Princeton Indexes Vatican Art

...The chapel in which the altar stands is, in fact, the only existing portion of the old Lateran palace of the Popes which was demolished in the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries...

...Let no man trust such a nation, for in the hour of trial it will fall...

...There exists at Princeton a unique instrument for research in mediaeval art which has been in process of compilation for years, and has now become indis- pensable for the thorough classification of mediaeval objects...

...But still the Puritan housewife occa- sionally made one...

...He further protected the chest with bronze doors which dose the opening of the altar in which the chest rested, and added to its contents the relics which had been acquired since the time of Leo III...

...its foundations are not built upon that solid rock of human strength--the Christmas pudding[ (Due to limitations of space in this issue of The Common-weal, several important communications have been omitted...

...It may well be the one mentioned in the Book of the Popes as having been presented to the basilica by Pope Symmachus (498-514...

...The Vatican Library has assigned the task to the writer of this article and his colleagues of the De- partment of Art and Archaeology at Princeton Uni- versity, with the invaluable assistance of the staff of the library itself, and especially of S. E. Pio Franchi de'Cavalieri, Bali of the Knights of Malta, and the most accomplished hagiologist in Italy...

...Let nothing you dismay...

...The painting appears on the inside of the cover, which is of the sliding variety, and depicts in five panels the Crucifixion, the scene of Easter Morn, the Ascension, the Nativity, and the Baptism...

...less known is its other collection of treasures, which the casual visitor sometimes hardly notices as he "does" the gallery of Pius IV...

...That day is forever past, but it is to be hoped we shall never let that pudding pass away...

...The manuscripts of the Vatican Library are famous the world over...

...it is becoming effete...

...In that year the altar of the chapel of the Sancta Sanc- torum was opened, and after recognition of the relics it contained, the objects of art which served as con-tainers of these relics, or had otherwise found their way into this ancient repository of sacred treasure, were transferred to the Museo Cristiano...

...It is cheap and certainly effectual...

...In the five panels of its front, the craftsman has quaintly imagined in the stenographic style of his period the scenes which the mediaeval sculptors used to call the "infancies of Jesus"--the Annunciation to Mary, the Visitation (Mary and Elizabeth) the Journey to Bethlehem, the Birth of the Saviour, the Adoration of the Three Magi, and the Presentation of the Christ-Child in the Temple...

...Of this important collection no catalogue exists...

...Since the reign of Pius X they have been installed in more mod- ern fashion in fire-proof vaults convenient to the study rooms which are situated in the transverse wing of Sixtus V mentioned above...

...It would have taxed even the supreme competence of a De Rossi to dassi-fy properly all the objects of the Museo Cris-tiano, so varied is their character, and so wide the space of time (from the third to the eighteenth cen-tury) over which their dates of production are scat-tered...

...Our Pilgrim ancestors had their doubts about pudding-- and well they might...

...The precious collection of 5o,ooo manu- scripts for which the library is famous, used to be kept in the little cupboards which one sees along the lower walls of the corridor of Pius IV...

...By the time of Innocent III (II98-1216) the treasure already had its name of Sancta Sanctorum...

...The assignment of a Vatican catalogue to American scholars is a departure in European practice which throws interesting light on the development of re-search in the history of art in our country in recent years...

...The Baptism in Jordan ends the series and opens the nar- rative anew with the Ministry of Christ...

...silver caskets of unique importance in the history of mediaeval silver-work...

...Whenever a national stomach can no longer digest a pudding, that race is doomed...

...The Museo Cristiano, as the little museum is called, occupies a single room in the long gallery...

...Chief among the reliquaries which were found in the cypress chest of Leo III, and are now in the Museo Cristiano, is a gold and enameled cross (figure 3) which served as container for a fragment of the true Cross--an extremely ancient work of its kind, since there is good reason to believe that it is the same cross reliquary which Pope Sergius discovered in old Saint Peter's in the seventh century...

...It still remains true, and will doubtless so remain for many years, that Europe possesses, in in- dividuals, the richer scholarship...

...Chaucer, the fourteenthcentury poet, speaks in his Canterbury Tales of a cook's prowess in making puddings and sauce therefor...

...It com-menced by acquisitions of private collections nearly two hundred years ago...

...The existence, under the altar of the Sancta Sanc- torum, of this cypress chest, had been known for hun- dreds of years...

...It is well that the peasants, gathered in front of the castles, sang the reassuring Christmas carol: "God rest you, merry gentlemen...

...And men had better stomachs at religion Than I to capon, turkey-cock, or pigeon...

...And in it put great lumps of fat As big as my two thumbs...

...On the other hand, scholars who study the art of the middle- ages know it well as perhaps the most interesting assemblage of mediaeval minor arts to be found in any museum of Europe--hardly rivaled by the Car-rand collection in the National Museum of Florence, or by the more imposing but hardly so valuable series which is installed in the H6tel de Cluny at Paris...

...In fact, the visitor usually enters the Vatican galleries by climbing the steps into the museums of sculpture, and only rarely turns to the right in the entrance lobby, to go down the long cor- ridor of the wing which Plus IV built along the western or garden side of the Cortile del Belvedere...

