I waited a long a sunny Sunday in this rainy winter for a ride in Trastevere with the camera.
Not so far from pleased “chaos” of the market Portaportese, there is Piazza di Santa Cecilia. This square is beautiful and calm, as if the neighboring monasteries of nuns invade the space around it with a sense of calm and order.
From the square, heading towards the basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, you enter this beautiful eighteenth-century portico, the center of which are
a Roman vase of the fifth century, found in the basement of the church.
Well, the first interesting thing about today is this vessel: it is a rare example of “cantharus,” a ritual immersion pool, used by early Christians. You need to know that it is through the “cantharus” which remains today the tradition of wet hands in the holy water when we enter a church!
But now we enter this ancient basilica, failing to examine the beautiful façade and the old (and pending!) Tower …
The interior is unique, full of works of art, but as usual omit these arguments to dedicate myself to the ‘legendary rome ”
At the center of the altar is the tomb of St. Cecilia, patroness of music. On the tomb is the statue of the saint, by Stefano Maderno, a truly magnificent statue, considered by many the most beautiful sculpture of Rome (but the fight here is really difficult!). Not to enter into these rankings (which does not make much sense), we note, however, that is a particular work, because the position of the subject depicted is very extravagant.
Why is that? To find out, we will have to follow a legend.
Let’s step back in time to 220 AD. We are in the earliest years of Christianity, and as we know at that time the new worship was forbidden and persecuted. Legend has it that the young Roman noblewoman Cecilia, converted to the new faith, not deny but rather diffuses it, and for this reason is imprisoned and killed. At first he tried to kill her trying to suffocate with the fumes of a steam bath, then suffered decapitation. Legend has it that Pope Urban I buried the saint in the catacombs of Callixtus, also right on Cecilia’s house, the place of martyrdom, he built a church dedicated to her.
They spend nearly 600 years, we are in 820 A.D. and Christianity is well established. Pope Paschal I was in a dream the vision of Santa Cecilia that indicates the exact place where it was buried. The pope does perform the excavation, actually finding the body, which by the way is miraculously intact. To the dismay of the body of the saint is placed in “his” church, which in the meantime has made rebuilding.
So much for the legend.
Spend an additional 8 centuries … this time we are in 1599: the body which is said to be that of Santa Cecilia is revived, and distinguished scholars present operation note that the present body, with a deep cut on the neck corresponding precisely to the described in the ancient legend of the martyrdom, after almost 1400 years, still miraculously intact!
The miracle made a great stir in Rome, and Maderno was commissioned to make a statue that portray the body of the saint in exactly the position in which it was found. That’s why the “strange” position of the statue.
Notice the hands: 1 … 3 and indicate that the mystery of the Trinity.
Amazing how often, legends like this, from the space open to scholars and archaeologists excavations carried out at the beginning of 1900 in the basement of the church unearthed the ruins of a Roman noblewoman of the second century. AD, as it happens with calidarium … the home of Santa Cecilia!