Burn, Babylon, Burn: The Vatican Goes to Hell in Paradise Lost
by Jenny (Walicek) Clendenen
San Jose State University | James D. Phelan Literary Award - 1st Place, Critical Essay (2005)
John Milton was a scholar as well as a poet , and was most certainly well acquainted with the popular treatise The Elements of Architecture written by his benefactor Sir Henry Wotton in 1624 (“Milton: His”). Wotton’s book was a paraphrase of the recently rediscovered 10-volume de Architectura libri decem by Vitruvius, in which that Augustan architect elaborated on the significance of proportion and symbolism in design. Milton, as an artisan of yet another form of indirect truth, would have agreed, as did Frank Lloyd Wright centuries later. “True ornament,” he said, “[…] is organic with the structure it adorns […]. At its best it is an emphasis of structure, a realization in graceful terms of the nature of that which is ornamented” (Miller).
Milton’s awareness of these timeless concepts is evident in the celestial architecture of Paradise Lost. Welding together two forms of art, he applies “graceful terms” of poetry to “emphasize structures” of architecture to reveal “the nature of that which is ornamented.” The true nature of any work of art, of course, is always a matter of perspective. “Every great architect is -- necessarily -- a great poet,” said Wright. “He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age” (Miller). In Milton’s descriptions of underworld edifices, we can see that this great poet was -- necessarily -- a great architect: for his prime metaphor he has gone right to the heart of the Vatican to dismantle the most powerful icon of Catholicism, St. Peter’s Basilica -- and rebuild it in the bowels of hell.
In the mind of this profoundly anti-Catholic poet, the structures of the Church embodied, among other spiritual felonies, a sinful obsession with power and wealth that his Calvinistic theology strongly condemned. He had visited the Vatican in 1638 (with Sir Henry Wotton’s letters of introduction -- and possibly his famous architecture book --in hand), just twelve years after the dedication of St. Peter’s Basilica by Pope Urban VIII (Flannagan). Milton would have been highly sensitive to the pivotal role that the basilica had played in the Protestant Reformation: the funding of the building by the sale of indulgences had prompted Martin Luther to write his 95 Theses (“95 Theses”). Perhaps it was that visit that inspired Milton, that same year, to promise his country a national epic (Abrams 1771) -- not by elevating England, as his countrymen expected, but by scathingly reducing the Roman Catholic Church to the lowest possible position in the universe.
Such an insult would have to be slung surreptitiously (and even so, Milton would nearly lose his head in 1659 for his opposition to the debatably pro-Catholic monarchy (Flannagan)). His cautionary words in the anti-censorship pamphlet Areopagitica, written while Paradise Lost was still a work in progress, may have been addressed to himself as well as to the English Parliament: “Let us therefore be more considerate builders, more wise in spiritual architecture, when great reformation is expected (Milton p. 266). Combining poetic and architectural symbolism was an ideal way for him to ornament, reinforce, and disguise his Calvinist message. Even now, scholars usually see only the Greco-Roman design elements in Paradise Lost, missing the link with secondary classical motifs in Roman Catholic architecture. Yet this is quite markedly where that graceful emphasis of Milton’s is most shockingly revelatory.
Rome, and particularly papal rome, has long been considered a second “Babylon,” as expressed through the imagery and politically encoded text of Revelations, and Herodotus writes that the gates of Babylon, similar to those in Milton’s hell, were “double gates of solid brass, with brazen lintels and posts, and fastened with bars of iron” (Herodotus). This comparison is not complimentary, despite the legendary achievements of ancient Babylon. The author of Revelations portrays Rome as the embodiment of emperor worship,
to accept which is to deny the sovereignty of God: the “beast” which symbolized the empire is the agent of Satan. Christians owe no loyalty to Rome and soon only respond with endurance and suffering: they are not to fight against it, for God’s action alone will soon excuse its fall. (Porter 255)
Milton and his fellow Calvinists condemned the pope as the “ ‘beast’ which symbolized the empire.” According to Calvinism "There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof, but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God." (Westminster).
