Santa Sabina
A Singular Intersection
of Ancient Rome and Early Christianity
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Look up the word “elegiac” in the dictionary and by all rights there should be a picture of Rome’s Protestant Cemetery, since the early eighteenth century one of the oldest burial grounds in continuous use in Europe and one of the most peaceful corners in Rome. From the busy street passing by it, the nondescript wall surrounding the cemetery gives no hint of the tranquil oasis contained within, shaded by tall cypresses and pine trees and populated by non-feral cats sunning themselves on the verdant lawn or on some of the larger graves. The cemetery abuts against the towering Pyramid of Cestius, once a burial site itself and on the “bucket list” of travelers on the Grand Tour in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Part of the enclosing wall is a segment of the massive third-century Aurelian Wall, built with impressive battlements to protect Rome from the barbarians, which it ultimately did not. Immediately next to the pyramid is the hulking Porta San Paolo, one of the ancient gates built into the Aurelian Wall.
The Protestant Cemetery is located in Testaccio, the rione or district adjacent to the Aventine. Today a quiet residential and business area, in ancient times Testaccio was site of a huge mound composed of discarded amphorae, or terracotta jars, sort of like an urban garbage site. The Romans used amphorae for transporting and storing olive oil, wine, and foodstuffs such as honey, olives, dried fish, dried fruit, and cereals, and not being biodegradable, their disposal was always a problem. Despite the overgrowth of vegetation over the millennia, the mound can still be seen in the distance from the entranceway to the cemetery, which is on a quiet side street off the main road. When the cemetery opened in the early 1700s, it was isolated in rural countryside, surrounded by pastures, vineyards, and the occasional inn and tavern. This part of Rome was then part of the disabitato, the large swath of the once densely populated ancient city that had been abandoned from the sixth century onward as Rome dwindled to a small fraction of its once one million inhabitants, with the remaining population huddled in the center of the city in hovels carved into ancient ruins. From the late nineteenth century onward, Rome rapidly expanded to fill in the disabitato, and today the cemetery is encircled by congested streets and tram tracks—the busy Ostiense train station is nearby, and commuters rush about, seemingly unconcerned, as many Italians can be, about the ancient pyramid and wall before them that encloses what Oscar Wilde, the nineteenth-century writer, once described as “the holiest place in Rome.”
However, when it had its first burial in the early 1700s, the cemetery wasn’t regarded as holy or even a place most Romans would visit, except to overturn the tombstones. Because Protestants were forbidden burial in the city, the Church decreed that they should be interred at its periphery, along the Aurelian wall, where prostitutes and executed criminals were dumped. Not far away was also the official cemetery for Rome’s Jews, another group of outcasts. For centuries, the Protestant Cemetery was the only place where Protestants and other non-Catholics could be buried. Up until 1870, when Italy became united as a nation, the Catholic Church required these burials to be held well after sunset, to prevent the occasional unrest and riots that reportedly occurred during burials of Protestants, who were regarded as heretics. Vandalization of the cemetery’s graves was also not uncommon, since a wall wasn’t built around it until 1900. In addition, the Church stipulated that tomb epitaphs and decorations, which had to be approved by a special papal commission, could not allude to—or even remotely hint of--salvation or any hope for eternal life, since such things were only possible through the Church. Even crosses were proscribed. Back then, Rome was the absolute and sole fiefdom of the Roman Catholic Church, which still nursed the wounds of the endless religious wars of the Reformation. When the Italian nation came into being in 1870—the unification was a messy affair, with complex alliances, political intrigues, and many battles--the Church lost its valuable lands around Rome. The pope angrily retreated to the Vatican, excommunicating Italy’s new king, Victor Immanuel II, who was Italy’s George Washington. (In fairness to His Holiness, the pope did rescind the excommunication when the king was on his deathbed.) The pope didn’t end his self-imposed exile until the 1929 concordant between the Church and Mussolini. By then, the Protestant Cemetery was starting to fill up and its environs were teeming with cars, businesses, and apartment buildings.
As with many places in Rome, there are no signs or directions to the cemetery entrance, which is set back from the street and framed by a large unadorned gate. Numerous pine and cypress trees rise up behind the entrance, a welcoming harbinger that anticipates the paradise on the other side, a contrast to the car repair shops directly across the street. As soon as you pass through the entranceway, the outside street noise dissipates into the singing of birds, and an almost surreal calm envelops you. The wafting fragrances of the plants, flowers, and shrubs deepen this tranquility. Not without good reason, the early nineteenth century English poet Percy Shelly once mused that the heaven-like tranquility and beauty of the cemetery “might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.” Shortly thereafter he drowned and was buried there. Directly before you, an incline gently slopes down from the Aurelian wall, which is carpeted with rows and rows of seemingly innumerable graves and monuments of all kinds, densely packed together and extending to your right almost into infinity. Numerous pine trees tower over the graves, and abundant lush vegetation springs between them. The walkways between the rows of graves are bordered by trimmed hedges. This is the more recent part of the cemetery, populated with people from the nineteenth century on. On the other side of the small wall to your left is the oldest part of the cemetery, which is right next to the pyramid and has far fewer graves. This part of the cemetery appears more as it did in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when it was an open grassy meadow. Immediately inside the entrance is a small box for donations—the cemetery receives no support from Rome, and burial and maintenance fees for the tombs don’t cover the cost of keeping it afloat.
