n the age of Heraclius from
the shrine of Venus and of Roma on the Sacred Way.

During the eleven centuries which elapsed between its consecration and
the decree for its destruction, S. Peter's had been gradually enriched
with a series of monuments, inscriptions, statues, frescoes, upon
which were written the annals of successive ages of the Church. Giotto
worked there under Benedict II. in 1340. Pope after Pope was buried
there. In the early period of Renaissance sculpture, Mino da Fiesole,
Pollaiuolo, and Filarete added works in bronze and marble, which blent
the grace of Florentine religious tradition with quaint neo-pagan
mythologies. These treasures, priceless for the historian, the
antiquary, and the artist, were now going to be ruthlessly swept away
at a pontiff's bidding, in order to make room for his haughty and
self-laudatory monument. Whatever may have been the artistic merits of
Michelangelo's original conception for the tomb, the spirit was in no
sense Christian. Those rows of captive Arts and Sciences, those
Victories exulting over prostrate cities, those allegorical colossi
symbolising the mundane virtues of a mighty ruler's character, crowned
by the portrait of the Pope, over whom Heaven rejoiced while Cybele
deplored his loss--all this pomp of power and parade of ingenuity
harmonised but little with the humility of a contrite soul returning
to its Maker and its Judge. The new temple, destined to supersede the
old basilica, embodied an aspect of Latin Christianity which had very
little indeed in common with the piety of the primitive Church. S.
Peter's, as we see it now, represents the majesty of Papal Rome, the
spirit of a secular monarchy in the hands of priests; it is the
visible symbol of that schism between the Teutonic and the Latin
portions of the Western Church which broke out soon after its
foundation, and became irreconcilable before the cross was placed upon
its cupola. It seemed as though in sweeping away the venerable
traditions of eleven hundred years, and replacing Rome's time-honoured
Mother-Church with an edifice bearing the brand-new stamp of hybrid
neo-pagan architecture, the Popes had wished to signalise that rupture
with the past and that atrophy of real religious life which marked the
counter-reformation.

Julius II. has been severely blamed for planning the entire
reconstruction of his cathedral. It must, however, be urged in his
defence that the structure had already, in 1447, b