Book Description
Margherita Guarducci, acclaimed scholar of ancient literature, extending her research to various disciplines, such as philology, ancient history, archaeology and epigraphy, demonstrates how they contribute toward clarifying and resolving a centuries-old problem: the primacy of the Church of Rome over the other Christian churches. The resulting picture spans over two millennia of history, illuminated by several "primacies" of Christianity, gathered and evaluated together for the first time: ownership of the oldest Christian basilica (the Lateran Basilica), the oldest portrait of Christ, the oldest icon of Mary, the oldest Christian statue, and, most importantly, the oldest relics that are surely authentic, those of St. Peter in St. Peter's Basilica. In a rigorously scientific way, Guarducci gives evidence of certain concatenations of events that, as if obeying a mysterious design, tend to confirm the primacy of the Church of Rome, the ancient universality of which survives to this day in the spiritual primacy of the Roman "Catholic" -- that is, Universal -- Church. And this survival is guaranteed down through the centuries by the extraordinary presence in the Vatican of the authentic earthly remains of the Apostle whom Christ selected as his vicar on earth. Book jacket.
