page_title: San Clemente al Laterano
section_title: 4th-11th century
hierarchical_section_title: San Clemente al Laterano / History / 4th-11th century
caption_attribution_description: Interior of the Basilica di San Clemente, Rome, Italy.
context_page_description: The Basilica of Saint Clement is a Roman Catholic minor basilica dedicated to Pope Clement I located in Rome, Italy. Archaeologically speaking, the structure is a three-tiered complex of buildings: the present basilica built just before the year 1100 during the height of the Middle Ages; beneath the present basilica is a 4th-century basilica that had been converted out of the home of a Roman nobleman, part of which had in the 1st century briefly served as an early church, and the basement of which had in the 2nd century briefly served as a mithraeum; the home of the Roman nobleman had been built on the foundations of republican era villa and warehouse that had been destroyed in the Great Fire of 64 AD.
context_section_description: At some time in the 4th century, the lower level of the industrial building was filled in with dirt and rubble and its second floor remodeled. An apse was built out over part of the domus, whose lowest floor, with the Mithraeum, was also filled in. This "first basilica" is known to have existed in 392, when St. Jerome wrote of the church dedicated to St. Clement, i.e. Pope Clement I, a 1st-century AD Christian convert and previously considered by patrologists and ecclesiastical historians to be identical with Titus Flavius Clemens. Restorations were undertaken in the 9th century and ca 1080-99.
  The early basilica was the site of councils presided over by Pope Zosimus (417) and Symmachus (499).  The last major event that took place in the lower basilica was the election in 1099 of Cardinal Rainerius of St Clemente as Pope Paschal II.
  Apart from those in Santa Maria Antiqua, the largest collection of Early Medieval wall paintings in Rome is to be found in the lower basilica of San Clemente.
  Four of the largest frescoes in the basilica were sponsored by a lay couple, Beno de Rapiza and Maria Macellaria, at some time in the last third of the 11th century and focus on the life, miracles, and translation of St. Clement, and on the life of St. Alexius. Beno and Maria are shown in two of the compositions, once on the façade of the basilica together with their children, Altilia and Clemens ("puerulus Clemens," i.e. "little boy Clement"), offering gifts to St. Clement, and on a pillar on the left side of the nave, where they are portrayed on a small scale witnessing a miracle performed by St. Clement. Below this last scene is one of the earliest examples of the passage from Latin to vernacular Italian: a fresco of the pagan Sisinnius and his servants, who think they have captured St. Clement but are dragging a column instead. Sisinnius encourages the servants in Italian "Fili de le pute, traite! Gosmari, Albertel, traite! Falite dereto colo palo, Carvoncelle!", which, translated into English means: "Come on, you sons of bitches, pull! Come on, Gosmari, Albertello, pull! Carvoncello, give it to him from the back with the pole!" The saint speaks in Latin, in a cross-shaped inscription: "Duritiam cordis vestris, saxa trahere meruistis", which means "You deserved to drag stones due to the hardness of your hearts."
  Art historians have long regarded Beno de Rapiza and Maria Macellaria as partisans of the now-canonical 'reform' popes Gregory VII, Urban II, and Paschal II and the frescoes as reform-party propaganda. However, if the paintings date to the 1080s or 1090s, as many art historians believe, then Beno and Maria may instead have favoured the Antipope Clement III (Wibert of Ravenna), whom they sought to honour through paintings about the early Christian pope of the same name.
caption: Interior of the second basilica
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