Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore
When one thinks of Rome, the immediate images will possibly be of romance from its food to the Italian language to the ties the city has to the ancient times. The history of Rome spans back some 2,800 years from a small Italian village to an immense civilization that would eventually dominate the Mediterranean region. It is within the city limits of Rome that the sovereign state of the Vatican City can be found. The entire region of the Vatican City measures about 109 acres, the size of any given farm in the state of Ohio. The governing body over the Vatican is done so by the Bishop of Rome, also known as the Pope, this would make the government an ecclesiastical government as all the officials are members of the Catholic Church.
One of the largest and most grandest churches in Rome and the Vatican City would be the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, also known as the Basilica di Santa Maria della Neve, the Basilica Liberiana, and Saint Mary Major Basilica. No matter the name, the church is now more than sixteen hundred years old and with the passing of centuries she has changed dramatically. The change has been brought on by earthquakes, Popes, artists, and, fittingly enough, Mother Nature. To appreciate what the Santa Maria Maggiore stands for now, one must also appreciate where she comes from, understand whom she is for, and at the same time, not forget how the world has changed and yet has not ever changed.
The Santa Maria Maggiore is one of five great ancient Catholic basilicas of the Vatican City and Rome. The others are the, St. Peter found in the Vatican, and St. Lawrence, St. John Lateran, and St. Paul located outside the walls in Rome. The Liberian Basilica, as Santa Maria was once called, is one of the tituli. According to Wikipedia.org, tituli is Latin for title, and in Christian archeology, “the tituli are a set of specific numbers of Early Christian churches built round Ancient Rome and were ascribed to patrons, whose names often identified them.” In the case of Santa Maria Maggiore, it was Pope Liberius who presided over the major congregations of early Christians in Rome. Built over the pagan temple of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, Santa Maria Maggiore is the only Roman basilica that retained the core of its original structure, left intact despite several additional construction projects and damage from the earthquake of 1348.
The name of the church reflects two ideas of greatness, both that of a major basilica as opposed to a minor basilica and also of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as the true Mother of God. In the Greek language this title of doctrine is called Theotokos, and was officially adopted at the Council of Ephesus in 431. The Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore is the largest and most important place of prayer dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and is widely believed to be the most important church dedicated to Mary in Western Christendom. In the course of sixteen centuries all the arts have joined together to glorify this ancient basilica as the house of the Virgin Mary on earth. Even today, one can see the basilica’s architectural and artistic masterpieces, contributed by some of Catholicism’s most powerful Popes underline one constant theme – the pre-eminence of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus and the true Mother of God.
According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, Pope Liberius, for whom Santa Maria Maggiore was named, was Pope from 352 to his death on September 24, 366. He was a Roman and the successor of St. Julius I. Around the year 360, Liberius commissioned the construction of the Liberian Basilica. He wanted a shrine built at the site where an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary manifested herself before a local patrician and his wife. According to legend, a miraculous summer snowfall, announced in a dream to both Pope Liberius and to a devout wealthy Catholic couple. The couple was childless and decided to leave their wealth to the Church, this would be the funding for the building of the Santa Maria Maggiore. True to the dream, snow did fall on August 5, and on that site as said by the Virgin Mary, “Liberius should then erect a church to the Madonna” (Hager). This legend can be traced back to the seventh century, although the miracle was first recorded in writing by Fra Bartolomeo of Trento around 1250. The event is celebrated every August 5, with flower petals thrown from the tower to symbolize the legend.
The basilica built by Pope Liberius’ would eventually fall into ruin and then disappear. The Santa Maria Maggiore that we know today took its shape in 432, when Pope Sixtus III decided to build a new and more magnificent structure near the site of Liberius’ church. Sixtus felt that the time to bring back a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary was right away. It was a time that the Greek goddess of childbirth, Juno Lucina, was popular and many Catholics were looking to her for guidance. In an effort to bring women back to the worship of the Virgin, Sixtus ordered a new church built and even removed some of the marble columns from the Juno Lucina temple, to be used in the new church (Hager).
