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PETER
AND PAUL.
THE HISTORY, THE CULT, THE MEMORY IN THE FIRST CENTURIES.
Just when the Catholic Church starts the third millennium from the birth
of Christ, here it is that it is presented an exhibition devoted to
the apostles Peter and Paul out of common for the literary, historical
and artistic novelty and the archaeological finds collected for the
first time and overall for the basic importance and acknowledgment of
Christianity as a moving factor of history. The exhibition, opened on
June 30th is held in Rome at the Palazzo della Cancelleria and will
close on December 10th. It is devoted to the two apostles Peter and
Paul and their influence over the first Christianity, and shows one
hundred exceptional archaeological finds coming from several Italian
and foreign museums.
And
it is in Rome that the memory and the signs of the two apostles are
kept; here their graves are venerated; here it rises catacombs and basilicas,
that is the places the most loved by the tradition and the popular devotion
of Christians; here it rises the first building given over to the cult
of Peter and Paul, and since then destination of an unbroken pilgrimage;
here it rises the pastoral and social action of the Christianity all
over the world. In Rome Peter and Paul were the first promoters and
then witnesses of the Gospel in the Christian community, of Judaical
origin, already settled there when they arrived. Here they dead because
of the gospel itself. In the places of their martyrdom and burial, it
started soon the pilgrimage and the cult along time that influenced
the topographic and religious panorama of the same town.
The exhibition is in the Palazzo della Cancelleria underground rooms,
just recovered, and it is organized into five sections: 1) the origins
of the Christian Rome; 2) the spiritual environment of the late imperial
period; 3) Peter and Paul, the history; 4) Peter and Paul, faces and
ideas 5) the cult of the apostles Peter and Paul from origins up to
the fifth century.
And
it was there in Vatican where Peter's corpse was graved round 64 or
67 b.C. in an opencast earth hole, object of veneration till the II
century, when it was beautified by an architectonic structure. Here
there are the places of the Christian memory, in Rome, seat of the whole
Christian Catholic Church that along the centuries went on the itinerary
of the faith, conversion and forgiveness, of which this exhibition is
an admirable example. These places and these art and history objects
narrate about the admirable person of Christ and his two martyrs.
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