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TheMarian ShrinesofRome

Features of everY streetevery corner of the narlancient quarters, once Iare smallwaYside shrinoften protected by little-canopies' The

norn"lttt call them "the Little Madonnas"

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"little Modonno" of

Piozzo Compitelli.

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Anguillaro,bY

Fronz Roesler,

RomeMuseum

ause passer-bY and bow Your headto thre MothLer of God and the

Queen of Heaven"' These wordscin be read under a wall shrine toMarv on a house in the Monti quar-ter, one of the old districts of Rome'It's enough to lift your eyes in any otthe one-time working class areas otRome - Monti, CamPitelli, Traste-vere,Trevi,Ponte, Mars Field - andthere in the narrow street you'll findone of hundreds of such shrines'Every street, every square' everYcrossroad, almost every corner nasits shrine with its own little canopyand a smalllight in front of it ' Ro-mans callthem "the Little Madon-

Marv in the streets' in the desire todedicate the Eternal City to Our La-dy, has transformed Rome over thecentur ies in to one vas t Mar ian

founded for one of them.Modern estimates reckon there

are about 500 of the Little Madon-nas scattered throughout the his-toric center of Rome. Until about1850 there were almost 3'000 andthe smalllamPs burning in front ofthem were the onlY street lightingRome enjoYed until this centurY'Alessandro Rufini, a late 19th cen-turv historian of religious matters'recbunts that an English traveller to

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3 O D A Y S N o l l - 1 9 9 5

Rome at that period was astonishedthat the streets of such an impor-tant city were l it only by the lampsin front of the shrines: "lt is no won-der that the Romans find their wayabout by day and night in the thici<tangle of crossroads, alleys. squaresand places by the Marian shrines."Indeed, before the rebuilding pro-g ram was begun i n 1870 . whenhouses sti l l had no street numbers.t he L i t t l e Madonnas were Iand -marks in the city People took theirbearings from them and they werean integral part of a district, a road.a b lock of houses They were aneveryday part of l i fe and. as Rufinipu t i t . ' The

eve r l as t i ng l amp rhefa i t h fu l se t be fo re t he image o fMary is both a sign of devotion andthe l ight that s teers the t ravel lerSeeing the face of Mary l it up. hedoes not get lost in the streets of lifeor of the city" Each of these Litt leMadonnas has its own story to tell.a s t o r y o f t e n m a d e u p o f s m a l lthings but one that has left its markand brought comfort to the peopleof Rome at dramat ic moments intheir l ives

Posuerunt me custodem"They set me to s tand guard " I twas in the middle of the fourth cen-tury, the period after Constantine.that the custom of setting up publicimages of Mary began to spread.The story of the L i t t le Madonnasarose out of the express desire toplace the city of the Apostles andthe martyrs under the protection ofthe Mother of God. At first. to marke n t r y i n t o t h e s a c r e d s p a c e o fRome. they were set up on the citygates and wal ls , then the customgrew and they were soon appear-ing on house-f ronts. The ear l iestep i sode we know took p lace i n590, immediately after the electionof Pope Gregory the Great. In thes i x th cen tu ry , acco rd ing to t heL ibe r Pon t i f i ca l i s . t he image o fMary already had a place of honori n bas i l i cas . Bu t some o f t he o ldicons showing the Theotokos (theMother of God), such as the So/uspopul i romani s t i l l in Saint MaryMajor . were carr ied in processionthrough the city. not jusr on specialleasts but also in times of plague orwar. In 590 the icon was carried inprocession from Saint Mary Ma- )

, I

corovoggio's /l'l adonna of the pilgrim, church of soint Augusrine in Mors Fierd

AFilialBond"But the Romans' love for the Virgin", writes the abb6

Rolland in 1870, "is like that of children for theirmother. sometimes it rhay appear disrespectful but suchliberty is always the direct result of the filial bond".

This intimacy is powerfully portrayed by Caravaggioin his celebrated work, The Mad.onna. of the pitgrirn.Itfeatures the same scene that might have been viewed atthe foot of any of the little shrines in Rome. The painting' shows the Madonna with poor people on their kneesbefore her. One is bare-foot, his feet muddied, and theother presents herselfwith her cloth headcovering allworn and wrinkled. It is as if they were captured oncanvas in the simple, unrefined round of their daily lives.

