From the Apostle's Tomb to the Papal Basilica
Catholics have long venerated the burial place of the Apostle Paul beside the Ostian Way, on a small Christian cemetery within easy reach of the place of his martyrdom at the Tre Fontane. The earliest basilica was raised over the tomb under the Emperor Constantine in the early 4th century. By the end of the same century it had become too small for the pilgrim crowds, and the three emperors Theodosius, Valentinian II, and Arcadius began a far larger basilica with five aisles, eighty columns, and a long transept oriented across the Apostle's tomb. It was consecrated under Pope Saint Siricius in 390 and remained the largest church in Rome until the Renaissance rebuilding of Saint Peter's. The Benedictines were established at the adjoining abbey in the 10th century and have served the basilica ever since. Pope Honorius III commissioned the 13th-century apse mosaic in 1220, and Arnolfo di Cambio signed the ciborium over the papal altar in 1285. The medieval Cosmati cloister of the abbey was completed in the same period by the Vassalletto family. On the night of 15 to 16 July 1823, while masons were working on the lead roof, a fire broke out and substantially destroyed the Theodosian basilica. Pope Leo XII opened a worldwide subscription for the rebuilding, and contributions came from Catholic and non-Catholic governments alike, including the Tsar of Russia, the Khedive of Egypt, and Queen Maria of Portugal. The new basilica was raised on the same Theodosian plan, preserving what had survived the fire, and Pope Pius IX reconsecrated it on 10 December 1854, three days after defining the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. In the Pauline Year of 2008 to 2009, marking two thousand years since the traditional birth of the Apostle, an archaeological investigation of the sarcophagus beneath the confessio reported the presence of bone fragments carbon-dated to the first or second century, consistent with the long-standing tradition of the Apostle's burial at this site.
The basilica gathers two architectural memories at once. Below the level of the nave, the Theodosian plan of the 4th century remains visible in the orientation of the building, the position of the confessio, the surviving portions of the triumphal arch, the 13th-century apse mosaic, and the ciborium of Arnolfo di Cambio. Above that level, the rebuilt basilica of Luigi Poletti, raised after the fire of 1823 and reconsecrated in 1854, restores the five-aisle plan with eighty granite columns, the great coffered ceiling, the alabaster windows, and the renewed Series Pontificum along the nave. The medieval Cosmati cloister of the adjoining Benedictine abbey, completed in the early 13th century by the Vassalletto family, is one of the most refined examples of the Cosmati style in Rome and one of the few major medieval spaces of the complex to survive the fire intact.
What gives the basilica its weight is the tomb of the Apostle at its centre. The five-aisle plan, the long transept, and the great triumphal arch all open toward the confessio, and the Series Pontificum reads the whole nave as the visible memory of the apostolic succession that follows from Paul's witness. A Catholic visit reads the basilica inward: from the quadriportico and the colossal statue of Saint Paul, through the nave under the gaze of the popes, to the papal altar and the marble grille over the Apostle's sarcophagus. The basilica is also a serious place of liturgy. The Benedictine community keeps daily Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, the chapter of the basilica celebrates the great feasts of Saint Paul, and the closing liturgy of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity each January is celebrated here in the presence of representatives of other Christian communions.
