![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/11\/Group.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nNext, we went to St. Johns at the Lateran, which used to be the calvary for Maxentius, Constantine\u2019s rival. Constantine was able to defeat his enemy and used the space outside of the walls as his first Christian dedicated building. Inside of this church there are sculptures of the twelve disciples of Christianity, also known as Jesus\u2019 best friends. We found it powerful because they were all facing towards the congregation, seemingly watching over them. This is also one of the few places that all twelve disciples are standing within the same room. Each of the disciples also has an element of their personality displayed with them, a couple of examples would be Saint Paul having a sword, and Saint Peter having his key emblem. We also believe the baptistry located behind the church is worth mentioning. While the original baptismal pool is no longer there, the significance of this being the only baptismal in Rome for many years is huge. With baptisms only occurring on Easter at the time, one can imagine the massive line of Christian converts waiting to be baptized by the Pope, also the bishop of Rome. Constantine also constructed this building and we found it interesting that it could possibly be the oldest baptistry in Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then we went to Santa Croce which was particularly moving for some of the class. In this church there were four relics, part of the cross Jesus was crucified on, the finger of Saint Thomas, one of the nails that pierced Jesus, and finally there was two thorns from the crown Jesus was forced to wear. This was a very spiritual situation because we were able to get up close and see what those relics mean to the Christian church. We found this meaningful because we were not only seeing Christian relics, but we were also seeing ancient artifacts from the Christian faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, we went to San Clemente which was the oldest. The church today was constructed in the eleventh century. Underneath was a late third and early fourth century Christian Church that was sacked around the year 1090 AD. What was most fascinating was that even below that church there was a first century Mithraeum, a pagan religion early in Rome. All three layers were interesting in their own respect, but the Mithraeum was surprisingly very much intact. As a society, we have very little information on Mithraeums and their practices, but we do know that seven steps of initiation are required to go through this religion. These seven steps were not depicted in this location, but there is evidence of multiple small rooms that could have been used for each initiation step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(As a disclaimer, we were unable to photograph everything that was discussed due to certain rules and regulations).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blog by: Hoyt Stafford \u201824, Jaron Bradford \u201824, Auggie Isaac \u201825, and Christopher Royal \u201826 What\u2019s up Wallies, friends, and family, today in Rome we experienced the Vatican Museums, seeing presentations from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":1954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2023-rome"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/11\/Group.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1959,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions\/1959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"