The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575

and the Image of Pilgrimage

Barbara Wisch, SUNY Cortland

I f the reports of contemporary observers and chroniclers are to be believed, the Holy Year of 1575
was the most impressive religious spectacle that had ever been seen in cinquecento Rome.1 The
reigning pope, Gregory XIII (1572–1585), viewed the celebration as the culminating symbol of Catho-
lic spirituality, unity, and restoration. He had spent the preceding two years in strenuous preparation
for the event, encouraging cardinals, noble families, and religious orders to restore dilapidated church
buildings and complete languishing decorative and architectural projects. To this end, the pope
personally sponsored a network of urban improvements to aid the passage of pilgrims.2 Inviting the
faithful to pilgrimage and penitence, the Jubilee of 1575 reminded every Catholic that only the pope
had the power to distribute the treasury of grace and merit—and grant the all-encompassing plenary
indulgence—that could lead the faithful to salvation. The Catholic population of Europe seems to
have responded to the call in previously unheard-of numbers. According to the best estimates, some
400,000 pilgrims came to Rome during the Holy Year, compared to about 30,000 in normal years.
This extraordinary influx, in turn, changed traditional patterns of receiving, lodging, and feeding the
pilgrims as well as guiding them to the principal churches to earn the Jubilee indulgence. In Rome,
organizing and carrying out these charitable and pious acts became the duty of confraternities.3
Another significant innovation of the Jubilee of 1575 was the prolific production of printed
images made specifically for that year. These prints differed in type and quantity from those made
for earlier Jubilees. Indeed, there seems to have been no independent pictorial graphic production
directly related to Jubilees between 1450 and 1550. In contrast, the prints created for the Holy Year

Parts of this essay were presented as papers: “‘Cresciute al
numero di nove’: Panvinio, Lafreri, and Le sette chiese di
Roma” at the conference “Unità e frammenti di modernità:
Arte e scienza nella Roma di Gregorio XIII Boncompagni
(1572–1585),” sponsored by the University of Rome “La
Sapienza” and the American Academy in Rome (Rome
2004); and “Revolution 9: Revisiting the Principal Pilgrim-
age Churches of Rome,” Renaissance Society of America
(Cambridge, UK 2005).
1
The literature on the Holy Year of 1575 is too vast to be
reiterated here. Perali 1928, 22–27. See also Fagiolo and
Madonna 1984; Fagiolo and Madonna 1985; Gamrath 1987;
Fagiolo and Madonna 1998. Manni 1750, 128: As late as 1750,
Manni unequivocably accepted earlier judgments: “uno de’
più rinomati Anni Santi, sè per la moltiplicità delle genti, che
vi concorse, e siè per le pie opere, che vi furono esercitate, e
sopratutto vien notato per lo più celebre del secolo XVI. dal
Cardinal di Verona nel Libro suo del Giubileo del MDC”
(“one of the most renowned Holy Years, both for the mul-
tiplicity of peoples gathered there, and for the pious works
that were practiced there, and above all it became noted as
the most celebrated of the sixteenth century, by the Cardinal
of Verona in his Book on the Jubilee of 1600”).
2
For the pontificate of Gregory XIII, see Pastor 1955. The
woodcut by Nicholas Van Aelst, Portrait of Gregory XIII
and His Deeds, published in M. Ciappi, Compendio delle
heroiche et gloriose attioni, et santa vita di Papa Greg. XIII
(Rome 1596), demonstrates the centrality of the Holy Year
among the accomplishments of Gregory’s reign by illustrat-
ing the opening of the Holy Door directly above the pope’s
head. The improvement of thoroughfares is depicted in the
lowest register just to the right of center. For an illustration,
see Courtright 2003, fig. 4. For the roadways for pilgrims,
see Freiberg 1991, 66–87, esp. 70; Freiberg 1995, 17–18. See
also Jacks 1989.
3
Wisch 1990.

MAAR 56/57, 2011/2012

 272 Barbara Wisch

Fig. 1. Anonymous (attrib. Stefano Duperac), Le sette chiese di Roma (Rome: Antonio Lafreri 1575),
etching with engraving. Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana (photo © Bibliotheca Hertziana–Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte).

of 1575 included interpretative reproductions of significant religious works and new kinds of docu-
mentation regarding the celebrations.4 Among these, Le sette chiese di Roma (The seven churches
of Rome), an etching with engraving published by Antonio Lafreri in Rome in 1575 (fig. 1), stands
out as the defining image of Gregory’s Holy Year. It was also one of the most influential, inspiring
a fascinating series of prints that promoted and preserved the memory of this and later Jubilees.
In a broader sense, this print may be said to have literally created the matrix—in the form of the
original copperplate as well as the pictorial conception—of Rome’s principal pilgrimage churches.
Despite its ubiquitous appearance as an illustration of the Holy Year of 1575 in modern histories
of the period, Le sette chiese print itself has received insufficient scholarly attention.5 In this study, I
would like to reconsider the etching as a site of innovative sacred strategies that are also indicative
of the vibrant print culture that flourished in late cinquecento Rome. It has been observed that this

4 5
C. Esposito 1984; Prosperi Valenti Rodinò 1998. See also Rinaldi 1985; San Juan 2001, 112–116; Woodward 2007b,
San Juan 2001, 112–119; Bury 2001, 121–135; Witcombe 10–11; Witcombe 2008, 253.
2008, 251–268.
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 273

image promulgates a finite vision of Roma Sancta as well as a grand allegory of salvation through
pilgrimage to the Seven Principal Churches. These churches, among the oldest in Rome, conserved
the most venerated relics and remained foremost in the sacred geography of the Eternal City for
many centuries. The arduous passage, traversing the city and rolling countryside, covered about
sixteen miles and was ideally completed in one day.6
In the print, Rome is depicted as something much more complex than the endpoint, or goal, of
the Holy Year pilgrimage. To put it another way, it is not only the veritas but the via, as Alessandro
Rinaldi has so eloquently phrased it. In this study, I would like to expand upon, or to put it more
literally, to lengthen this notion of the via. In particular, I will propose that in addition to the first
pictorial “codification,” as it were, of the tradition of the Seven Principal Churches, the 1575 print
also signals the expansion of this venerable tradition to incorporate two additional sites, which were
located outside the southeastern walls of the city. These are the still-famous and frequently visited
abbey and shrines at Tre Fontane and the now little-known Church of Santa Maria Annunziata,
also called the Annunziatella (located outside the Porta San Sebastiano), which, taken together,
augmented the number of privileged churches from seven to nine. Although it has been assumed
that the new sequence of Nine Churches was instituted for the first time in the Jubilee of 1600, I
will demonstrate here how this transformation was, in fact, initiated centuries earlier. I shall also
explore the ways that Le sette chiese print showcased the central role that the city’s confraternities
played, as guides to the great pilgrimage churches and, more broadly, in shaping Roman devotional
culture. By reintegrating Le sette chiese di Roma into the rituals of pilgrimage, guidebook literature,
and print publishing in the Eternal City, I hope to cast new light on this original pictorial matrix.

