in our upcoming Journey Toward the Face of Christ pilgrimage this coming May/June 2022.
