To be read climbing the Scala Santa in Rome on one's knees. Rare.
[Rome] / [Guidebook]. Modo di salire fruttuosamente La Scala Santa. Rome: Stibil. Tipogr. di G. A. Bertinelli, 1856. 12mo [14.8 x 10.2 cm], 24 pp., with image of Sudarium on title page. Bound in contemporary wrappers. Wrappers wrinkled and with minor edge wear. A few stray marks, minor wrinkling and edge wear, lost to outer margin of margin at pp. 11-12.
Very rare (no U.S. copies) pocket-sized devotional guide to be used by pilgrims while climbing the Scala Santa in Rome on their knees. Few books ask such a thing of their readers.
The Scala Santa, composed of 28 marble steps, is said to have been brought by Saint Helena (d. c. 330) to Rome from Jerusalem where it originally served as the stairs leading to the praetorium of Pontius Pilate. These, therefore, were thus the stairs that Jesus Christ mounted on the way to his trial. The Scala Santa, which long stood in the Lateran Palace, was given its own building by Sixtus V in 1589.
The booklet begins with a longer prayer to be recited before approaching the Holy Stairs. There follow 28 shorter prayers—1 for each of the 28 steps—to be recited during one’s ascension (which must be made on one’s knees). These prayers follow the trajectory of Christ’s Passion, from the Last Supper to his placement in the tomb.
The booklet at last provides prayers for confronting the Sancta Sanctorum, the room that lies at the top of the stairs and houses the famous icon of Christ begun by Saint Luke and finished by an angel. At the Sancta Sanctorum, one is confronted with a golden inscription stating that there is no holier place in the world: “Non est in toto sanctior orbe locus.” Few books have been printed expressly to be read in the holiest place in the world.
Prayers for use in climbing the Scala Santa were sometimes included in longer guidebooks to Rome, especially those treating to the Sette Chiese (e.g., Giovanni Battista da Diece, Vero modo di fare la Scala Santa, e visitare le Sette Chiese…, [Roma: Ignatio Lazzari, 1656]), and there exist a few considerably longer meditations devoted specifically to the Scala Santa (e.g., Pio da S. Colomba, Modo di visitare, e salire divotamente la Scala Santa…, [Rome: L’Eredi del Corbelletti, 1706]), but small handbook guides like the one offered here seem to be largely a 19th-century phenomenon (see also, e.g., the booklets printed by Aureli (1862), Guerra (1864), and Amori (1874) in Rome. Such pocket-sized guides are all very rare today, most having been carried about the city and used to pieces.
OCLC, KVK and ICCU/OPAC locate examples of this guidebook at the Biblioteca comunale Augusta (Perugia) and Biblioteca Casanatense (Rome).
* IT\ICCU\RML\0182297.