The cemetery’s official name is the Non-Catholic Cemetery for Foreigners, since many of its 4000 or so graves contain the remains of not only Protestants but also Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslins, Buddhists, Confucians, and not a few atheists—the tombstone inscriptions are in over fifteen languages. The first recorded burial was in 1738, of a young Englishman, an Oxford University student who was reportedly was killed when he fell off a horse, and over the centuries he was followed by a procession of many of his countrymen, the most famous of whom were John Keats and Shelley. Indeed, for a while the cemetery was referred to as the “Englishman’s Cemetery,” since Rome was a magnet for English writers, poets, historians, artists, and many young men of well-to-do circumstances whose fathers set them out on the “Grand Tour” of the continent, which was felt to be a requirement of upper-class education. Although English and German graves are the most numerous, today there is a rainbow of nationalities that include scientists, diplomats, architects, and sculptors, many of them famous and all of them bound together by their having once lived in Rome. Indeed, the American-British author Henry James (1843-1916) once described Rome as “The Mecca of artists,” many of whom settled there for good. According to the official website of the cemetery, burials continue to this day, but you must be a non-Catholic citizen of “a select group of countries” and “effectively resident” in Italy at the time of death. The website (www.cemeteryrome.it) also has a link to its database of people buried there.
However, unless you are a genealogist or historian, you will want to explore the new part of the cemetery on your own, leisurely strolling up and down the narrow pathways, randomly inspecting the grave markers, which range from small flat slabs flush with the ground to grand artistic monuments rising high above more modest graves. Among the latter, one of the most notable ones is the “Angel of Grief”—a life-sized angel has collapsed prostrate over an altar, head bowed down in fathomless sorrow, a stark image of helpless and exhausted mourning over the death of the sculptor’s wife in 1894. The angel’s abject lack of hope--of even salvation in the afterlife--is almost palpable in William Story’s iconic representation of grief. A replica of “Angel of Grief” at Stanford University memorializes the victims of San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. Nearby is another monument, almost as impressive as the deceased’s name, Devereux Plantagenet Cockburn, who died in 1850 at age 21 of an unknown illness—probably tuberculosis—for which he traveled to different lands for a cure, finally dying in Rome. The life-size sculpture atop the sarcophagus depicts him lying on his side on a large pillow, dressed in upper class English garb and partially wrapped in a blanket, holding a small book, his little cocker spaniel nestled up beside him. His epitaph celebrates his “deep and unpretending piety” and “rare mental and corporeal endowments,’ noting that he was “beloved of all who knew him” and “most precious to his parents and family.” Even today, over a century and a half later, long after his mourners had joined him in death, the pain of their loss remains acute and raw. Indeed, the silent voices and elegies of the bereaved echo throughout the Protestant Cemetery, their eloquence, melancholy, and admonitions speaking to us even today. One of the largest graves has a carved relief of an angel lifting up a teenage girl named Rosa who drowned in the early nineteenth century when she was riding her horse near the Tiber during a flash flood—as her mother noted on the monument, the tragic accident was due "to the swollen river and the spirited state of her horse." The mother’s grief didn’t end there—her husband vanished “on a special mission” to Vienna. The woman concludes her litany of sorrows by speaking directly to us: "Who may pause to peruse this tale of sorrows let this awful lesson of the instability of human happiness sink into thy mind." And a few of the grave markings remind us even more vividly of our own impending mortality during our holiday in the Eternal City--the unadorned tomb of William Harding of Scarboro, who died in 1821 at age 31, notes that he died "while making a tour through Italy to see its curiosities of nature and art, ancient and modern." Although there are no accurate statistics, it is safe to say that of the approximately 10 million tourists visiting Rome each year, many hundreds, perhaps thousands, breathed their last in the city, victims of heart attacks, strokes, heat exhaustion, the occasional fatal pedestrian accident, and such.
The legions of graves in the newer part of the cemetery can seem overwhelming, stretching to the right of the entrance almost as far as the eye can see. It would take at least several days to inspect all the graves, so a leisurely stroll is the best approach. Fortunately, there are many benches for resting and musing.
To the left of the entrance, just beyond the gift shop (and convenient bathroom) and on the other side of the small wall--it had been built centuries ago to keep vandals out--is the meadow-like old cemetery, containing far fewer graves, most from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the best known being those of Keats and Shelley. This area gives the best idea of what the cemetery looked like in the first century or so of its existence—rural and isolated in the pastures of the disabitato, the only nearby structures being the towering Pyramid of Cestius and the hulking, forlorn Aurelian wall which in the third century had incorporated the pyramid and the adjacent Porta San Paolo. Today, the pyramid is best seen from the old cemetery, since busy traffic makes viewing from the street difficult. There are ample wooden benches to rest on and muse upon this pointed sentinel from over two thousand years ago that over the past three centuries has silently witnessed burials in the cemetery.
