The Eternal City

Rome in early November is alive with the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of the autumn season, and I have a particular fondness for pasta stuffed with pumpkin, as well as the pervasive aroma of roasted chestnuts.  The weather is also turning.  The leaves are falling from the trees, and there is only a single day without rain. 

In a place that has been an important site of human activity in an unbroken tradition extending more than two and a half millennia, it is perhaps not a surprise that new grist for the mills of archaeologists and historians is continually coming to light.  Rome never ceases to amaze, and I am there primarily to examine a large mural of the early 8^th century which was rediscovered in 2010 on the narthex wall of the Early Christian church of Santa Sabina, beneath later accretions of plaster and whitewash.  The discovery itself is not new to me.  I first looked at it in February 2011, and presented initial findings at two conferences earlier this year.  But recent work has revealed more of the painted inscription on the upper border, including the name of the pope in whose time the priests Theodore and George commissioned this large image of the Madonna and Child enthroned with saints and donors, apparently in fulfillment of a vow.

The pope is now known to be Constantine, which makes the dating rather easy as there is only one pope who bore this name, and he occupied the episcopal throne of St Peter between the years 708 and 715.  Historians of the early Middle Ages tend to struggle for information, not only due to a comparative lack of surviving documents but also because those few documents which have managed to survive mostly lack dates, and hence a precise context.  So, to have a mural that includes portraits of three contemporary figures, all identified by name, including a reigning pope whose presence permits an accurate dating, is highly unusual – and of course very welcome.  Actually, that’s an enormous understatement.  For those of us who toil in the trenches of the history of medieval Rome, this discovery is HUGE!  Our understanding of political and cultural life in Rome in a period normally dismissed contemptuously as the “Dark Ages” will be much changed as a result.  And yes, I shall confess that I am quite excited!

It is not for nothing that Rome has come to be known as the “Eternal City”, a place of much fascination, both intellectual and sensual.