Dhis article reproduces a lecture in which I address a chapter of the Roman tradition of St Peter's and present historical statements on the social value of monuments as a basis for monument protection. Here we look at the planning for the renovation of the old St Peter's Church in terms of the ideas that influenced it. To this end, we abandon the fixation on Western Europe and include the debate with the Middle East, which was of great importance. We are focussing on the beginnings of the planning because particularly revealing evidence of it has been preserved. I published my first reflections on our topic in 1995, my latest research has just been published in Italian and is in print in English.
The Constantinian St Peter's Church
After Emperor Constantine won the Battle of the Milvian Bridge under the sign of the cross (312), he founded the first public Christian churches in Rome: St John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome and Christendom, and St Peter's Church above the place where St Peter, the first pope, is said to have suffered martyrdom and found his final resting place. The design of both buildings was modelled on the columned basilicas in large private houses, to which a transept for the clergy was added. This characterised the classical type of Christian church. St Peter's Church was built outside the Aurelian city wall, on the opposite side of the Tiber to the city centre. Constantine had the Lateran Palace and the basilica built on the outermost edge of the city, on a barracks area on the Aurelian city wall. By placing it on the edge of the city, he took the pagans, who still dominated the centre at the time, into consideration. As a result, the Pantheon was still a pagan temple until 609.
In 324, Constantine moved his residence to the Bosporus and founded the first Christian metropolis, Constantinople, today's Istanbul, where he founded several churches. The most important of these are the imperial church of Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Apostles as a burial place for himself and his successors. Rome lost its central position in the empire as a result of the emperor's relocation and the war campaigns of Germanic peoples during the Migration Period, which primarily affected the western part of the empire.
Constantinople flourished all the more. In the 6th century, Emperor Justinian reconquered western parts of the Imperium Romanum, including Italy. The emperor - who ruled from 527 to 563 - also renovated Constantine's two main churches in Constantinople. Justinian's Hagia Sophia was generally regarded as the most beautiful building in the world, both in the Orient and in the Occident. There was even a legend that it was designed by divine wisdom, like Solomon's temple. During the Renaissance, it became a topos to praise a new building by comparing it to the Hagia Sophia as to Solomon's temple.
Restoration and extension of St Peter's Church under Nicholas V.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, from 1309 to 1377, the pope and with him the curia resided in Avignon on the Rhône in France and after the attempted return of the papacy to Rome, a schism broke out in 1378 between the popes elected in Avignon and those elected in Rome, which only came to an end in 1417 and the seat of the pope was once again undisputedly located in Rome. Disputes between councils and popes continued to plague the Church for decades. During this time, the city of Rome lost much of its religious and political appeal and was also in a very difficult financial situation. Many churches fell into disrepair and decay. Only around ten thousand inhabitants remained of the ancient city of millions. By comparison, the largest cities in Italy at the time had around one hundred thousand inhabitants.
The popes who resided in Rome from 1378 onwards moved their residence from the old Lateran Palace to the Vatican, which was also located outside the city centre, because this complex was secured by medieval walls and Castel Sant'Angelo. The Roman popes also took care of the restoration of the churches as soon as they could. S. Giovanni in Laterano was first extensively restored by Martin V, reigned 1417-31, and his successor Eugene IV (1431-1447). Over the course of the Middle Ages, the substance of the Constantinian basilica had been severely decimated by several fires, earthquakes, the effects of war and an expansion of the choir section. The columns in the nave were in such a dilapidated state that they had to be replaced by brick arcades, while the walls above were magnificently decorated. It was not until the end of the 15th century that the patriarchal basilica in the area of Rome inhabited at the time, the popular basilica, S. Maria Maggiore, was refurbished with new roofs and vaults in the side aisles, also to support the nave walls.
