The Basilica of San Clemente is important for both archaeological and historical research. The church that now stands was built upon a 4th century church, which contains several restored frescoes, and a large amount of recovered roman tiles with Latin inscriptions which were used to reconstruct the walls. This church was also built on the site of an early Roman area, with sites like a Temple of Mithras, a cult imported into the Roman Empire from Persia, which competed with Christianity as the premise of the cult was very similar. There are also roman villas and a street which have been excavated at the same level as the temple. There are also several artefacts, such as busts and large storage jars which have been preserved, which was useful when looking to identify the historical period the temple was built in. There is a spring which runs alongside the temple and villas, which suggests why the homes and temple were built there, as they would have constant access to freshwater. When undergoing the archaeological excavations the water level was extremely high and had to be drained before any more excavations could be completed. This was not the only archaeological difficulty in this project, and when the church underneath the current Basilica was first discovered the entire chamber was filled with rubble, which had to be taken out through a small hole in the ceiling. After this, several of the frescoes were revealed, including one of the Virgin Mary that, despite efforts to maintain it, crumbled to reveal and older fresco in a niche, also of the Virgin Mary but in the Byzantine style. This fresco was interesting when compared to later styles, as the Virgin Mary is depicted like a Byzantine princess with a headdress and not a halo. The current Basilica also has some fascinating artefacts, such as a genuine Cosmati pavement. These pavements were designed by a thirteenth century family, and uses geometric swirls that can be followed infinitely. These pavements are almost solely used for religious buildings, as the infinite circles are symbolic of the never-ending life for the followers of Christianity, and the infinity of the universe and God’s ultimate power. These pavements can also be found in places like the Sancta Sanctorum, the pope’s private chapel. Due to the exquisite craftsmanship of these pavements, they were expensive, therefore suggesting that at the time the current basilica was built, and Christianity was thriving in Rome as the Church was wealthy enough to commission this pavement. The current basilica is run by the Irish Dominicans, and has been since 1667 when Pope Urban VIII gave the catholic clergy refuge when they were expelled from England. The current basilica has several frescoes dedicated to Saint Catherine, such as one of her attempting to preach Christianity to several Roman officials, and images of her martyrdom on the wheel. There is also an apse mosaic showing the tree of life, in a Byzantine style, with images of prophets and the disciples depicted as sheep below this. This is a very ornate apse mosaic, and is one of the earliest made.
CMRC Research Blog – Gallery of Maps

The Gallery of Maps, in what is now the Vatican Museums, will be the subject of this post. The gallery, which displays forty maps in fresco form, was painted between 1580 and 1585 at the commission of Pope Gregory XIII; the maps – which depict the different regions of Italy ruled by the papacy – were based on drawings made by Ignazio Danti, a contemporary geographer and cartographer.[1] The gallery provides many insights into the power, position and political thought of the papacy at the beginning of the early modern period, but this blog will focus on three points of particular interest to me: first, the gallery’s expression of papal power and opulence; second, its reference to and support of early modern academia; and third, its function as a physical space both in the early modern period, and now.
First and foremost, the gallery was designed to construct a very specific image of Gregory XIII’s papacy; the maps – which are elaborately decorated – not only highlight the opulence of the papal court, but also emphasise that the Italian regions were papal properties, ruled and controlled by the papacy. This papal statement is important because it deliberately highlights the ‘dual character of the papal office’ – i.e. that the pope was directly involved in ‘both spiritual functions and secular lordship’ – and places great emphasis on the papacy’s ‘secular authority’ over Italy.[2] By choosing to decorate the Vatican palace with maps of papal properties, Gregory XIII embodies the early modern transition ‘towards new emphasis on the monarchical character of the papal office’ which is discussed in detail by Fernandez.[3]
This increasing emphasis on representing the Vatican as a monarchical court is also revealed by the gallery’s reference to and support for contemporary academia. During the early modern period, Rome’s papal court was ‘one of the most influential models […] for the royal households’ of Europe – it became a ‘major centre’ for both ‘politics and diplomacy’ and ‘literary and artistic tastes’.[4] The maps are geographically accurate – highlighting the papacy’s involvement in contemporary scientific discovery and innovation – but interestingly, they also frequently allude to themes and ideology from classical Rome, which had begun to appear ‘prominently in court iconography’ all over Europe during this period.[5] The inclusion of these themes allowed the pope to assert a threefold authority over early modern Europe: not only was he a spiritual leader, but his secular court was at the forefront of scientific innovation and discovery; and if that wasn’t enough to assert his dominance, the pope could still claim to be a descendent of imperial Rome, a successor of the ‘deified Roman emperors’ who had conquered the world.[6]
Even today, a lot of the power in the gallery is in how it functions as a physical space. As Fernandez argues, the rooms of the Vatican Palace were ‘primarily created to provide a setting for pageantry and ceremonial’ – in the gallery, architecture plays an important role in the construction of that setting.[7] The room is very long and narrow, with a seemingly eternal and heavily gilded ceiling; the maps – which stretch floor to ceiling – line the walls on either side. The ceiling is particularly striking; it seems to go on forever, symbolising the eternal might and perpetual expansion of the regional properties of papal Rome. The creation of such a setting is undoubtedly deliberate; the combination of contemporary and opulent architecture, scientific innovation and classical ideology solidify the image of the papacy as an ‘influential model’ for the rest of Europe.[8]
When examined in greater detail, these points may be beneficial to wider studies in this field; I believe that the gallery is vitally important in providing an insight into the carefully constructed papal imagery of the early modern period. As I have suggested, Gregory XIII deliberately sought to connect himself and his papacy with Rome; in his creation of the gallery, Gregory became one of many who sought to represent and rule ‘the city as something more than a city, as an idea or symbol of grandeur […], Christianity, imperium, and beauty’.[9] This manipulation of the idea of Rome is as relevant today as it was in the early modern period; as McCahill suggests, the ‘city has grown slowly over time, each era and ideal superimposed on the last’ – the gallery then, can help us not only to understand early modern representations, but also modern perceptions of both the papacy and Rome.[10]
[1] ‘The Gallery of Maps’, in Vatican State Website
<https://www.vaticanstate.va/content/en/monumenti/musei-vaticani/galleria-delle-carte geografiche.paginate.1.html> [accessed 14th April 2018]
[2] I. S. Robinson, ‘Rome and the Patrimony of St. Peter’, in I. S. Robinson, The Papacy 1073 – 1198: Continuity and Innovation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 3 – 31, (pp. 18 – 20).