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Built by Caius Cestius between 18 and 12 B.C. as his tomb—one of its inscriptions boasts that it took only 330 days--the pyramid is 118 feet high and 97 feet wide and is actually the fourth tallest one in the world, only after the three massive ones in Gizeh, Egypt. After Rome conquered Egypt in 30 B.C., the Romans became enamored of Egyptian style, and for centuries afterward obelisks were shipped from Egypt to Rome to adorn temples, palaces, the Circus Maximus, and tombs. The brick and concrete structure of Cestius’s pyramid is covered with fine marble slabs, and the tip is steeper and more sharply pointed than those in Gizeh. Some scholars have proposed that earlier in his life Cestius might have been an officer in the Roman army that conquered Nubia, a kingdom in northeastern Africa, south of Egypt, where the pyramids were also steeply pointed. In the interior is a small chamber with badly faded frescos—when the chamber was initially excavated in the 1600s, they were much more brilliant, but they have dimmed over the ensuing centuries. At first, Cestius’s tomb stood well outside of the city—burials within the city limits were prohibited, and there were probably other spectacular tombs nearby, each one an attempt by its occupant or their heirs to leave a memorable record in marble and stone. The pyramid was surrounded by a low wall, and bronze statues adorned the approach to it. But its isolation quickly ended, and from the first century on, the rapid outward growth of Rome soon engulfed it. In the 270s, when Emperor Aurelian hastily ringed Rome with his massive walls, the pyramid was incorporated into it, thereby ensuring its survival through the vicissitudes of the Dark Ages and the rapaciousness of Renaissance popes—a similar pyramid tomb near the Vatican, in the Middle Ages dubbed the Pyramid of Romulus, was taken apart in the sixteenth century to provide marble for the new St. Peter’s Basilica, by some accounts for the front steps. Were it not for Aurelian’s architects, a similar fate would almost certainly have befallen Cestius’s memorial, as was the case for other tombs around it. As Rome collapsed and contracted from the sixth century on, the pyramid once again stood in splendid solitude, heavily overgrown by vegetation, its once gleaming marble surface slowly disintegrating, its origins soon forgotten and of no interest to anyone, although people back then said it was the Pyramid of Remus, to complement the tomb of Romulus, above. In the 1660s, Pope Alexander VII undertook an excavation of the pyramid, burrowing into the burial chamber and uncovering ancient inscriptions on its the east and west sides which recorded the name and grandiloquent titles of the deceased, how long it took to build, and names of his heirs. As popes were wont to do, Alexander recorded his own name on another side of the pyramid to commemorate his munificence. Despite the pope’s excavations and restoration, a print from the mid-1700s showed the pyramid in shabby condition, with plants and other vegetation growing up its sides, although the artist, Piranesi, tended to embellish the decay of Rome’s ancient monuments to create a romantic effect.
So who exactly was Cestius, whose name will live on in perpetuity, or at least as long as Rome exists? That he was wealthy is a given, and according to inscriptions on the bases of bronzes that decorated his mausoleum, he had valuable tapestries, perhaps ones he acquired in the Nubian campaign, which he wanted interred with him but which probably had to be sold after his death to pay for his tomb. The inscription on the pyramid says he was a priest or magistrate responsible for arranging feasts for the numerous festivals and games held for the masses in Rome. It is possible that he was the official responsible for building the Ponte Cestio, the bridge connecting Tiber Island with Trastevere, still in use today. He lived at a time of relative peace, when Rome, having conquered much of the Mediterranean world, was benignly ruled by its first and most famous emperor, Augustus. So life was probably good for Cestius, and like many Romans of his class and status, he wanted to leave something substantial behind, a monument that would make people after him take notice and wonder who he was. But other than his pyramid and his titles carved onto it, we really don’t know much about this man.
In his pensive poem, “Rome at the Pyramid of Cestius Near the Graves of Shelly and Keats” (1887), the renowned English writer Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) also asked the same question before us, “Who then is Cestius, And what is he to me?” Like many artists and writers of the time who had come to Rome, Hardy visited the Protestant Cemetery to pay homage to these two great English poets, and mused how Cestius and his pyramid, after nearly 2000 years of anonymity, finally achieved “an ample fame” in “beckoning pilgrim feet with marble finger high to where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street, those matchless singers lie.” One wonders how this upper level functionary of the Roman state would react to such fulsome, posthumous fame.
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Without doubt, the most famous graves in the Protestant Cemetery are those of John Keats and Percy Shelly, who, along with Lord Byron, were the beacons of early nineteenth-century English poetry. Indeed, their works to this day speak to our deepest intentions and hopes. Although adored by his small group of friends in England, Keats never achieved popular fame in his lifetime. Ironically, soon after his death, the trajectory of his fame took off, and he was regarded by many as England’s new Shakespeare. The bitter disappointment followed him to the grave, when he died of tuberculosis in Rome at age 25 in early 1821. Unlike Shelly, whose biography recounts many instances of callousness and shameless womanizing, Keats, in addition to being a poetic genius, was probably a good person with a gentle soul, lending money to friends when he himself was in debt and devotedly nursing his younger brother dying from tuberculosis at the expense of pursing a young woman he was in love with. Coming from modest background and never attending any upper-crust universities—he even trained as a doctor and pharmacist before finally committing himself totally to his poetry--Keats was regarded as low-brow by the class-conscious reviewers of his poetry. Perhaps his aesthetic can best be summarized when he wrote, "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. What imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth." Later he would memorialize this consuming vision in the closing of "Ode on a Grecian Urn": "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." When he developed serious symptoms of tuberculosis in early 1820, his doctors in England had advised the move to Rome to improve his health, a commonly prescribed antidote back then—more than a few denizens of the cemetery ended up in Rome for the same reason. Keats was accompanied by Joseph Severn, an English painter a few years older than Keats, who at the time was only an acquaintance. But Severn stayed with Keats to the very end, nursing him and reporting back to Keats’s friends and fiancée every detail of his illness and eventual death, which, if it was anything like that of the hundreds of patients with AIDS and TB I cared for in Africa, was probably not a pretty sight. Keats’s modest grave is in the most distant corner of the old cemetery, surrounded by lush foliage. At the top of the slab is a lyre with broken strings, beneath which is the epitaph, which he composed himself, reflecting his sadness at dying unrecognized for his genius: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” Severn, who lived until 1879 after a very successful career as a painter, is buried next to Keats, with the epitaph “Devoted friend and deathbed companion of John Keats.” His tombstone is engraved with a painter’s palette. Next to Severn’s marker is the grave of his infant son who died in 1837. With today’s voyeuristic hypersensitivities about sexuality, some might raise an eyebrow about two young men so intimately connected—they shared a bed on the long voyage from England, and Severn’s heartrending accounts of caring for Keats in his last days are reminiscent of a man caring for his lover dying of AIDS in the 1980s. But back then, close friendships, even romantic but nonsexual love, between young men of similar aesthetic and artistic sensibilities were common.
