Santa Maria della Rotonda

About

The Sanctuary of Maria Santissima della Rotonda ('a Ritonna in Albano dialect), formerly known as Santa Maria Maggiore, is an important Marian sanctuary in Lazio, located in the city of Albano Laziale, in the province of Rome, in the Roman Castles area. The sanctuary occupies an ancient round building of Roman construction dating back to the 1st century, traceable to Domitian's villa at Castel Gandolfo, which was formerly a nymphaeum or, according to other hypotheses, a temple. The building was converted to Christian use at the time of Constantine the Great or in the period between the 9th and 11th centuries. Probably run in the first centuries of its existence by religious of the Byzantine rite, it was managed by Augustinian nuns from the 14th century until 1444 and was later assigned to the Girolaminian religious of the basilica of Saints Boniface and Alexius on the Aventine Hill in Rome, who held it until 1663, when the sanctuary was purchased by the suburbicarian diocese of Albano for the purpose of installing the bishop's seminary there. Between 1708 and 1799, the direction of the seminary and the sanctuary passed to the Piarist Fathers. Since then, the sanctuary has been diocesan...

The erection of the building with a perfectly cubic plan within which a sphere is inscribed, later to be used as a sanctuary, is dated by all scholars to the imperial age, under the principate of Titus Flavius Domitian (81 - 96).

However, disagreements arise as to what function this imposing structure had in the complex of Domitian's monumental villa, which encompassed practically the entire crater of Lake Albano and had its residential center at the present Villa Barberini, in the extra-territorial complex of the papal villas of Castel Gandolfo. Tradition claimed that the building was conceived as a temple dedicated to the goddess Minerva, since the Emperor Domitian was very devoted to that deity and it is attested by some classical authors that in the Albanum Domitiani -that is, in the Domitian villa- the Quinquatria, solemn festivals in honor of Minerva, were celebrated:

Celebrabat et in Albano quotannis Quinquatria Minervae, cui collegium instituerat, ex quo sorte ducti magisterio fungerentur ederentque eximias venationes et scaenicos ludos superque oratorum ac poetarum certamina. Suetonius, De vita XII Caesarum - Vita Domitiani, VIII, 4. He celebrated in the Alban villa every year the Quinquatria festivities of Minerva, in whose honor he had founded a college, whose task was to carry out the oracles and notify the great hunts and shows and also the competitions of orators and poets. Archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi claimed that the building was a temple dedicated to the Sun and the Moon - Solis et Lunae - but scholar Giuseppe Lugli states that he had not been able to ascertain why de Rossi made this claim, and in addition he argues that the building does not have the plan of a Roman temple, and furthermore it could not have been a bath house either, but, proceeding to a comparison with other Roman buildings with a circular plan inscribed in a square, he comes to the conclusion that the sanctuary of Rotonda in the Domitian age was founded as a nymphaeum.

The most common modern view, in light of the archaeological excavations and restorations of 1935-1938, is precisely that the building was an isolated nymphaeum at the edge of the imperial estate.

With the founding of the Castra Albana (the fortified encampments of the Legio II Parthica, which arose around 197 during the principate of Emperor Septimius Severus ), the ancient nymphaeum was probably repurposed as a pagan place of worship: this would be evidenced by a peperino cult altar found during the 1935-1938 excavations at the level of the Severan floor, which was slightly raised above the Domitian floor. After the Severan age, as some of the surrounding buildings collapsed and were gradually abandoned, the future sanctuary began to gradually become buried. In the course of the earthworks in the 1930s, a layer of soil mixed with wheat seeds was found: this would suggest a continuation of pagan worship in the last centuries of the empire, and would exclude that consecration as a Christian church took place immediately at the time of Constantine the Great. The latter would take place only later, by eastern clerics around the 8th century.

There is a tradition in the Volgo Albanense, that in this persecution some of those fleeing Greek Nuns withdrew to their City, that they brought with them that Image of our Lady, today called of the Rotonda, and that they exposed it to public veneration in that round Temple, at other times dedicated to Minerva [...].

It is widely believed that the Christian sanctuary was founded by Eastern-rite religious devoted to iconodulism who fled the Byzantine Empire at a time when iconoclasm was raging. For all intents and purposes, the image of Our Lady of the Rotonda is a Western work that can be dated between the 6th and 8th centuries or between the 11th and 12th centuries; and the earliest medieval-era artifacts found during archaeological excavations at the sanctuary are fragments of marble braid decoration referable to the period between the 9th and 10th centuries.