This righteous condemnation in mind, Milton marks his approach to St. Peter’s Basilica with landmark images that relate to its immediate surroundings. His description of the “four infernal rivers that disgorge / Into the burning lake their baleful streams” (Milton II.575-76) near Lethe, the river of oblivion, corresponds to Rome’s “Fountain of the Four Rivers,” just across the Tiber from the Vatican (fig. 1). This fountain was designed by Baroque architect Gianlorenzo Bernini in 1648 to personify the four rivers of the then-known continents: the Danube, the Ganges, the Nile and the Rio della Plata. Milton would have enjoyed symbolically sending this fountain to hell, as Pope Innocent X had commissioned it as a Counter-Reformation proclamation of global Roman Catholic influence and papal triumph (Sullivan).
Milton is referring to another landmark in the Vatican environs when he describes Belial, a member of “a crew who under names of old renown, / Osiris, Isis, Orus and their train / With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused / Fanatic Egypt and her priests” (Milton I.477-480) :
In courts and palaces he also reigns
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage: and when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. (I.497-502)
The towering obelisk in the center of the Piazza of St. Peter (fig. 2), just outside the basilica, shares Belial’s Egyptian origins and negative connotations. Originally built under Augustus in Egypt, it was moved to the Vatican Circus (“where the noise / Of riot ascends”) in 37 CE by the depraved emperor Caligula. That this pagan phallic symbol (“monstrous shapes”) never fell was attributed to Nero’s sorcery (“sorceries abused”). Pope Sixtus V ordered it relocated in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in 1586 (Rowland) while crowds watched and celebrated -- certainly with wine, if not insolence:
When Domenico Fontana moved the Vatican obelisk just 200 yards from the site of Caligula's circus to the piazza in front of St. Peter's, thousands of people watched […] as Augustus' obelisks were brought up the Tiber on barges, unloaded, dragged through the cramped and narrow streets of the city, and raised into position. (Rehak)
Both Belial and the obelisk are of Egyptian origin, embody “monstrous shapes,” are associated with sorcery, and are located amidst “luxurious cities” of “loftiest towers” where “riot […], injury and outrage” lead to arrogance and drunkenness. It is understandable that Milton would view this obelisk as an offensive, ostentatious display of wealth, power, and paganism.
Narrowing in on the basilica, Milton sends Satan on a soaring search for an exit while the poet tells us that the bounds of hell are a “fiery concave” (Milton II.635). This aptly describes the interior of the giant dome of St. Peter’s, designed by Michelangelo and his successor Giacomo della Porta in the century prior to Milton. Inside the dome, a shimmering gold mosaic ceiling reaches a crown of fiery stars around an oculus that lets in the sun (fig. 3). At the far end of the basilica, a brilliant orange-red glow emanates from Bernini’s stained glass gloria (fig. 4) (“Basilica di San”), suspended over the Chair of St. Peter (fig. 5). It is indeed a “fiery concave.”
Once Satan finds the gates of hell, he finds, metaphorically, Saint Peter himself. The gates are described as “reaching to the horrid roof, and thrice threefold the gates;” they are comprised of three folds each of brass, iron and adamantine (impenetrable) rock (II.644-45). Peter has long been associated with the number three for his threefold denial of Christ and his threefold response to the risen Christ’s question “lovest thou Me? (KJV, John 21:15-17). Furthermore, Peter was known as The Rock upon which the Catholic Church was founded -- the very first pope -- because Jesus said, in Matthew 16:18, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (KJV). (Most Protestants argue that it was not St. Peter on whom the Church was predicted to be built, but on his declaration of faith in the verse just prior.) In the center of St. Peter’s Basilica lies the tomb of this adamant “rock” -- behind two sets of gilded bronze gates (fig 6), and under an iron grille (fig 7) (“Confessio,” “Confession”). Milton has applied the same quantity and kind of barriers to his literary gates as a statement that the establishment of the papacy had been the portal by which the powers of hell corrupted mankind .
