SAN PAOLO FUORI LE MURA

The area in which the building stands is located along the Via Ostiense, outside the walls of the Aurelian Walls (hence its name), at the time of its foundation near the Tiber embankment where there was an active port area between the 1st century BC-2nd century AD Nearby was a large Roman villa and a large open-air cemetery used until late antiquity. According to a consolidated Christian tradition, Paul of Tarsus was buried here, through the intervention of Matron Lucina, after having been beheaded in the town known as Acque Salvie, today Tre Fontane. Therefore, from the 1st century, the town became a place of pilgrimage until Emperor Constantine I created a small basilica there, consecrated by Pope Sylvester I in the year 324: over time, the building became unsuitable for the multitude of pilgrims and was therefore rebuilt during the reign of Theodosius I, Gratian and Valentinian II, assuming the structure which remained substantially intact until the disastrous fire of 1823. They continued further interventions by Gala Placidia and Leo the Great, then during the following medieval centuries and in modern times.

The first testimonies of the monastic presence in San Paolo date back to the time of Gregory the Great, author of important interventions in the basilica, who mentions a female monastery dedicated to Santo Stefano, which was followed by a male abbey dedicated to San Cesario. When it fell into ruins, Pope Gregory II (715-731) restored it and united it with Santo Stefano, giving life to the Monasterium Ss. Stephani et Caesarii ad S. Paulam but soon, as the importance of the male Benedictine community grew, he was entrusted with the management of the basilica. Sacked by the Saracens in 846, Pope John VIII enclosed the complex within walls, thus creating an authentic village, of which no archaeological remains remain today. Having received important gifts, among them the Carolina Bible of Charles the Bald that is still preserved in the abbey, the monastery was reformed in the 10th century by the Cluniacs, assuming its current title, and in the 11th century by order of Leo IX by Hildebrand of Soana, who continued to be interested in him even after his election as Pope, removing his vast patrimony from the diocesan ordinary: it was Innocent III who granted the abbots the use of insignia and episcopal rights.

Precisely in the centuries of the Middle Ages the monastery experienced a great artistic flourishing, followed by a new decline from which it emerged when it became part of the congregation of Santa Giustina in the first half of the 15th century. The suppressions decreed by the Italian government in 1866 and 1870 also affected San Paolo, whose economic and spiritual recovery began at the end of the 19th century thanks to very important figures, such as the future archbishop of Milan Ildefonso Schuster and the blessed Plácido Riccardi. . With the Lateran Pacts of 1929 the abbey and the basilica obtained extraterritoriality, in the following decades the episcopal function of the abbot was progressively reduced and definitively extinguished in 2005, with the monks maintaining only the pastoral care of the basilica under the ordinary jurisdiction of a archpriest. of pontifical appointment.

The cloister of the monastery is located outside the basilica, located on the right side, at the level of the transept: it was built in Romanesque-Cosmatesco style by Pietro Vasselletto and completed by his son Iacopo between 1220 and 1236. During the excavations carried out it was inaugurated in 2008 – In 2009, an archaeological area emerged in the abbey garden with remains, among others, of the ancient late-ancient Sancti Pauli portico, which led from the city to Paul’s tomb, and of the female monastery of Saint Stephen. The area is part of the exhibition sector that includes, among others, the Lapidario Museum and the art gallery.

The central event of the church is the very serious fire that devastated it in 1823, after which few structures remained intact: in particular, the cycle of frescoes in the central nave was irremediably destroyed and the 14th century bell tower was demolished. The reconstruction was initiated by Leo XII and carried out for the most part by the architect Luigi Poletti (although the works lasted until 1928), faithfully respecting the forms of the Constantinian building. Second in size of the four Roman patriarchal basilicas, it is preceded by a quadriportico built between 1890 and 1928, with a patio in the center of which is the statue of Saint Paul. The façade above the colonnade is decorated with mosaics inspired, as far as possible, by the original from the 10th century, divided into three bands representing the four prophets of the Old Testament, the Agnus Dei with the rivers of Paradise and Christ blessing . between San Pablo and San Pedro. In the polychrome marble narthex there are five portals through which you enter the basilica: the one on the right is important because it dates back to the 11th century, divided into 54 panels with engraved scenes from the life of Jesus and the apostles. Behind the apse rises the neoclassical style bell tower, built by Poletti in 1860 in five orders, which houses seven bells, the largest of which is the famous Pierpaola.

