We continue our annual visit to the Lenten station churches in Rome with our friends Agnese and Jacob. This second post normally includes some photos of the amazing relic collection of St Lawrence in Panisperna, but this year, the room in which they are kept is being refurbished, and was not accessible. Life in Rome...
Monday of the First Week of Lent – St Peter in Chains
The stational observance begins in the narthex...
followed by the procssion inside.
Veneration of a relic.
This reliquary contains the chain with which St Peter was kept prisoner in Rome under Nero, and another chain brought from the prison where he was kept by Herod in Jerusalem. Tradition holds that when the two chains were brought together in the mid-5th century, under Pope St Leo the Great, they were miraculously united as a single chain in such fashion that one could not tell where the one began and the other ended. A series of smaller links on the left side is from a chain that was used to hold St Paul. The church of Rome has always honored the two Apostles together as her co-founders; for this reason, one of the antiphons of their office reads, “The glorious princes of the earth; as they loved one another in their life, so also in death they were not separated.”
From Jacob: Michaelangelo’s famous staue of Moses, part of the tomb of Pope Julius II.
Tuesday of the First Week of Lent – Saint Anastasia
The statue of St Anastasia in the niche in front of the high altar was planned by a sculptor called Francesco Aprile, in imitation of similar statues of St Cecilia by Stefano Maderno, and Bernini’s Blessed Ludovica Albertoni. Aprile died in 1684 at the age of 30, and the work was executed by Ercole Ferrata, who was already in his 70s, and died very shortly after completing it.
From Jacob
Ember Wednesday of Lent – Saint Mary Major
The penitential procession passes through the basilica...
out into the narthex...
and back through the basilica.
Thursday of the First Week of Lent – Saint Lawrence ‘in Panisperna’
The entrance to the crypt and the site of St Lawrence’s martyrdom.
Relics exposed on the high altar especially for the station.
Ember Friday of Lent – Basilica of the Twelve Apostles
The church was originally dedicated to the Apostles Ss Philip and James the Lesser, whose relics are now kept in the crypt, along with those of a great many other martyrs. “The bodies of the Saints are buried in peace, and their names shall live forever.”
The foot of St Philip, and part of the femur of St James.
Jacob’s photo of a painting of one of his patron Saints in the crypt.