The construction of hell’s capital, Pandemonium, is also based on the architectural features of the basilica. The materials are mined from a hill -- and St. Peter’s is at the foot of Vatican Hill, one of the Seven Hills of Rome (Seindal). In the poem, Mammon, a greedy gold-digger, leads “a numerous brigade” on this quest for mineral wealth. Before his expulsion from Heaven he had always looked downward,
[…] admiring more
The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beatific” (Milton I.679-84)
According to Milton, Mammon is the one who teaches Man to ransack the earth, and “with impious hands / [To rifle] the bowels of their mother Earth / For treasures better hid.” This represents not only the greed and excess of the Catholic Church, but that the pope ordered gold purloined from the Pantheon for the basilica’s construction. The poet derides those who “boast in mortal things” by comparing them to the builders of Babel and reminding us how “their greatest monuments of fame / And strength, and art, are easily outdone” (I.694-96). This admonition against material wealth and human glory is a classic anti-Catholic argument.
The actual design and construction of Pandemonium is filled with references to St. Peter's Basilica. That the ore “By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook; / As in an organ, from one blast of wind, / To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes” (1.707-09) is an obvious reference to the Church, but more specifically, Milton tells us that Pandemonium was
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven;
The roof was fretted gold. (1.711-717)
The elliptical Piazza of St. Peter, in front of the basilica, is surrounded by 248 Doric columns and 88 pilasters in the Baroque Neoclassical style (fig. 8) (Trachtenberg). Pope Alexander VII commissioned Bernini to build the Piazza in 1656 as a grand approach to the basilica; it cost roughly a million dollars. The basilica itself cost forty-eight million dollars and includes such elaborate ornamentation as gold, sculpture, colored marble incrustations, and elaborate moldings (“Basilica of St.”), which outraged Calvinists such as Milton who saw this lavish expenditure (and the Baroque style in general) as a symbol of extreme excess. The poet goes on to describe the interior:
Th’ ascending pile
Stood fixed her stately height, and straight the doors,
Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide
Within, her ample spaces o’er the smooth
And level pavement: from the arched roof,
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
With naptha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky. (Milton I.722-30)
Milton has just described the 400-foot high basilica and its most famous entrance (the medieval bronze doors (fig. 9) designed over twelve years by the sculptor Filarete), the basilica’s 693-foot long stone floor, its dome ceiling, and the hundred lamps that are suspended, burning eternally, around the Confessio where St. Peter is supposedly interred (“Confessio”).
The poet proceeds to call Pandemonium a “spacious hall / (Though like a covered field, where champions bold / Wont ride in armed […])” (1.762-63); even today, the docents and pamphlets of the basilica frequently refer to its 163,000 square foot interior as comparable to “two football fields” (“Basilica of St.,” Fintel). On its dedication day in 1626 the crowds admired the handiwork of its famous architects including Michelangelo, Brommini, della Porta and Bernini:
The hasty multitude
Admiring entered; and the work some praise,
And some the architect: his hand was known
In heaven by many a towered structure high (I.731-33)
Milton names Mulciber as the architect of Pandemonium, and the name Mulciber is the Latin epithet for Vulcan, the god of fire (“Mulciber”) -- an epithet that applies equally well to Michaelangelo’s well-known fiery personality. Milton tells us that Mulciber had been a famous tower-building architect in heaven but was ejected by “Jove” (patron saint of Rome) and forced, never mind his reputation, “with his industrious crew, to build in hell” (Milton II.751). This almost humorously echoes the story of Michelangelo, the Chief Engineer of city fortifications (including towers) in Florence, who was summoned to Rome over his objections by Julius II, who wanted him to work on St. Peter’s Basilica. Michaelangelo resisted until the pope forced him from the Roman court and eventually coerced him into being the reluctant Chief Architect on the basilica. His notable achievement is the dome itself, of which he finished only the drum; his successor della Porta completed the work (“Michelangelo”). Despite having worked against his will, the effects were to be his piece de resistance. When St. Peter’s was dedicated, many “admiring entered,” as Milton says, to praise both the work and architect.