1. The Matrix of 1575

Measuring 390 × 495 mm, the copperplate (now lost) was large, which necessitated its being printed
on a foglio reale, the second largest of the standardized paper sizes.7 The text inscribed on the fictive
plaque on the lower right reads:

the seven churches of rome / Now that the year of the Holy Jubilee has arrived, conceded by
Our Lord Gregory XIII according to the ancient custom, this drawing was made with the circuit
of Rome where are seen the said churches, taken from the original, and if they have not been
placed in their [proper] location, every judicious person will know that the reason is due to not
having enough space. Of these seven churches four are privileged, marked with the Saints to
whom they are dedicated and with a + and in these is earned the Holy Jubilee [indulgence], by
which God grants us his Holy peace, in order to be able to acquire it in the present year 1575.
[At the establishment of] antonio lafreri, in rome.8

6 8
Ponnelle and Bordet 1979, 190–191; Pastor 1963, 289–290.
The distances related in travelers’ accounts are unreliable
since the length of a mile varied from place to place, even
if based on the ancient Roman mile, the mille passuum or a
thousand paces; see Mączak 1995, 254–259.
7
Landau and Parshall 1994, 16; Bury 2001, 45. A foglio reale
measures approximately 445 (or 448) × 615 mm, the size
of the sheet necessary for Le sette chiese di Roma, allowing
sufficient margins. The largest size was the carta imperiale,
measuring 500 × 740 mm.
le sette chiese di roma / Per esser venuto lanno del Santo
Jubileo con: / cesso da Nostro Sigre Gregorio XIII secondo
/ lanticho consueto a fatto questo disegno con il / circuito
de Roma dove si vedeno dette chiese / cavate dal naturale
et se non sono poste nel / suo luogo, ogni persona iuditiosa
conoscera / depender la causa per non haver piu spatio / Di
queste sette chiese quattro sono pivile: (sic) / giate segnate
con li Santi a chi sono de: / dicate et con una + et in esse
si piglia il / Santo Jubileo, il quale i Dio cidia sua Santa /
pace per poterlo acquistare nel presente / anno 1575. ant.
lafrerii romae.
274 Barbara Wisch

This map itself falls within the well-established tradition of bird’s-eye perspective views, a conven-
tion in mapping and topographical landscape painting that had been employed since antiquity.
Inscribed both within and outside the turreted Aurelian Wall with its well-defined gates, these
maps included a compendium of the principal landmarks of Rome, observed from a high vantage
point. By 1575, this type of cityscape had become the standard representation, culminating an evo-
lution that spanned the relative abstraction of late medieval maps to the carefully measured views
of entire cities that were produced during the cinquecento.9 With southeast at the top, the selected
monuments are meticulously depicted in perspective, with the churches “taken from the original”
as the text records, in their relative positions, but “turned” northwest to face the viewer’s idealized
position. Although during the sixteenth century the claim to “mirrorlike” realism became standard
for the topographical city view,10 the text here focuses attention on the conceptual, spatial layout
and appeals to the “judicious” viewer to recognize the distortions. The print’s ingenuity lies in its
profound interweaving of realistic vedute (views) and a vision of salvation reified by ritual procession.
The print’s lively rendering of line and the scenographic effect of the harmonious composi-
tion have suggested the authorship of the celebrated French printmaker Étienne Du Pérac (ca.
1525–1604), who was called Stefano Duperac in Italy.11 An engineer, architect, and diligent student
of antiquity, he was in Rome by 1550. While there he published numerous vedute, maps, and books
in the highly successful Roman printing establishments of his countrymen, Antoine Lafréry, called
Antonio Lafreri (or Lafrery) (ca. 1512–1577), and the latter’s well-known rival, Laurent de la Vac-
cherie, called Lorenzo Vaccari (fl. 1574–1608).12 As we know from its listing in the inventories of
Lafreri’s establishment, Le sette chiese di Roma was sold as a single sheet. However, it was quickly
incorporated among the diverse maps and prints representing ancient and modern Rome that privi-
leged clients collected to create their personal editions of the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae
(The mirror of Roman magnificence), for which, by 1575, Lafreri had published an undated title
page, convincingly attributed to Duperac.13 Le sette chiese seems to have been an immediate suc-
cess. Indeed, it appears that within a few months of its first production, it was copied with minor
variations by Pietro de’ Nobili (fl. 1580s), who claimed ownership of the reworked plate.14

2. The Venerable Matrix: The Seven Principal Churches of Rome

The first really comprehensive, scholarly investigation of the Seven Churches of Rome may be
credited to the distinguished Augustinian historian and antiquarian Onofrio Panvinio (1530–1568),
9
The literature on Renaissance cartography is vast. See
Woodward 2007a. See also Miller 2003, esp. 103–110 and the
extensive bibliography. For maps of Rome, see Frutaz 1962.
10
Nuti 1994, esp. 108.
11
Catelli Isola and Beltrame Quattrocchi 1975, 30.
12
For the rivalry, see Witcombe 2008.
13
Ehrle 1908; Huelsen 1921; Lowry 1952; Bury 2001, 50,
59–60; Parshall 2006; Zorach 2008.
14
The assumption has been that Pietro de’ Nobili copied
the Lafreri print during the Holy Year to benefit from its ap-
parent commercial success. The text is almost identical. The
signature reads “Petri de Nobilibus Formis.” “Formis” refers
to the publisher who was in possession of the plate (forma).
Except for this print, Pietro de’ Nobili is undocumented at
this date. Therefore, it is worthwhile to question whether he
actually made the new plate at that time, even though the
inscription claims “al presente anno 1575.” However, it seems
unlikely that de’ Nobili had actually obtained the original
plate since it remained in the inventory of Lafreri and his
heirs. He must have made a new plate, transforming those
sections he deemed an improvement (see note 83 below) and
claiming ownership of the design. If de’ Nobili’s version of
Le sette chiese di Roma was made around 1582, the year a
few prints bear the names of both Lafreri and de’ Nobili,
the ongoing fame of Pope Gregory’s Holy Year is further
demonstrated. For the documents concerning de’ Nobili’s
inventory in 1584, see Lincoln 2000, 185–188.
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 275

