Santa Maria sopra Minerva

About

Santa Maria sopra Minerva is a minor basilica church and one of the major churches of the Dominican order in Rome, Italy. The church's name derives from the fact that the first Christian church structure on the site was built directly over (Italian: sopra) the ruins or foundations of a temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis, which had been erroneously ascribed to the Greco-Roman goddess Minerva (possibly due to interpretatio romana). The church is located in Piazza della Minerva one block east of the Pantheon in the Pigna rione of Rome within the ancient district known as the Campus Martius. The present church and disposition of surrounding structures is visible in a detail from the Nolli Map of 1748. While many other medieval churches in Rome were refurbished during the Baroque era, replacing their Gothic structure and decoration, the Minerva is the only extant example of original Gothic architecture church building in Rome. Behind a restrained Renaissance style façade the Gothic interior features arched vaulting that was painted blue with gilded stars and trimmed with brilliant red ribbing during a 19th-century Neo-Gothic restoration. The church and adjoining convent served...

In Roman times there were three temples in what is now the area surrounding the basilica and former convent buildings: the Minervium, built by Gnaeus Pompey in honour of the goddess Minerva about 50 BC, referred to as Delubrum Minervae ; the Iseum dedicated to Isis, and the Serapeum dedicated to Serapis. Details of the temple to Minerva are not known but recent investigations indicate that a small round Minervium once stood a little further to the east on the Piazza of the Collegio Romano. In 1665 an Egyptian obelisk was found, buried in the garden of the Dominican cloister adjacent to the church. Several other small obelisks were found at different times near the church, known as the Obelisci Isei Campensis, which were probably brought to Rome during the 1st century and grouped in pairs, with others, at the entrances of the temple of Isis. There are other Roman survivals in the crypt.

The ruined temple is likely to have lasted until the reign of Pope Zachary (741-752), who finally Christianized the site, offering it to Basilian nuns from Constantinople who maintained an oratorium there dedicated to the "Virgin of Minervum". The structure he commissioned has disappeared.

In 1255 Pope Alexander IV established a community of "converted women" (former prostitutes) on the site. A decade later this community was transferred to the Roman Church of San Pancrazio thereby allowing the Dominicans to establish a convent of friars and a studium conventuale there. The Friars were on site beginning in 1266 but took official possession of the Church in 1275. Aldobrandino Cavalcanti (1279), vicarius Urbis or vicar for Pope Gregory X, and an associate of Thomas Aquinas ratified the donation of Santa Maria sopra Minerva to the Dominicans of Santa Sabina by the sisters of S. Maria in Campo Marzio. The ensemble of buildings that formed around the church and convent came to be known as the insula sapientae or insula dominicana (island of wisdom or Dominican island).

The Dominicans began building the present Gothic church in 1280 modelling it on their church in Florence Santa Maria Novella. Architectural plans were probably drawn up during the pontificate of Nicholas III by two Dominican friars, Fra Sisto Fiorentino and Fra Ristoro da Campi. With the help of funds contributed by Boniface VIII and the faithful the side aisles were completed in the 14th century.

In 1453 church interior construction was finally completed when Cardinal Juan Torquemada ordered that the main nave be covered by a vault that reduced the overall projected height of the church. In the same year of 1453 Count Francesco Orsini sponsored the construction of the façade at his own expense. However work on the façade remained incomplete until 1725 when it was finally finished by order of Pope Benedict XIII.

In 1431, the Church and the adjacent Convent of the Dominicans was the site of a Papal conclave. The city of Rome was in an uproar upon the death of Pope Martin V (Colonna), whose family had dominated Roman political life for fifteen years, and enriched themselves on the wealth of the Church. There was fighting in the streets on a daily basis, and the Plaza in front of the Minerva, because of the configuration of streets, houses, church and monastery, could easily be fortified and defended. The Sacristy of the Church served as the meeting hall for the fourteen cardinals (out of nineteen) who attended the Conclave, which began on 1 March 1431. The dormitory of the friars in the Convent to the immediate north of the Church, served as the living quarters for the cardinals and their refectory and kitchen. On 3 March they elected Cardinal Gabriele Condulmaro, who took the name Eugenius IV. A second Conclave was held at the Minerva, on 4–6 March 1447, following the death of Pope Eugenius, once again in the midst of disturbances involving the Orsini supporters of Pope Eugenius and his enemies the Colonna. Eighteen cardinals (out of a total of twenty-six) were present and elected Cardinal Tommaso Parentucelli da Sarzana as Pope Nicholas V.