Eugene IV's successor, Nicholas V (reigned 1447-55), finally took care of St Peter's Church after the Jubilee Year of 1450 - the proclaimed Holy Year caused the city to boom due to the influx of many pilgrims. The basilica was dilapidated and tectonically endangered, with the clerestory leaning by around one and a half metres. Nicholas V envisaged two measures: Renovation and extension. He wanted to secure the nave tectonically - with vaults in the side aisles - and also decorate it. He wanted to demolish the old transept and apse and build a new transept about twice as large and a deep choir in its place. The high altar above the place where Peter was buried was to occupy the centre of the new crossing, and the Pope's throne was to be elevated at the end of the new choir so that it could be seen from afar.
Although Nicholas V's project was indispensable and had predecessors in the extension of the choir section of two other patriarchal basilicas, it was met with fierce criticism. Critical voices called for the old basilica to be preserved intact, as it had "already called the most nefarious souls to God through its age alone", according to Andrea Guarna in 1517. Leon Battista Alberti wrote about architectural monuments such as churches that age lent them no less authority than the jewellery lent them dignity. The old St Peter's Church was also worth preserving as a landmark: Constantine had built it over the circus in which Nero had the Christians executed, and Peter himself is also said to have been crucified there. The circus testified to the special status of the eternal city as the first place of early Christian confession and thus confirmed Rome's primacy over all other bishoprics.
The humanist Maffeo Vegio presented the construction of St Peter's Church over Nero's circus as a symbol of the superiority of Christianity over paganism. He wrote: "Where once the godless and shameful emperors would have committed monstrous atrocities to satisfy their insane lust, now the pure spirit of Christianity appears. In place of ostentation, pleasure-seeking, lustfulness, extravagance, irascibility, arrogance and hatred, modesty, frugality, shame and thriftiness have taken their place.
Moderation and love".
The obelisk in the centre of the circus was the only one of the many obelisks in ancient Rome to remain standing in its original position over the ages, apparently because it was a memorial to the circus as a place of martyrdom. Pope Nicholas V and his successors repeatedly planned to move it to the square in front of St Peter's Basilica. However, it was not until Sixtus V realised this idea in 1586 and expressly pointed out in inscriptions that the obelisk was a sign of the victory of Christianity over unbelief. Gian Lorenzo Bernini then laid out the forecourt of St Peter's Church in the form of a circus, the colonnades of which are crowned by countless statues of the early martyrs.
Moreover, the political situation was used as an argument against Nicholas V's project. It was no longer the exile of Avignon and the schism that were at the centre of the threat to the Church, but the Ottoman threat. By the 14th century, the Ottomans had conquered almost the entire territory of the former Eastern Roman Empire. They even advanced as far as Hungary and made their first attempts to expand their empire further westwards. Constantinople had been surrounded by Ottoman territory since the late 14th century. In 1453, Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror, as he called himself from then on, conquered Constantinople.
The Ottomans, they proclaimed, did not want to destroy the Roman Empire, but to continue it. The sultans saw themselves as the successors of the Roman emperors, and not just the Eastern Roman emperors, but the emperors of the entire Imperium Romanum. As such, they also claimed Central and Western Europe as their possessions. After the conquest of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II even appointed the new patriarch of the Eastern Church, as the emperors had once done. The Ottomans were tolerant in matters of faith. Constantinople kept its old name (Turkish: "Konstantiniyye"). Pope Pius II (reigned 1458-64) complained that the conquest of Constantinople had torn out one of the eyes of the Western world. The event also triggered fears that the other eye of the West, Rome, would also be conquered. Since then, the popes have repeatedly called for a crusade against the Ottomans.
The Florentine Giovanni Francesco Poggio Bracciolini polemicised against Nicholas V spending the church's money on building projects instead of on defence against the Ottomans, as he feared that the Ottomans would soon conquer Italy if they continued to win as before. The Franciscan preacher Johannes Capistranus railed: "At this moment of greatest need for the faith, it truly seems to me that Peter would prefer and God would be more pleased if they spent the money they were collecting for the decoration of the Lateran Basilica and St Peter's Church on the protection of the Christian religion ...".