whose De praecipuis urbis Romae sanctioribusque basilicis, quas septem ecclesias vulgo vocant (Con-
cerning the most notable and most holy basilicas of the city of Rome, which are called commonly
the seven churches) was published, posthumously, in Rome in 1570.15 An Italian translation, aimed
at a wider audience of devout Catholics—Le sette chiese principali di Roma (The seven principal
churches of Rome)—was published at the same time.16 Although early guidebooks had devoted
considerable attention to the Seven Churches, and included discussion of their histories, relics,
and other relevant features, Panvinio’s was a serious, intellectual endeavor, particularly concerned
with the founding and early history of the churches gleaned from textual sources, which he quoted
extensively, and from his own astute observations, scrupulously gathered during the author’s short
but energetic life.17 In 1575, just five years after the first edition had appeared, Panvinio’s text was
reprinted in full for the Holy Year by Canon Pier Francesco Zino of Verona, whose voluminous
handbook for pious pilgrims included many “marvelous things pertinent to the journey, and the
Churches and the antiquities of Rome,” as the title stated.18 In the same year, Marco Attilio Serrano
published his own study, De septem Urbis ecclesiis (Concerning the seven churches of the city of
Rome), which depended heavily on Panvinio’s information and methodology, augmented by the
author’s own investigation into the historical sources.19
Panvinio’s first chapter opens with a discussion of the five principal and patriarchal churches
in the order of their foundation: San Salvatore (later called San Giovanni in Laterano), San Pi-
etro, San Paolo fuori le mura, Santa Maria Maggiore, and San Lorenzo fuori le mura. They were
established, he reports, to honor the five principal patriarchates of Christendom: Constantinople,
Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Rome.20 As devout Christians flocked to these most celebrated
churches, he continues, two others came to be included in their pious passage: San Sebastiano, with
the “cemetery of Callisto and the Catacombs filled with so many bodies of the saints,” situated
on the route between San Paolo and San Giovanni; and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, “adorned
with the most noble relics,” between San Giovanni and San Lorenzo. The mystical number seven,
it was believed, evoked the seven churches of Asia mentioned in the book of Revelation (1:4, 11,
and 2–3). The Seven Churches of Rome, declared Sixtus V in a bull of 1586, symbolized the whole
Church and church unity.21 In the print, pride of place is shared. Although St. Peter’s dominates
the foreground, San Giovanni in Laterano, the cathedral of Rome and the first church built by
Constantine, is centrally placed; the other basilicas radiate out from it, creating an irregular yet
rhythmically movemented circle.22
In the print, only four of the five patriarchal basilicas are labeled in majuscules and accompanied
by their titular saints and a cross, indicating the necessity of a visit to earn the Jubilee indulgence,
as the text informs the viewer. In 1300, when Boniface VIII instituted the first Holy Year, the con-
trite and confessed pilgrim needed to visit only St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s. For the second Jubilee in
1350, Clement VI added the Lateran. Then in 1400, Gregory XI included Santa Maria Maggiore,
15 18
Panvinio 1570a; Panvinio 1570b. Panvinio’s manuscript Zino 1575.
“De Ecclesies Urbis Romae” (ca. 1560) is in the Biblioteca
19
Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 6187. Serrano 1575; Martin 1969, xxv–xxvii.

16 20
Panvinio 1570b, 1: “Acciocché, conosciuto con diligente Panvinio 1570b, 7–14: chapter one is titled “Delle cinque
investigatione ch’elle [le sette chiese] sien vere e legittime, tutti chiese principali & patriarchali, & dell’altre due aggiuntevi,
s’accendano gli animi a maggiormente honorarle e riverirle.” le quali compiono il numero settenario.”

17 21
Panvinio envisioned publishing a ten-volume set titled De Gamrath 1987, 133–142, esp. 138.
antiquis et recentioribus ecclesiis, monasteriis, coemeteriis (Con-
22
cerning ancient and recent churches, monasteries, cemeteries). Freiberg 1995, 16–19.
See Waetzoldt 1964, 10; Perini 1899.
 276 Barbara Wisch

Fig. 2. Giovanni Battista de’ Cavalieri, Sancta Roma, engraving, 1575. London, British Museum (photo © The Trustees of the British Museum).

as a gesture of devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Visits to the Four Churches remained a condition
for obtaining a Holy Year indulgence during subsequent Holy Years (fig. 2). The prescribed period
of visits was at least once a day for thirty consecutive days for the inhabitants of Rome, fifteen days
for foreigners.
Conserving the most venerated relics in the city, the Seven Churches remained foremost among
the original forty “station” churches that were believed to have been established by the sainted
pope Gregory the Great (590–604). The number of station churches, where the pope said Mass
on each day of the forty-day period of Lent, grew during the Middle Ages, as did the calendar of
required feast days throughout the liturgical year. Major indulgences were offered on these days,
which were celebrated by special Masses, processions, and, most important of all, by the exposition
of relics.23 To demarcate the station church’s sacrality, its façade was traditionally draped with rich
cloth hangings, and fragrant laurel leaves were hung above the portal.24 By the end of the thirteenth
century, the papacy offered indulgences of such astounding generosity in these churches that a
pilgrim could obtain more years of remission for his sins in Rome than in all the other sanctuaries
in Christendom combined.25
23 24
For a succinct summary of the development of the station Ingersoll 1985, 118–122.
churches through the Renaissance, see Stinger 1985, 48–49
25
with bibliography. Sumption 1975, 144, 225–227, and 242–244.
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 277