...some extraordinary textiles with woven fig-ures and scenes, mostly from the looms of the East and occasionally displaying Christian subjects...

...a striking series of devotional plaques and triptychs ranging from the Slavic to a beautiful group 184 THE COMMONWEAL December 22, x926 of Gothic ivories of the fourteenth century (figure 2...

...On Christmas Eve, she deftly mixed some milk, bread-crumbs, butter, salt, eggs, sugar, and raisins...

...Generally the great pudding was molded into the shape of the jolly head of Old King Cole, or Santa Claus---a custom that is followed to this day in ancient Osborne House on the Isle of Wight...

...in Shakespeare's day the references to the Christmas pudding are innumerable...

...You may measure a nation's vitality by its plum puddings...

...The famous Scala Santa which forms at present the access to the chapel, was placed in its present position by Sixtus V. The chapel itself was dedicated to Saint Lawrence, and the name of Sancta Sanctorum was originally applied only to the altar and its contents---the most revered set of relics, perhaps, that the middle-ages knew...

...in the seventeenth-century folk-tales and ballads you may smell its savory odors...

...182 T H E C O M M O N W E A L December 22, I9z6 PRINCETON INDEXES VATICAN ART By C. R. MOREY I T IS refreshing to note, in these days of inter-national recrimination when political and financial misunderstandings seem to compose the materia of our foreign relations so far as Europe is concerned, that the real or fancied distrust so loudly voiced by our politicians on both sides of the Atlantic finds no echo in the scholar's study...

...Even without this unique series of objects that have come from the Sancta Sanctorum, the collection of the Museo Cristiano would be of first importance...

...It has, naturally, a very fine set of llturgical implements of all periods--chalices and patens which range in provenience from England to Italy and the Byzantine East...

...THE CHRISTMAS PUDDING By CARL HOLLIDAY H OW long man has considered pudding a Christmas necessity, would be hard to calculate...

...Other museums, such as our own Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, own a few of these objects...

...Evidently the scenes have reference to the holy places visited by the early pilgrims to the Terra Sancta, since Golgotha, the Holy Sepulchre, the Mount of 0lives, Bethlehem, and Jor- dan are the places listed in the earliest pilgrim's itin- erary which we possess--that of the Pilgrim of Bor- deaux of the fourth century...

...bronze and terra-cotta lamps of unusual quality...

...Well might Sir Walter Scott dedare that "England was Merry England then...

...ostensoria of all types...

...flagella of bronze which seem to have served penitential uses...

...the Museo Cristiano has over a hundred of the most varied character...

...Heed them not--they are as tinkling cymbals and sounding brass...

...It in- cludes an excellent series of the enamels which made the city of Limoges in the south of France a famous centre of this branch of art from the twelfth century to the sixteenth (figure 4...

...English tradition says that old King Arthur had one made for his Round Table, and his recipe is still on record: ;'A bag pudding the King would make And stuffed it well with plums...

...The Museo Cristiano is not so well known to the visitors of the Vatican as are the other collections of that vast palace...

...When honest sisters met to pray, not prate, About their own, and not their neighbors' state...

...Loud were the cheers that rang forth at this imposing spectacle...

...A goodly mixture, indeed...

...Well, at the present price of food, most housewives would stand aghast at the ingredients...

...This astounding and deadly conglomeration was nine feet in circumference and weighed twelve stone, or about one hun- dred and sixty-eight pounds...

...and in her museums, the most valuable material for comparative study...

...ivory and enameled book-covers, among which is the famous book-cover of Lorsch (figure I ) which was made by some Carolingian workman after an Alexandrian model...

...an ivory casket made in Alexandria in the fifth or sixth century...

...in her libraries, the most inaccessible books...

...its resisting and absorbing capacities are fast ebbing away...

...for " 'Twas in those days an honest grace would hold Till a hot pudding grew at heart a-cold...

...It is a task for a group, rather than for a single scholar...

...for a century and a half its growth was slow and its reputation limited, until Pius IX moved it into a rank of first importance by the simple means of giving it its choice of the objects found during the excavation of the Catacombs of Rome...

...Years of work have finally made it practically complete for the early mediaeval period...

...it has filling capacity that is positively marvelous...

...No wonder that we unfortunate descendants of our forefathers are afflicted with indigestion...

...and the next day when she brought the savory pudding before her lord and master he doubtless had inner qualms lest his heart--and stomach--should incline too much toward the good things of this world...

...But cer-tain centres in the United States have amassed so much of photographic apparatus, and have built up special libraries so convenient for workers, that it is actually possible at the present moment to do the re-search inherent in the preparation of such a catalogue as that of the Museo Cristiano more conveniently and perhaps more effectively in New York or Cambridge or Princeton, than in Rome, Paris, London, or Berlin...

...Publication of these will follow shortly.--The Editors...

...lous image of the Saviour known as the "Acheiro-poeta," whose history can be traced as far back as Pope Stephen II (752-757) who carried the image in procession from the chapel of Saint Lawrence to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, at a time when Rome was threatened with a Lombard invasion...

