The Sistine Secrets Read Free Page B

building the papal palace there.
    What does “the Vatican” mean today? Because of its history, the name has a number of different connotations. It can refer to the Basilica of St. Peter; to the Apostolic Palace of the popes with more than fourteen hundred rooms; to the Vatican Museums complex with more than two thousand rooms; to the political/social/religious hierarchy that is considered the spiritual leadership of about one-fifth of the human race; or to the world’s smallest official country of Città del Vaticano (Vatican City). It is indeed strange to consider that this tiniest country on earth, which could fit eight times over inside Central Park in New York City, contains within it the world’s largest and costliest church, the world’s largest and most luxurious palace, and one of the world’s largest museums.
    REPLACING THE TEMPLE
     
    Most fascinating of all, though, may well be a place within the ancient fortress walls of Vatican City whose symbolic meaning is unknown to almost all its visitors. Its theological significance can best be realized by noting that this Catholic effort was something explicitly forbidden to Jews. In the Talmud, the ancient holy commentaries of the greatest Jewish sages spanning more than five centuries, it is clearly legislated that no one may construct a functioning full-sized copy of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem in any location other than the Temple Mount itself (Tractate Megillah, 10a). This was decreed in order to avoid any possible bloody religious schisms, such as later happened in Christianity (Roman Catholicism; Eastern and Greek Orthodoxy; Protestantism—and their centuries of internecine warfare) and Islam (Sunni and Shi’ite, who are sadly still killing each other around the globe).
    Six centuries ago, however, a Catholic architect who was not constrained by Talmudic laws did exactly that. He designed and built an incredible, full-sized copy of the inner sanctum, or the Holy of Holies, of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem—right in the middle of Renaissance Rome. To get the measurements and proportions exactly correct, the architect studied the writings of the prophet Samuel in the Hebrew Bible, where Samuel describes the First Holy Temple, cubit by cubit (1 Kings 6:2). This massive reproduction of the heichal, or rear section of the First Temple, still exists today. It is called la Cappella Sistina—the Sistine Chapel. And this is where more than four million visitors a year come to view the incredible frescoes of Michelangelo and pay homage to a site sacred to Christianity.
    Before the creation of this replica of the Jewish Temple, there had been a chapel on the same spot during the Middle Ages. It was called la Cappella Palatina, or the Palatial Chapel. Since every European ruler had his or her own regal chapel for praying privately with the royal court, it was deemed necessary for the pope also to have one in his own palace. This was to show the power of the Church, which had to be viewed as greater than that of any secular sovereign. It is no coincidence that the word palatina comes from the Palatine Hill, the home of the most powerful human beings known to Western history at that point—the pagan emperors of ancient Rome. According to Roman tradition, the Palatine Hill was where Romulus had founded the city on April 21, 753 BCE. Since that time, every ruler of Rome had lived on the Palatine, constructing one spectacular palace after another. The Church was determined to prove that it was the new ruling power in Europe and hoped to spread Christendom, that is, the empire of Christianity, across the globe. This chapel was meant to be a harbinger of this coming triumph and glory, and so the pope wanted its opulence to overshadow that of any other royal chapel on earth.
    Aside from the magnificent Palatina, there was also the Niccolina, a private chapel ordained by Pope Nicholas V in 1450 and decorated by the great Renaissance painter Fra Angelico. This was a