Between Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Santa Maria Antiqua c.570-847 C.E.

View of the sanctuary of Santa Maria Antiqua from the nave (former quadriporticus), looking south toward the sanctuary with apse (former tablinum) and west side aisle. Photograph by Dr. Steven Zucker for Smarthistory. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

By the middle of the sixth century, Rome had become a city dramatically transformed from its classical heyday, operating in a changed empire governed by new paradigms of imperial authority, elite patronage and religious hegemony. Two centuries earlier, the imperial presence had removed to the eastern reaches of the empire when the first Christian emperor, Constantine I (r.306-337) refounded the city of Byzantion as Constantinople (present day Istanbul), a second Rome on the Bosporus strattling Thrace and Anatolia.

At the beginning of the fifth century, the capital of the western empire had been transferred to the city of Ravenna by Honorius (r.393-423). Shortly thereafter, Rome experienced repeated incursions by Germanic invaders: Visigoths under Alaric sacked the city in 410, as did Vandals under Genseric in 455. In 476, the Germanic King Odoacer deposed the young western emperor Romulus Agustulus—an event that, in traditional chronologies, has marked the end Roman Empire in western Europe. Odoacer was later murdered by Theodoric (r. 493-526), who ruled the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy from Ravenna, ostensibly in the name of the Eastern Roman emperor—also referred to as the Byzantine emperor—in Constantinople.

Following the death of Theodoric in 526, and in the wake of the successful conquest of North Africa from the Vandals, Emperor Justinian I (r.527-565) launched a series of military campaigns to reclaim Italy from the Ostrogoths in the year 535. Although Justinian’s Gothic Wars (535-554) returned the eternal city to imperial hands, the drawn-out conflict proved to be utterly devastating for Rome, resulting in its depopulation and the almost total destruction of Rome’s remaining senatorial class (Bjornlie 2018, 277).

From Constantinople, the emperor ruled his Italian territories through an imperially appointed military and civil governor—an Exarch—based at Ravenna. Under the Exarchate, the city Rome was governed by a Dux (“leader”), and Byzantine administrators took up residence on the Palatine Hill, the former abode of emperors.

The founding of Santa Maria Antiqua

Sanctuary (former tablinum) with apse, featuring the sixth-century Maria Regina on the ‘Palimpsest Wall’ to the right. Photograph by Dr. Steven Zucker for Smarthistory. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

It was in the second half of the sixth century—following the arrival of Byzantine officials in the vicinity of the Palatine—that the building erected by Domitian appears to have first been used as a chapel with a Marian association. This is evidenced by the Maria Regina  fresco recovered on the south wall of the tablinum, called the ‘Palimpsest Wall’ for having retained multiple, later phases of fresco paintings (read more about the Maria regina fresco under patronage and local identities). The Maria Regina fresco was later cut into for the construction of the apse when the building was extensively modified for conversion into a formal church. During excavation, three coins  dated to the reign of Emperor Justin II (r.565-574) were found beneath the southeastern Corinthian column of the  quadriporticus, which had been transformed into the church’s nave (Webb 2001, 113). This find appears to confirm that the church was consecrated around the year 570 (Kalas 2018, 192).

Maria Regina with crown-bearing angel on the ‘Palimpsest Wall’ of the sanctuary, where the later apse (left) was cut prior to the church’s consecration. Photograph by Dr. Steven Zucker for Smarthistory. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

The earliest textual reference to describe the building as a church is found in De Locis Sanctis Martytrum, composed around the year 635 (Webb 2001, 113). Later, the eighth-century pilgrim’s guide to the city of Rome, the Itinerarium Einsidlense, refers to the church as a diaconia (ibid.). In early medieval Rome, diaconiae were charitable institutions operated by the Church for the distribution of food to the urban poor and travelers. Often attached to church complexes and built into preexisting imperial buildings, diaconiae were typically managed by monastic communities and dedicated to the Virgin Mary or other saints of the Church (Maskarinec, 2018).

The church may owe its name—already called antiqua or ancient in the early middle ages—to an encaustic painted icon of the Virgin Mary with the Christ child, reputedly of Eastern origin, that today lives at the Church of Santa Francesca Romana. The image is believed to have been transferred from Santa Maria Antiqua to its present location in the ninth century (see below; Belting 1994, 72, 124). A large reproduction of this icon currently hangs in Santa Maria Antiqua before the sanctuary.

Decoration

Crucifixion from the Theodotus Chapel completed around 741-752, located in a northeast chamber adjacent to the sanctuary. Photograph by Dr. Steven Zucker for Smarthistory. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Over the three centuries of its operation, Santa Maria Antiqua was embellished with successive decorative programs showing Christ, Mary, biblical scenes, saints and donors painted in fresco, completed through the patronage of several Popes and one known Byzantine official among others. Read more about Santa Maria Antiqua’s iconography here.

A decorated chapel sponsored by the Byzantine official Theodotus during the papacy of Pope Zacharias (r.741-752) and frescoes completed under Pope Paul I (r. 757-767) were painted at the same time as the first Byzantine iconoclasm (726-787), a period in which many holy images were destroyed in the eastern empire as a result of imperial policy of the Isaurian Emperors Leo III (r.717-741) and Constantine V (r.741-775). The resulting theological controversy put the bishops of Rome—who opposed image-breaking and defended the veneration of images in Christian worship—directly at odds with the iconoclastic Byzantine emperors through most of the eighth century, marking a watershed in the growing geopolitical and ecclesiastical distance between Rome and Constantinople.

The eclipse of Byzantine Rome and Santa Maria Antiqua

The period of Byzantine governance over Rome and its central Italian possessions came to an end in 751, when the last Exarch of Ravenna was executed by the Lombards. In the face of the Lombard threat, Pope Steven II sought out a new protector in the Frankish King Pepin—the father of Charlemagne, whom the Papacy would later proclaim as Holy Roman Emperor in 800, a major realignment of papal power in circumvention of Constantinople’s authority.

Santa Maria Antiqua would only endure as a functioning church for another century after the fall of the Ravenna Exarchate. As recorded in the Liber Pontificalis, an earthquake-induced landslide severely damaged the church in 847, prompting Pope Leo IV (r. 847-855) to transfer the “possessions, duties, rights and name” of Santa Maria Antiqua to a new church across the Forum—Santa Maria Nova—which is today called Santa Francesca Romana (Webb 2001, 113). The atrium of the church continued to be used by a monastic community into the eleventh century. Although Santa Maria Antiqua was partially rediscovered in 1702, another two centuries elapsed before the site was fully excavated by the Italian archaeologist Giacomo Boni in 1900-1901.

 

 

 

Works cited

Belting, Hans. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp. 72, 124.

Bjornlie, Shane. “Byzantine invasion and occupation of Italy” in ed. Oliver Nicholson, The Oxford Dictionary od Late Antiquity, vol. 1. Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 276-7.

Kalas, Gregor. “Acquiring the Antique in Byzantine Rome: The Economics of Architectural Reuse at Santa Maria Antiqua” in eds. Diana Y. Ng and Molly Sweetnam-Burland, Reuse and Renovation in Roman Material Culture: Functions, Aesthetics, Interpretations.Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 186-207.

Maskarinec, Maya. City of Saints: Rebuilding Rome in the Early Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Kindle edition.

Webb, Matilda. The Churches and Catacombs of early Christian Rome: a comprehensive guide. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001, pp. 112-122.

The full bibliography for this site can be read here.