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Liturgical practices were not strictly uniform from one community to another, but there was a tendency to view Saint Peter's as the model, and it was at Saint Peter's that some important features of the familiar Roman liturgy took shape. For the eighth-century office celebrated by the monasteries serving Saint Peter's, the evidence is focused largely on the cycles of readings during the night office of Matins. The fourfold liturgical year, centred on Saint Peter's, seems to underlie the arrangement of readings in OR XIV, OR XVI and OR XIVB, representing the period when the great Roman basilicas were staffed by monastic communities, and when Saint Peter's seems to have been something of a model for the other churches of the city. The liturgical leadership seems to have been shifting away from the Vatican basilica, toward the person of the pope himself, whose cathedra or chair was at the Lateran.
The building of the imperial mausoleum at Saint Peter's marks a new and closer association of the western emperors with Rome. This process was characterized on the one hand by the emperors' increasing involvement with Saint Peter's and on the other by the popes' rise to a greater prominence in imperial affairs. The provision of episcopia was included to the right and left of the entrance to the atrium of Saint Peter's, presumably residences for the clergy of Symmachus's household. The question of the staffing of the great papal basilicas is an important one, but the state of the evidence is such that the issue can probably never be resolved. Saint Peter's is especially problematic, because of its dual role as a great public monument, founded and endowed by an emperor, and as a major theatre for papal ceremonial.
Though the new Eastern feast of the Annunciation was adopted in the Latin West in the course of late seventh century, only one basilica developed in its liturgy a theological rationale for the new feast. The basilica was Saint Peter's on the Vatican. The liturgy of Saint Peter's on the Vatican was in the care of monks of Saint Martin. In Alfarano's plan, the chapel of the monastery is marked: just outside the western end of the basilica, slightly to the south of the apse. The author's example of how the liturgy at Saint Peter's looked out to a wider world beyond Rome is the celebration of All Saints in the chapel in front of the martyrium of Saint Peter, to the south side of the nave, in parte virorum. Saint Peter was chief of the apostles, who had been told by Christ to 'go therefore, teach ye all nations'.
Many late antique and medieval sources show that the Early Christian basilica of Saint Peter's had a baptistery, but it has left no physical traces. Early descriptions of the location of this inscription are particularly interesting. Until the fifteenth century, the inscription was not inside the basilica but outside, fixed on the external wall near the hillside. The idea that the baptistery of Saint Peter's was monumental and independent was developed some time ago by Gillian Mackie. Many observations seem to indicate that the baptistery of Saint Peter's was a monumental one. It remains certain that the place of the Vatican baptistery must be associated with the north transept where it was described from the sixth-century Gesta Liberii to Alfarano a thousand years later, but the exact place indicated on Alfarano's plan was probably only the vestibule of an external independent and monumental baptistery.
The first section of the Liber Pontificalis was completed in c. 535. It presents a history of the popes from Saint Peter to Pope Silverius in the form of serial biography. The original conception and structure of the Liber Pontificalis then determined the form of the subsequent extension added between 625 and 638 in the pontificate of Honorius. Saint Peter's status as a shrine is greatly enhanced by the Liber Pontificalis's records of the gifts and visits from foreign kings and envoys. Yet both Saint Peter's and the pope himself acquire an interesting role in diplomacy. Liber Pontificalis only records the orchestration of papal burials. Saint Peter's basilica and its various functions as one key focus of the stational liturgy, venue for councils, pilgrimage site, art treasure and holy place, are all deployed by the Liber Pontificalis authors to enhance and promote papal authority.
A thoroughly revisionist account of the historical origins of the basilica was published by Glen Bowersock, who proposed that the foundation and construction of the basilica should be attributed not to Constantine, but probably to Constans. This chapter takes the doubts they have raised as an opportunity to reconsider both the chronology of the fourth-century basilica, and also the evidence for possible changes in its design during construction. An inscription, referring unambiguously to Constantine as the founder of Saint Peter's, was located on the triumphal arch of the basilica and was executed in letters of gold, forming part of a mosaic scene. Whatever the precise chronology of the preceding stages of development, the remodelling or rebuilding of the apse in its definitive form seems to have followed on only after the accession in 337 of Constans, whose probable stamp occurred on bricks used in its construction.
Saint Peter's appears from its foundation to function as a centre of assistance for the poor. The zone of the basilica of Saint Peter attracted throngs of the poor right from the start, even though they are better attested in later periods. Gregory the Great recorded the alms that the shoemaker Deusdedit gave every Saturday to the poor of Saint Peter's. Through the imperial connection and through the authority of the apostle, the basilica of Saint Peter was also the place in which delicate political and religious questions could be raised that interested both the emperor and the Roman bishop. It is clearly an exaggeration to say that Saint Peter's incorporated the city of Rome, but certainly the basilica succeeded in acting as a strong force field for the city, and one that is manifest in the physical and functional structures of the urban fabric.
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