Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

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Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere is a 5th century church of

Churches of Rome

There are more than 900 Churches in Rome. Most, but not all, of these are Roman Catholic, with some notable Roman Catholic Marian churches....
Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
, located in the Trastevere

Trastevere

Trastevere is Rioni of Rome XIII of Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber, south of Vatican City. Its name comes from the Latin trans Tiberim, meaning literally "beyond the Tiber"....
rione

Rioni of Rome

The word rione comes from the Latin regio ; during the Middle Ages the Latin word became rejones, from which rione. The word has been used since the Middle Ages to name the districts of central Rome, according to the political divisions of that time....
and devoted to Saint Cecilia

Saint Cecilia

Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians and Church music because as she was dying she sang to God.St. Cecilia was an only child. Her feast day is celebrated in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox Church, and Eastern Catholic Churches on November 22....
.

History
The first church of Saint Cecilia was founded probably in the 3rd century, by Pope Urban I

Pope Urban I

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Encyclopedia

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere is a 5th century church of

Churches of Rome

There are more than 900 Churches in Rome. Most, but not all, of these are Roman Catholic, with some notable Roman Catholic Marian churches....
Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
, located in the Trastevere

Trastevere

Trastevere is Rioni of Rome XIII of Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber, south of Vatican City. Its name comes from the Latin trans Tiberim, meaning literally "beyond the Tiber"....
rione

Rioni of Rome

Saint Cecilia

History

The first church of Saint Cecilia was founded probably in the 3rd century, by Pope Urban I

Pope Urban I

Pope Saint Urban I was pope from 14 October 222 to 230. He was born in Rome, Italy and succeeded Pope Callixtus I who had been martyred. For centuries it was believed that Urban too was martyred, however recent historical discoveries now lead scholars to believe that he died of natural causes....
, and devoted to the Roman martyr Cecilia. Tradition holds that the church was built over the house of the saint. The baptistery of this church, together with the remains of a Roman Imperial house, was found during some excavations under the Chapel of the Relics. In the synod of 499 of Pope Symmachus

Pope Symmachus

Pope Saint Symmachus was pope from 498 to 514.He was born on Sardinia, the son of Fortunatus. He was baptized in Rome, where he became archdeacon of the Church under Pope Anastasius II....
, the church is indicated with the Titulus Ceciliae. On 22 November 545

545

Events...
, Pope Vigilius

Pope Vigilius

Pope Vigilius reigned as pope from 537-555. He belonged to a distinguished Roman family; his father Johannes is identified as a consul in the Liber pontificalis , having received that title from the emperor....
was celebrating the saint in the church, when the emissary of Empress Theodora

Theodora

Theodora can refer to any of the following:* Flavia Maximiana Theodora, daughter of the Roman Emperor Maximian and second wife of the Emperor Constantius I Chlorus....
, Antemi Scribone, captured him.

Pope Paschal I

Pope Paschal I

Pope Paschal I was pope from January 25, 817 to February 11, 824. A native of Rome and son of Bonosus, he was raised to the pontificate by the acclamation of the clergy, shortly after the death of Pope Stephen IV, and before the sanction of the emperor Louis the Pious had been obtained - a circumstance for which it was one of his first cares...
rebuilt the church in 822, and moved here the relics of St Cecilia from the catacombs of St Calixtus

Pope Callixtus I

Pope Callixtus I or Callistus I, was pope from about 217 to about 222, during the reigns of the Roman Emperors Elagabalus and Alexander Severus....
. More restorations followed in the 18th century.

The Cardinal Priest of the Titulus S. Caeciliae is Carlo Maria Martini

Carlo Maria Martini

Carlo Maria Martini, Society of Jesus is a Latin Rite Italian people Cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milan from 1980 to 2002, and was elevated to the Cardinal in 1983....
. Among the previous titulars are Pope Stephen III

Pope Stephen III

Pope Stephen III, , pope August 1 or August 7, 768 – January 24, 772, was a native of Sicily.He came to Rome during the pontificate of pope Gregory III and gradually rose to high office in the service of successive popes....
, Adam Easton

Adam Easton

Adam Easton was an English Cardinal, born at Easton, Norfolk in Norfolk.He joined the Benedictines at Norwich moving on to the Benedictine Gloucester College, Oxford where he became one of the most outstanding students of his generation....
, Thomas Wolsey and Giuseppe Maria Doria Pamphili.