St. Peter’s Basilica was dedicated in November of 1626 by Urban VIII (1623-44), the pope in power when Milton visited the Vatican. Urban’s family arms, which swarm with the Barberini bees (fig. 10), are displayed in the basilica on Bernini's great bronze baldacchino (fig.1), a huge, spiral-columned canopy over the altar. Milton is unquestionably connecting the papal family to the assembly of demons in Pandemonium:
Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air,
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees
In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer
Their state affairs; till, the signal given,
Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed
In bigness to surpass Earth’s giant sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs […] (Milton I.767-79)
Milton may even be describing the basilica’s dedication day, when the Barberini family and consorts would have filled the edifice and sat “amidst the hall / Of that infernal court” (I.791-92). His next few lines of observation are both a description of the golden cherubim (fig. 12) surrounding the gloria over The Chair of St. Peter, and a snide remark about those present: “The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim,” he says sarcastically, “In close recess and secret conclave sat, / A thousand demi-gods on golden seats, / Frequent and full” (I.794-97).
Milton’s impressions of the Vatican in 1638 took thirty years to find their way into Paradise Lost, and en route they acquired the fierce rhetoric of anti-Catholicism with which he embellished the poem’s underworld architecture. Though his “graceful terms” clearly “emphasize structures” to reveal his interpretation of “the nature of that which is ornamented” (Miller), his message went unnoticed by the vast majority of readers. As a poet, Milton achieved his greatest recognition for this epic of Fallen beings. As an architect, he remained unsung.
Works Cited
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September 2003. Accessed 4/20/04 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13369b.htm>
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<http://stpetersbasilica.org/Confessio/Confessio.htm>
“Confession.” Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent.org. Updated September 2003.
Accessed 4/20/04 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04214a.html>
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Flannagan, Roy. “A John Milton Chronology” Milton Home Page. Copyright 1992.
Accessed 4/19/2004 <http://www.richmond.edu/~creamer/milton/chronology.html>
Herodotus, The Histories. Trans. Rawlinson, George. New York: Everyman’s Library,
1992. Book I, Chap. CLXXVIII, and Appendix' to Book I, Essay VIII.
“Michelangelo Buonorotti.” Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent.org. Updated September 2003.
Accessed 4/20/04 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03059b.htm>
Miller, C. “Frank Lloyd Wright Quotations.” All-Wright Site: An Internet Guide to Frank
Lloyd Wright. Copyright 2000. Accessed 4/03/04.
<http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/1469/flwquote.html>
Milton, John. The Major Works. Eds. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg. New York:
Oxford UP, 2003.
“Milton: His Continental Tour.” Bartleby.com. Accessed 4/22/04.
<http://www.bartleby.com/217/0502.html>
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<http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/95%20Theses.
Porter, J.R. The Illustrated Guide to the Bible. London: Duncan Baird, 1995.
Rehak, Paul. Augustus and the Obelisks of Egypt. Paper delivered at CAA, New York,
February 2000. Accessed 4/21/04 < http://www.duke.edu/~prehak/CAA.html>
Rowland, Ingrid. “Della Trasportatione dell'Obelisco Vaticano, Rome, 1590." The
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Sullivan, Mary Ann. “St. Peter’s, Vatican City” Bluffton College. Ohio 2001 Accessed
4/21/04 < http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Piazza_of_St._Peters.html>
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San Jose State University | James D. Phelan Literary Award - 1st Place, Critical Essay (2005)
John Milton was a scholar as well as a poet , and was most certainly well acquainted with the popular treatise The Elements of Architecture written by his benefactor Sir Henry Wotton in 1624 (“Milton: His”). Wotton’s book was a paraphrase of the recently rediscovered 10-volume de Architectura libri decem by Vitruvius, in which that Augustan architect elaborated on the significance of proportion and symbolism in design. Milton, as an artisan of yet another form of indirect truth, would have agreed, as did Frank Lloyd Wright centuries later. “True ornament,” he said, “[…] is organic with the structure it adorns […]. At its best it is an emphasis of structure, a realization in graceful terms of the nature of that which is ornamented” (Miller).
