L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2018 www.italoamericano.org 12 L'Italo-Americano LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE ELIZABETH SALTHOUSE D es igned by Michelangelo and built ins ide the ruined façade of the ancient Roman Baths of Diocletian, the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels and Martyrs is no ordinary parish church. But it's not just the mas- ter Michelangelo's beautiful vaulted ceilings held aloft by his monolithic 14 meter columns of red granite that bring visitors to its doors. It's the meridian sundi- al, commissioned by a peevish Pope in a spot of one-upmanship in the 18th century, that marks the basilica out as a triumph. So what led a man of faith to install a scientific wonder over the foundations of the ancients?  There's been a building on the site since ancient Roman times. First they erected a large second century monument in tribute to Quirinus, an early Sabine god of war. Then, within a hundred years, that was demol- ished to make way for something much more s ubs tantial, the imperial Baths of Diocletian. Serving as public baths, the thermae complex was the largest imperial bathhouse in Rome. Commissioned by Emperor Dio- cletian in 298 AD, it would take thousands of slaves a full eight years to finish the construction. Fast-forward fifteen hundred years. Some legends say that Pope Pius IV Medici ordered a church to be built within the ruins of the baths to commemorate and honor the lives of the Christian slaves who toiled and died dur- ing their building. The sugges- tion was that they were some of the first martyrs in Christendom. But delve a little deeper and it seems that, as with so many leg- ends, this one is a modern inven- tion. In truth the church's found- ing owes more to the tireless work of a Sicilian priest, Anto- nio Lo Duca. The pious priest was devoted to the Christian cult of angels and in the summer of 1541, hav- ing transferred to Rome as a chaplain, he saw a light "whiter than snow" coming from the thermal baths. At the center of his glowing vision were seven faithful martyrs and from that moment on Lo D uca cam- paigned for a church, dedicated to the seven, to be built at the heart of the baths. The lofty dream was tem- porarily crus hed w hen the Pope's nephews transformed the baths into hunting grounds, but after a couple of changes of pon- tificate and the passage of twen- ty years incoming Pope Pious IV finally signed the order commis- sioning the Basilica of Saint Mary of the angels and martyrs. At the time, the celebrated Michelangelo Buonarroti was working on Saint Peter's so Pius IV didn't have far to look for his architect, appointing him to transform the thermal baths from a place of washing to a place of worship. And he did a beautiful job too, nestling the church over the foundations of the old cal- darium and frigidarium hot and cold plunge pools designed to clean out those clogged Roman pores . S adly M ichelangelo didn't live to see the finished building but his high arched Greek cross design draws the faithful even today, as do the many paintings that decorate the walls. It is the next chapter in the church's development, however, that makes it one of the most fascinating ecclesiastical build- ings in Rome. And once again it's down to a forward-looking pope, a location atop the high ground of the V iminal, the smallest of Rome's seven hills, oh and a little bit of Papal one- upmanship. By the turn of the 1700s Pope Gregory XIII's "new" civic cal- endar had been in use for just over a century, introduced as a refinement of Julius Caesar's old Julian calendar to improve the accuracy of Easter date calcula- tions. Incoming Pope Clement XI was keen to check how accu- rate Gregory's calendar was to see if he could rely on it to pre- dict the future Eas ter dates ; something that previous Popes had struggled to do. But instead of turning to holy learnings or civil experts, the Pope turned, provocatively, to science to veri- fy the calendar. And so in 1700 Clement commis s ioned Francesco Bianchini to construct a meridian line – a long, straight type of sundial - that could pre- cisely track the passage of the year using astronomy, mathemat- ics and the sun. The church proved the perfect location for such a contentious construction for a number of rea- sons. The basilica had several phys- ical attributes that perfectly suit- ed the siting of a meridian. It faced south, naturally capturing the sun's path through the day. The soaring bathhouse walls were ideal to measure the sun's course through the day. And its foundations were built on strong, stable ground that had withstood many earthquakes over sixteen centuries without damage; ideal to ensure that the delicately cali- brated meridian would not shift or slip. Symbolically too, the church was perfect to house the complex scientific instrument. It was set within and over Roman ruins so the meridian could be seen as the Christian church's victory over their earlier pagan ancestors. The site was also in Rome, the spiri- tual, symbolic and geographic heart of the Catholic church. And, perhaps crucially, if a little defiantly, locating a state-of-the- art meridian in the Church of Saint Mary of the angels and martyrs enabled Pope Clement to reassert Rome's centrality to the Papal State and score significant s tatus points over Bologna, where a meridian had recently been installed, much to his irrita- tion and chagrin. Within a couple of years , Bianchini's 45 meter long bronze instrument had been carefully set into the gleaming, white marble floor, surrounded by circles, numbers, astronomic and astro- logical symbols. It dissected the main nave, precisely following the longitudinal geographic line that crosses Rome and wraps around the earth. And as the sun made its annual journey across the skies it sent a tiny noonday shaft of light piercing through a pinhole in the church wall to cast an illuminated ellipse onto the floor. By observing where the sunlight fell along the bronze meridian rod, scientific observers calculated the time of year rela- tive to the summer and winter solstices at each end and were able to verify that the Gregorian calendar is, indeed, more accu- rate than the Romans' Julian almanac. As a final touch, Bian- chini also added additional pin- holes in the basilica ceiling to enable the nighttime observation of key stars and so with a tele- scope astronomers could mark the transit of the heavens too, not just the sun. Three hundred years later the meridian still lies exactly where it was laid, operating just as accurately as it did on the very first day. The church is still cen- tral to Roman life, sitting as it does in Piazza della Repubblica at the summit of Via Nazionale, one of the bus ies t s hopping streets in Rome. And the original Roman bath walls have stood the test of time, wrapping them- selves around this singular house of w ors hip des igned by Michelangelo for centuries and protecting the fascinating scien- tific meridian. It's a wonderful juxtapos ition of ancient and modern, spiritual and scientific, astronomy and astrology, bath- house and basilica, function and design. And if it hadn't been for Bologna putting Clement's nose out of joint with their meridian, it might never have been laid. No wonder Santa Maria degli Angeli e Martiri has been a favourite for official religious and royal ser- vices down the years. Long may it continue! The Gregorian sundial of St Mary of the Angels and Martyrs, in Rome, was designed by Michelangelo himself Telling the time with Rome's Gregorian sundial

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