Keats had a fiancée whom he pined for on his deathbed, and Severn married later in life and even had had an illegitimate son before he left for Rome with Keats. Some people have questioned Severn’s motives in accompanying Keats to Rome, contending that he really wasn’t a close friend at the time and was trying to advance his artistic career on the back of Keats. As with most of us, Severn’s motives were probably mixed, and because the Royal Academy had just awarded him a scholarship to study abroad, and because Keats’s friends in England either couldn’t or wouldn’t accompany him to Rome, Severn probably felt this was a chance to be a nice guy and, like many before him, immerse himself in the art of the Eternal City. And it is possible that once he became completely involved in caring for Keats, his love and devotion for him blossomed.
Percy Shelly’s grave is nearby—he died in 1827 at the age of 29. His tragic death, by all accounts totally preventable, was emblematic of the contradictory beliefs about our eventual demises that are hard-wired into our psyches: our awareness of our mortality versus our irrational conviction that death, while inevitable and irrevocable, will happen sometime far into the future and certainly not today or next month or even next year. Against the warning of his friends and aware that he couldn’t swim, he set sail off the coast of Italy as a storm was approaching, and his boat sank. When his body washed ashore, they cremated it due to quarantine laws, although at the penultimate moment his friend Edward Trelawny, an adventurer of note, reportedly snatched his heart and gave it to his wife, who, again reportedly, kept it wrapped in paper in a drawer, eventually returning it to his grave. Appropriately, his tomb epitaph has a quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.” A reflection of their own “bromance,” Trelawny is buried next to his friend. Shelly’s life was even more convoluted than Keats’s, with numerous affairs and marriages—he lived life on the edge, as his ill-fated boat outing proved. Most of his poetry wasn’t published widely during his lifetime, because his political views, at least for the times, were very radical, and the elite were horrified by his uncompromising views on class and even the monarchy. As but one example, his refusal to renounce his atheism got him expelled from Oxford—when one British newspaper announced his death, it chortled that “now he knows whether there is a God or no.” Posthumously his works influenced notables such as Karl Marx, George Bernard Shaw, and Bertrand Russell, as well as the great and the mighty of Western—and Eastern—literature. Shelly traveled extensively in Italy, often leaving large unpaid rent bills in his wake, and in Rome he completed Prometheus Unbound, his masterful interpretation of a lost ancient Greek play. In tribute to Keats, whom he greatly admired—a book of Keats’s poems was found in his coat pocket before he was cremated—he wrote the poem Adonais.
Yet despite their compelling biographies, Keats and Shelley’s remarkable lives are but microscopic specs in the infinite universes of other residents of the Protestant Cemetery, to say nothing of humankind itself. Even the dead interred in monumental tombs had hopes and fears no more significant than those of the nameless servants who attended them in life. The myriad emotions of the people in this cemetery—their loves, their hopes, their joys, their fears, their anguish—are unfathomable, and should put our own feelings into proper perspective. The mournful inscriptions on the tombs here, from the striking monuments to the simple slabs almost buried in the ground, reverberate through the centuries, much like those on ancient Roman tombs millennia ago. A stroll through any cemetery, especially one as beautiful as this one, is an existential challenge for those of us who try to lead a life of self-examination. Too often we gaze on the tombs of the dead with a false bravura, confident that we understand the meaning and lessons of such a place. Instead, we should approach the Protestant Cemetery with humility and grace, so that when sickness and infirmity strike, when the acute awareness of our own impending mortality strikes, we can return to the beauty and calm of this small plot in Rome.
There are many places in Rome where the din of traffic and rush of a busy international city dissipate into peaceful tranquility, allowing the weary traveler to stop and rest, to take stock of their visit, and of themselves. The Protestant Cemetery is probably the most rarified and sanctified of these oases of calm. Sitting in the shade, you feel an incredible inertia, a desire to linger as long as possible, despite the pull of other sites beckoning to you.
Preserved intact over the past 16 centuries, Santa Sabina is one of the few ancient Christian basilicas still standing in Rome, and as such, it is invaluable testimony to a remarkably important period in Western Civilization, a period that, for better or for worse, has largely made us what we are today, regardless of our religious beliefs, if any. In order to appreciate the significance of Santa Sabina—indeed, to fully grasp the transcendent meanings of Rome itself--it is necessary to understand the historical and religious context that made this extraordinary church on the Aventine possible in the first place.