It turned out that Sixtus III had an additional incentive for the construction of this new church. In 431 the Council of Ephesus met in Asia Minor, condemning the teachings of Nestorius’ teaching that Mary, the mother of Jesus gave birth to a man, Jesus, and not God, and that God only resided in Christ. Therefore, Mary should be called Christotokos, Greek for the “Mother of Christ” and not Theotokos, Greek for the “Mother of God.” The Council affirmed that the person of Jesus possessed both divine and human natures and was thus truly God and truly man. Mary, being the mother of Jesus, was also the Mother of God. It was Sixtus’ intention to bring back the faithful to reflect on the divinity of Christ and the Virgin Mary’s celestial motherhood (“Council of Ephesus”).
According to Bernard Frischer, Director and Principle Lead Investigator at the UCLA Cultural VR Lab, the Santa Maria Maggiore is two hundred and seventy-nine feet long and has a basilica plan, a nave, two side aisles, and an apse. Inside the building are thirty-six columns of Hymettian marble and four made of granite, all with an Ionic column over an architrave decorated with mosaics. The fifth-century columns and capitals were re-cut and standardized by Ferdinando Fuga during the sixteenth century. The fifth-century half-dome and perambulatory were replaced with the current apse by Pope Nicholas IV (1288-1292), who also commissioned Jacopo Torriti to add the mosaic showing the Coronation of Mary. The ceiling of the nave was coffered and gilded with the first gold brought back from the New World, donated to the Spanish Pope Alexander VI by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Along both side aisles, several chapels were added, substantially changing the original appearance of the church. The most notable of these are the Sistine Chapel, or Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, designed by Domenico Fontana in 1584-1587; and the Borghese Chapel built by Pope Paul V in 1605-1611.
In the centuries that have passed, the weather has been Santa Maria Maggiore’s biggest rival. Whether it is the heat and humidity of the summers, or the mild winters, none of it helps when pollution from modern vehicles are added. All of that puts at risk the old churches and the artwork they hold. Centuries before the first vehicle spewed exhaust into the city, during the late sixteenth century, a number of the Vatican’s churches were renovated and redecorated. The basilica itself was restored and extended by various popes, including Eugenius III (1145-1153), Nicholas IV (1288-92), Clement X (1670-76), and Benedict XIV (1740-58), who in the 1740s commissioned Ferdinando Fuga to build the present façade and to modify the interior. The interior of the Santa Maria Maggiore underwent a board renovation encompassing all of its alters between the years 1575 and 1630 (Knox 680). Any redecoration of Santa Maria Maggiore was not an easy task it is required to be in line with the church’s history and tradition. No program of redecoration could simply ignore this tradition; it was too important to the continued status of the church in the city and that was the people’s church. It is because of this, the church has been viewed for centuries as the “pupil of the eye and ornament of this entire city” (Knox 684).
In 1576, the Misericordia Maggiore, or the MIA, asked that Pellegrino Tibaldi to visit Santa Maria Maggiore and give an assessment of what should be done to update the structure. Often referred to as “the architect of S. Carlo,” Tibaldi drew out a record of suggestions and outlined his general goal to modify the building so that it had “more beauty and ornament and fewer defects” (Knox 684). Tibaldi’s main focus was on items of the church, such as furniture like pulpits and balustrades.
The most recent and extensive repairs of the mosaics of the central nave and triumphal arch took place in the last century, during the papacy of Pius XI and under the direction of Biagio Biagetti with Giorgio Pianigiani. The primary goal of this restoration was “conservation and artistic integration” (Spain 325). Both Biagetti and Pianigiani wanted to stay true to the style of the original fifth century mosaics and when replacing the tesserae, an individual tile in a mosaic, to make it so the difference would hardly be noticed. Prior to this renovation, it was during the middle of the nineteenth century, when the initial steps were taken to restore the mosaic panels in the nave. While the some of the mosaic frieze located in the entablature was restored, the panels were never touched.
A century earlier, during structural repairs, Pope Benedict XIII (1724-1730) had the mosaics of the triumphal arch cleaned and restored. Soon after, Pope Benedict XIV (1743-1750) sponsored an extensive rebuilding and redecoration of the church. As a result Benedict XIV is credited with the restoration of the mosaics, while others give that credit to Benedict XIII (Spain 326). No matter, it is certain that the mosaics were cleaned and repaired during the second half of the eighteenth century.