Nicholas V defended his project against the opposition by pointing out the effect that monuments could have. Two years after the conquest of Constantinople, the humanist Giannozzo Manetti wrote a defence of the Pope. In order to create firm and unwavering convictions in the minds of the people, there had to be something that spoke to the eye. A faith that was only underpinned by dogma would always remain weak and unstable. Experience teaches that large and enduring buildings, eternal monuments so to speak, which appear to have been built by God, will strengthen devotion in those who see them. In addition, grand buildings would have the effect of strengthening the respect of the whole world for the institution of the church. This would protect the church from internal enemies and attacks from outside. This is why he, Nicholas V, adorned and fortified Rome in such a way as to honour the city throughout Christendom and its divine destiny as the residence of the popes.
Although the papal side put forward plausible arguments in favour of their building activities, this was of little use at first: Nicholas V only managed to lay the foundations for the extension of St. Peter's Church and raise walls to man-height above it. But for half a century, subsequent popes hardly dared to lay a hand on the further construction.
Completely rebuilt under Julius II.
Only the energetic Pope Julius II (reigned 1503-1513) took up the matter again: Immediately after his election, he began to renovate the papal residence with the Cortile del Belvedere In the spring of 1505, he decided to complete Nicholas V's project. He wanted to erect the monumental tomb that Michelangelo was to make for him in the new choir. In the autumn of the same year, he suddenly changed his mind. The tomb took a back seat. All of a sudden, the entire St Peter's Basilica was to be replaced by a new building, and this new building was to be the most magnificent church in the world. A close confidant of the Pope, Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, proclaimed in a speech on the Golden Age that there would be nothing in the whole universe more beautiful, more magnificent, more outstanding, more spectacular, more admirable than Julius II's project. He placed the project alongside the new construction of Solomon's Temple and pointed out that God had been behind Julius II's decision to build the new building, as He had been with Solomon.
There were good reasons to invoke God for the new project. If the mere restoration and extension of St Peter's Church had already met with fierce opposition under Nicholas V, one can only imagine the outrage caused by the plan to replace the entire Constantinian basilica with a new building. It is reported that people from almost all walks of life, and in particular many cardinals, objected. The papal secretary Paolo Cortesi countered: "It is as if St Peter's had been wilfully set on fire" (1510).
Despite all opposition, planning for the new building began immediately. The destruction of the Constantinian basilica was even pushed ahead with great haste. The justification for the demolition of the Constantinian Basilica began at the same point as that of Nicholas V: the building had to be appropriate to its dignity as the most prominent of all sanctuaries. Only now the final conclusion was drawn: According to Paolo Cortesi, the old basilica had to be completely replaced because it was no longer worthy of its dignity. It was too modest, frugal and economical, to paraphrase Maffeo Vegio.
During his visit to Rome in the Jubilee Year 1450, the Florentine merchant Giovanni Rucellai noted that the patriarchal basilicas, including St Peter's, were only comparable to the main churches of the mendicant orders in Florence; none reached the size of Florence Cathedral. The historiographer of Julius II, Sigismondo de' Conti, justified the need to build a new St Peter's Basilica on the grounds that the existing basilica had little artistic value. It had been built at a time when the Roman Empire was already in decline and no more reasonably elegant architecture was known.
In a memorandum, Raphael called on Pope Leo X, Julius II's successor, to save the Roman monuments from destruction, for they would bear witness to those divine spirits whose memory would spur men to virtue until now.