Milton’s awareness of these timeless concepts is evident in the celestial architecture of Paradise Lost. Welding together two forms of art, he applies “graceful terms” of poetry to “emphasize structures” of architecture to reveal “the nature of that which is ornamented.” The true nature of any work of art, of course, is always a matter of perspective. “Every great architect is -- necessarily -- a great poet,” said Wright. “He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age” (Miller). In Milton’s descriptions of underworld edifices, we can see that this great poet was -- necessarily -- a great architect: for his prime metaphor he has gone right to the heart of the Vatican to dismantle the most powerful icon of Catholicism, St. Peter’s Basilica -- and rebuild it in the bowels of hell.
In the mind of this profoundly anti-Catholic poet, the structures of the Church embodied, among other spiritual felonies, a sinful obsession with power and wealth that his Calvinistic theology strongly condemned. He had visited the Vatican in 1638 (with Sir Henry Wotton’s letters of introduction -- and possibly his famous architecture book --in hand), just twelve years after the dedication of St. Peter’s Basilica by Pope Urban VIII (Flannagan). Milton would have been highly sensitive to the pivotal role that the basilica had played in the Protestant Reformation: the funding of the building by the sale of indulgences had prompted Martin Luther to write his 95 Theses (“95 Theses”). Perhaps it was that visit that inspired Milton, that same year, to promise his country a national epic (Abrams 1771) -- not by elevating England, as his countrymen expected, but by scathingly reducing the Roman Catholic Church to the lowest possible position in the universe.
Such an insult would have to be slung surreptitiously (and even so, Milton would nearly lose his head in 1659 for his opposition to the debatably pro-Catholic monarchy (Flannagan)). His cautionary words in the anti-censorship pamphlet Areopagitica, written while Paradise Lost was still a work in progress, may have been addressed to himself as well as to the English Parliament: “Let us therefore be more considerate builders, more wise in spiritual architecture, when great reformation is expected (Milton p. 266). Combining poetic and architectural symbolism was an ideal way for him to ornament, reinforce, and disguise his Calvinist message. Even now, scholars usually see only the Greco-Roman design elements in Paradise Lost, missing the link with secondary classical motifs in Roman Catholic architecture. Yet this is quite markedly where that graceful emphasis of Milton’s is most shockingly revelatory.
Rome, and particularly papal rome, has long been considered a second “Babylon,” as expressed through the imagery and politically encoded text of Revelations, and Herodotus writes that the gates of Babylon, similar to those in Milton’s hell, were “double gates of solid brass, with brazen lintels and posts, and fastened with bars of iron” (Herodotus). This comparison is not complimentary, despite the legendary achievements of ancient Babylon. The author of Revelations portrays Rome as the embodiment of emperor worship,
to accept which is to deny the sovereignty of God: the “beast” which symbolized the empire is the agent of Satan. Christians owe no loyalty to Rome and soon only respond with endurance and suffering: they are not to fight against it, for God’s action alone will soon excuse its fall. (Porter 255)
Milton and his fellow Calvinists condemned the pope as the “ ‘beast’ which symbolized the empire.” According to Calvinism "There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof, but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God." (Westminster).
This righteous condemnation in mind, Milton marks his approach to St. Peter’s Basilica with landmark images that relate to its immediate surroundings. His description of the “four infernal rivers that disgorge / Into the burning lake their baleful streams” (Milton II.575-76) near Lethe, the river of oblivion, corresponds to Rome’s “Fountain of the Four Rivers,” just across the Tiber from the Vatican (fig. 1). This fountain was designed by Baroque architect Gianlorenzo Bernini in 1648 to personify the four rivers of the then-known continents: the Danube, the Ganges, the Nile and the Rio della Plata. Milton would have enjoyed symbolically sending this fountain to hell, as Pope Innocent X had commissioned it as a Counter-Reformation proclamation of global Roman Catholic influence and papal triumph (Sullivan).