A Brief Primer of Very Early Christianity and Ancient Rome
For the first two and a half centuries after Christ's death, the emperors haphazardly and sporadically persecuted the Christians, but the violence was usually localized and mob-led, abating after a few years at most. The main problem the Roman state had with the Christians was their refusal to participate in the routine and largely pro forma rituals honoring the gods and the emperor, much like people in the 1950s who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. But the new religion had undeniable staying power, and the message of redemption, eternal life, and ultimate equality before God resonated with rich and poor alike. The gods of Rome—detached, capricious, and without any promise of an afterlife—really didn’t have a chance against this new religion started by an itinerant Galilean rabbi who was born under Augustus and crucified under Tiberius.
Throughout the first 250 years of its existence, and despite periodic, short-lived persecutions, Christianity quietly took root throughout the empire, reaching into the highest levels of society. Because they believed Christ’s second coming was imminent, and probably because they didn’t want to call attention to themselves with large church buildings, Christians met and worshipped in private homes. Many homes of well-to-do converts eventually became community centers, called tituli, where services were held and alms were distributed to poorer members. Such a “house church” of a pious Roman matron named Sabina existed on the Aventine on or near the eventual site of Santa Sabina. As we shall see, embedded in one of the walls of the church is an ancient column which some guidebooks (and some historians) attribute to the titulus and others say is from the Temple of Juno which was also on or near the site where the church was eventually built. That’s one of the fascinating things about Rome—there is no end to speculation and conjecture, since such fragments, origins, and attributions from antiquity date back so long ago.
From 250 A.D. onward, persecution became empire-wide, as emperors issued edict after edict against Christians, many of whom were killed for refusing to offer incense to the state. Not surprisingly, the Christian persecutions took place against the backdrop of violent anarchy and civil unrest—the so-called “3rd century crisis”—that threatened to disintegrate the empire, which was beset by plague, incursions by German barbarians to the north and the Persians to the east, and a revolving door of emperors, many of them generals of the far-flung legions. In a span of 50 years, Rome saw 26 emperors, most of whom were assassinated by yet another usurper. The history of this period makes a harrowing read, and for many decades, the empire was “a darkling plain swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight.” The violent convulsion abated in the late 200s with a series of military emperors who restored order, fortified the borders, and created a centralized, state-controlled society. The final frenzy of violence against the Christians came in the first few years of the 300s—it was ancient Rome’s version of the 20th century Holocaust—when Diocletian, a ruthless and determined military type, decreed that churches should be closed or burned, Holy Scriptures should be destroyed, and bishops and priests should be imprisoned and killed. Throughout the vast expanse of the empire, Christians were under siege.
The Christian persecutions gradually ended around 305--many of the provincial governors had had their fill of trying to stomp out the religion since no sooner would Christians be executed than even more of them would appear, ready for martyrdom. By 313, with the Edict of Milan, issued by co-emperors Constantine and Licinius--it basically proclaimed a policy of religious toleration --the position of Christianity in the Roman Empire changed radically. It was a change as profound as if earth were visited today by intelligent beings from another galaxy.
The importance of the Edict of Milan and Constantine’s subsequent favoritism toward the Christians cannot be overstated. It changed everything and set western civilization on a pathway which is still being followed today. Confiscated property was returned to Christians, they were recruited into the bureaucracy, and bishops and other prelates were welcomed into the emperor’s Sacred Presence, to discuss theology or simply have a lavish meal. But it would not be until 391 when the pagan temples were shuttered for good and Christianity became the state religion of the empire. During the 4th century, the resuscitated Roman state and, most important, its army—largely consisting of less barbaric barbarians--maintained a modicum of peace and stability throughout the empire, as beset as it was from one barbarian incursion after another. Most emperors during this period ruled from different cities in the empire, primarily for military campaigns—Constantine in fact moved the capital to Constantinople in Asia Minor. But Rome itself still remained in people’s minds the Queen City, the incomparable center of the ancient world. This period was probably the first time when the radiant image of Rome as the eternal capital of civilization parted with and superseded the stark reality of a city largely abandoned by the emperors and left with bare bones administrative infrastructure, a largely ceremonial Senate, and neglected pagan temples stripped of their gilded bronzes and marble. Into this deteriorating vacuum came the Church.
At first, the Church was reluctant to be coopted by the empire, but the allure of wealth, status, and power was too much to resist. Although the ancient tituli continued on for several centuries more, the landscape of Rome in the 4th and 5th centuries become dotted with large and magnificent churches built by emperors, wealthy benefactors, and the increasingly powerful Bishop of Rome. Rather than repudiating the classical harmony and tradition of pagan Rome, which not too many years earlier had nearly liquidated Christianity, the Church embraced it architecturally, organizationally, and politically. The history of this transition from pagan, Hellenic values to early Christian ones is a fascinating story, and nowhere is this remarkable intersection of Ancient Rome and early Christianity better illustrated than in Santa Sabina, a near-perfect remnant from the time when Rome was newly Christian and still an empire, a bit ragtag to be sure, but a physical and governmental entity that Augustus from 400 years earlier would have still recognized. Indeed, at Santa Sabina’s dedicatory mass in 432, there were still chariot races at the nearby Circus Maximus—the roar of the crowds probably could be heard in the sanctuary--literary soirees were held in the Greek and Latin libraries in the majestic Forum of Trajan, the vast Imperial Palace complex was kept up to snuff in the event the emperor might drop in, and toga-clad senators gathered in the Senate House to debate and deliberate weighty issues of empire, even though, of course, they wielded little power, if any. Indeed, the great and the mighty, including an emperor or two, probably attended mass at the Santa Sabina. To enter this treasure today is to step back into time nearly 1600 years.
