Ashes to Ashes

Yesterday was the bone Church today was the Scavi Tour.  This tour, difficult to get tickets for, is the excavations begun by Pope Pius XII under the "New" Basilica of St. Peter's.  The first half of the tour you see an ancient necropolis - A city of the dead, the second half was the cemetery (place of sleep) - Christian burial grounds.  In a Christian Mausoleum is one of the earliest depictions of Christ as Apollo the sun god riding his chariot. The tour lasted 90 minutes and it is VERY humid and hot.  The pagan burial grounds had beautiful mausoleums.  They are very well preserved because when Constantine the Great began the building of the old basilica he simply removed the roofs of the mausoleum's and filled them in with dirt.  At this juncture he was still a pagan who believed to disturb the spirits was not a good thing to do.  Today's blog title refers to the fact pagan Rome cremated their human remains before burial or entombment.  It is also the reminder for Christians on Ash Wednesday.

You are probably asking, 'then why was he building a Christian Church?'.  Good question, the answer is a simple one.  His mother, St. Helena, was a devote Christian and she asked him to build several great Churches in Jerusalem and Rome.  He was a good Italian son, he did what momma wanted!  They do not allow pictures in the Scavi so there are none to share.

We did get within a few feet of St. Peter's bones, today they sit in two small boxes no larger than a cigar box, these rest in an ancient niche where they lay for over 2,000 years.  It was really neat because the first Christians of Rome built a "Trophy", a type of victory monument over the remains, then the old basilica was built as a shrine, there were no Masses, Mass was held at St. John Lateran.  Later Pope Gregory the Great added a huge marble altar, still visible.  When the old basilica made way for the  new basilica they left the old altar in place and built the new one above it!!  You can see all of this very well underground.  You can see the original foundations of the old basilica, it columns, walls, wall decorations and such.

When the workers broke into the tomb of St. Peter they did not realize it was his tomb, they carefully photographed the scene (they were working in haste because WWII was going on and Hitler was pressing in on Italy, the Pope feared the Germans would steal the relics if they were found).  A worker simply picked up the bones and moved them to a storage room where they sat for another decade until a female archeologist was examining the tomb, she found a considerable amount of graffiti.  It said, "Peter is here", "Peter, pray for me", Peter, I visited you" and such.  Petrus (Peter) was written so many times and she saw the remains of the trophy and the huge altar and knew this was his tomb.  She then examined the catalog and saw the photos and asked where was the box with the bones.  DNA and soil samples were matched against the head of St. Peter at St. John Lateran and it was determined the remains in both sites matched both in DNA and soil.  It was also noted the feet of the skeleton were missing, they had been cut off deliberately, which was consistent with the manner of removing bodies in Rome after Crucifixion.

The afternoon was spent at John and Ashley Noronha's apartment, they hosted the priests for afternoon tea.  John was born in India so he made us a delicious chai style tea with honey, cardamon, cinnamon, ginger and some things.  He also served us some typical Indian snacks.  Very exotic tasting and delicious.  The tea was like drinking a perfumed garden!

Here are some pictures from the afternoon tea along with the requested shots of Ashley's shoes for T.

John sharing a story with the group

John and Ashley sharing some wonderful Rome stories with us.

Roman and Indian snacks, the three bowls had nice spicy Indian snacks

John and Ashley

The famous shoes from the rain

Ashley modeling shoes from India she bought for her brother-in-laws upcoming wedding at St.Peter's

This is a picture of their compact kitchen.  Large by Roman Standards, their apartment was the residence of the Prince of Afghanistan before they moved in.  They have a website, www.johnandashley.org check it out.