When the prayers were over, the Pope came forth from the Lateran, wearing the mitre and holding the Golden Rose in his hand; mounting his white palfrey, and accompanied by the whole Pontifical Court, he rode down the green way to the Basilica of the Holy Cross. There he preached a sermon on the virtues symbolised by the rose (there is still one of these sermons extant, delivered by Innocent III) and then celebrated Holy Mass. When that was over, he returned on horseback, still holding the Golden Rose and followed by the whole gorgeous cavalcade to St. John Lateran, where, if some royal prince happened to be present, his was the honour of assisting the Holy Father to dismount, and he received, in reward for his filial piety, the Golden Rose from the Pope’s own hands.
In our days the ceremony of blessing the Rose takes place in a hall of the Vatican, and the Holy Father sends it as a gift usually to some Catholic princess—I remember that a few years ago he sent one to our little English Queen of Spain. I heard of another, and a very touching, present sent by Leo XIII to a royal lady who was awaiting the birth of her child—the baby’s entire layette, marvels of beauty worked by the nuns, and all blessed by the Holy Father for the small Christian who was to wear the garments!
After founding the Church of St. John Lateran, the zeal of Constantine led him to build another and greater one over the tomb of St. Peter. For this the tomb itself served as a nucleus, and Constantine would have no hands but his own dig the beginning of the foundations. “Laying aside the chlamys” (the mantle on which were embroidered the insignia of his rank) “he opened the earth for the construction of the Basilica. Then he carried away on his own shoulders twelve basketfuls of earth, in honour of the twelve Apostles.” The work thus inaugurated was continued under his direction. The body of the blessed Apostle was at this time brought back from the Catacombs to its original resting-place with great glory, and encased in a magnificent silver coffin which in its turn was placed inside a sarcophagus of gilt bronze. Constantine forbade any but the priests to touch the sarcophagus, under pain of severe punishment. At one point on the way, the bearers seemed to be wavering a little, and a common workman, forgetting the Emperor’s orders, stretched out his hand to steady it. There was no need for Constantine to punish him, for the poor fellow’s hand shrivelled up at the contact, only to be restored after earnest prayers for forgiveness of this irreverence.