[3] Henry Dietrich Fernandez, ‘The Patrimony of St. Peter: The Papal Court at Rome c. 1450 – 1700’, in John Adamson, The Princely Courts of Europe 1500 – 1750, (London: Seven Dials, 1999), pp. 141 – 164, (p. 141).
[4] Fernandez, p. 142.
[5] Fernandez, p. 153.
[6] Fernandez, p. 153.
[7] Fernandez, p. 147.
[8] Fernandez, p. 142.
[9] Elizabeth McCahill, Reviving the Eternal City: Rome and the Papal Court 1420 – 1447, (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2013), (p. 1).
[10] McCahill, p. 1.
CMRC 2018 RESEARCH REPORT – Salisbury Cathedral

For my project I will be looking at Salisbury Cathedral as a working religious building and investigating how the religious Reformation orchestrated by Henry VIII affected it during the 1530s/40s. The official cathedral website can be quoted as saying that Salisbury ‘faced less of an adjustment’ than other cathedrals. This immediately interested me as some cathedrals suffered huge disturbance at the hands of this religious change, and I wanted to know why Salisbury was different. I was also interested because the cathedral website only touches briefly on the subject of the Reformation; the only information given by the website is that Salisbury experienced few alterations, and that it’s ‘basic organisation […] didn’t change.’ Immediately after reading, I felt that this was likely a very watered-down version of events, and I wondered how so little change really could be possible at this significant place during such major religious upheaval. Perhaps the running of the Cathedral remained largely unaffected, but this does not touch on any possible theological, material or architectural changes felt at Salisbury.
In this MA, I am specialising in the Tudors; specifically, the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Last term I learnt about Henry VIII’s own personal religious practices both before and after the reformation through architectural scholarship and examining inventories of Henry’s private possessions in Maria Hayward’s module Fashioning the Tudor Court. I also learnt about how the royal family as a whole observed their religious beliefs throughout Henry VIII’s reign. Currently, I am taking George Bernard’s module Religion and Politics in Henry VIII’s England, where we have looked specifically at the running of working religious buildings and the components of pre- Reformation religious life and worship during Henry VIII’s reign. Furthermore, we have contrasted this with changes faced by these places in general during and after the Reformation. Maria’s module made me curious to see how the Reformation directly affected religious institutions that were outside of the royal bubble, and George’s has given me the opportunity to look at the wider affects of the Reformation. Therefore, this project will relate to my personal research by allowing me to build on my previous (more general) knowledge of Reformation by using Salisbury as a case study to see how an individual religious site was affected in specific detail. I want to examine how the Reformation affected Salisbury and those within it who had dedicated their lives to a faith that was arguably being changed beyond recognition by a king who really had very little intent on observing truly protestant beliefs. To do this, I think briefly comparing Salisbury to another cathedral throughout my project will be extremely useful. Through doing so, I am hoping to establish what changes at Salisbury were typical or unusual, and to highlight any trends and differences between the two places. For this comparison, I will be using either Winchester or Canterbury Cathedral as these were other significant cathedrals during the Tudor era and underwent changes due to the Reformation.
In terms of both past and present scholarship Salisbury Cathedral has been heavily examined, with a lot of scholastic focus on the cathedral’s architectural qualities. Most have chosen to write on specific parts of the cathedral, such as Cathy Oakes who has closely studied the Tudor chantry chapel of Bishop Edmund Audley, and Matthew M. Reeve who has written on specific works of art inside of the cathedral. Lots of scholars do seem to touch on the effects of the Reformation on Salisbury Cathedral, but I have not yet found anyone focusing purely on any element during this certain period in the cathedral’s history.
By using some of this wider scholarship which focuses on specific elements of the cathedral I am hoping to build up a clear picture of any changing elements of the cathedral during the Reformation. I will also use a large body of archival evidence to ascertain what did and didn’t change in different areas of the cathedral at this time. I am hoping that this will allow me to ultimately offer a concise and comprehensive record which focuses on Salisbury Cathedral and the changes it faced as a result of Henry VIII’s Reformation.
See link to Salisbury Cathedral website’s Reformation page here:
https://www.salisburycathedral.org.uk/history/reformation
Hello World!
Welcome to the CMRC Core Course Blog 2017-18.