Italy Trip 2024 - Milvan Bridge
Eleven miles on foot today - this morning feels like a week ago! A couple of disappointments due to things closed for the Jubilee year preparations. But at this point we hardly remember what they were LOL.
First thing today was getting drone footage over the Milvan Bridge and it was a great success! Constantine and Maxentius fought a battle here with Constantine claiming to have had a vision of the cross that signaled victory. The victory meant Constantine was now Emperor. He legalized Christianity shortly after. The bridge is still there!! It’s a pedestrian bridge now and has obviously had some work over the centuries, but it has been here since 206 BC.
Next we saw Augustus’s altar of peace that has been re-assembled and restored as a museum. Then it was parade of the most unbelievably beautiful churches:
Santa Andrea della Fratte with its Bernini angels, Santa Maria Della Concezione with its Cappuchin crypt/art work of bones, Santa Maria Maggiore and its amazing mosaic loggia and Bernini stairs, Saint Prassede and the column of the scourging ( a supposed relic from Christ’s trial and scourging) , and finally Santa Martino Ai Monti which has underground excavations of a Roman market and baths from the 3rd century - space was donated to Christians in the 300s- VERY early - and a preparatory meeting for the counsel of Nicea was held here in 324 AD.
What a day. Thanking God for the success filming at the Milvan Bridge and for our Christian ancestors who preserved our history so well.
Peace to all and good night! PB, Margery and Jacob
PS Jacob made us walk all the way up the Spanish steps .
Milvan Bridge - the site of Constantine’s vision of the cross and victory over Maxentius in 312 - a precursor of the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire in 313 AD.