Constantine's St Peter's Church was not a spectacular building either. The nave only consisted of a few parallel rows of walls with wooden ceilings and rows of columns, all of which had been collected from older buildings. St Peter's Church was primarily worth preserving as a symbol of the victory of Christianity. Nobody thought of demolishing Constantine's triumphal arch because of the poor quality of its sculptures, because it was also a landmark. On the contrary: it played a role in the many processions in Rome. Emperor Charles V entered Rome through the Arch of Constantine after his victory over the Ottomans at Tunis. The Basilica of Constantine at the Roman Forum was so admired that it was generally believed that the building was identical to Vespasian's Temple of Peace, which Pliny praised as one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. For propaganda reasons, it was therefore dated almost three hundred years before Constantine.
All in all, the above arguments in favour of demolishing the old St. Peter's Church do not seem very plausible. The question arises as to why they suddenly came to the fore. What prompted Julius II's sudden change of heart despite the massive opposition? My answer: the political situation had changed again. The Ottomans once again came into focus. There were still close ties between the Orient and the Occident, including between Rome and Constantinople, not only warlike, but also commercial, religious and friendly. Sultan Bayezid II, known as the Pious, the successor to Mehmed the Conqueror, even gave the Pope the Holy Lance in 1492, which was subsequently kept in one of the crossing pillars of St Peter's Basilica. So this time it was not the growing power and military successes of the Ottomans that took centre stage, but their outstanding cultural achievements that were the background to the new kind of East-West relations.
For when Constantinople fell into the hands of the Ottomans, the city was in a similarly miserable state as Rome after the return of the popes from Avignon. The sultans renewed Constantinople just as the popes had strengthened Rome. The sultans began this immediately after the conquest and Constantinople flourished more quickly than Rome. Mehmed the Conqueror crowned his conquest of the eastern metropolis of the Roman Empire by converting the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. This act was at the centre of the complaints about the conquest of Constantinople and was denounced as a desecration. The Hagia Sophia became a symbol of hope for the reconquest of Constantinople.
Mehmed the Conqueror and Bayezid the Pious built two magnificent new mosques, which were linked to hospices, schools and other exemplary public welfare facilities. Mehmed built his mosque on the site of the Church of the Apostles. He destroyed the church, which had long been in ruins, and the tombs of the emperors and erected his own tomb there. He replaced the administrative and residential buildings around the church as well as the baths with facilities for public welfare and education. The mosque of Bayezid the Pious is a truly magnificent building. It was modelled on the Hagia Sophia and has many of the typical architectural elements of its model: the layout with the large cubic space in the centre, the central dome that dominates the entire building and the complex exedrae with their domes at the front and back, which are as high as the central space. This mosque was consecrated in 1506. The old Roman church of St Peter looked pitiful compared to the mosque of Bayezid the Pious.
Planning for the new construction of St Peter's Church began at the end of 1505. The reason for this was apparently the completion of the mosque in Constantinople. If Julius II wanted to create the grandest building in the world with St Peter's Church, then he had to surpass the Hagia Sophia and the Mosque of Bayezid the Pious. The mosque of Bayezid the Pious was built in just five years - the time it had taken Nicholas V to lay the foundations for the extension to St Peter's Basilica. The haste with which Julius II pushed ahead with the new building gives the impression that he did not want to lag behind the Ottomans in the construction of his new building either.
The first plans for the new St Peter's Church
There are no other contemporary comments apart from the full-bodied declaration that the grandest building in the world was to be built. For a more precise judgement, we are dependent on an in-depth examination of the form and its art-historical classification. I will concentrate on the essential elements.
Two alternatives were presented. Apparently, certain conditions were imposed, because both designs have roughly the same dimensions and neither provides any indication of the dimensions of the new building or where it should be located. There is no scale, no formal reference to the existing building, no site designation, not even the place where Peter was believed to be buried is marked.
One of the plans was drawn up by the papal architect Donato Bramantewho came to Rome in 1499 after making a career in Milan and had just begun to extend the papal palace. Bramante only drew half of his project because the other half was supposed to look exactly the same anyway. This was a common practice in medieval cracks. The other plan was drawn by the Veronese architect Fra Giocondo, who worked for the Republic of Venice and the kings of Naples and France. Why did the Pope use a foreign architect instead of one of his confidants, such as Giuliano da Sangallo, who was famous in central Italy and had proven to be his loyal follower?