3. Guiding the Pilgrim’s Progress

Beginning in the twelfth century, pilgrims’ guidebooks provided visitors and pilgrims alike with
a veritable font of information regarding the most venerable monuments of the Eternal City. In
the process, they also guided their readers on the path to salvation. They meticulously listed the
feasts of the Church calendar, directed visitors to the major and minor sanctuaries, and enumer-
ated the heavenly mathematics of indulgences. Despite their primarily religious character, these
texts also devoted considerable attention to the city’s antiquities. This antiquarian tendency was
already (and famously) present in the pages of the earliest of these guidebooks, the Mirabilia
urbis Romae (Marvels of the city of Rome), which provided an overview of Rome’s ancient build-
ings, statues, and other “wonders” of its storied past, in accounts that were interwoven with
fantastic legend and misinformation. After the institution of the Holy Year in 1300, Christian
pilgrims required more stringent information about the multifarious relics and potent indul-
gences that motivated their visits. Sometimes a list of indulgences was appended to the later
editions of the Mirabilia, but by the mid-fourteenth century, separate indulgence books were
being produced under a variety of titles: Libri indulgentiarum (Of the book of indulgences); In-
dulgentiae ecclesiarum urbis Romae (Of the indulgences of the churches of the city of Rome); Libri
indulgentiarum et reliquarum (Of the book of indulgences and relics). These Latin texts, some only
a few pages long, laid out the Church calendar in coordination with the relevant station churches
and provided detailed inventories of relics, which were accompanied by precise calculations of
their spiritual value. Sometimes all 366 churches of Rome were included, an impressive number
that underscored the unique and powerful sanctity of this New Jerusalem.26
The first known Italian edition of the Mirabilia, Le cose maravigliose, was published in 1532.27
Vernacular editions issued in the 1550s and ’60s were expanded periodically to include a wider
selection of material. In 1554, Andrea Palladio, the renowned Venetian architect, published a De-
scritione de le Chiese, Stationi, Indulgenze & Reliquie de Corpi Sancti, che sonno in la Città di Roma
(Description of the churches, stations, indulgences and relics of the holy bodies that are in the city
of Rome). This was his second book on the city to be published that year, having been preceded
(by a few months, it seems) by his guide to the city’s ancient monuments, L’Antiquità di Roma. In
1557, they were published together as Le cose maravigliose dell’alma città di Roma dove si tratta
delle chiese, stationi, indulgenze & reliquie de corpi santi, che sonno in esse. By this time, the fact of
Palladio’s authorship was being ignored, and, as later editions appeared, his original connection
with the project was, for the most part, forgotten. This little guidebook—modest in length, small
in its ottavo format, devout in nature, and written for the general public with little knowledge of
Rome or its history—became an influential model for later publications since it proposed a practical
method of visiting the city’s churches. The obligatory Seven Churches were described first, followed
by four itineraries.28

26
Schudt 1930. The Mirabilia was first printed in 1473.
Forty-four Latin editions of the indulgence books were
issued between 1475 and 1523; twenty editions in German
were published as well as fewer editions in Italian, French,
Spanish, and Flemish. See also Stinger 1985, 34–36; Robijntje
Miedema 2003.
27
Howe 1991, 38, 151 n. 23 cites an edition published in
Rome by Valerio Dorico, today in the New York Public
Library, and corrects Schudt 1930, no. 53, who stated that
the earliest Italian edition was in 1541.
28
Howe 1991, xi–xv, 37. The title continued by noting the
short guide to the antiquities that had been added to the
revised volume: Con un breve trattato della antichità, chiamato
La guida romana, returning to the original Mirabilia combi-
nation of describing the pagan as well as the Christian city.
This three-day tour of the antiquities was written in Italian
by an English organist residing in Rome, Thomas Shakerlay
(or Shakerley), and was first published in 1557.
278 Barbara Wisch

4. “The Majesty of Each Church”

Rome’s most eminent scholars and theologians were well aware of the value and the utility of guide-
books. Onofrio Panvinio himself, illustrious ecclesiastical scholar that he was, helped to update the
chronology of the popes in the revised editions of Le cose maravigliose, issued by two Venetian pub-
lishers in 1565.29 These new editions claimed to have purged the historical inaccuracies that tarnished
earlier printings and offered up-to-date accounts of relics and indulgences, details that were ever
more pertinent in the face of Protestant challenges to the Roman Church’s claim to legitimacy. In his
introduction to Le sette chiese di Roma, Panvinio states his aim: “to assert the majesty of each church,
to enumerate its relics, and to set down whatever admirable things had been written or spoken of
them.”30 Indeed, the entire volume may be described as an adamant affirmation of the Council of
Trent’s decree of the twenty-fifth and final session in December 1563: “Those who maintain that
veneration and honor are not due to the relics of the saints, or that these and other memorials are
honored by the faithful without profit, and that the places dedicated to the memory of the saints for
the purpose of obtaining their aid are in vain, are to be utterly condemned.”31 Reprinted in Italian
for the Holy Year of 1575 in Canon Zino’s compendium, Panvinio’s text shared center stage in that
volume with the pastoral letter of the ascetic Cardinal Carlo Borromeo (1538–1584) and the set of
instructions on how to conduct a pious pilgrimage issued by the reform-minded Cardinal Gabriele
Paleotti (1522–1597).
Panvinio’s linking of the “majesty of each church” with “its relics” was both traditional and
instrumental. The unparalleled sanctity of the relics filling the churches of Rome reminded pilgrims
of the cruel yet glorious sacrifices of the martyrs—both in the distant past and in the contemporary
world. They stirred increasingly emotional transports as the faithful touched and kissed them, defying
the Protestant denial of their efficacy. Gregory Martin, the devout English priest who sojourned in
Rome from 1576 to 1578, described his powerful reaction, to the extent of being virtually overcome,
by the “very sepulchres of Saints.”32 Pope Gregory XIII encouraged these devotions during the
Jubilee of 1575. Contemporary texts describe his bounteous response to the pilgrims’ ardor when
they came to St. Peter’s and the Lateran, where he commanded that Veronica’s Veil, the Holy Lance,
and the heads of Sts. Peter and Paul be shown many more times than the customary ostensions. At
times, the chroniclers report, he was so moved that he gave physical fragments of the saints, as well
as blessed medals, images, and rosaries, to the Holy Year visitors.33
Le sette chiese print reflects this intensified cult of relics. The fully enfleshed bodies of Peter,
Paul, John, and Mary, who stand before their nominal basilicas, are vivid reminders of the “sacral
presence” of these saints, who offer salvation to the faithful through the relics venerated in the great
Roman pilgrimage churches. Kneeling before the saints, groups of pilgrims comport themselves
with devotion and decorum. Their living counterparts had been carefully advised regarding proper
behavior during their journeys and would have had these instructions confirmed and even ampli-
fied upon their arrival in Rome. Contrition, acts of penance, ritual gestures, even the prayers to be
uttered in each location were supplied in the guides published for the Holy Year.

