Today, June 29, is the feast of SS Peter and Paul, who are among Rome's patron saint, since Rome is both their place of martyrdom and their place of burial - at least according to the medieval tradition. Due to their historical connection to Rome, both Peter and Paul have been key figures in the construction of Rome's Christian identity. This identity has been predominantly orchestrated by the Papacy, but it has also been added to, perpetuated, disseminated and maintained by a range of other historical actors across the social hierarchy of medieval Rome.
To map the many forms in which Peter and Paul have been used to construct and maintain Rome's identity would require a study of its own and at least one hefty monograph. Even today, Peter and Paul are ubiquitous in Rome, and they continue to provide a cornerstone for the city's identity. In this blogpost, therefore, I will only look at one aspect of this identity construction, one that I encountered by chance while I was preparing a talk on the issue of typological rejoicing.
Before I return to Peter and Paul, however, it might be necessary to briefly explain what I mean by typological rejoicing. Typology, or the study of types, was one of the main keys through which medieval Christians understood their place in Creation. The term refers to the patterns and similarities - types - that can be found in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the post-biblical period. In other words, typology reveals the pattern in God's plan, and through typological connections a person, a city, an institution, or a country can see itself as a new version of an old phenomenon. This connection across time - a connection divinely ordained - carries prestige as the glory of the earlier iterations, or types, is reflected onto the new iteration, or the antitype. (In this case, 'anti' does not mean contrary to.)
Typological connections can be sought in many different ways, and one such way is rejoicing. Several biblical versions contain exhortations to rejoice or to be happy. Isaiah 52:9 tells deserted Jerusalem to rejoice because a better future will come, while Paul, in Philippians 4:4 tells the Christians in general to rejoice in the Lord always. Similarly, addressing a city, a country, or a people to be happy is another form of establishing a typological connection through joy.
One such typological connection can be found in the liturgy for the feast of SS Peter and Paul. The above manuscript page - from a late-twelfth-century antiphoner from Marseille, whose content can be found here, and a digitized version of which can be found here - contains chants for the hour Lauds on their feast. Lauds is celebrated around six hours after sundown, and is one of three important services in the daily round of the liturgical office, the performance of which is divided into eight slots in one twenty-four-hour cycle. Lauds is typically where the chants describe miracles of whichever saint is being celebrated on that particular day, and these are described in chants called antiphons, each of which is sung before and after a psalm from the Bible. There is also a hymn, and in our case here, the hymn is called 'O Roma felix', O happy Rome.
Rome is here called happy because it is the resting-place of two such important martyrs as Peter and Paul, two of the most important apostles and two of the most powerful saints in the Latin Christian collegium of saints. Importantly, in this chant, Rome is not only connected to Peter and Paul by way of containing the primary shrines of these two saints, but through its happiness the city is connected to biblical locations which also have reason to rejoice, such as Jerusalem (cf. Isaiah 66:10), Israel (Zephaniah 3:14) and Sion (Zechariah 2:10). Even though the wording is different - 'felix' instead of 'gaude' or 'laetare' - the point remains the same: Happiness brought on by the divine machinations of the Lord, which has ensured that the city or the country or the people can rejoice.
By calling Rome happy, Rome's identity as a Christian city is further enhanced because its happiness is an echo of biblical events. This echo proves that God protects and guides Rome's progress through history. Moreover, since the happiness is caused by Rome being chosen as the location of two of the most important martyrdoms in Christian history, there is also a connection to the New Testament. This biblical, cosmic background is neatly summarized in the incipit, or opening words, of the hymn: 'O Roma felix'.
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