A Trip Back to the Early 400s
Just a very short walk from the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta brings you to the small Piazza di Pietro d’Illiria and the side entrance to Santa Sabina. As noted in Santa Sabina’s official guidebook (1962), this space was once a garden which supplied the adjacent monastery. Nowadays, as usually befalls most otherwise picturesque piazzas in Rome, this one, too, is often a parking lot. From the piazza, the side of the church appears very plain and nondescript, the light brown brick exterior not evoking the beauty and power of ancient Rome, although it is important to remember that these flat bricks were put into place 16 centuries ago and have thus far withstood the vicissitudes of weather, time, and numerous invasions. The side door to the church is under a small portico—the columns are from the Renaissance but the Corinthian capitals date from the 5th century--and was probably added in the 10th century, when the main entrance had to be closed up and fortified against unwelcome intruders. We will later visit the original vestibule of the church—a small universe of incomparable beauty in itself—but the first-time visitor to Santa Sabina will want to hurry into the church, to see what all the hype is about.
A few steps into the church transports you back into the early 400s, when Christianity and Imperial Rome coexisted, before the latter was eventually extinguished over the subsequent centuries of war, disease, and neglect. Words cannot fully describe the sight of the two evenly matched rows of massive fluted columns—twelve on each side of the central nave—crowned with finely carved Corinthian capitals: august, serene, majestic, monumental, breathtaking, glorious, imposing, harmonious, eternal come to mind, but they really do not capture the beauty before you. The classical symmetry and basilica style are frozen, timeless tribute to ancient Greece and Rome, but conceived as a setting for Christian worship. Nowhere else in Rome is there such a perfect and evocative intersection of classical Hellenic aesthetics with early Christianity. The architectural language of an ancient basilica—a rectangular building with two (or four) rows of columns separating narrower side aisles from the large central nave—spoke of the authority and majesty of Rome, which used basilicas for administrative and judicial functions, as well as banking and commercial shops. As it became ascendant, the Church had no problem adopting the basilica form for their own sanctuaries. Indeed, the basilica allowed for the procession of believers down the central nave to the altar for communion and then exiting via the side aisles.
The actual origin of Santa Sabina’s graceful columns is unknown, shrouded in the mists of time, and as you gaze on them, you can let your mind wander back and forth on this mystery. The church’s official guidebook from 1962 claims they were made de novo for Peter of Illyria, the Dalmatian priest who financed and built the church, a position some other guidebooks support. However, I agree with the inestimable art historian Richard Krautheimer that they almost certainly came from an earlier first or second century structure, perhaps from the by-then defunct Temple of Juno, or another nearby temple or mansion, perhaps even that of the original titulus. The Corinthian capitals and clean-lined fluting of Santa Sabina’s columns were almost certainly beyond the skills of whatever artisans were still in Rome in the early 5th century, when the financially strapped government was not building any new public edifices.
Santa Sabina’s columns support an arcade, not the usual straight, horizontal architrave of most Roman basilicas. Directly above the capitals of the columns are multi-colored marble inlays, the so-called style of opus sectile. Just as there is controversy about the origin of the columns, so there is debate about the iconographic meaning of these designs—some experts say they represent the chalice and paten of Holy Communion, whereas others ascribe them to insignias of the Roman legions in Dalmatia. Peter of Illyria’s father made his fortune by selling horses to the cavalry, a fortune which Peter spent on his church on the Aventine. Of course, the ancient mind being at least as playful as our own, it’s possible that both meanings of the opus sectile design were intended. Midway down the nave, the marble designs above two columns on the right and one on the left are different from the others, and some historians say they almost certainly represent the military standards of the Illyrian cavalry units at the time. However, given the equine source of the church’s financing, there is little doubt about the meaning of the two stirrups at the top corners of each marble panel, between which is a cross. These stones were once brightly polished and gleaming from the oil lamps illuminating the church. But even more bedazzling were the brilliant mosaics that once carpeted the upper walls of the nave—you can still see the large rectangular outlines of the panels. Late Roman mosaic art was still highly advanced and refined, even for the overall deterioration of the arts in the early 5th century. Despite the sad destruction of these mosaics over the many centuries, one utterly glorious remnant has survived and gives us a tantalizing hint of how splendidly Peter decorated his church. Directly over the main door at the back of the church is an immense dedicatory declaration of his beneficence and piety, all in late antique Latin, the gold letters shining against a dark blue background. At the sides are female representations, dressed as noble Roman matrons, of the Church of the Circumcision—the church of Peter and the Jews—and the Church of the Gentiles—the church of Paul, who did more than anyone in the early years of Christianity to uproot it from its Jewish origins in Jerusalem and propagate it among the Romans. A bit stern-faced, each of the women is holding in one hand a sacred text, presumably the Old and New Testaments, with the other hand in a pose of benediction. A shining golden background accentuates the dark purple of their robes. The entire scene is bordered by green-on-gold vine-like design which epitomizes late imperial ornamentation—when you visit the equally amazing 5th century mosaics in Ravenna, the capital of the Empire in its final decades, you will see similar designs, elegantly fashioned to extol God or the Imperial Family. This great dedicatory mosaic, elaborately ornamented, represents one of the last gasps of late imperial Roman style, an aesthetic that was soon to disappear into the morass of the Dark Ages.