29
Howe 1991, 38–40. sacred images.”

30 32
Panvinio 1570b, 1. See also Martin 1969, xxvi. Martin 1969, 49. See the sensitive discussion of relics by
Labrot 1997, 96–105, 312.
31
Canons and Decrees 1960, 215–217: “On the invocation
and veneration of saints, on the relics of saints, and on 33
Labrot 1997, 105, 312.
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 279

5. The Pilgrim’s Processional Progress

New to the Jubilee of 1575 was the institution of organized processions—for the journey to Rome,
for the entry into Rome, and for the trips to the various sanctuaries where pilgrims could earn the
plenary indulgence. An unprecedented rule was established for those wishing to travel to Rome
that required them to apply in advance to the local bishop or magistrate, who, upon the applicant’s
acceptance, was responsible for organizing the details of the journey as well as the final processional
entry into the city. The order of these processions was also prearranged, with flagellant confraterni-
ties with their crosses and banners coming first, followed by the regular confraternities, then the
clergy, civil magistrates, town citizens, and, finally, the women. In his printed pastoral letter, Cardinal
Borromeo exhorts the pilgrim to make the journey with this in mind:

Neither is it ynough for you to content your self, onely to go to Rome, to visite the Churches . . .
and the holy Relikes of Saincts: but you must joyne hereunto true and perfect penance, so that
you make this journey in the grace of God, and with such mortification of your flesh and senses,
as may serve for the satisfaction of your sinnes. . . . Abandon al surfeiting, glottony, Drunken-
nesse, wantonness . . . and . . . see that your voyage be accompanied with the mortification and
chastening of al your sensualitie.34

The visiting confraternities were received just outside the gates of the city by their illustrious Ro-
man counterparts and reorganized so the processional entry could take place with full ceremony.
As noted above, the flagellants, whipping their flesh through an open circle in the back of their
sackcloth habits, marched first, setting the penitential tone. The recurrent claim—repeated by the
Holy Year chroniclers—that the streets of Rome were bathed or stained with the blood of the fla-
gellants was surely an exaggeration, but the topos invokes a powerfully charged image of the city
repentant. As Rome had been hallowed in the past by the blood of the martyrs, now once again it
was being purified through the imitation of Christ, exemplified by this painful ritual of atonement.
The elaborate entry processions were also choreographed, with costumed participants and allegori-
cal floats representing the Church Penitent, Militant, and Triumphant, which captivated the eyes
of bystanders and chroniclers.35
The most crucial processions of the Holy Year were the ones directed to the Four Churches.
Their scale was amplified considerably after the Roman confraternities successfully petitioned the
pope to reduce the thirty days traditionally required to obtain the Jubilee indulgence to only three,
on the condition that the pilgrims would go to the major sanctuaries in procession. “This is the
reason,” wrote the Jesuit Rafaele Riera, “that the people no longer go to the station churches two
by two . . . but in great companies and like well-organized squadrons of 200, 300, 700, and 800,
2,000, 5,000, 8,000, even 12,000.”36 Another account presented the broad panorama of groups that
earned the Jubilee processionally: confraternities, colleges of canons, convents of friars, companies
of “nations” with seats in Rome, monks, guilds, parishes (so important in the system of religious
reform), all the children above five years of age from the Hospital of Santo Spirito, all the children
being taught their catechism by the Christian Doctrine brotherhood, and finally, the blind, lame,
and crippled of Rome, for whom Pope Gregory had compassionately reduced the processional

34 35
The translation is by Gregory Martin; see Martin 1969, For a full description of the entry processions, see Wisch
223–229, esp. 226. 1990, 86–89.

36
Riera 1580, 23.
280 Barbara Wisch

obligation to only one day.37 This microcosm of sixteenth-century Catholic society had remained
disparate until the Holy Year processions unified them in Rome under the jurisdiction of Pope
Gregory XIII, one sheepfold under one pastor.

6. Visiting the Seven Churches

Especially impressive, according to the chroniclers, were the processions to the Seven Churches,
which were led by the confraternity of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini e Convalescenti under the
direction of Filippo Neri (1515–1595). Neri is traditionally credited with revitalizing the pious proces-
sion to all Seven Churches during the Carnival of 1552, although he himself had begun this practice
more than a decade earlier.38 By 1559, as many as 3,000 marched with Neri along the venerable route.
The Seven Churches procession was at first regarded as suspect by the infamously inflexible Paul
IV (1555–1559), but as more and more worthy prelates and cardinals proclaimed their support and
zealously joined the spectacle, the pope relented. We get a sense of the popularity and importance
of the procession from the fact that Neri met the already influential nephew and advisor to Pope
Pius IV (1559–1565), Carlo Borromeo, for the first time in 1563 while visiting the Seven Churches.39
Pius IV’s successors Pius V (1566–1572) and Gregory XIII did not participate directly in Neri’s
procession but chose to make their pilgrimages seasonally. Pius V’s visit to the churches in 1571
was presented to the public as a propitiatory act on behalf of the Holy League in its fierce battle
against the Turks. After the great victory at Lepanto on 7 October 1571, Gregory XIII continued
this practice throughout his pontificate.40 Gregory’s plans for urban renovation in preparation for
the Holy Year of 1575 specifically facilitated the progress to all seven basilicas by regularizing and
widening the thoroughfares.41 The pope, who modeled his program of spiritual reform on that
of his canonized namesake, embraced the late cinquecento desire to recreate a “hyperspiritual,”
paleochristian past in order to authenticate the origins of the true Catholic Church and confirm its
continuity in contemporary doctrine and practice.42
Le sette chiese underscores the act of pilgrimage through its representation of the interwoven
pattern of the processions. No earlier maps of Rome had ever “populated” the city in quite this way.
In the 1447 illustrated version of the Dittamondo, an historical-geographic account of the world
from its creation through the mid-fourteenth century, written by Fazio degli Uberti between 1355
37 41
Pientini 1577, 176–178. An avviso of 4 July 1573 mentioned the road from the
Lateran to Santa Maria Maggiore (Via Gregoriana, now Via
38
La regola e la fama 1995, 46–49, cat. no. 17: after Antonio Merulana) and records Gregory’s desire to build additional
Tempesta, Pietro Croel, The Blessed Filippo Neri in Ecstasy ones to link the “altre 7 chiese per l’anno santo”; see Freiberg
and Events from His Life, engraving, 1600. In the print, 1995, 70 n. 14. Jacks 1989, 138–139 notes Gregory’s reactiva-
Neri’s first miracle depicts his scoffing at demons that tor- tion of several ancient roads, such as Via Appia, leading to
ment him during a visit to the Seven Churches. The first such the pilgrimage basilicas. Gamrath 1987, 42, 130 discusses the
experience occurred in 1537, en route to the San Sebastiano improvements made to smaller roads, although they were not
catacombs, where Neri “lived” for ten years (41, fig. 28). See regularized like the great thoroughfares between the basilicas:
also Ponnelle and Bordet 1979, 190–191. For an excellent (1) Via Ferratella (now Via dell’Ambra Aradam and its exten-
summary of Neri’s procession, with its stop for refreshments sions), connecting the Lateran with the Porta Metronia and
at the villa and gardens of Ciriaco Mattei on the Caelian hill, continuing to the Porta San Sebastiano, where it intersected
see La regola e la fama 1995, 480–481. For an important with the Via Appia; (2) Via delle Sette Chiese, connecting
discussion of the social and urban implications of the ritual, San Paolo to San Sebastiano. The Duperac/Lafreri Map of
see Boiteux 1997, 52–59. Rome of 1577 names the latter road Via di San Sebastiano.
See also note 2 above.
39
La regola e la fama 1995, 17.
42
Courtright 2003, 15–16, 20 with references to contem-
40
Boiteux 1997, 58. porary sources.
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 281