Milton is referring to another landmark in the Vatican environs when he describes Belial, a member of “a crew who under names of old renown, / Osiris, Isis, Orus and their train / With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused / Fanatic Egypt and her priests” (Milton I.477-480) :
In courts and palaces he also reigns
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage: and when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. (I.497-502)
The towering obelisk in the center of the Piazza of St. Peter (fig. 2), just outside the basilica, shares Belial’s Egyptian origins and negative connotations. Originally built under Augustus in Egypt, it was moved to the Vatican Circus (“where the noise / Of riot ascends”) in 37 CE by the depraved emperor Caligula. That this pagan phallic symbol (“monstrous shapes”) never fell was attributed to Nero’s sorcery (“sorceries abused”). Pope Sixtus V ordered it relocated in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in 1586 (Rowland) while crowds watched and celebrated -- certainly with wine, if not insolence:
When Domenico Fontana moved the Vatican obelisk just 200 yards from the site of Caligula's circus to the piazza in front of St. Peter's, thousands of people watched […] as Augustus' obelisks were brought up the Tiber on barges, unloaded, dragged through the cramped and narrow streets of the city, and raised into position. (Rehak)
Both Belial and the obelisk are of Egyptian origin, embody “monstrous shapes,” are associated with sorcery, and are located amidst “luxurious cities” of “loftiest towers” where “riot […], injury and outrage” lead to arrogance and drunkenness. It is understandable that Milton would view this obelisk as an offensive, ostentatious display of wealth, power, and paganism.
Narrowing in on the basilica, Milton sends Satan on a soaring search for an exit while the poet tells us that the bounds of hell are a “fiery concave” (Milton II.635). This aptly describes the interior of the giant dome of St. Peter’s, designed by Michelangelo and his successor Giacomo della Porta in the century prior to Milton. Inside the dome, a shimmering gold mosaic ceiling reaches a crown of fiery stars around an oculus that lets in the sun (fig. 3). At the far end of the basilica, a brilliant orange-red glow emanates from Bernini’s stained glass gloria (fig. 4) (“Basilica di San”), suspended over the Chair of St. Peter (fig. 5). It is indeed a “fiery concave.”
Once Satan finds the gates of hell, he finds, metaphorically, Saint Peter himself. The gates are described as “reaching to the horrid roof, and thrice threefold the gates;” they are comprised of three folds each of brass, iron and adamantine (impenetrable) rock (II.644-45). Peter has long been associated with the number three for his threefold denial of Christ and his threefold response to the risen Christ’s question “lovest thou Me? (KJV, John 21:15-17). Furthermore, Peter was known as The Rock upon which the Catholic Church was founded -- the very first pope -- because Jesus said, in Matthew 16:18, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (KJV). (Most Protestants argue that it was not St. Peter on whom the Church was predicted to be built, but on his declaration of faith in the verse just prior.) In the center of St. Peter’s Basilica lies the tomb of this adamant “rock” -- behind two sets of gilded bronze gates (fig 6), and under an iron grille (fig 7) (“Confessio,” “Confession”). Milton has applied the same quantity and kind of barriers to his literary gates as a statement that the establishment of the papacy had been the portal by which the powers of hell corrupted mankind .
The construction of hell’s capital, Pandemonium, is also based on the architectural features of the basilica. The materials are mined from a hill -- and St. Peter’s is at the foot of Vatican Hill, one of the Seven Hills of Rome (Seindal). In the poem, Mammon, a greedy gold-digger, leads “a numerous brigade” on this quest for mineral wealth. Before his expulsion from Heaven he had always looked downward,
[…] admiring more
The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beatific” (Milton I.679-84)
According to Milton, Mammon is the one who teaches Man to ransack the earth, and “with impious hands / [To rifle] the bowels of their mother Earth / For treasures better hid.” This represents not only the greed and excess of the Catholic Church, but that the pope ordered gold purloined from the Pantheon for the basilica’s construction. The poet derides those who “boast in mortal things” by comparing them to the builders of Babel and reminding us how “their greatest monuments of fame / And strength, and art, are easily outdone” (I.694-96). This admonition against material wealth and human glory is a classic anti-Catholic argument.