Beneath the mosaic is the basilica’s main door, composed of Cyprus wood on which has been sculpted simple designs of flowers and leaves, each panel framed by finely crafted vine-like decoration. These carvings are so well preserved, even modern-like, that you wouldn’t guess that they date from the time of the church’s construction. Simple and nondescript, they do not prepare you for the glorious carvings on the other side of the door in the vestibule—it is a glory of the church which surpasses even that of the overhead mosaic. But first, walk towards the alter to the marble panels enclosing the scola cantorum, the “school of singers,” which was erected in the 8th century to segregate the monks from the laity during religious services. The panels probably originate from the 6th century, and several have elegant geometric designs, mostly crosses encircled by vines—the craftsmanship is really superb for the time. The 17th century painting in the apse, definitely banal and second rate, supposedly is based on the original mosaic once there. The wall beneath the apse has its original marble facing—the deep purple porphyry strips attest to Peter’s sparing no expense for his church. Mined in the desert of eastern Egypt, porphyry was extremely valuable and was reserved primarily for imperial use. The alter itself is another example of how Rome can let the mind wander: the finely veined marble on the front, sort of like blue cheese, and the porphyry marble frames could have come from an ancient structure, purloined many centuries ago from the detritus of a mansion or temple.
To the left of the scola cantorum, in front of the sacristy, is some of the original 5th century pavement, the multi-colored chunks of marble badly worn away by the centuries of supplicants but still retaining enough color to evoke their original splendor—during the early 19th century renovation, the new flooring was based on the ancient design. On the opposite wall of the nave, in an indentation created to display it, is a single diminutive column with a Corinthian capital. The base of the column has been excavated for display as well. As above, the origin of this fragment from antiquity is open to debate—some guidebooks say it’s from the original titulus, whereas others attribute it to the Temple of Juno. The two Baroque side chapels in the nave are a reminder of how, in the 16th century, one of the popes decided to redecorate Santa Sabina by closing up the beautiful windows in the nave, installing over-the-top rococo claptrap typical of that time, and except for the magnificent columns, covering up the pristine classical beauty of the original church and plunging it into darkness. Fortunately, in the early 1900s, as scholars sought after the ancient remnants hidden for so long in Rome, most of the Baroque renovations were removed, save for these two small chapels.
On returning to the back of the nave, notice in the right corner how the last column has been incorporated into the bell tower built in the 10th century. By then, Rome was a very dicey place to live, and such towers served as lookouts for invaders, gangs of bandits, and marauding militias from nearby clans that had divided the carcass of Rome into minor fiefdoms. In the corner, on a small column, is a flattened polished stone of black basalt, an ancient weight, probably from the Temple of Juno. The Aventine was close to the Tiber docks, and such official weights, often kept in temples and administrative buildings, were used to measure produce being bought and sold. The small holes in it are filled with lead, to preserve the exact weight as needed over the centuries. One wonders what haggling and bargaining has transpired over this rock as traders from all corners of the ancient world weighed their wares and negotiated a sales price.
At the back of the nave, to the left, is a door leading to the vestibule, or if it is locked, exit the side door you entered by and turn right to get to the vestibule, to view the other side of the basilica’s main door. This door of dark Cyprus wood is arguably one of the greatest legacies of late Roman art on a Christian motif, and its survival, largely intact, over the past sixteen centuries is a miracle, helped along by the fact the ancient atrium, which initially was open with a columned portico, was enclosed in the early Middle Ages as part of the church’s fortifications. There has been much scholarly debate about the origin of the door, and most experts believe it had initially been larger and probably constructed for a larger frame. There were originally 28 panels depicting scenes from the Bible, and 18 have remained, in nearly pristine condition, each elaborately set off by several ornamented borders, the outmost one comprised of a thick and luxurious vegetation of tendrils and vines. You can test your Biblical knowledge by trying to decipher what stories have been carved into the dark brown wood. The panel in the upper left corner is the earliest known depiction of the crucifixion, and in the same row, you can make out the three wise men with Mary and Baby Jesus. The other panels show scenes from the Exodus—you can easily make out the Egyptian host drowning in the Red Sea, below which are the serpents Moses displayed to Pharaoh. The lower rows depict Christ’s miracles and passion, including in the left lowest panel Pontius Pilate washing his hands of Jesus’s fate. For the ancient and Medieval believer, these three dimensional renditions of important moments in the Bible had great power—the sight of the Egyptian army engulfed by the Red Sea probably had as great an effect back then as the awe people had when Charlton Heston parted the Red Sea in the movie The Ten Commandments. Art historians contend that at least two different artisans of differing aesthetic skills created these panels, and if you look carefully at the details of the scenes, some appear more elegant and refined than others. The door is framed by three massive marble fragments, elegantly carved and probably from a nearby temple, possibly the portal of the Temple of Juno. Then again, the slabs could have adorned a nearby mansion, or administrative building, or thermal bath. Finally, before leaving, do not overlook a major discovery made during the atrium’s 2010 renovation: a beautiful seventh or eighth century fresco on the wall between two ancient spiral columns, which shows the Virgin Mary with Jesus, surrounded by Saints Peter and Paul, as well as Santa Sabina and other church officials. Previously covered over centuries ago, the painting is of high quality, especially for the increasingly stark times in which it was created. Although now faded to soft pastel colors, the technique is realistic and not in abstract Byzantine style—the figures’ faces are individualized, and the garments are flowing. The square haloes of the church officials indicate that they were still alive when this fresco was created.
