Schismatic (Re)Visions: Sant’Elia near Nepi and Sta. Maria in Trastevere in Rome, 1120–1143

The ecclesiastical art and architecture of early twelfth-century Rome are often interpreted as communicating political positions in a period of conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. This article addresses the processes and ramifications, medieval and modern, of this politicization of Rome’s ecclesiastical landscape through three interwoven cases. The first is the monastic church of Sant’Elia, built about 1125 near Nepi. Earlier studies of Sant’Elia’s architecture, frescoes, and Cosmati marble work generally dismiss the church as a provincial emulation of Roman structures, but art historical and historical evidence reveals a fully Roman church built by an important patron to demarcate the northern limit of papal territory, a meaning lost through both historical change and scholarly bias. A fresco in Sant’Elia of the Madonna della Clemenza, the famous icon of Sta. Maria in Trastevere, is a primary sign of the church’s romanitas and connections to the early twelfth-century popes Calixtus II and Anacletus II. Examination of the icon’s history demonstrates how it came to symbolize Calixtine and Anacletan authority and the repercussions of this link after Anacletus’s postmortem redefinition as antipope to Innocent II. Applying the results of these two cases to Sta. Maria suggests that the Trastevere church was built by Anacletus to honor its icon but was later claimed by Innocent through the insertion of an apse mosaic that both annulled the icon’s Anacletan symbolism and replaced that pope’s patronal memory with that of Innocent—an act of historical erasure perpetuated by medieval and modern authors.