3-028-491 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Reception of a Benedictine monk in St. Paul's Church at Rome, 1870. The '...ceremony of the reception of a new member into the Benedictine Order of monastic persons...was performed, on New-Year's Day, in the sumptuously-decorated new Church of St. Paul Without the Walls, built in the desert Campagna, two or three miles from the nearest houses of the city, on the road called the Appian Way, by which the Apostle Paul travelled to Rome after his landing at the mouth of the Tiber. The novice about to be initiated was a young man from America, whose name is not generally known. [In the] most remarkable feature of the ceremonial, the newly-made monk lay down upon the floor (a mosaic pavement), which was spread with a piece of black velvet in this place, and he was then completely covered with a pall of black silk held by two boys. This is designed for an emblematic representation of his act of self-surrender in dying to the world. After the performance of the mass, he was desired by the officiating priest to arise from the state of death, and to enter a state of new spiritual life, upon which the black pall was removed'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.