The Pope could choose between the central building presented by Bramante, which corresponded to a Renaissance ideal or the Hagia Sophia and the mosque of Bayezid the Pious, and the central building presented by Fra Giocondo The church was proposed with a nave, as was the case with the Constantinian church of St Peter and most parish and pilgrimage churches. Both plans were completely out of step with what was customary in Rome and central Italy. They are based on building types that were widespread in the eastern part of the Imperium Romanum and were occasionally adopted in the area of the Republic of Venice, because the Republic of Venice was particularly connected to Eastern Rome (Byzantium).
Bramante proposed a cross-domed design. This type of building emerged in Byzantine architecture and spread from the East to Venice. In Venice, it became the national building type of the Republic at the beginning of the Renaissance. At that time, six Cross-domed churchn - its prototype was the church of S. Giacomo di Rialto. Fra Giocondo, on the other hand, proposed a type of church related to the cross-domed church that emerged in the Eastern Roman Empire under Justinian and also found a successor in Venice, in S. Marco, then the Doge's church. Both architects were certainly familiar with Venice; they had not visited Constantinople themselves, but they may have seen the drawings of Byzantine buildings in the Sforza library in Pesaro, which the humanist Ciriaco d'Ancona had made during his travels to the ancient sites in Greece and the Middle East.
Why did people in Rome think that the Byzantine or Byzantine-derived building types in Venice were appropriate for St Peter's Church? This question can only be answered by realising that the style of buildings was not only determined by the passage of time, but was also influenced by other factors.
The design of buildings was often based on local ties. Contemporary sources speak of this: The German Brotherhood and the King of France built churches in Rome for their compatriots expressly in the German and French styles respectively. The two churches only follow the national style on the inside, on the outside they are adapted to what was customary in Rome. This is how differentiated local architectural styles were taken into account. The two plans for the new St Peter's Church, on the other hand, completely ignored the local Roman connection.
This was because it was also possible to express political content through architectural forms: The Republic of Venice made the Byzantine cross-domed church its national building type in order to demonstrate that it belonged to the eastern part of the Imperium Romanum under constitutional law. It benefited from its political independence from the West and knew how to exploit this skilfully, sometimes to the chagrin of the popes. For this reason, the Republic of Venice even claimed special rights in the Roman Church.
Grand Duke Ivan III of Moscow commissioned the Italian architect Aristotele Fioravanti to build the Uspensky Cathedral in his residence in the Kremlin, modelled on the medieval Uspensky Cathedral of Vladimir, to demonstrate that the ancient seat of the Metropolitan of Russia had been transferred from Vladimir to Moscow. Vladimir Cathedral is a cross-domed church and the Russian metropolitan was subordinate to the patriarch of the Eastern Church in Constantinople, where the cross-domed church had been the ruling church since the High Middle Ages.
type of building.
The architecture of the Ottomans had the same significance. Since the conquest of Constantinople, the mosques of the sultans were characterised by the reception of the Hagia Sophia and thus referred to the sultans' claim to be the successors of the Roman emperors. The mosques of high dignitaries also drew on Byzantine models, but only less prominent ones.
When Julius II chose Byzantine building types for St Peter's Church against Roman tradition, this is not only of formal significance, but also contains a political statement. Julius II intended to draw attention to Constantinople.
Bramante's plan
The Pope chose Bramante's plan as the model for the new St Peter's Church. It was depicted in the exterior view on the foundation medal of the new St Peter's Church. Its features are the huge dome dominating the entire building, including the domes of the cross arms, the secondary domes in the four corners, the four corner towers and the small entrance front instead of a large façade. The solemn motif of the central dome between four small corner domes did not exist in Western architecture, not even in Venice, where the domes above the corners of the cross-domed churches do not appear on the outside; in Byzantine architecture, on the other hand, the motif was widespread. This confirms that Byzantium, rather than Venice, provided the model for Bramante's project.