Cardinal Domenico Pinelli, the archpriest of Santa Maria Maggiore, accepted the extensive task of restoration of the mosaics in the basilica during the years of 1587 and 1611. It can be argued that Pinelli did more bad than good by subjected the mosaics to further damage. He added new cornices, which were larger than the previous ones, he reduced the width and height of the brick pilasters and had them encased in fluted and gilded stucco Corinthian pilasters, and he removed the double order of fluted columns between the pilasters in the fifth century tabernacles (Spain 327). The good that Pinelli is credited with is having repaired the mosaics only in fresco.
Two reasons for so much restoration in the Santa Maria Maggiore deals a great deal with the varying degrees in the temperature and humidity though the centuries. Because of the thick walls and the mild climate of central Italy, no heating system has ever been installed in the Santa Maria Maggiore, and the only air ventilation is provided by the front doors and the upper windows of the central nave (Camuffo 244). The source of heat and moisture found inside the church stems from the churches lights and visitors both which are high at any given time, especially during holy services.
When a study was conducted on the temperature inside the Santa Maria Maggiore, it was found, without surprise, that the summer months put the mosaics and frescoes at greatest risk. It was discovered in this study that every “morning at opening time, cold external air invades the lower layers of the nave up to a level sited between seven and eleven in the morning … as the day heated up, the warmer temperatures would rise to the ceiling while the cooler air remained lower” (Camuffo 247).
In the autumn and winter months, when the church doors are kept closed, the study of temperature and the effects on the Santa Maria Maggiore also found reasons for concern on the valuable artwork. Heat rises up from the floor and mixes with the air that comes in from the poorly isolated windows (Camuffo 249). This puts a strong opposite of what happens in the summer where heat rises and the cooler air stays low, there was a separation, and now they clash right at the level of the ceiling and windows. This does revert back to summer like conditions during holy services with the opening and closing of the doors and the increase in numbers of patrons allowing the heat to rise.
This all comes down to one thing, that in the long run with the mixing of air, the upward transport of particles, smoke, and gas pollutants from the lower levels to the upper levels, and the temperature fluctuations sped up the decay of the most fragile works of art inside the Santa Maria Maggiore, and this would require the frequent restorations (Camuffo 249). The Santa Maria Maggiore can never be truly saved, no work of public art can be. It can only be in the most meticulous forms for restoration that it can be saved. Without that, with the passing of time, she will slowly fade from our memory and dissolve into the ground like dust, or be taken apart bit by bit and used in other buildings for worship, or even to just be ignored in a ill-ventilated building to warp away. This is the potential fate of all works of art, whether they are paints or buildings, they are victims to the elements, both the weather and to pollution.
The history of Rome, the Vatican City, and the churches that are positioned there it is a history that is entwined together. It is that togetherness they have witnessed tyrants, famine, war, and corruption, and together they have survived. One of the most startlingly facts I have learned about the Santa Maria Maggiore is that not only is it open daily, it is the only church in all of Rome that holds daily Mass. This schedule for the church attracts tourists and pilgrims all year long, and it is that needed connection of the past to the present that is needed for survival. The role of the Santa Maria Maggiore is for it to often be used by the pope. Most notably when the pope presides over the annual Feast of the Assumption of Mary, celebrated each August 15. Inside the church can be found a high canopied altar dedicated to the pope and primarily used by the pope alone, with the exception of a few choice priests, including the archpriest.
Traditionally, the pope will give control the Santa Maria Maggiore to an archpriest, usually an archbishop made cardinal in consistory. The archpriest was formerly known as the titular Latin Patriarch of Antioch, but that title was abolished in 1964. The present archpriest of the Santa Maria Maggiore is Bernard Cardinal Law who was placed there by Pope John Paul II after Law’s resignation as Archbishop of Boston. In addition to the archpriest and his servant priests, a chapter of canons inhabitant the Santa Maria Maggiore. In addition, Redemptorist and Dominican priests and monks serve the church daily by offering confessions and administering other sacraments. All this means one thing that life at Santa Maria Maggiore has continued on for more than sixteen hundred years, serving the public and the Blessed Virgin Mary as she was placed for to do so. Some believe that history does not stand still, but is always moving forward. I would argue against that, point to Santa Maria Maggiore and say that time has stood still for this beautiful church and for all the people that come in contact with her.
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