In any case, the first consecration of the sanctuary of which there is any record took place on December 7, 1060, when Pope Nicholas II was reigning: the church was dedicated in ancient Greek to the Most Holy Mother of God. At the consecration, Cardinal Bishop Bonifacio with Archdeacon Gregorio took care to have a paper fragment walled into the high altar of the sanctuary in memory of the consecration itself, along with numerous relics belonging to St. Sabinus, Pope St. Sylvester I and the Most Holy John and Paul. The paper fragment, along with the relics and a marble plaque with an inscription in ancient Greek, was found during the recognition of the altar made before the second consecration of the sanctuary in 1316.

However, the oldest official document in which the sanctuary of Santa Maria della Rotonda is mentioned is a letter from Pope Celestine III dated December 16, 1195, in which a plot of land " positi in territorio Albanensi in Caccabellis " bordering on one side with " S. Maria Rotonda de Albano " is mentioned.

It is unclear who managed the sanctuary during this period. Galletti has cautiously speculated that the sanctuary may have belonged to the abbey of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata, which had numerous properties in the Albano area; however, according to surviving archival material, it can be assumed that the church was governed in the early 13th century by an archpriest in the employ of the suburbicarian diocese of Albano, and in the early 14th century by a chaplain in the employ of Augustinian nuns.

On September 8, 1316, the sanctuary was re-consecrated at the request of the abbess of the Augustinian nuns' convent, Sister Agnes. The celebration, at which a recognition of the relics placed in 1060 inside the high altar was carried out, was presided over by Nicholas bishop of Tortiboli.

The sanctuary, throughout the 14th century, was the object of abundant donations from ordinary people, and also from Roman citizens, which unquestionably enriched the community of nuns that ruled it.

Thus it was that in 1369 a dispute arose between the free commune of Velletri on the one hand, and on the other the Guglielminian monks of the church of San Paolo and the Augustinian nuns of the Rotonda, both supported by the cardinal bishop of Albano, Angel de Grimoard. In fact, the two convents accused the Velletrans of having plundered them and demanded compensation. Pope Urban V, from Avignon, appointed the cardinal bishop of Sabina Guillaume d'Aigrefeuille the Younger as judge-commissioner to investigate the affair: it is unknown how the dispute ended.

In March 1436 or 1435 Albano, along with Castel Gandolfo, Castel Savello and the Borghetto of Grottaferrata -all fiefs of the Savelli family - was razed to the ground by the papal militia commanded by Cardinal Giovanni Maria Vitelleschi during one of the wars between Pope Eugene IV and the Roman baronial families. Subsequently, on June 15, 1444, the destroyed and abandoned churches and convents were granted by Eugene IV himself to the Girolamini religious of the basilica of Saints Boniface and Alexius in Rome : among them, the sanctuary of the Rotonda with all its annexed and related property is also reported.

In the early years of the 17th century, there was a great fervor in making embellishments and new altars in the sanctuary. However, as early as during the apostolic visitation of Monsignor Marco Antonio Tommasi in 1661, a neglected situation of the sanctuary was attested, whose jurisdiction still belonged to the Girolamini monks of the basilica of the Most Holy Boniface and Alessius. Thus, the cardinal bishop of the suburbicarian see of Albano Giovanni Battista Pallotta decided to challenge the apostolic constitution Instaurandae regularis disciplinae issued in 1652 by Pope Innocent X - " super soppressione parvorum conventuum, ac prohibitione erigendi novos " (i.e., "on the suppression of small convents and the prohibition of erecting new ones")-: therefore, on August 6, 1663, the diocese purchased the convent and some surrounding dwellings from the Girolamini monks for the price of 1250 scudi.

In 1667 Cardinal Bishop Ulderico Carpegna had the seat of the local bishop's seminary moved to the buildings purchased by the Diocese next to the sanctuary of Rotonda, after some restoration work. Further work on the interior of the sanctuary was carried out with funding from Cardinal Bishop Virginio Orsini in 1673, who had the lantern built on the central oculus of the dome and had it covered with lead.

Pope Clement XI, by a papal brief dated June 19, 1708, granted the religious congregation of the Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools -widely called Piarists - the management of the bishop's seminary and the sanctuary.

On the occasion of Pope Benedict XIII 's visit to Albano, on the sidelines of his return trip from an apostolic visit to Benevento in 1727, Cardinal Nicolò Maria Lercari had a chapel dedicated to St. Philip Neri built next to the sanctuary's sacristy: in fact, Benedict XIII had entrusted this saint with his own salvation during the 1703 earthquake when he was archbishop of Benevento.

On June 5, 1728, Monsignor Ranieri-Simonetti, canon of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, solemnly crowned the image of Our Lady of the Rotonda in the presence of city authorities, the chapter of canons regular of St. Pancras Cathedral and local religious authorities.