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, been pronounced insecure.  Nicholas V. ordered his architects, Bernardo Rossellini and Leo Battista Alberti, to prepare plans for its restoration.  It is, of course, impossible for us to say for certain whether the ancient fabric could have been preserved, or whether its dilapidation had gone so far as to involve destruction.  Bearing in mind the recklessness of the Renaissance and the passion which the Popes had for engaging in colossal undertakings, one is inclined to suspect that the unsound state of the building was made a pretext for beginning a work which flattered the architectural tastes of