San Giovanni a Porta Latina

English name:
St John before the Latin Gate
Dedication:
St John the Evangelist
Denomination:
Roman Catholic
Type:
Titular church
Titular church
Cardinal Franciszek Macharski
Built:
5th c., rebuilt 8th c., restored in 1191 and 20th cent.
Address:
17 Via di San Giovanni a Porta Latina 
00179 Roma
Phone:
06 77 40 00 32

San Giovanni a Porta Latina is dedicated to St John the Evangelist, and is hidden away behind the Rosminian college at Via di Porta Latina 17. The church is located is approximately 40 m north of the Via Latina, which passes through the wall at the Latin Gate (Porta Latina). Also, the church is not near a bus stop; the nearest is the Latina stop on route 360 from Termini or Porta San Giovanni (or 218 from the latter only), which entails a walk through the Porta Latina. Pictures of the church at Wikimedia Commons. [1]

History

Scholars suggest that the initial date of construction as around 500 CE, basing their evidence on masonry analysis which places the date between 450 CE at the earliest and 550 CE at the latest. Four roof tiles, which contain the tax stamp of Emperor Theodoric (495-526), provide further clues of this suggested date. Thus, some sources attribute the attribute S. Giovanni a Porta Latina to Pope Gelasius I (492-496), believing that the date of construction is slightly prior to 500 CE, although this is highly uncertain. Subsequent to the date of construction, S. Giovanni remains a mystery until the period of Pope Hadrian I (772-795), when the Liber Pontifus states that the church underwent complete restoration. This being the earliest known textual reference, S. Giovanni a Porta Latina remains a complete mystery prior to the first half of the eighth century.

In 1191 Pope Celestine III ordered the restoration of S. Giovanni a Porta Latina when the campanile was built. This was only one of several restorations on record as being needed throughout the centuries, as the area became completely depopulated and isolated. At the end of the 18th century some of the ancient Roman columns re-used in the porch and nave were allegedly appropriated for San Giovanni in Laterano (an indignity also suffered by San Saba) and replaced with inferior ones, as the church and adjoining convent belonged to the Canons Regular of the Lateran. The ancient columns in the church came, according to tradition, from a local temple of Diana, but they are a mixed lot and obviously came from several structures. The cardinalate title was only created in 1517.

French soldiers used the church as a barracks after the invasion in 1798. After that, it was first turned into a warehouse for wool and then a tannery. However, in 1905 the Annunciation sisters (who had moved here from Santa Maria Annunziata delle Turchine) began a thorough restoration which lasted intermittently until the 1940's. This involved removing all Baroque embellishements in favour of the pure Romanesque style. During the restoration in 1913-1915 F. Paul Styge and Mon. Joseph Wilpert discovered and restored a fresco above the high altar. Later, upon further renovations, they discovered an entire fresco cycle on the nave walls. By 1941 the Rosminian Fathers completely restored the fresco cycle.

The current titular of the church is H.E. Franciszek Cardinal Macharski, archbishop of Kraków, who has been its titular since 1979.

Exterior

The exterior walls are all in brick. The entrance is on a courtyard with iron railings separating it from a quiet piazza just north of the former convent rebuilt by the Lateran canons in the 18th century, which separates the church from the road. This now the central curia or headquarters of the Institute of Charity (IC) or Rosminians, founded by Antonio Rosmini.

Nice tree. The well is behind the left hand railings.

There is an extrance narthex, with a pitched tiled roof and five rather narrow arches with brick voussoirs and re-used ancient columns. They are mismatched, being green marble, grey granite, red granite and white marble. They have Ionic capitals, except the green one which has a debased Doric one. The white marble one is ribbed. Above the narthex, the gable end wall of the nave is pierced by three arched windows in a row, with fretted marble screens. There is a glazed round window under the gable. In the narthex on the right is the original stone finial of San Giovanni in Oleo. Pieces of ancient sculpture have been used in the pavement.

