Coliseum, the Gates of Hell
In the Middle Ages the Coliseum was considered one of the seven gates of Hell and it was believed that the souls of the gladiators killed in the arena, wandered without peace among the arches and along the underground during the night. A real door passing deaths was the Porta Libitidinaria used by slaves with Charon's mask, to take away from the arena the gladiators killed. Without forgetting the souls of the condemned to die in the arena killed by gladiators or helpless in front of the wild beasts (now you know that the Colosseum was not used to the persecution of Christians).
The interpretation of the Flavian Amphitheatre as a place of evil, until the sixteenth century, was derived from considering the absolute symbol of paganism as well as being the bulwark of imperial power. The Ludi Gladiatores continued to be held in the Coliseum even after the Christian religion had been recognized and even the emperors were Christian, but only in 438 A.D. Valentintiano III abolished games.
After the end of the Roman Empire, the Coliseum was for centuries witness the past power of Rome that the new rulers of the German-Roman and France-Roman dynasties proclaimed themselves the heirs, so that St. Bede the Venerable in the VII century wrote: " Since when the Coliseum will be left standing, it will also be Roma. When the Coliseum will fall, Rome will collapse also. When Rome will collapse, even the world will collapse ", As if the most impressive testimony to the glory of Rome possessed of thaumaturgic powers.
The Colosseum was a place where everyone began to perceive the supernatural but every man according to his own inclination; for historians obsequious of the empire was expression of power and greatness of the new dynasties as heirs of the Caesars; for the Vicar of Christ and his officiators was a place of sin, where evil emperors had destroyed thousands of lives and where the souls of the dead demanded peace; for the people, half Christian and half pagan, it was a scary place to be avoided when the night came down between the majestic ruins of the Colosseum nobody dared you walked here and wizards and witches for a long time chose to practice their esoteric art.
Just in the Middle Ages were born many of the legends about Colosseum, one of these concerns the herbs that witches gathered. In fact this legend seems to have real recognition as modern scholars have found among the grasses that grow in the Coliseum plants that are not native; it is possible that the exotic plants that were used for the representation of the Silvae have left their seeds and that from these were born the herbs used by the witches.
One of the most disquieting legends is that of the Temple of Beelzebub that would be built inside the Coliseum; Beelzebub was a powerful demon worshiped by a sect, and in the initiation ceremony, his followers placed to the neophytes the question in Latin "Colis eum?" That is, "Do you love him?" referring to the demon, and this, according to some ones, it would be the etymological origin of the word Coliseum...
by M.L. ©ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (Ed 1.0 - 11/08/2016)