San Pietro in Vincoli

00184 Roma

The church of San Pietro in Chains al Colle Oppio (Latin Sancti Petri ad Vincula, German St. Peter in Chains ) is situated on the Esquiline Hill near the Colosseum in Rome and is a Rector's church, minor basilica and titular church of the Roman Catholic Church.

History

The church was. Licinia of Eudoxia, the wife of Emperor Valentinian III, sponsored and stands on the remains of the 2nd century. The foundation stone was laid in the year 431, eight years later San Pietro was by Pope Sixtus III. consecrated. Einhard mentions the church in his Translatio Marcellini et Petri et Miracula SS ( " The transfer and wonders of the Holy Marzellinus and Peter " ): right next door stood the house in which the unreliable deacon Deusdona was domiciled with him took 826 of the secretary Einhard, Ratleik and his traveling companions apartment ..

Throughout its history, the church underwent several modifications, in particular under the then Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere title, who was elected in 1503 to Pope Julius II, in the Renaissance style, and finally by Francesco Fontana in the late Baroque style. It is the monastery church of the Augustinian canons of Lateran. On 8 May 2011, the new title holder, Donald William Wuerl cardinal took his church in possession.

Name

The name derives from the church are the chains (lat. / It. Vincoli ) that are kept in a glass container under the altar. They are revered by pilgrims as those who was tied up to his miraculous deliverance which Peter in Jerusalem (Acts 12,6.7 EU), and at the same time as the ones he wore in the Mamertine prison in Rome. The bandages, which should have received Peter because of injuries stemming from the chains, he is said to have lost at the site of the previous building of the present church of Santi Nereo e Achilleo.

After the legendary Empress Aelia Eudocia tradition received during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the Jerusalem chain of Patriarch Juvenal and gave it to her daughter Licinia Eudoxia. This she showed Pope Leo I, who compared it with the retained in Rome Mamertine chains. Here, the two chains miraculously put together, and Eudoxia built the church for them.

Tomb of Pope Julius II

The church is known primarily for Michelangelo's tomb for Pope Julius II with the statues of Rachel, Leah and Moses.

Intended were about 40 larger than life figures. The base of the monument should allegories of the arts and sciences as well as slaves surrounded as symbols of the conquered provinces. In four seated figures were provided around the sarcophagus originally. 1506 Julius II had dropped the plan, and Michelangelo left Rome. In 1508 he returned and began with the ceiling frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. When in 1513 Pope Julius II died, Michelangelo devoted again to the tomb. It created the Bound Slave and the Dying Slave and Moses.

The Moses statue is one of the most important works of Michelangelo. It shows Moses, who comes back with the tables of the law from Mount Sinai, in the moment when he finds the Israelites at the dance around the golden calf. The horns on his head go back to a translation error: In the original Hebrew, which knows no vowels, and the word ' krn ". When it comes to it later to provide the text with vowels, you bet two " e". From " krn " is " streamlined " and that means " horned ". This version keeps the centuries and is also adopted in the Vulgate, draws its knowledge from Michelangelo. By comparison with other texts can be recognized much later that really two "a" must be added. The word is then called " karan ", meaning " shining ", and the somewhat enigmatic passage in the Bible gets a different, intelligible meaning ..

Michelangelo's biographer Giorgio Vasari sums up the contemporary judgment of whom Moses in 1568 in the second edition of his biography in this way:

The plan was Moses as Eckfigur at the level of the sarcophagus. From this position, the body rotation and the physiognomic drama that is calculated to explain action at a distance. From near the head gets the fearsome expression in the characterization of Michelangelo masterpiece which has solidified terribilità, the " awe-inspiring power." This plan illegal formation also influenced Goethe's impression, who wrote in 1830:

These heroes I can not think otherwise than sitting me. Probably about the powerful statue of Michelangelo at the grave of Julius the Second, in my imagination seizes such that I can not get rid of it.

Attitude and details of the statue have been numerous attempts at interpretation occasion. Even Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, worked intensively with the statue and published in 1914 an anonymous treatise on the subject ( " The Moses of Michelangelo "). The essay was written immediately after the conflict with his " renegade " student CG Jung. You certainly can in this interpretation of the sculpture " a moment of identification Freud me of the mythical figure of Moses" see. Freud describes in his essay on the Moses several explanatory approaches and concludes that the dynamics in the image factory in Carrara marble results from a motion sequence. Moses stands at the dance around the golden calf to raise his voice and hand, thereby threatening the Tables of the Law of his other hand to slip. In the movement of the Rose, the movement goes back to seat movement, because Moses tries - as every person in such a situation - to get the panels back into the handle. This movement is shown in Freud in the form of sketches. The movement is effectively frozen in marble.

Cusanus- grave

In the left aisle of the German theologian, philosopher and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa is buried ( Cusanus ), who is regarded as the most important philosopher of the 15th century.