3ODAYS No t l 1995 35

TheMari

jor to Saint Peter's to implore anend to the plague that was infestingthe city. Tradition says that it wasduring that procession that the an-gel for whom Castel Sant'Angelowas named then appeared. In

memory o f theevent shrines withcopies of the imagewere pu t up onhouses a long theroute. They weres imp le cop ies inpaint or fresco witha smal l roof overthem. The customspread in later cen-turies and imagesof Mary, as marksof remembrance,consecrat ion andprotect ion beganto throng the darkstreets and tangledallevs of medievalRome. Very few ofthe remain ingshrines today dateback to that period.One of them is theMadonna o f theStreet, veneratedfrom the dawn of

the Middle Ages. It is no longer inthe street but in a chapel in theChiesa del Gesi. Others can stillbeseen on the side wall of Santa Mariain Trastevere. Trastevere was thefirst area in Rome to take up devo-tion to Mary and scholars say thatthe public streets must have had nu-merous shrines to her already in theearly centur ies. But we have toreach the 15th century before wefind any written evidence of theseimages or information on theirfame, popular devotion to themand the miracles attached to them.

MemoryandMiracleeIn the 15th century some of the Lit-tle Madonnas were rescued fromthe streets and put up in churches.The image o f Our Lady in theChurch of the Madonna della Con-

'solazione was one of these.During the Middle Ages public

executions took place at the foot ofthe Capitol ine Hi l l , c lose to theTarpeian Rock. There used to be anancient image of the Virgin on awall where the condemned crimi-

nals would pause before mountingthe scaffold. On June 26,1470 theimage became the focus of a mirac-ulous event. It saved a young manwho had been wrongly convicted ofmurder. The ordinary people im-mediately began cal l ing i t "HolyMary of the Consolation" anddevo-tion to it became such that PopeSixtus [V issued a papalbull, StelloMaris, permitting a church to bebuilt there in her name. The popewas himself devoted to some of theLittle Madonnas. A manuscript inthe archives of the Cistercians ofSaint John Lateran, for example,describes the origins of the Churchof Our [-ady of Help close to that ofSanta Croce in Gerusalemme. Itsays that in June I472 the popewas caught in a violent storm and' took shelter under the roof of ashrine to Mary. In thank to Our La-dy he had a church built in her hon-or. But that wasn't the only occa-sion. The pope often went to prayin front of a shrine to Our Lady inthe porch of the Church of Sant'An-drea degli Acquaricciari, so calledbecause of the water-sellers whoplied in the areas. The image wasgreatly venerated because traditionsaid that it had shed blood after be-ing hit by a stone thrown by a gam-bler. When war began to loom afterthe Conspiracy of thePazzi in Flo-rence, Pope Sixtus IV summonedthe clergy and went in procession tomake a vow that if war did not breakout he would build a church to Our[-adv there. And so it was. When thedanger had passed Santa Maria del-la Pace was built and it stillhousesthe miraculous image. It was underSixtus IV, a member of the della Ro-vere family, that a period began inwhich churches were built in honorof shrines known to work miracles.Santa Maria in Via on the main citystreet. the Corso. Santa Maria delPianto in the ghetto, Santa Mariadell'Orazione in Via Giulia, SantaMaria dei Miracol i , Santa Mariadell'Orto, and Santa Maria dellaScala in Trastevere, Santa Mariadelle Grazie, Santa Maria della Pu-ritir, Santa Maria in Vallicella, SantaMaria ai Montiare allchurches builtto house miracle-working images.This, which was a feafure of renais-sance Rome, went on into the 17thcenturv.

oE- Clm llrrttl

All-r illlt rI flD

I IL qll" rtrf,ll\^

The Addolorcto, tn vio tod/Agonodei Gori, in thc llonti quorler

The Modonno of ilre Rosoty, in viodell?rco dello Ciqmbcllo in rheTrovi quorier

36 3ODAYS No 1l - 1995

During those centur ies manywere c rowned by the Vat icanChapter, others were moved intoex is t ing chape ls and churches .Confraterni t ies grew up aroundsome of them, while in the streetsthe images multiplied, often beingc o p i e s o f t h e m o s t v e n e r a t e d .These were the golden centuries forthe Little Madonnas and the pietvof ordinary people.

