The Basilica of Saint Mary in Cosmedin (Italian: Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin; Latin: Santa Maria de Schola Graeca) is a minor basilican church in Rome, Italy, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It is located in the rione (neighborhood) of Ripa. Constructed first in the sixth century as a diaconia (deaconry) in an area of the city populated by Greek immigrants, it celebrated Eastern rites and currently serves the Melkite Greek Catholic community of Rome. The church was expanded in the eighth century and renovated in the twelfth century, when a campanile (bell tower) was added. A Baroque facade and interior refurbishment of 1718 were removed in 1894–1899; the exterior was restored to twelfth-century form, while the architecture of the interior recalls the eighth century with twelfth-century furnishings. The narthex of the church contains the famous Bocca della Verità sculpture.
The epithet "Cosmedin" The epithet Cosmedin is traditionally thought to come from the Greek word kosmidion (κοσμίδιον), itself derived from kosmos (κόσμος), meaning "ornament" or "decoration". More recent scholarship, however, connects the term to the Monastery of Kosmidion in Constantinople, which was dedicated to Saints Cosmas and Damian. This monastery was built north of the city during the reign of Emperor Theodosius II (408–450) and also functioned as a center for charitable relief of the poor. In 626, during the Avar-Persian siege of Constantinople, the monastery, located outside the city walls, was destroyed. Some of its monks subsequently fled to Rome, settling in the Ripa Graeca, a district inhabited largely by a Greek-speaking community. There, they continued their charitable activities, serving the poor through a diaconia dedicated to the Virgin Mary and brought with them the name of their former monastery. From Rome, the name Kosmidion spread to other Byzantine exarchates in Italy, including Ravenna and Naples, where it became associated with churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
Early history
The site
The basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin is in an area of Rome along the Tiber River that once housed the Forum Boarium, the ancient cattle market, and a complex of temples and shrines to Hercules. Archaeologists discovered a platform of ancient tufa under the crypt of the church, which they have tentatively identified as part of the Great Altar of Unconquered Hercules (Latin: Herculis Invicti Ara Maxima), possibly dating from the sixth century BCE. A later building on the site had a colonnaded loggia, probably constructed in the fourth century CE. This is thought by some to have been a statio annonae, one of the government-run food distribution centers of ancient Rome, but other scholars believe it was one of the buildings dedicated to Hercules. In the sixth and early seventh centuries CE, this area of Rome developed into a Greek quarter (schola graeca), a compound initially populated by Greek, Syrian, and Egyptian merchants and by functionaries of the imperial government in Constantinople during the Byzantine Papacy of 537–752, when the popes were approved by and subject to the Byzantine emperors. Several waves of eastern refugees added to the population as they fled from wars and persecution, the encroachment of Islam, and the violence of the Iconoclastic Controversy in the Christian East. The quarter became an important economic sector of the city and was allowed to govern itself with little interference from Roman authorities.
The diaconia Around 550, a hall was built on the site, incorporating some of the loggia columns of the previous building in its west and north walls. This was identified as a diaconia (deaconry), an early Christian welfare center, where charitable distributions were given to the poor. The brick masonry of the building was not typical of Rome at this time but was common in Naples in the sixth century, suggesting the work was done by Greek or South Italian builders, perhaps immigrants residing in the schola graeca. The hall itself was probably a gathering place and place of worship; two-story aisles on each side contained chambers on the ground floors, perhaps for the functions of the diaconia, and galleries above with six windows on each side, opening onto the main hall. Diaconiae were funded by wealthy individuals. A mid-eighth century inscription displayed in the narthex records a gift of extensive properties to the church's ministry to the poor by Eustathius (or Eustachius), a Byzantine duke of Rome who had administered the territory of Ravenna for the papacy. The same inscription also mentions a donation by a "vir gloriossimus [most noble] Georgios" and his brother, David.
The eighth-century church Pope Hadrian I (papacy 772–95) rebuilt and extended the diaconia around 780, demolishing a large ruined temple to make way for this construction. The result was a basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary, at that time called Santa Maria de Schola Graeca or the ecclesia graecorum (Greek church) because of its location and a community of Greek monks there. The church was built with a nave and two aisles, but it culminated at the east end with three full apses, an eastern feature unusual for a Roman church, but one that had reached the West by the sixth century. In the rebuilding, the tall columns from the structure that preceded the diaconia were retained and were visible (and still are) in the entrance wall and embedded in the side walls at the western end of the church. In the center apse was an altar made from a Roman red granite basin, and the floor was a simple opus sectile pattern. The nave was separated from the aisles by alternating groups of columns and piers; the unmatched columns were spolia (spoils) from older Roman buildings. Some scholars believe that the columns supported a trabeation (lintel) at this time and not arches. On the upper level of the outer walls, rows of clerestory windows repeated the motif of the arches in the diaconia that had opened into galleries. By the ninth century, the church was known as Santa Maria in Cosmedin, probably the Latinization of κοσμίδιον (kosmidion), derived from the Greek word κόσμος, meaning "ornament, decoration."
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