BASILICA AND CATHEDRAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 152, 31 March 1876, Page 14

BASILICA AND CATHEDRAL.

The celebrated Parisian organ-makers, Messers. Cavaille-Col, have j received instructions from the Pope to build a grand organ for the ' basilica of St. Peter's. There are to be 155 stops, 28 pedals, 8,316 ■ pipes and four rows of manuals. The mechanism is to include every modem improvement, and the decorations will be of a magnificent sort. The instrument is to cost at least 500,000 francs, and J will be the largest organ ever built. The news we obtain from that excellent periodical, the • Music Trade Review,' but we beg to remind it that St. Peter's is not a " cathedral" as it calls it, but a "basilica." The cathedral of Eome is St. John of Lateran. Thei*e is no episcopal throne in St. Peter's; there is simply a pontifio al chair for the Pope. One might as well call "Westminster Abbey the cathedral of London, as St. Peter's the cathedral of Rome. This error, however, is not original with the periodical in question, but figures in the writings of many clever persons and even in good guide books. St. Peter's is a major basilica in company with seven others, St. Mary Maggiore, St. John of Lateran, St. Paul. St. Lorenzo, Holy Cross, and St. Sebastian ; St. John being both a cathedral and a basilica. It is the cathedral of Cathedrals, being the cathedral of the See of St. Peter. A basilica is a church, usually built over or out of the ruins of an ancient Roman law court, and possessed of certain special privileges of a high'order. A cathedral, on the other hand, is the chief and episcopal church of any city, as St. Paul's is of London, Notre Dame of Paris, St. Patrick's of New York. Many cities have basilicas indulgenced with the same ecclesiastical privileges as the basilic is of Rome. Milan has seven — St. Maria Maggiore, San Lorenzo, San Stefano, Sant' Ambrogio, San Eustorgio, Santa Babbila and San Seinpliciano, each of which is indulgenced exactly as are the basilicas of Rome. Many other Italian, French, German and Spanish cities have seven churches called basilicas, in which the same indulgences can be obtained that are to be gained by visiting the seven great churches of Rome. — ' Catholic Review.'