Identifier: destructionofan00lanc (find matches)
Title: The destruction of ancient Rome : a sketch of the history of the monuments
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Lanciani, Rodolfo Amedeo, 1847-1929
Subjects:
Publisher: London : Macmillan
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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f St. Paul, a plain marble coffin level with thefloor of the basilica, was certainly injured or destroyed.We find the evidence of the fact last mentioned in thelife of Benedict III.:^ Sepulclirum (^Pauli apostoli) quoda Sarraeenis destructum fuerat^ perornavit. The worddestructum^ however, cannot be taken in a literal sense ;the lid of the sarcophagus, with the epitaph pauloAPOSTOLO mart(yiii) engraved in the style of the ageof Constantine, is still in existence. I saw it on Decem- 1 Chapter xxii. in Duchesnes edition of the Liber PontiJicaUs, Vol.II. p. 145. The passage reLating to St. Peters, in the life of Leo IV.,mentions not the grave, but the altar of the Apostle as having beeninjured by the Saracens : beatiss. Petri altare violatum et ad vilitatemperdiictum. 132 DESTRUCTION OF ANCIENT ROME ber 1, 1891, having lowered myself from the fenestellaunder the high altar.^ (^^ig- 23.) The most notewortliy consequence of these events,from a topographical point of view, was the inclusion
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Fia. 23. — The tomb of St. Paul and the canopy of Arnolfo di Lapo in S. Paolofuori le Mura, after the fire of 1823. of the Vatican district in the (ity proper, and theconstruction of two powerful outlying forts, one atSt. Pauls, the other at the church of S. Lorenzo fuorile Mura. The walls of the Civitas Leonina, or Burgas, are 1 See Pagan and Christian Rome, p. 157. INCURSION OF THE SARACENS, IN 846 133 still in existence, and are properly considered a mas-terpiece of mediaeval military engineering. Leo IV.undertook to imitate, to a certain extent, the construc-tion of the wall of Aurelian. His structure is twelvefeet thick, and has two galleries, one above the other.The lower gallery is supported by open arcades facingwithin. The upper one is level with the battlements.The arcades of the lower gallery were walled up inthe fifteenth century by Pope Borgia, and the galleryitself transformed into a secret passage — the famousCorridojo di Castello — connecting the palace of theVat

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