When the great early Christian basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome was gutted by fire on 15/16 July 1823, there was no question but that it should be rebuilt. Before this time it would naturally have been rebuilt in the best contemporary style, and there were proposals to do just that, but the antiquity and status of the basilica, both as an imperial foundation of the 380s and the site of the tomb of St Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, meant that there was growing support for the unprecedented suggestion that the great basilica be restored to its former glory. Still, a comparison of the present building on the via Ostiense and visual records of the pre-fire state of the building reveals significant changes, and every wrinkle of the developing design is recorded and analysed in this comprehensive study. The rebuilding project would by no means be recognised today as conservation. During the design process aspects of the historic basilican form were ‘improved’ according to the best contemporary taste and every trace of historic patination was polished away for a rather cold and gleaming result.

Restoration was encouraged by the survival of the transept and the medieval ciborium over the tomb itself, seen as having been preserved by God’s providence. This proposal to restore became known as the in pristinum option, which was approved by Pope Leo xii in 1825, but that was not the end of the debate. This book uses the architectural history of this major project to provide a new perspective on the early years of the Catholic Revival. As Wittman writes: ‘This is, in other words, a book concerned not only with architectural matters per se but also with the prominent public role architectural matters played in the Church’s effort to navigate, control and project its own nineteenth-century modernity’ (p. 5). This is an immense historical weight to place on a project, even of this grand scale, and no one in the Church is likely to have framed the objective specifically in that way, since Leo xii (elected in 1823) comprehensively rejected the notion of modernity in his first encyclical Ubi primum. On the other hand, the appeal to local architectural historicism was at that time a modern Romantic gesture informed by developments in early Christian archaeology, but still constrained by notions of ideal classical aesthetics. Wittman is very good at bringing out the complexities, ironies and contradictions of the developing situation.

He describes the various forces that were swirling about, influencing the form and progress of the project. To rebuild on this imperial scale would be a huge challenge financially. A second encyclical proclaimed 1825 a Jubilee year and the faithful were invited to make their pilgrimage to Rome to visit both the Basilicas of St Peter and St Paul. In the event, St Paul’s would not be ready. The encyclical sent a worldwide appeal for donations to the faithful and in the early stages there was some considerable success in the popular response.

The complexity of papal politics, funding problems, culture wars and the academies, are all shown to be seething under the surface of the major objectives of rebuilding the church and reviving the institution of the Church, latterly in the form of the encouragement of popular piety and Marian devotion. On 8 December 1854, Pope Pius ix promulgated the bull Ineffabilis deus, raising Mary above all other saints of the Church and established the Church as the possessor of a ‘deposit of faith’ by divine gift, which only they could interpret with the guidance of the pope. The Catholic hierarchy was in Rome in force for the occasion. Pope Pius ix took advantage of their presence to consecrate the largely complete St Paul’s a few days later, on 12 December. Despite the magnificence of the consecration ceremony and the theological connection between the two events, international attention was almost exclusively fixed on the new Marian dogma. As a force for revival, the Immaculate Mary had overwhelmed the sternly thoughtful Paul; thoughtful argument proved no match for popular fervour.

The almost total eclipse of the architectural project by the sensational proclamation of the dogma does not reduce the importance of the subject of Rebuilding St Paul’s Outside the Walls, in which Wittman ‘has invited the reader to consider three intertwined early nineteenth-century histories: that of Roman architecture, that of Roman Catholic understandings of time and history, and that of the institutional Church in its relationship to the changing cultural, social, political and religious possibilities of contemporary modernity’ (p. 382). We too often remain narrowly within our own historical lines, and Wittman presents us with the opportunity to follow some new and original interlacing strands. The challenge to the reader is to keep track of all three strands of the plot and the political allegiances of the enormous number of actors occupying the contemporary Roman stage, rather like an overcrowded opera performance, but that was clearly the reality of the circumstances. While maintaining the subtleties of the positions, some of the clarity of the political alignments is lost along with some of the thrust of the argument. This does not diminish the book as a fine piece of research.