16th and l Tth Century Pietyln msnibus tuis sorfes meae. His-tory tells us what Rome was like inthe 16th and 17th centuries. It was

tered in the most unrulv and i l l -famed districts. One of these wasthe Parione distr ict where SaintPhilip worked. His great devotionto the Madonna is well known. ThePhilippian Fathers' Chiesa Nuova,Santa Maria in Vallicella, was builtin 1535 on St. Philip's initiative tohouse a miracle-working image at-tached to the wall of a hovel in thenearby Via della Stufa. The saintcould often be found praying infront of i t . That is whv after-hisd e a t h s h r i n e s w e r e

The llqdonno of Divine Providence, in vio dettc Borhghe orcurc in theSont'Angelo quorter. This is one of | | imoges of Mory whose cyer were soid tohove moved mircculously in | 296

A ruffion rcpenrs before the imoge of Mory otthe Ottovio Portico. Thic ond the engruvings tofollow ore conserved in the Municipol Cobinet ofPrints of Rome

The lllodonno and Child,in vio dell'Umilro, in rheTrevi quorter

painted showing him inadoration of Marv. oneof them still survivinq to-day near San Girolimodella Caritd where theOratorians first came to-gether. In those districts,with their teeming alleyswhere life was lived bothindoors and out, the Lit-tle Madonnas were set ateye level between thew a l l s o f h o u s e s a n dthose of the street, "likefront doors to the hous-es" to make i t easy tol i gh t a cand le so t ha t"the vows fixed aroundthem and the constant masses olthe devout spoke of their prodi-gies". Often they were painted in )

3 O D A Y S N o I I - 1 9 9 5 37

38

fheVirgin ond Childwith Soinrthilip Neri in vio di Monserroto,ol lhe cornerwirh vio deiFornesi, in lhe Regolo quorfer.Rome CityGovernmenl hod q

fewof rhe linle Mqdonnosrcstored forthe 1975 JubileeYeor but mony remoin in q sloteof considersble neglect

The people golheroround oCopuchin monk to heor himpreoching

The Marian Shrines of Rome

alleyways that were known to bedangerous, like that of the Madon-n a d i V i a S a n M a r c o n o w i n achapel in P alazzo V enezia. It is saidthat a ruffian was attacked from be-

hind by an enemya n d r a i s i n g h i seyes to the imageasked for Mary'si n t e r c e s s i o n :"Help me for I 'vebeen betrayed".He was g ran tedg r a c e a n d s u r -v i v e d . T h eMadonna of Mer-c y h a d b e e npainted in anoth-e r i l l - f a m e dp l a c e , w h e r eg a m b l e r s g a t h -ered at night. The-s to ry goes tha tone gambler, in-furiated at losinga game of bowls,threw a bowl atthe image's face,j u s t u n d e r t h eright eye. On the

e x a c t s p o t o f t h e b l o w . a r e d .b l o o d y b r u i s e f o r m e d o n t h eMadonna's face. Because of his sac-ri legious gesture, the gambler im-mediately lost the use of his armBut, repentant, he was cured andthe miraculous image carried by thepeople to the nearby Church of SanG i o v a n n i d e i F i o r e n t i n i . T h eMadonna della Scala also workedmirac les f rom the basement of ahovel in Trastevere where womenof i l l-repute used to gather in theevenings. Thus it was that alleys,squares, archways and hovels be-came places where the marks of thefaith entered into the lives of ordi-nary people, became the staQe onwhich sudden healings and changesof hear t assumed mater ia l form.Desirous of Mary's protection, subtuum presidium, the Madonna delPianto was moved into a church in7546. the Madonna della Trinitadei Pellegrini in 7562, the Madon-na del l 'Orazione in 1577 and theM a d o n n a d e l l a S c a l a i n 7 5 9 2 .Some images became part of themore general history of the city andstood guard over cer ta in c i rc les.Santa Maria del Pianto. for exam-ple, stood guard over the ghetto,

the Madonna of Trinita dei Pellegri-ni assisted the down-and-out. therealm of the pr isons came underthe Madonna dell'Orazione and theMadonna della Scala had the safe-keeping of the dangerous and un-ruly district of Trastevere.

Already by the end of the 17thcen tu ry gu idebooks were be ingwritten for the use of pilgrims visit-ing the more famous shrines. Oneof these. The Most Famous lm-ages of the Blessed Virgin Mary inR o m e , b y t h e J e s u i t C o n c e z i oCarocci. is a collection of the storiesof miracles he narrated in front ofthe holy pictures. It was, in fact, acustom among religious to give aweekly sermon in front of the mostvenerated shrines. Under the im-age at the Arco della Ciambella onecan st i l l f ind the l ines: "He whothinks and meditates/on vour mvs-t e r i e s / O V i r g i n . l i f t i c h a i t ethoughts to thee, /and in h is soulyoulkindle love /when in simplicityhe yields his heart to you".