Art and architecture

The church has a façade built in 1725 by Ferdinando Fuga

Ferdinando Fuga

Ferdinando Fuga was an Italy architect, whose main works were realized in Rome and Naples....
, which includes a courtyard decorated with ancient mosaics, columns and a cantharus (water vessel). It includes the coat of arms and the dedication to the titular cardinal who paid for the facade, Francesco Cardinal Acquaviva d'Aragona.

Among the artifacts remaining from the 13th century edifice are a mosaic depicting the Final judgment (1289-93) based on designs by Pietro Cavallini

Pietro Cavallini

Pietro Cavallini was an Italian painter and mosaic designer working during the late Middle Ages. Little is known about his biography, though it is known he was from Rome, since he signed pictor romanus....
in the chorus of the monks, and the ciborium

Ciborium

A ciborium is a covered container used in Roman Catholic Church, Anglican, and related churches to store the consecration host s of the sacrament of Holy Communion....
(1293) in the presbitery by Arnolfo di Cambio

Arnolfo di Cambio

Arnolfo di Cambio was an Italy architect and sculpture....
remain. The gothic ciborium is surrounded by four marble columns white and black, decorated with statuettes of angels, saints, prophets, and evangelists. The apse has remains of 9th century mosaics depicting the Redeemer with Saints Paul
Paul of Tarsus

Saint Paul, also called Paul the Apostle, the Apostle Paul or Paul of Tarsus , was a Hellenistic Judaism, who called himself the "Apostle to the Gentiles", and was, together with Saint Peter and James the Just, the most notable of early Christian missionaries....
, Cecilia, Paschal I, Peter
Saint Peter

Saint Peter was a leader of the early Christianity church, who features prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles....
, Valerian, and Agatha.

The ceiling of Cappella dei Ponziani was decorated God the Father with evangelists (1470) by Antonio del Massaro (Antonio da Viterbo or il Pastura). The Cappella delle Reliquie was frescoed and an altarpiece provided by Luigi Vanvitelli

Luigi Vanvitelli

Luigi Vanvitelli was an Italian engineer and architect. The most prominent eighteenth-century architect of Italy, he practiced a sober classicizing academy Baroque style that made an easy transition to Neoclassicism....
. The nave is frescoed with the Apotheosis of Santa Cecilia (1727) by Sebastiano Conca

Sebastiano Conca

Sebastiano Conca was an Italy Painting.He was born at Gaeta, then part of the Kingdom of Naples, and apprenticed in Naples under Francesco Solimena....
. The church contains two altarpieces by Guido Reni

Guido Reni

Guido Reni was a prominent Italy Painting of high-Baroque style....
: Saints Valerian and Cecilia and a Decapitation of Saint Cecilia (1603). Among the most remarkable works is the graphic altar sculpture of St. Cecilia (1600) by the late-Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
sculptor Stefano Maderno

Stefano Maderno

Stefano Maderno was an Italy sculpture....
. This sculpture reportedly is modelled on the saint's body as seen in 1595, when her tomb was opened. The statue depicts evidence of decapitation, thus helping to confirm the identity of the saint. In addition, it also it is meant to underscore the supposed incorruptibility of her cadaver (an attribute of some saints), which miraculously still had congealed blood after centuries. This statue could be conceived as proto-Baroque, since it depicts no idealized moment or person, but a theatric scene, a naturalistic representation of a dead or dying saint. It is striking, because it precedes by decades the similar high-Baroque sculptures of Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini was a pre-eminent Baroque sculpture and architect of 17th Century Rome....
(for example, his Beata Ludovica Albertoni

Beata Ludovica Albertoni

The monument to the Beata Ludovica Albertoni is a sculpture group by the baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It was commissioned from Bernini by Cardinal Paluzzi degli Albertoni, who had taken the name Altieri after the elevation of a kinsman of his family by marriage, Pope Clement X ....
) and Melchiorre Caffà

Melchiorre Caffà

Melchiorre Caf? was a sculpture from Malta. Caf? began a promising career in Baroque Rome but this was cut short by his premature death following a work accident....
(Santa Rosa de Lima

Santa Rosa de Lima

Santa Rosa de Lima is a municipality in the La Uni?n department of El Salvador. Santa Rosa de Lima was born on 1586 in Lima . The city is named after St....
).

The crypt is also noteworthy, decorated with cosmatesque

Cosmatesque

Cosmatesque style is a style of floor-making typical of Medieval era Italy, and especially of Rome and its surroundings. The name derives from Cosmati, one of the groups of marble craftsmen who created works by taking marble from ancient Roman ruins, and arranging the fragments in geometrical decorations....
style, keeping the relics of St. Cecilia and St. Valerian

External links

, photogallery