Pallien niche

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tomb with Christ mosaic and pallia niche below the papal altar in St. Peter's Basilica

The pallia niche is a niche in the Confessio of St. Peter's Basilica .

The niche with a rounded back wall was created around 160 AD together with a monumental grave in a red plastered wall, which is located above the tomb of the Apostle Peter and below the today's papal altar in the middle under the cathedral dome. This tomb was the reference point for the construction of Old St. Peter in the early 4th century. The back wall of the pallia niche is decorated with a Byzantine Christ mosaic from the 8th century. In it there is a gilded shrine in which the pallia , the official badges of the Latin metropolitans , are kept. Every year on the Solemnity of Peter and Paul , June 29th, the Pope removes the pallia from the shrine and gives them to the newly appointed Metropolitans in a ceremony designed for this purpose.

From the year 324 onwards, Constantine's first St. Peter's Basilica was not aligned axially with the rounded niche of the original tomb, but slightly offset to the right. To the right of the niche, an additional, vertical marble strip can be seen in the view, which gives the niche two unequally wide sides. Behind the marble strip on the far right, during the excavations of the Vatican necropolis in the 1940s to 1960s, the so-called graffiti wall from the 3rd century was discovered - named after the Greek graffiti from the 3rd and early 4th centuries on it Found marble compartment with bones. The original tomb with the niche was enclosed after 324 together with this graffiti wall on the right by the memoria of Emperor Constantine and the center of this memoria was decisive for the central axis of St. Peter's Basilica, which was also retained when St. Peter was rebuilt in the 16th century has been. After Pope Gregory the Great raised the floor of the presbytery so that the ceiling of the high memoria of Constantine could be used as an altar, the semicircular niche in the lower area was uncovered again.

The fact that the asymmetry in the main axis of St. Peter was obviously accepted because of the bones in the graffiti wall shows the importance attached to them by the builders of the basilica. While the graffiti wall with the bones from the 4th century until the excavations in the 20th century remained hidden behind walls and the memory of it was faded, the asymmetry of the niche has always made the specialty of the situation recognizable. On the basis of the archaeological excavation results and the petrographic and osteological reports, the bones found in the graffiti wall of Pope Paul VI. recognized as those of the Apostle Peter and buried again on June 27, 1968 in the marble compartment.

Behind, below and above the pallia niche, the remains of all construction phases have been found during the excavations: that of an earth grave from the 1st century, the tomb with the semicircular niche from the 2nd century, the graffiti wall from the 3rd century with the ossuary , the Constantinian one Memoria from the 4th century, the altar of Gregory the Great from the 6th century and the altar of Pope Calixt II from the 12th century. Today's papal altar was erected in the 16th century under Clement VIII on a significantly higher level above the pallia niche.

literature

  • Margherita Guarducci : Here is Peter. The bones of the Prince of the Apostles in the Confessio of St. Peter. Habbel, Regensburg 1967.
  • Engelbert Kirschbaum : The graves of the princes of the apostles. St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome. With a supplementary chapter by Ernst Dassmann . 3rd edition, Societaets-Verlag, Frankfurt 1974.