The campanile is from the 12th century restoration and was inserted into the narthex on the left hand side, an odd arrangement which has been copied at San Giustino. It stands six stories above the narthex roof, each storey separated from the next by a dentillate cornice. The second storey displays an arched recess, the third one has two arches separated by a brick pier and the top three storeys have triple arches having marble columns and capitals.

The well in the forecourt is ancient, a very rare survival of the 9th century and a witness to the collapse of the ancient aqueducts which used to supply the water. It has a wellhead in white marble, shaped like an inverted tree stump and bearing bearing naïve relief carvings of interlinked wheels and an abbreviated Latin inscription around the rim. This reads "In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Omnes sitientes venite ad aquas Ego Stefano", meaning "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. All who thirst, come to the waters. I, Stephen." The last is thought to be the carver. This wellhead is flanked by two small ancient marble Corinthinan columns. On the other side of the courtyard is a cedar tree, which looks old enough to have been planted when the restoration started in 1905.

From outside you can see that the triple apses are polygonal, which is an Eastern feature. The main apse has three large arched windows fenestrated with selenite (a kind of alabaster) rather than glass. There are windows at Santa Sabina treated in this way.

Interior

The nave arcades have five ancient columns on either side, an interesting mix of types and colours of stone. The columns nearest the sanctuary, unlike the others, consist of white marble with deep fluting. However, they have been provided with matching Ionic capitals. Above the arcades are arched windows. The wooden roof is open and trussed.

The basilica now resembles its twelth century design since the baroque architecture was removed during the most restorations. During these latest restoration, F. Paul Styge and Mon. Joseph Wilpert discovered a fresco cylcle under the plaster of in the nave. Fragments of ancient sculptures have been reused in the pavement of the sanctuary as in the narthex, and some of the pieces can be interesting. There are traces of cosmatesque pavement near the sanctuary.

Selected Bibliography

Armellini, Mariono and Carlo Cecchelli. La chiese di Roma dal secolo IV al XIX. Roma: Edizioni R.O.R.E. di N. Ruffolo, 1942.

Crescimbeni, Giovanni Mario. L' Istoria della Chiesa di S. Giovanni avanti Porta Latina. Rome, 1716.

Frothingham, Arthur. The monuments of Christian Rome from Constantine to the Renaissance. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1908.

Kehr, Paul. Italia pontificia, sive, Repertorium privilegiorum et litterarum a Romanis. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gött, 1907.

Kirsch, Johann P. Die römischen Titlekirchen im Altertum. Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1918.

Krautheimer, Richard. "An Oriental Basilica in Rome: S. Giovanni a Porta Latina." American Journal of Archaeology 40/4 (1936): 485-495. http://www.jstor.org/stable/498800.

Krautheimer, Richard. Corpus Basilicarum christianarum Romae. The early Christian basilicas of Rome (IV-IX cent.). Città del Vaticano: Pontificio istituto di archeologia Cristiana, 1937.

Hülsen, Christian. Le chiese di Roma nel medio evo. Florence, 1927.

Manion, Margaret M., “The frescoes of S. Giovanni a Porta Latina in Rome” (PhD diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1972).

Matthiae, Guglielmo. S. Giovanni a Porta lainta e I’Oratorio di San Giovanni in Oleo. Le Chiese di Roma Illustrate 51. Rome, N.D.

Nordhagen, Per Jonas. Constantinople on the Tiber: the Byzantines in Rome and the Iconography of their Images in Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough. Brill Academic Pub, 1962.

Wilpert, Josef and Walter N. Schumacher. D'ie römischen Mosaiken der kirchlichen Bauten vom IV.-XIII. Jahrhundert. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1917.

External links

Official diocesan web-page

Italian Wikipedia page

Church's website

Aerial photos

"ArcheoGuida" web-page (Italian)

SPQR web-page

Rosminian web-site

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