...the list includes another cross set with jewels that was the legendary receptade of the relic known as the praeputium Domini...

...One of these has a cover decorated with the only certain piece of Palestinian panebpainting of the early Christian period which we possess...

...What went into these famous puddings of the olden days...

...a curious Abyssinian processional cross which holds its own surprisingly well with the impos- ing crosses of mediaeval Europe...

...Thus, in I77o, one was made at Newcastle, England, which contained the following articles: Two bushels of flour, twenty pounds of butter, four geese, two turkeys, four wild ducks, two woodcocks, six snipe, four partridges, two heat's tongues, two curlews, seven blackbirds, and six pigeons...

...Those were indeed pious times...

...I saw the same image traversin~ Rome in I02~, during one of the solemnities of the Holy Year, followed by a throng of pedestrians and a host of automobiles...

...The box of relics is not the chapel's only claim to distinction, for it houses as well the miracu...

...It, and the startling boar's head, with cherry eyes and sugar teeth, were brought in on immense silver platters, garlanded with holly and all aflame with burning brandy...

...In I9O5, another acquisition was made which still further increased the importance of the collection...

...the existing lists of the relics it con- tained go back to the thirteenth century...

...At even an earlier date, the priests of the early Christian Church told the congregation that the pudding was a symbol or emblem of the offering brought to the Christ Child in the manger by the Wise Men from the East--and through all the centuries that have passed since then, this triumph of baking has been celebrated in song and story...

...The enumeration of the treasures of the Sancta Sanctorum would carry one beyond the limits of this article...

...At any rate, it appears to be our earliest specimen of that species of mediaeval Christian enamel known as cloisonn6...

...We should remember that it was the custom in early Eng- land to eat the pudding before anything else was served at the Christmas banquet, and to this day some English families persist in eating their pudding first...

...Its hollow back still contains the dessicated remains of the layer of balsam which covered the relic...

...Giovanni Batfista De Rossi, the founder of the science of early Christian archaeology, had commenced one before his death in t894, and had reached the point of a manuscript inventory which is now preserved in the Vatican Library and must serve as starting-point for any further work of the sort...

...It is called the Index of Christian Art, and has for its object the cataloguing of all works of figura- tive art down to the year I4OO, and of their subjects and relative bibliographies as well...

...The authorities of the Vatican Library have recently demonstrated the soli- darity that exists between the scholarship of Europe and America, by assigning to the latter the task of preparing the catalogue of the valuable collection of objects of the minor arts of the Christian epoch which has long been known and prized by students of medi- aeval art under the name of the Museo Cristiano...

...Leo III (795-816) inclosed them in the famous cypress chest, inscribing thereon the brief record: Leo Indignus Tertius Episcopus Dei Famulus Fecit...

...Some modern physiologists have declared plum pudding the insidious foe of man's welfare...

...The old-time pudding was served with great pomp and ceremony...

...The co6pera- tion reflected in the arrangements for the catalogue bears witness to the breadth of vision animating the direction of the Vatican Library, and to the happy facility with which objects of pure scholarship achieve an international modus operandi...

...When, therefore, the British tell you to come at "pudding time," they do not mean to invite you to the coffee-and-cigar end of the dinner, but to the whole menu...

...The paintings were done about the year 6oo, and the box was one of those receptacles sold to the pil- grims to the Holy Land for convenience in carrying their souvenirs, since inside it we find pieces of wood and stone, imbedded in some amalgam of resin and sand, on which is inscribed the provenience of the relics "from the life-giving place of the Resurrec-tion," etc...

...Doing so, he finds himself in the precincts of the Biblioteca Apostolica, since 16oo the extensive abode of the great Vatican Library, for which also was built, under Sixtus V, the wing that cuts across the Cortile del Belvedere to unite Pius IV's building with the wing of Julius II...

...Ungodly extravagance would never have been borne under such conditions, and the saintly wife, who then really did "love, honor, and obey" her "goodman," invented a simple pudding that was tasty, healthful, and above all--a success finandally...

...and certain painted wooden boxes which also served as reliquaries...

...Partly from these excavations, and partly from the Buonarroti, Chigi, and Vettori collections, the museum became the possessor of a very large, unique series of vetri d'oroJfragments of glass dishes adorned with a design in gold leaf imprisoned between films of glass, with which the humbler of the early Christians, lacking means perhaps with which to pur- chase inscribed gravestones, marked for identification the resting-places of their dead in the underground cemeteries of Rome...

...They were carefully catalogued at the time by the Jesuit, Grisar, and the librarian, Lauer, of the Biblioth~que Nationale at Paris, and it is no fault of these scholars if the new discoveries in Christian archaeology, and the new December 22, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 183 orientation of the study of early mediaeval art, should have modified so completely our point of view during the years that immediately succeeded the publication of their catalogues of the Sancta Sanctorum treasures, as to necessitate an entire review of their work and a redassification of the extraordinary objects that were found in the cypress chest of Leo III...