Grave Situation

(Image to the left not to scale.) Not Quite. For instance, the small statues on level one are 26 feet tall--taller than your average chihuahua. If you drop down to the next level (which tends to have quite a line most days), you find the centuries logged by the tombs of the succession of local bishops. But it's the level even further down which leaps the centuries. Uncovered only 50 years ago, the tombs of slaves and patricians stretch along the former slope of the hill Vaticanus at the edge of what was the large Roman circus. If you follow that level to the left you end up below the large baldechino two stories above.

This was the expedition we were able to make on the 26th--fifteen of us, guided through the dark passageways that take you past carvings and reliefs, speaking of a shift within the empire from paganism to the emerging Christian tombs. Simplest, and most hastily constructed, was the tomb found at the climax of the dig: a 'poor man's grave', six clay tiles leaned against each other to form a lean-to, looking like an old pup tent. Beneath the succession of altars which were later constructed over it, as well as the former basilica of Constantine, were the remains of the first local bishop, crucified upside down in the circus, a looming Egyptian obelisk in front of him, which still stands today in the center of the piazza.

The emperor who killed him is long dead, the bloodhappy spectators long vanished, but the work of the few followers who hastily stole his body endures, in the largest church built in Christendom. Even Peter's feet are missing, reminders of the anxious haste of his body's rescuers taking him down from the Roman instrument--but now the feet of millions yearly make the trek to gather over his grave.

The grain of wheat, fallen into the ground, bears much fruit.