St Peter versus Emperor Nero at Rome
The Emperor Nero was born in December ’37 – the son of Agrippina , the final wife of his predessor, Emperor Claudius– who , despite his misgivings, allowed his step-son Nero to follow him as Roman Emperor from 54 until his death in June 68, and so to be the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
Known for his craziness and cruelty, amongst his most hideous ideas was the introduction of Roman Candles – this tour group in Roman told us that as an early persecutor of Christians – Nero was known for having captured Christians burned, on crucifix’s often wrapped in tar covered blankets to make them burn for longer, in the Colosseum and even in his garden, at night as a source of light.
So having written about lions and St Peter in the last couple of weeks I was reminded of the book and films of Quo Vadis – taken from a classic novel Quo Vadis written in 1896 by Henryk Sienkiewicz – which refers to St Peter’s famous return to Rome having been spoken to by Jesus and persuaded to accept his martyrdom by being crucified “again” – or rather in Christ’s place – upside down on Vatican hill – now the site of the Vatican!
It was a brave decision which kept the Christian movement going despite Nero’s persecution.
The was first a little known black and white silent film of the book made by Enrico Guazzoni in Italy in 1913.
And I found this colour image below from what looks like a later Polish Film – probably Quo Vadis 2001 Polish film directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz It was Poland’s submission to the 74th Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
The image below shows Ursus the Herculean Ex-Slave carrying his beloved owner Ligia out of harm’s way. In the book Ligia was originally a princess from a family living in a part of the world that is now Poland,
But the most famous film of Quo Vadis name stars Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr and a young and very flamboyant Peter Ustinov – it was the first Hollywood Biblical Epic – filmed in 1951 when the memories of the second world war were still strong. In this film Nero wants to permanently remove the Christians from the Roman world and makes comments very reminiscent of many made by Hitler in respect of the Jews. – such as “when I have finished with the Christians , nobody, will ever know, that they ever …existed”.
In order to get the crowd on his side and to stop nicknaming him “Il Incendio” (the fire starter) Nero accused the Christians of starting the great fire of Rome. It is generally accepted that Nero himself had ordered his Praetorian Guards to start the fire in order to rebuild the City to his own design.
So this afternoon I have been enjoying the overlaid commentary from critic film historian F.X.Feeney – some of the stories that seem particularly amusing being the sequence where the well fed European circus and zoo lions who were supposed to chase around and eat Christians were so perturbed by the noise, bright sunshine and fierce heat they turned right round and went back into their pens! It took 2 weeks of keeping the poor beasts on a meagre diet before they were sufficiently hungry to even languidly attack a costume full of meat!
No wonder they didn’t get seen very much in the film after they came out of their pens – they just wouldn’t act – not even with encouragement from their trainers, also dressed up as sentenced Christians!
The next bit of animal cruelty in the film comes when a very lively Portuguese bull trots into the Colosseum ready for a bit of a fight – he is wrestled to the ground by an huge Polish actor called Buddy Baer – film name Ursus – but this bit of filming was also stopped several times when the continuity man called out “Stop! – Mr LeRoy can see the udders!!” The poor cow was definitely sacrificed on celluloid – this was the age well before digital enhancement – and having been tossed several times by the real bull – poor Buddy Baer spent several weeks in hospital!
All grissly stuff this – but it actually a film of great hope for a better world – and well worth watching for it’s spectacular effects!
