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| The Basilica of St. John Lateran |
Our last full day in Rome – and it was full – began with a
relatively late wake-up at 07:00, 08:00 breakfast, to be met by Roberta in the
lobby, thence immediately onto the bus for the drive to St. John Lateran, the
last of the four Major Basilicas of Rome we would visit on our pilgrimage [LINK]. It is the oldest of the Basilicas, the first
in rank (thus formally called the “Archbasilica of St. John Lateran”), indeed,
the oldest surviving church in the West.
It, moreover – not St. Peter’s
– serves as the Pope’s cathedral in his capacity as Bishop of Rome.
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| Constantine the Great |
The Basilica as a church building goes back to the very time
of the first Christian Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in the early 4th
century, when it was given by him to the Pope – but it is in fact much more
ancient than that, being part of the complex making up the extensive Palace of
the Lateran branch of the Sextian family, one of the more ancient families in
Rome. (Among the early notables was
Lucius Sextius Lateranus of Licinian-Sextian Law fame and first plebeian Consul
in the 4th century BC).
Constantine had inherited the Lateran Palace by marriage, but from the
early 4th century AD it would serve as the usual Papal residence
through most of the Middle Ages, undergoing the usual periodic restorations
after fires or earthquakes, such as in the 10th century, before
being magnificently embellished by Pope Innocent III in the early 13th
century. There, of course, in 1215,
Innocent would preside over one of the four most important Ecumenical Councils
in the history of the Church, Lateran IV.
Then an extended period of vacancy in the 14th century during
the Avignon Papacy (1305-1378) would leave it in near ruins to be rebuilt yet
again. The Basilica also suffered during
that period, to be rebuilt and embellished over the course of centuries once
the Popes had returned to Rome. The
modern façade was designed by Allessandro Galilei (related to Galileo, but a
century later), “remov[ing] all vestiges of the ancient basilica architecture,
and impart[ing] a new-classical façade” [op. cit.]. Nevertheless, some elements of the most
ancient structures were preserved throughout, including the Scala Sancta … but we’ll get to that.
