One hundred-thirty-and-four years was this thousand-year-old temple in building, and, pending its erection, all homeward-bound vessels were compelled to bring some tribute to the rising structure. The five hundred columns of the façade are of rare marbles thus imported, principally from the Orient. The wall between these is gorgeous with mosaics—not frescos. The domes are begirt with a frontlet of pinnacles. Sultana of the Sea, to whom all kingdoms have paid tribute, she sits upon the shore in calm imperiousness befitting the regal estate confirmed by a decade of centuries. The hack of chisel, the corrosion of acids here will be sacrilege. Yet they say it is ordained that she shall endure the outrage. They may smite,—they cannot belittle her.
We disbelieved in the fragment of the true cross set in a silver column exhibited in the “Treasury;” were disposed to smile at the splinter, or chip, of St. John’s frontal bone “adorning” an agate goblet. We shook our heads over St. Mark’s Episcopal throne as we had at St. Peter’s in Rome, and would not look at the crystal urn said to contain some of the Saviour’s blood. Nor were we credulous as to the authenticity of the capitals brought from the Temple at Jerusalem crowning the pillars of the Entrance-Hall.
But we always stayed our steps at the red porphyry slabs embedded in the floor of the vestibule. Here, Frederic Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany, and twice-crowned King of Italy,—once by Pope, again by the anti-pope of his own setting-up; Conqueror of Poland and Lombardy; the most accomplished, as he was the most heroic warrior in an era when heroism was knightly duty,—knelt to Pope Alexander III., at the pacific instance of Sebastiano Ziani, Doge of Venice. Ten years of excommunication; the disastrous battle on Lake Como, desertion, treachery and disease had tired out, not quelled the haughty spirit. A twenty years’ war, resulting in irrevocable defeat, probably wrought more potently upon reason and will than the Doge’s arguments. His face was of a more burning red than the hair and beard that earned his nickname, as his knee touched the ground.
Schiller makes Marie Stuart protest, after her betrayal into the like act of subserviency to Elizabeth, that she “knelt not to _her_, but to GOD!” The poet may have borrowed the equivocation from Barbarossa’s kingly growl—“_Non tibi—sed Petro!_”