and 1364, a large-scale figure of a woman in widow’s weeds sits inside the city walls, mourning the
passing of Rome’s imperial power and grandeur as a pair of extramural visitors looks on (Paris,
Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Ital. 81, fol. 18r).43 Although the miniatures illustrating Giovanni
Sercambi’s early fifteenth-century Croniche (Chronicles) depict pilgrims entering and exiting a city
gate during the Jubilees of 1300, 1350, and 1400 (Lucca, Archivio di Stato, fols. 29r, 50v, and 351r),
the city itself is not filled with people.44
In Le sette chiese print, however, great processions wend their way throughout the city and outside
the walls. They are created by two distinct groups: prelates with their extensive entourage and, as I wish
to emphasize here, confratelli (confraternal brethren) in their hooded sackcloth habits. The prelates
suggest a dignified and purified church hierarchy, while the confratelli represent a lay model of pious
and charitable behavior. The figures depicted here may, perhaps, be identified with the confraternity
of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini e Convalescenti, a group renowned for the extraordinary number
of pilgrims they cared for in 1550 and 1575.45 Thus, in this new, pilgrimage-oriented image, Rome is
not simply “represented” (in representazione) but is depicted in (sacred) action (in azione).46
One of the most innovative aspects of the map is the way it fuses two distinct components: the
descriptive, which produces a “space that conflates institutional hierarchy with urban topography,”
and the narrative, which articulates a sequence of time through bodily performance that is inherently
“fragmented and ephemeral.”47 The processional ductus of the corteges dynamically contrasts the
ruined aqueductus both within the city walls and without. Only the devout generate the “palpitating
human substance of the city of the spirit.”48
In this way, the 1575 print provided what Panvinio, the contemporary plethora of guidebooks
and indulgence lists, the prestige of Filippo Neri, and even Pope Gregory’s exemplary piety could
not—a consummate visualization of the Seven Churches pilgrimage in all of its essential aspects.
Instead of leafing through pages to determine the complex cycle of the stations or how best to
circumnavigate the privileged churches, viewers of the print would instantaneously understand the
paradigmatic value of the basilicas. The elevated God’s-eye angle embraced Roma Sancta completely
and dominated reality. In the mind’s eye, the beholder could embark on the processional visit to
each of the privileged churches, appreciating in remarkable detail the actual architecture of the
sanctuaries, the Holy Figures to whom they were dedicated, and the devout gestures and prayers
that would help them to achieve salvation. As in Sancta Roma (Holy Rome), the large, two-sheet
engraving by Giovanni Battista de’ Cavalieri of 1575 (fig. 2), the city is defined as the eternal locus
of salvation in which the pilgrimage basilicas play the crucial mediating role.49 In this case, however,
the pilgrims are limited to the circuit of the Four Principal Churches.

7. The Matrix Augmented

But we have not yet exhausted the significance of the print. In addition to its very rich pictorializa-
tion of the canonical Seven Churches, it represents some other, more recent pilgrimage practices,

43 47
Maddalo 1987, esp. 16–18. San Juan 2001, 112–113; Rinaldi 1985, 268.

44 48
Maddalo 1990, pls. IIa, IIb, and IIIc. Rinaldi 1985, 270.

45 49
Fiorani 1998; Maroni Lumbroso and Martini 1963, Fagiolo 1985 suggests that the images of the four basilicas
425–430. were derived from the Lafreri print.