The interior has a Latin cross plan, divided into five naves separated by four rows of 20 columns, with polychrome marble walls and floors. In the band immediately above the arches that divide the naves you can admire the tondos that contain the portraits of all the pontiffs, in mosaic with a golden background, as they were painted before the fire (some survivors are preserved in the De Rossi Collection of the monastery ). ). In the upper part of the central nave and in the transept there are 36 frescoes representing episodes from the life of Paul, commissioned as the tondos by Pius IX. The triumphal arch that separates the transept from the central nave is said to be by Gala Placidia, who commissioned it: its mosaic, dismantled and subjected to restoration after the fire, has in the center Christ Pantocrator on whose sides are the symbols of the evangelists. , below the 24 elders of the Apocalypse divided into two groups on each side, finally still below, on a blue background, Peter and Paul. The cruise is decorated in la upper part with frescoes related to the life of Paul, to whom one of the two altars is dedicated and the other to the Virgin. The structure is completed with four chapels decorated with frescoes, the second escaped the fire and is dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament. Near the fourth chapel on the right is the Sala del Martyrologio or oratory of San Giuliano, in which there are fragments of frescoes from the 12th and 13th centuries representing many saints venerated in the former monastery of the abbey, including Cesario and Stefano.

Under the triumphal arch is the ciborium, the work of Arnolfo da Cambio commissioned by Abbot Bartolomeo (1285), composed of a Gothic aedicule supported by four Corinthian columns with statues in the corners of Saint Paul, Saint Benedict, Saint Peter and Saint Timothy. . Nearby you can admire the Easter candelabra made in 1170 by Pietro Vasselletto and Nicolò D’Angelo, with scenes from the life of Christ. In front of the main altar is the Confession whose quadrangular opening allows us to see both the sarcophagus of the Apostle Paul and the apse of the Constantine basilica, which had the opposite orientation to the current one. The latter is one of the structures least damaged by the fire: in the center is the papal chair, while the font is decorated with a mosaic made during the papacy of Honorius III (1216-1227) by Venetian workers, also active in San Marco. The figure of the Redeemer dominates on the throne with the four Gospels, on the sides the saints Peter and Paul flanked by Andrew and Luke, at the feet of Honorius III. On the lower band the Cross is represented flanked by two angels: on both sides appear ten of the twelve apostles and at their feet Pope Nicholas III, abbot of the monastery, the monk Ardinolfo and the Five Holy Innocents, venerated here until their transfer. to Santa María la Mayor.

Roberto Bellini for URBS REGIA

– Giuliana Massimo, Gli affreschi della basilica di S. Paolo fuori le mura: studi e proposte, «Benedictina», 48 (2001), pp. 197-237.
– Fabio Sebastianelli, L’incendio della basilica di San Paolo fuori le mura, «Roma moderna e contemporanea», 12 (2004), pp. 539-566.
– Rosamond McKitterick, Narrative strategies in the «Liber pontificalis». St Paul, ‘doctor mundi, doctor gentium’ and San Paolo fuori le mura, «Rivista di storia del cristianesimo», 10 (2013), pp. 115-130.
– Nicola Maria Camerlenghi, St. Paul’s outside the Walls: a roman basilica, from antiquity to the modern era, Cambridge 2018.
– Luca Ceriotti, Contributo alla cronologia abbaziale dei monasteri cassinesi (1419-1810), Parma 2019, pp. 66-72.

BASILICA PAPALE DI SAN PAOLO FUORI LE MURA

SAN PAOLO FUORI LE MURA