The actual design and construction of Pandemonium is filled with references to St. Peter's Basilica. That the ore “By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook; / As in an organ, from one blast of wind, / To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes” (1.707-09) is an obvious reference to the Church, but more specifically, Milton tells us that Pandemonium was
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven;
The roof was fretted gold. (1.711-717)
The elliptical Piazza of St. Peter, in front of the basilica, is surrounded by 248 Doric columns and 88 pilasters in the Baroque Neoclassical style (fig. 8) (Trachtenberg). Pope Alexander VII commissioned Bernini to build the Piazza in 1656 as a grand approach to the basilica; it cost roughly a million dollars. The basilica itself cost forty-eight million dollars and includes such elaborate ornamentation as gold, sculpture, colored marble incrustations, and elaborate moldings (“Basilica of St.”), which outraged Calvinists such as Milton who saw this lavish expenditure (and the Baroque style in general) as a symbol of extreme excess. The poet goes on to describe the interior:
Th’ ascending pile
Stood fixed her stately height, and straight the doors,
Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide
Within, her ample spaces o’er the smooth
And level pavement: from the arched roof,
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
With naptha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky. (Milton I.722-30)
Milton has just described the 400-foot high basilica and its most famous entrance (the medieval bronze doors (fig. 9) designed over twelve years by the sculptor Filarete), the basilica’s 693-foot long stone floor, its dome ceiling, and the hundred lamps that are suspended, burning eternally, around the Confessio where St. Peter is supposedly interred (“Confessio”).
The poet proceeds to call Pandemonium a “spacious hall / (Though like a covered field, where champions bold / Wont ride in armed […])” (1.762-63); even today, the docents and pamphlets of the basilica frequently refer to its 163,000 square foot interior as comparable to “two football fields” (“Basilica of St.,” Fintel). On its dedication day in 1626 the crowds admired the handiwork of its famous architects including Michelangelo, Brommini, della Porta and Bernini:
The hasty multitude
Admiring entered; and the work some praise,
And some the architect: his hand was known
In heaven by many a towered structure high (I.731-33)
Milton names Mulciber as the architect of Pandemonium, and the name Mulciber is the Latin epithet for Vulcan, the god of fire (“Mulciber”) -- an epithet that applies equally well to Michaelangelo’s well-known fiery personality. Milton tells us that Mulciber had been a famous tower-building architect in heaven but was ejected by “Jove” (patron saint of Rome) and forced, never mind his reputation, “with his industrious crew, to build in hell” (Milton II.751). This almost humorously echoes the story of Michelangelo, the Chief Engineer of city fortifications (including towers) in Florence, who was summoned to Rome over his objections by Julius II, who wanted him to work on St. Peter’s Basilica. Michaelangelo resisted until the pope forced him from the Roman court and eventually coerced him into being the reluctant Chief Architect on the basilica. His notable achievement is the dome itself, of which he finished only the drum; his successor della Porta completed the work (“Michelangelo”). Despite having worked against his will, the effects were to be his piece de resistance. When St. Peter’s was dedicated, many “admiring entered,” as Milton says, to praise both the work and architect.
St. Peter’s Basilica was dedicated in November of 1626 by Urban VIII (1623-44), the pope in power when Milton visited the Vatican. Urban’s family arms, which swarm with the Barberini bees (fig. 10), are displayed in the basilica on Bernini's great bronze baldacchino (fig.1), a huge, spiral-columned canopy over the altar. Milton is unquestionably connecting the papal family to the assembly of demons in Pandemonium:
Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air,
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees
In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer
Their state affairs; till, the signal given,
Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed
In bigness to surpass Earth’s giant sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs […] (Milton I.767-79)
Milton may even be describing the basilica’s dedication day, when the Barberini family and consorts would have filled the edifice and sat “amidst the hall / Of that infernal court” (I.791-92). His next few lines of observation are both a description of the golden cherubim (fig. 12) surrounding the gloria over The Chair of St. Peter, and a snide remark about those present: “The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim,” he says sarcastically, “In close recess and secret conclave sat, / A thousand demi-gods on golden seats, / Frequent and full” (I.794-97).
Milton’s impressions of the Vatican in 1638 took thirty years to find their way into Paradise Lost, and en route they acquired the fierce rhetoric of anti-Catholicism with which he embellished the poem’s underworld architecture. Though his “graceful terms” clearly “emphasize structures” to reveal his interpretation of “the nature of that which is ornamented” (Miller), his message went unnoticed by the vast majority of readers. As a poet, Milton achieved his greatest recognition for this epic of Fallen beings. As an architect, he remained unsung.
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