46
Rinaldi 1985, 274.
282 Barbara Wisch

dating from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, that have hitherto gone unnoticed. In the
pages of his Le sette chiese principali, Panvinio reports that “in later times” two other shrines had
been added to the canonical seven, so that the number of important pilgrimage churches has “grown
in number to nine.”50 In the Holy Year accounts, published in 1575 and shortly thereafter, this in-
crease to Nine Churches is fully recognized. The Dominican theologian Angelo Pientini51 and the
English priest Gregory Martin both refer in a straightforward way to the augmentation of sacred
sites, the latter remarking, “Now, when upon devotion, the self same persons sometimes visite five,
sometime fowre, seven, nine.”52
In the print, the Four Principal Churches are labeled in majuscules and marked by a cross,
indicating the required visit for earning the plenary indulgence. The three additional basilicas are
identified in a cursive hand. Although not named, Santa Maria del Popolo marks the northern entry to
the city from the Via Flaminia; the Castel Sant’Angelo guards the Vatican; and the Franciscan Church
of San Pietro in Montorio, with Bramante’s Tempietto in its cloister, commemorates the location of
St. Peter’s martyrdom. The Isola Tiburtina, with its famous churches and pilgrim hospices (it was
believed that early Christians were imprisoned on the island before their martyrdom), is also depicted.
Monte Testaccio and the Cestius pyramid mark the gate to the Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls.
In contrast to many maps from the late Middle Ages and the fifteenth century based on the
Mirabilia, the Lafreri print expunges the marvelous antiquities of Rome. Within the Gregorian
vision of reform that it reflects, there was little place for this pagan past. Although Pope Gregory
never promulgated the disfigurement or demolition of pagan monuments as did his successor,
Sixtus V (1585–1590), the major monuments of antiquity are simply omitted from the print.53 But,
while the intramural city of 1575 has been emptied of much of its historical urban and pagan past,
this is not the case outside the southeastern walls. Here, the depictions of specific Christian and
pagan monuments54 follow a long tradition, exemplified by the exquisitely drawn and hand-colored
maps of Rome by the noted Florentine miniaturist and visitor to the city, Pietro del Massaio (active
50
Panvinio 1570b, 15: “percioche la pia intentione de i tempi built by Titus and Vespasian, had been recognized as a circus
appresso, per commodità della strada, alle sette Chiese an- and attributed to Caracalla. Only in the nineteenth century
tiche, due altre n’ha aggiunte, di santo Anastasio cio è dalle was the hippodrome correctly identified as belonging to
tre fontane, & di santa Maria Annunciata, poste tra santo the imperial complex of Maxentius, completed by 312. In
Paolo & santo Sebastiano, & le hà cresciute al numero di the fifteenth-century map, the three rectilinear walls of the
nove, che hoggidi sono da christiani frequentate.” so-called theater frame what would later be recognized as
the spina (spine) of the hippodrome with the hollow bases
51
Pientini 1577, 223: “venivano continouamente ordinatis- of the metae on either end. As far as medieval visitors were
sime processioni, & andavano visitando le sante chiese, . . . concerned, the vaulted spaces of the metae, embedded with
le quattro chiese, & anco si trovavano molti, che visitavano le potsherds in the rubble core, were kilns. Near the spina, large
sette, & le nove”; 234: “Si vedde parimente questa particolar fragments of an obelisk are depicted lying in ruins. In 1649
divozione, nel visitare non solamente le quattro chiese, ma these were reassembled by Bernini to crown the Four Rivers
come vi dissi dianzi, le sette, & le nove.” Fountain in the Piazza Navona. See Frazer 1966. Lending
weight to the attribution of Le sette chiese to Duperac is the
52
Martin 1969, 18–19: “Chap. 2. The Seven and the Nine fact that he was very well acquainted with these monuments.
Churches . . . why there were Seven principal, I told before; From at least 1565, he had worked closely with Panvinio to
no other then that there are also nine. ” create illustrations for the antiquarian’s De ludis circensibus
(Concerning the circus games), first published in Antwerp
53
Jacks 1989, 138. in 1596, although drafts of the treatise had circulated earlier
and the papal privilege for its publication had already been
54
The pagan monuments have been updated according to granted in 1571. The illustrations (retouched in 1580) were
new archaeological discoveries of the sixteenth century. Most first published in 1600 in Venice by G. B. Ciotti, when the
important, the “Theatrum gladiatorium. Teatro dove batagle volume was printed in tandem with De triumphis (Concern-
mortali faceano” (Theater of the gladiators. Theater where ing triumphs). See Ferrary 1996, 26–38, 214; Jacks 1993,
they fought unto death) in the Massaio map, which reiterated 257–259. See also Zerner 1965; Grelle 1987.
the Mirabilia’s claim that the ruins had been an amphitheater
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 283

Fig. 3. Giovanni Antonio Dosio designer, Sebastiano del Re engraver, detail of the compagna outside the southeastern walls
from Map of Rome (Rome: Bartolomeo Faletti 1561), engraving. Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana
(photo © Bibliotheca Hertziana–Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte).

1458–1472). His maps of Rome were added to three manuscripts of Ptolemy’s Geography, dated
from ca. 1453–1456 to 1472,55 the most extensively annotated of which was made for Duke Federico
da Montefeltro of Urbino, who visited the city frequently (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Urb.
Lat. 277, fol. 131r).56 On sixteenth-century maps of Rome that extended their view outside the walls,
these same churches were regularly depicted, which underlines their importance by this time (fig. 3).
Leaving the relative safety of the walled city and venturing southeast through the Porta San Se-
bastiano, the pilgrim proceeded two miles along the ancient triumphal route of the Via Appia before
arriving at the venerable Basilica of San Sebastiano fuori le mura and its adjacent catacombs. All of
those buried there, it was believed, had been gruesomely martyred.57 Following in the footsteps of
the saints, the pilgrim then approached the small chapel of Domine Quo Vadis, which is indicated
on the Massaio map, at the fork of Via Appia and Via Ardeatina. This modest structure marked the
site of St. Peter’s encounter with the resurrected Jesus, in whose response to the Apostle’s famous
55
For a discussion of Pietro del Massaio and the dating of the topographical account of the city based on documents,
three versions of the map of Rome, see Miller 2003, 18–19, coins, and inscriptions. Written in the mid-1440s, it set new
129–131 with bibliography; Frutaz 1962, 1:137–144; 2:pls. standards for the study of classical archaeology. For Flavio
157–158, 160. See also Jacks 1993, 113–121. It has been Biondo and the Strozzi map, see Miller 2003, 136–139. See
convincingly argued that the Massaio maps as well as the also Scaglia 1964.
map of Rome drawn in pen and ink by Alessandro Strozzi in
56
1474 (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Cod. Redi For a color image of this famous map, see Miller 2003, pl. 8.
77, fols. 7v–8r) are based on a lost prototype that depended
57
on Flavio Biondo’s Roma instaurata (Rome restored), a Magnuson 2004, 53–67, 74–75.
284 Barbara Wisch

inquiry—“Lord, where are you going?” (Domine, quo vadis?)—“I am going to Rome to be crucified
again” (Eo Romam iterum crucifigi), Peter recognized the necessity of his returning to Rome, where
he suffered his own martyrdom.58 During the thirteenth century, many pilgrims, instead of walking
directly to the Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls (the traditional circuit of the Seven Churches),
began to follow the unpaved Via Oratoria for another mile, finding numinous relics and respite at the
small Church of Santa Maria Annunziata before proceeding to Tre Fontane and, finally, to St. Paul’s.

8. “They Have Grown in Number to Nine”