The Eyesof the Little MadonnasThe promptings of this piety in or-dinary l ife did not diminish in theperiod of the Enlightenment. Quitethe opposite. Towards the end ofthe 18th century, at a time of seri-ous political and social crisis when itseemed inevitable that Rome wouldbe invaded by French troops, some-th ing a l together untoward hap-pened in the city, and it involved theLitt le Madonnas. On the morninqof July 9,1,796 a poor man passin[through the Trevi quarter close toPiazza Santissimi Apostoli, whereon the wall was fixed a veneratedimage of Our Lady known as theMadonna del l 'Archet to. saw theeyes of the image move again andagain. Not believing what he hadseen - "l reckoned I was deceivingmyself and that these eyes of minewere seeing too much" - he wasabout to continue on his way whennews came that the image of OurLady of the Rosary in Via Arco dellaCiambella. that of Our Lady of Sor-rows in the nearby Vicolo delle Bol-lette and the one of Divina Prowi-denza in Via delle Botteghe Oscure- where they still stand today - hadall begun moving their eyes at thesame time. In fact, many of the Lit-

=r

3 O D A Y S N o I l - 1 9 9 5

t le Madonnas were seen perform-ing this marvel simultaneously andfrom that t ime it was repeated at intervals in various parts of the cityand was w i tnessed by i nd i v i dua lmembers o f t he l a i t y . p r i es t s andcrowds of the faithful who came ineuer greater numbers. During oneof these episodes a man sought totake a closer Iook at the eyes of theM a d o n n a d e l l ' A r c h e t t o a n dclimbed up a ladder to measure theva r i a t i on and movemen t . Somec r i p p l e s a n d b l i n d p e o p l e w e r ehealed Eminent cardinals came tocheck on the truth of the marrer anoreport directly back to the pope Af-ter l istening to the evidence Pius VIordered the canonical process inOctober of that same year. thoughsome peop le rema ined skep t i ca land the free-thinkers mocked. It isnot diff icult to imagine what effectthese events must have had on thepeople of Rome at that precise his-tor ica l moment and there was nol a c k o f p o l i t i c a l i n L e r p r e t a r i o n sEven the satirists of the period tooknote and a pasquinade appeared inthe Moni tore d i Roma in 1798 i tis one of the invented conversationsbe tween two o f Rome 's f amous' t a l k i n g

s t a t u e s ' . M a r f o r i o a n dP a s q u i n o . a n d e n d s w i t h t h e s ewords: "Pasquino: ' l

s a y ! W a s n ' t i t a tabout th is t ime thatt h e M a d o n n a sw o u l d o p e n t h e i reyes l n yea rs goneby? That miracle wil lhappen again. you' l lsee

' Marfor io : 'But

we don ' t be l i eve i ni t . and we won t beany less good Chris-tians for that'.

'

In that same yearthe acts of the apos-to l i c p rocess weredrawn up recogniz-ing the authentic na-ture of the miracle of11 images o f Maryin wayside shr inesA m o n g t h e s e . t h efirst to move its eyesw a s t h e M a d o n n ad e l l ' A r c h e t t o f o rwhich Pius VI estab-lished a solemn feasto f t h a n k s g i v i n g :

" W e a r e h e m m e d i n o nevery side. new foes ariseproud and fearsome You.who by turn ing your eyeson Rome in t h i s i n tage .s h o w e d t h e n a t u r e a n dgreatness of your powerand p i ty . turn them nowupon us in immediate suc-cor . In i85 1 th is venerat-ed image was lodged in ac h a p e l b u i l t i n t h e a l l e ywhere i t had stood Thechapel is now thought tob e t h e s m a l l e s t M a r r a nshrine in Rome Solemnlyc rowned by t he Va t i canc h a p t e r i n 1 9 4 6 i t w a spart icu lar ly venerated bySaints Benedet to Labre,Gaspare Del Bufalo. Maxr-milian Kolbe. and by PiusXII This is why there was as p r e a d o f s u c h s h r i n e swith copies of the imageI n m o r e r e c e n t t i n r e s

The Modonno of rhe Arch,is Rome's smqllest Morionsoncluory, in the vicoloSon Morcello, Treviquorler