On the Caradosso medal, the dome is far larger in relation to the overall width of the building than the crossing in Bramante's plan. This has hardly been noticed so far, but the enlargement of the dome cannot be dismissed as an adjustment to the surface of the medal; on the contrary, the church fits into the surface worse than a correct representation. The towers protrude into the inscription. This and other detailed observations show that the size of the dome is deliberately exaggerated in the foundation medal. Such a large dome in the shape of a hemisphere, as depicted in the foundation medal, could not have been realised at the time for structural reasons, at least not in the west.
There was no church in the West that would have resembled Bramante's project as depicted on the foundation medal. In contrast, the depiction, with the exception of the towers, is essentially similar to the mosque of Bayezid the Pious. The similarity is so important that I will list the similar elements in detail here:
- the enormous dome, which did not exist in this size in the western world,
- including the tambourine,
- including the calotte of the frontal exedra,
- small domes without tambour on both sides next to the frontal exedra,
- Instead of a façade, as was customary in the West, there was only a low porch at the bottom.
The Hagia Sophia was the model for the mosque of Bayezid the Pious, but it differs in various individual elements: the dome is considerably flatter, it has no tambour and the small side domes are missing.
But as Bramante had not seen the Hagia Sophia with his own eyes, he had to rely on images to get a picture of the Hagia Sophia, and these images naturally did not have the same precision as today's photographs.
The most accurate drawing of the Hagia Sophia from the Renaissance has been preserved in the magnificent parchment volume of antique drawings left behind by Giuliano da Sangallo. It was probably created around the same time as the first plans for the new building of St Peter's Church or shortly before, but it is based on a model by Ciriaco d'Ancona. The drawing clearly deviates from the actual building: the central dome is hemispherical instead of flat like the original, a tambour is attached to it, which does not exist, small domes appear next to the calotte of the frontal exedra, as if Hagia Sophia were a Byzantine-style cross-domed church, but these domes do not exist on Hagia Sophia either. Bramante would hardly have recognised the deviations.
The foundation medal demonstrates that Bramante's plan for the new St Peter's Church was largely modelled on the plan for Hagia Sophia and the Bayezid Mosque, as it was accessible to him. This particularly emphasises the unrealistic exaggeration of the size of the dome. The enormous size of the dome has always been emphasised as the essential element of the Hagia Sophia, and the mosques of the sultans competed with it. Bramante's project surpassed the Hagia Sophia and the mosque of Bayezid the Pious in that it regulated the ground plan in the Renaissance sense and added the solemn motif of the four corner towers that Filarete had created as an architectural ideal in his design for the cathedral of a utopian city.
Fra Giocondo's plan
Fra Giocondo's proposal for the new construction of St Peter's Church was evidently modelled on St Mark's in Venice. This is shown in particular by the rows of domed rooms in the nave and transept, the pillars between them, which are composed of several columns, and the unusual gallery around the nave. As the most learned architectural theorist of his time, Fra Giocondo was certainly not naïve enough to recommend the Doge's church as a model for the Pope's church. Behind the similarity of his plan to St Mark's, there was more likely an intention to refer to the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople. For contemporaries knew from a written source that St Mark's was modelled on the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople. The descriptions of the Church of the Apostles by Procopius and Eusebius are not precise enough to make this information accurate, but Ciriaco d'Ancona was able to see the Church of the Apostles before it was destroyed and certainly brought drawings of it, as well as of Hagia Sophia, to Italy.
What the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople looked like in detail is not known today because Ciriaco's studies in the Sforza library were burnt in 1514. However, Byzantinists unanimously assume that it resembled St Mark's. As Fra Giocondo lived and worked around Venice, he was more familiar with Venetian and Byzantine architecture than Roman architects. I think Julius II asked Fra Giocondo for his opinion on the new building precisely because he was more familiar with Venetian and Byzantine architecture than central Italian architects such as Giuliano da Sangallo.