The Minerva has been a titular church since 1557, and a minor basilica since 1566. The church's first titular cardinal was Michele Ghislieri who became Pope Pius V in 1566. He raised the church to the level of minor basilica in that same year.

In the 16th century Giuliano da Sangallo made changes in the choir area, and in 1600 Carlo Maderno enlarged the apse, added Baroque decorations and created the present façade with its pilastered tripartite division in Renaissance style. Marks on this façade dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries indicate various flood levels of the Tiber 65 feet (20 metres).

Between 1848 and 1855 Girolamo Bianchedi directed an important program of restoration when most of the Baroque additions were removed and the blank walls were covered with neo-gothic frescos giving the interior the Neo-Gothic appearance that it has today.

The basilica's stained glass windows are mostly from the 19th century. In 1909, the great organ was constructed by the firm of Carlo Vegezzi Bossi. The organ was restored in 1999.

The inscriptions found in S. Maria sopra Minerva have been collected and published by Vincenzo Forcella.

In 1288 the theology component of the provincial curriculum for the education of the friars was relocated from the studium provinciale at the Roman basilica of Santa Sabina to the studium conventuale at Santa Maria sopra Minerva which was redesignated as a studium particularis theologiae. At various times in its history this studium served as a studium generale for the Roman province of the Order.

The late 16th century saw the studium at Santa Maria sopra Minerva undergo transformation. Thomas Aquinas, who had been canonized in 1323 by Pope John XXII, was proclaimed the fifth Latin Doctor of the Church by Pius V in 1567. In his honor, in 1577 the Spanish Dominican Msgr. Juan Solano, O.P., former bishop of Cusco, Peru, funded the reorganization of the studium at the convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva on the model of the College of St. Gregory at Valladolid in his native Spain. The result of Solano's initiative, which underwent structural change shortly before Solano's death in 1580, was the College of Saint Thomas ( Latin : Collegium Divi Thomae ) at Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The college occupied several existing convent structures, and new construction was required. At that time the convent underwent considerable reconstruction to accommodate the college and the cloister was redesigned so that side chapels could be added to the church's northern flank. A detail from the Nolli Map of 1748 gives some idea of the disposition of buildings when the Minerva convent housed the College of St. Thomas.

On 14 September 1628, by papal decree, the convent of Minerva was designated as the seat of the Congregation of the Holy Office. It thus became the place where the tribunal of the Roman Inquisition set up by Paul III in 1542 held the Secret Congregation meetings during which the sentences were read out. It was in a room of the Minerva Convent on 22 June 1633 that the father of modern astronomy Galileo Galilei, after being tried for heresy, abjured his scientific theses, i.e. those of the Copernican theory.

In the late 18th and early 19th century the suppression of religious orders hampered the mission of the Order and the College of St. Thomas. During the French occupation of Rome from 1797 to 1814 the college declined and even briefly closed its doors from 1810 to 1815. The Order gained control of the convent once again in 1815, only for it to be expropriated by the Italian government in 1870.

In 1873 the Collegium Divi Thomæ de Urbe was forced to leave the Minerva for good, eventually being relocated at the convent of Saints Dominic and Sixtus in 1932 and being transformed into the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in 1963.

The Dominicans eventually were allowed to return to the Minerva and part of the convent.

In 1288 the theology component of the provincial curriculum for the education of the friars was relocated from the studium provinciale at the Roman basilica of Santa Sabina to the studium conventuale at Santa Maria sopra Minerva which was redesignated as a studium particularis theologiae. At various times in its history this studium served as a studium generale for the Roman province of the Order.

The late 16th century saw the studium at Santa Maria sopra Minerva undergo transformation. Thomas Aquinas, who had been canonized in 1323 by Pope John XXII, was proclaimed the fifth Latin Doctor of the Church by Pius V in 1567. In his honor, in 1577 the Spanish Dominican Msgr. Juan Solano, O.P., former bishop of Cusco, Peru, funded the reorganization of the studium at the convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva on the model of the College of St. Gregory at Valladolid in his native Spain. The result of Solano's initiative, which underwent structural change shortly before Solano's death in 1580, was the College of Saint Thomas ( Latin : Collegium Divi Thomae ) at Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The college occupied several existing convent structures, and new construction was required. At that time the convent underwent considerable reconstruction to accommodate the college and the cloister was redesigned so that side chapels could be added to the church's northern flank. A detail from the Nolli Map of 1748 gives some idea of the disposition of buildings when the Minerva convent housed the College of St. Thomas.