Santa Maria sopra Minerva
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The only Gothic church in Rome, the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva gets its name because, like many early Christian basilicas, it was built directly on the foundations of a temple, to Minerva. Behind a self-effacing facade, its arched vaulting is painted with brilliant red ribbing, and blue with gilded stars, a 19th century restoration in the Gothic taste.
Details of the ruined temple to Minerva, built by Pompey about 50 BCE, referred to as Delubrum Minervae are not known. A temple to Isis and a Serapeum may also underlie the present basilica and its former convent buildings. There are some Roman survivals in the crypt. The ruined temple is likely to have lasted until the reign of Pope Zacharias (741 - 752), who finally Christianized the site, offering it to Eastern monks . The structure he commissioned has disappeared. The present building owes its existence to the Dominican Friars, who received the property from Pope Alexander IV (1254-1261) and made the church and adjoining monastery their influential headquarters. The Dominican Order administers the area today.
The old Romanesque basilica would not serve as the chief Dominican church in Rome. Two talented Dominican monks, Fra Sisto Fiorentino and Fra Ristoro da Campi, who had worked on the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, began the present structure in 1280, during the pontificate of Nicholas III. After funds contributed by Boniface VIII set an example, this first Gothic church in Rome was completed in 1370. It was renovated by Carlo Maderno among others, and given a Baroque facade, then restored in the 19th century to its present neo-medieval state.
Saint Catherine of Siena is buried here (except her head, which is in Siena). Beyond the sacristy the room where she died in 1380 was reconstructed here by Antonio Cardinal Barberini in 1637, the first transplanted interior, and the progenitor of familiar 19th and 20th century museum "period rooms."
Fra Angelico died in the adjoining monastery, and is buried here, as well as Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII.
The Cardinal Priest of the Title of Santa Maria sopra Minerva is Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor.
External links
- June Hager, "Santa Maria sopra Minerva" (http://www.initaly.com/regions/latium/church/smsm.htm)
- Santa Maria sopra Minerva: official site (http://www.basilicaminerva.it/) (in Italian)
In Assisi, another church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva was installed in the 16th century within the surviving cella of a late Republican temple of Minerva, whose Corinthian portico still stands.