12 - Gregory IX and Rome: Artistic Patronage, Ceremonies and Ritual Space

Summary

Abstract

Literature on Gregory IX's patronage has hitherto considered the facade mosaics of Old St Peter's as his ‘only known enterprise’ in Rome. Previously overlooked sources (both documentary and epigraphic), combined with a fresh analysis of architectural and material evidence, lead us to demonstrate that his attention to the City was much more wide-ranging and of a far greater scope: from churches to welfare structures and urban infrastructures, including a poorhouse, the major bridge of Rome and a sewer system for the viability of the streets; from buildings in the Patriarchio to a stauroteca for the Holy Cross, from textiles to the finest manuscripts; from the commission of a monumental bell for the promotion of the Vatican, not to mention his intervention in favour of the Franciscans. Furthermore, grandly orchestrated processions throughout the city played just as an important role as the ‘patronage’ itself in shaping the Rome of Gregory IX.

Keywords: Vatican, Lateran, processions, icons, relics

It is often stated that ‘the facade mosaics of Old Saint Peter's are Gregory IX's only known enterprise in Rome’. Such a statement, and those analogous to it, do not surprise in as much as the facade mosaics of the Vatican basilica were ‘one of the most prominent of all papal decorative campaigns throughout the thirteenth century’, and have thus succeeded in overshadowing the memory of any other instance of Gregory's patronage for the city. Indeed, recent research – based, inter alia, on the discovery of hitherto overlooked sources – has unveiled several neglected aspects of the mosaics. This in turn has led to a reappraisal of relic distribution in Old Saint Peter’s, ultimately leading to a new interpretation of the facade as ‘an extraordinary dense manifesto of both Gregory IX's ecclesiology and eschatology, as well as of his idea of the role of a changing Church – and of the pope as its leader – in guiding the faithful on the right path both on earth and to Heaven’.

Despite the undoubted importance of the Vatican campaign, Gregory's patronage and attention for the Urbe was far from being limited to it alone. After all, during his fourteen-year pontificate he devoted energy and financial resources to several significant building campaigns outside Rome and it would have been surprising had he only focused on one single enterprise in the Eternal City.