A Becalming Sense of Timelessness...
The timeless calm of Santa Sabina beacons you to return again and again. Even when other tourists visit the church, you can still feel the blessed solitude of this amazing space—and often you have the entire place to yourself. As you sit on one of the worn wooden benches in the back, there is something reassuring from quietly contemplating the two lines of columns extending away from you in perfect geometric perspective. You need to visit different times of day, and different seasons, to appreciate the kaleidoscopic play of light the large windows high on the nave walls cast onto the columns and the wall above them. The latticework of the windows dates from the church’s construction—in the vestibule was once a large wooden fragment from an original window—and the glass today replicates the selenite used in the 5th century. On a bright sunny morning, the windows on the right filter a speckled array of sunlight onto the left wall just above the columns, where colorful mosaics once were—you can imagine how the small mosaic stones comprising biblical scenes sparkled and gleamed. In the early evening of winter, the only illumination in the nave is a silvery shaft of light cast from one of the capitals at the front of the church, creating a moon-like aura that dissipates into the deep shadows of the side aisles. Once, when I was alone in the church one grey and rainy evening, there slowly emerged from the shadows near the alter what initially seemed like a ghost-like apparition enshrouded in white, the dim overhead light creating an other-worldly glow around the specter. As the figure slowly walked towards me, I quickly realized it was the Dominican priest in his monk’s cassock, coming from the sacristy for evening rounds. For three decades, I have aged with this nameless priest, as he would sweep the floor or pace back and forth pensively, rosary beads in hand, paying no mind to anyone except to shoo out the rare tourist who would enter the church in a thong or a bikini. Once youthful, even handsome, he gradually aged alongside me, his hair greying and his step slowing as he lovingly tended to his church. However, lately on my trips to Santa Sabina, he has been nowhere to be found, and a slightly younger balding priest seems to have taken his place. Whether he has retired, or become ill, or even died I will never know. He is but one of countless legions of people who have walked before the timeless columns, then never to return, ghosts, if you will, whose spirits can still be felt there.
Sitting in the back of the nave, reflecting on the procession of “ghosts” who have entered and then left this sanctuary, you can sometimes feel that the church is a living, breathing being. When I worked in Botswana as an AIDS doctor, I noted how its magnificent clouds serenely floated through the sky, unconcerned with the human suffering beneath them. Likewise, when I’m in Santa Sabina, I often muse on how over the past 16 centuries its majestic columns have passively observed the unending parade of us frail and fragile human beings silently walking before them. There would be the great and the mighty: Roman senators, usually fabulously rich land owners, strutting in their togas; noble matrons with elegant gowns and glittering jewels, their retainers and slaves waiting outside; popes and other princes of the Church cloaked in religious vestments; the remaining few western Roman emperors and, centuries later, the Holy Roman Emperors—nearby was the 10th century palace of Otto III (996-1002) who dreamed of resurrecting the western Roman empire, and who probably gazed approvingly on the church’s classical columns, visible reminders of the ancient glory he yearned after but, struck down by contagion at an early age, he never attained; barbarian chiefs clad in animal skins striving, and always failing, to emulate the glory of the emperors of the past; local potentates from warring Medieval families who had carved up the city into fortresses; philosophers and saints—Thomas Aquinas taught here, and St. Dominic lived here; Renaissance artists and musicians, and on and on. Practically anyone who was someone in Rome very likely at some time or another attended mass at Santa Sabina, which from the times of Pope Gregory the Great in the late 6th century was the first station of the pilgrimage of Lent, commonly known as Ash Wednesday.
But perhaps the most evocative insights can be gained through contemplation of the ordinary parishioners who have worshiped at Santa Sabina over the many centuries, each and every one, like us, a universe of worry, hope, and suffering: the servants and retainers of the rich and powerful; barefoot and lice-infested peasants seeking solace and relief from sickness, both from the routine diseases afflicting us all and the doomsday cloud of plague which hovered over Rome from time to time; those who mourned the loss of a loved one; the fearful who would petition God to protect them from a barbarian hoard or local militia about to descend upon them; young couples getting married amid the nave’s ancient splendor—nowadays the church hosts numerous weddings, but they have no problem if you stand quietly in the back and enjoy the music and mass; and tourists, many oblivious and clueless about the singular importance of Santa Sabina and others who are well aware of its artistic and historical significance. But even then, we all are ultimately reduced to just staring dumbly at the incredible sight before us, feeling the weight of the centuries and being aware that all too soon, we, too, will join the procession of the now-dead who entered this church.
The Buddha taught that all things change, that the source of our anguish is our foolishly trying to hold on to the past, be it a relationship, a beautiful moment, even life itself. Just as the Himalayans will someday disappear, so will Santa Sabina. Of course, we know this fact, but as we sit and let the 16 centuries of this church envelop us, there is a becalming sense of timelessness, of eternity, a feeling that we are part of something much greater than ourselves.