St Peter's Church and the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople have in common that they were both apostolic churches; it was believed at the time that some of the bones of the two Princes of the Apostles were kept in St Peter's. The next large apostolic church to be built, St Giustina's in Padua, in which the bones of the evangelists Matthew and Luke are kept, is strikingly similar to Fra Giocondo's plan. S. Giustina gives a rudimentary idea of what Fra Giocondo's plan for St Peter's Church should look like in outline.
Concluding remarks
The first plans for a new St Peter's Church under Julius II were characterised by the idea of Constantinople, the old capital of the Imperium Romanum, which had been conquered by the Ottomans and was to be regained in a crusade. The models for the plans submitted were the two main churches of Constantinople: the emperor's church, the Hagia Sophia, which Mehmed the Conqueror had rededicated as a mosque; and the church of the emperor's tomb, the Church of the Apostles, which Mehmed had destroyed and replaced with his own mosque. The new construction of St Peter's Church was intended to surpass the mosque of Bayezid the Pious, the modern Islamic paraphrase of Hagia Sophia.
This was the intention that was publicly displayed on the founding medal. But Bramante's model, like Fra Giocondo's proposal, was intended more as a symbol for the new building than as a guideline for it. Both plans were therefore able to dispense with marking the relationship to the Constantinian basilica. The reference to Constantinople was apparently intended primarily as a justification for the controversial new building, but in the end it was too eccentric for the construction. Bramante had an even more unusual idea. In order to emphasise the patronage of Julius II, he wanted to move St Peter's Church together with the tomb of Peter, it is reported, so that the Pope had to remind him that the new church should be built over the tomb of Peter, not the tomb of Peter in the new church.
Bramante's plan laconically states: "Pianta di Sto. pietro di mano di bramante che non ebbe effetto" (plan for St Peter's by Bramante, which had no effect). In the end, all that remained of the first vision was the intention to create a large crossing with a dome above St Peter's tomb, similar to the Florentine cathedral. Incidentally, it was by no means clear what was actually going to happen. The two papal masters of ceremonies report on the laying of the foundation stone: one said on the stone that St Peter's Church would be rebuilt, the other said on the stone that St Peter's Church would be restored. Initially, the idea of incorporating the nave of the Constantinian basilica into the new building was actually considered, as Nicholas V had wanted. The choir section was to prominently imitate the Temple of Hercules in Milan, which the Christians had turned into a church and dedicated to St Laurence.
This was believed, but in reality the building was intended to be a Christian church from the outset. S. Lorenzo seemed more suitable than the Pantheon for expressing the victory of Christianity over paganism because its disposition was closer to the building tradition of Christian churches. In addition, porticoes like those in St Lorenzo's could have continued the arcades of the Constantinian nave if it had turned out that it was to be preserved. Finally, the choir of Nicholas V was realised, only stylistically altered and adapted inside to the porticoes, which were to be executed on the transverse arms. The idea of a cross-domed church was abandoned.
The uncertainty lasted almost a century. Instead of pressing ahead with the construction, Antonio da Sangallo created a huge and enormously expensive wooden model for a new project. Apparently, the external presentation was again more important than the execution. When Michelangelo took over the construction management, he dismissed Antonio's model as "Gothic". He demolished much of what had already been started and, instead of a basilica, erected a central building reduced to the essential elements. He returned to the solemn motif of the main dome between smaller corner domes, although he continued to organise the interior without a cross-domed layout.
The building finally took shape thanks to Michelangelo. The nave of the Constantinian basilica remained until 1605, when it was demolished for the construction of a new nave, which was added to Michelangelo's central building. In the end, a basilica was built after all. The dome over the tomb of St Peter, once conceived as the highlight of the building, largely disappeared behind the new pompous façade.