The shrine of the Corridorein the Borgo quorter

something s imi lar happened wi ththe Madonna del Divino Amore Itbegan to wo rk m i rac les i n 17 40and for that reason was taken downfrom the tower to which it was at-tached and set up in the sanctuarys p e c i a l l y b u i l t f o r i t o n t h e V i aArdeatina. It became an object ofspec ia l vene ra t i on du r i ng rhe l as tw a r O n J u n e 4 . 1 9 4 4 G e r m a ntroops le f t Rome wi thout b lood-shed after the people of Rome hadmade a vow consecrating the city tothe Madonna de l D i v i no Amore .On June 11 P ius X I I p roc la imedher "savicr of the City" Since thenmany shrines with copies of the im-age have been set up in the post-wa r subu rbs . One o f t hem, su r -rounded 69 ex uoto, can be seen onthe wall of Casrro Pretorio.

But i f nowadays rhe onlv wav-side shrine to receive great ven- i

3oDAYs No l t l ges 39

-\

.. F?

TheAddolorqrc in thevicolo delleBollelfc,Trovi quorfer. Thc lolininrcripion bcneoth thc ilorionimogo rocollr tlre | 796 mirncle:

"Die lX lulii posuil oculum suumsupcrcordo illorum, obtenderc illis

mognoliooperum iuorum"

The Marian Shrines of Rome

eration from the people of Rome isthe Madonna del Divino Amore,last century every one of them inthe city was honored.

l9thCenturyf),evotionIn 1853, as A les-sandro Rufini tellsus, the shr ines toMarv in Rome wereframed bv an enor-mous quant i t y o fvotive objects leftby those whosepleas had been an-swered. Therewereover a thousandsuch including iew-e ls , locks o f ha i r ,c ru tches , s i l veritems. And lookingat them in all theirsimplicity of heartthese ex uo tospoke of people de-voted to a particularshrine, they told.of

the smallfacts and the daily troublesof the inhabitants of the street orthe district. This was somethingthat was bound to attract the atten-tion of visitors to Rome during thatcentury. Nineteenth century travelIiterature provides ample evidence.The Danish story-teller Hans Chris-tian Andersen says in his novel TheImprouisor that during the Christ-mas festivities "outside every housewith an image of the Madonna thebagpipers proclaimed the birth ofthe Savior. At dusk the lights on theshrines to Mary lit up the wholec i ty " . Wro te the French wr i te rErnest Renan in his travel iournals:

"severaltimes in the month of MaYat the moment of the Aue Maria Imet with a spontaneous processionin front of one of those innumer-able Madonnas that the devotion ofthe people of Rorne has set onevery wall. At midday groups ofcommon people gathered undercertain images and intoned the An-ge lus a loud. " But there was noshortage of cr i t ic ism ei ther: " lnRome," comments the Frenchwriter Hippolyte Taine, "the faith-fulfeelthe need to give human formto all religious conceptions," and hederides "that stubborn wish to havesacred images under their eyes -why ever are they built at a heightabove that of the usual level of hu-

. man sight - that humble genuflect-ing, that making acts of contritionand reinforcing everything throughof fe r ings . The express ion o f amean southern cult which doesn'thesitate to hang the image of theVi rg in even in the most vu lgarplaces, next to caf€s, even in drink-ing dens and shops, between thesausages and the ham". But "theRomans' love for the Virgin," wrotethe Abb6 Rolland in 1870, "is likethat of young chi ldren for theirmother. It can sometimes seem dis-respectful. The intimacy neverthe-less depends solely on the fact thatit is a matter of a filialbond." It wasas i f the Romans fel t they couldknock on the Madonna's door andas i f She would come in answerready to respond to whomeversought Her : "Here w i th bowedhead, stop, O passer-by, here is thefount of grace, this is the Mother ofGod; look upon Her, weep andpray that She may not deny Hergrace to the faithful".

In the 20th century, with the re-building of entire quarters of thec i ty , the major i t y o f the L i t t leMadonnas had no place in the newarrangement of things and theywere to have no function in the newsuburbs except that of a genericallyreligious item of embellishment.Thus that close relationship, thatreal familiarity which for centurieshad characterizedthe everyday lifeof people who l ived both in thefaith and in the streets of their cityas i f they were their own home,their dwelling-place,.slowly disinte-grated. O

Populordevotionlooneof Rome'sliillcModonnor

/n 3ODAYS No 11 - 1995