Let us pause to consider the history and character of these two shrines—Tre Fontane and Santa
Maria Annunziata—that had been added to the list of principal pilgrimage churches at this time.
The first, Tre Fontane, which became the eighth in the series, is a combination of three distinct
sacred sites. The Three Fountains themselves are the earliest and best known. Since early Christian
times, they had been a locus of devotion in connection with the martyrdom of the apostle Paul. Ac-
cording to an ancient tradition, these holy springs had miraculously gushed forth where the saint’s
decapitated head had bounced and struck the earth three times. The second locus, the Church and
Monastery of Sant’Anastasio, had been founded by Honorius I in the seventh century. In 1140,
control of the complex was transferred from the Cluniac Benedictines to St. Bernard of Clairvaux,
who established a Cistercian abbey on the site. In 1221 a new, larger church was completed, filled
with a precious cache of relics, and consecrated by Honorius III (1216–1227). The third and final
shrine is the oratory of Santa Maria in Scala Coeli, which, according to tradition, marks the site of
the martyrdom of San Zeno and the 10,203 soldiers during the persecutions of Diocletian. It takes
its present name from St. Bernard’s vision of a heavenly stairway, from which souls in purgatory
climbed to salvation, guided by his prayers.59 Cardinal Alessandro Farnese served as commendatore
(governor) of the abbey from 1536 to 1589. In 1574, Pope Gregory issued a stern warning to the
delinquent cardinal to have repairs and restorations completed in time for the Holy Year. The fol-
lowing year, with the Jubilee already begun, the abbey was described as “badly governed” since the
monks were not celebrating Mass even on important feast days.60 In 1583, Farnese finally responded
to the criticisms by commissioning Giacomo della Porta to build the still extant octagonal Church
of the Scala Coeli. In time for the next Holy Year (in 1600), the commendatore Cardinal Pietro
Aldobrandini, nephew of Pope Clement VIII (1592–1605) and secretary of state, saw to its comple-
tion and further commissioned Giacomo della Porta to rebuild the small Church of Tre Fontane in
1599, which was consecrated the following year. Therefore, by the Jubilee of 1600, these holy sites
had been restored and decorated with rich marbles and golden mosaics, rendering their appearance
commensurate with their canonically elevated status as the eighth of the Nine Churches (fig. 4).
As noted above, the Sanctuary of Santa Maria Annunziata, or the Annunziatella as this diminu-
tive church was called, is less well known (fig. 5).61 This relative obscurity may help to explain the
58 59
In anticipation of the Jubilee in 1550, Cardinal Reginald Panvinio 1570b, 108–114.
Pole had the ancient (probably ninth-century) chapel re-
60
paired. The small circular chapel was superseded in the early Robertson 1992, 160–161; 304, doc. 81; and 306, doc. 93;
seventeenth century by the new Church of Domine Quo Schwager 1982; Ruotolo 1972.
Vadis, built nearby on the site of Santa Maria delle Palme. The
61
new façade, commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Barberini, For the Church of the Annunziatella, see Ruggeri 1866,
nephew of the reigning pope Urban VIII, was completed in 92–104; Maroni Lumbroso and Martini 1963, 204–205. For the
1637 (see note 62 below). Today, the tiny circular chapel has archaeological excavations, see De Rossi 1998. For a complete
fallen into total disrepair. study of the church, see Wisch and Newbigin in press, chap. 8.
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 285

Fig. 5. Anonymous (attrib. Stefano Duperac), detail of Santa Maria

Annunziata from Le sette chiese di Roma (Rome: Antonio Lafreri
1575), etching with engraving. Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana (photo ©
Bibliotheca Hertziana–Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte).

Fig. 4. Antonio Tempesta designer, Giacomo Lauro engraver, detail

of Tre Fontane from Septem Urbis ecclesiae cum earum reliquiis,
stationibus et indulgentiis (Rome: Giacomo Lauro 1599), engraving.
London, British Museum (photo © The Trustees of the British
Museum).

fact that little has been documented or commented upon regarding its inclusion in the Nine.62 The
explanation for the Annunziatella’s rise to importance, I suggest, can be traced to its late medieval
legacy, when a rich treasury of relics, lavish indulgences, and the pious passage of pilgrims trans-
formed the ritual topography of Rome. We know nothing about the church at this site until 9 August
1220, the date of its consecration during the reign of Honorius III. It may be the oldest Marian
sanctuary in the Roman countryside and appears to have been the only Roman church dedicated
to the Annunziata until the Jesuit foundation in 1567 (later rebuilt as the present-day Church of
Sant’Ignazio di Loyola a Campo Marzio).
A marble inscription in the Annunziatella, which repeats the original once placed near the altar
as recorded in fifteenth-century guidebooks, enumerates the plethora of relics that had been placed
in the altar in 1220.63 Counted among the sacred items were pieces of wood from the True Cross,
62
The church we see today, located at Via di Grotta Perfetta, Miedema 2001, 600–601. See also Planck 1925, fol. 35r.
591, is predominantly the result of restorations commissioned Ruggeri 1886, 95–96 n. 10 publishes the full text of the Latin
around 1640 by the confraternal Cardinal-Protector Fran- inscription. Panvinio 1570b, 115–117 translates it into Italian.
cesco Barberini (see note 58 above). Significantly, it was to In English the inscription reads: “In the name of the Lord
the cardinal that Giovanni Baglione dedicated his volume Le Amen. In 1220, the fifth year of the pontificate of our Lord
nove chiese di Roma (The nine churches of Rome) in 1639. Pope Honorius, in the eighth indiction on the ninth of Au-
gust, this church was dedicated in honor of the Blessed Virgin
63
Robijntje Miedema 2003, 340–341 n. 93 cites the Latin Mary and of all the Saints by the Venerable Giovanni Anagni
Historia et descriptio, printed in Augsburg around 1475, that and Giovanni Gabbini, auxiliary bishops to the venerable
specifically included the dedication inscription. Robijntje abbots Giovanni Villamagna and Giovanni of Santa Maria of
286 Barbara Wisch

wood from the table of the Last Supper, fragments of the stone on which Jesus wept, of the stone
where he was transfigured, of the column of the Flagellation, and of the Holy Sepulcher. Remnants
of the sepulchers of the Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist and fragments of the cave where
Mary Magdalene did penance kept holy company with the remains of six apostles, Sts. Lawrence,
Sebastian, Nereus and Achilleus, and the Eleven Thousand Virgins. The list goes on and on.
The venerable history of this church was closely associated with Honorius III (Cencio Savelli,
b. 1148). This Roman pope, scion of the noble Savelli family, placed great emphasis on the renewal
of paleochristian sites of martyrdom and triumph. The future pope, as compiler of the census of Ro-
man churches (completed 1192) and then as cardinal-chancellor of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216),
had overseen a number of projects to restore and embellish the most venerable churches outside
the ancient walls, a project that continued into his own reign.64 He promoted these sanctuaries by
endowing them with scores of relics retrieved from the ancient cemeteries or recovered from other,
older or relatively disused shrines. Special attention was devoted to the Annunziatella in the same
years that Honorius restored Sant’Anastasio at Tre Fontane, commissioned a new mosaic apse
decoration for St. Paul’s, and oversaw the enlargement of the Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le mura.
He returned Sebastian’s relics to his nominal basilica (San Sebastiano furi le mura), where he also
restored the crypt and built an oratory—a kind of sacred vestibule to the so-called Platonia, where
the bodies of Sts. Peter and Paul had been kept before their permanent burial.65 The consecration
of the Annunziatella with a splendid treasury of sacred remains fit perfectly into Honorius’s broader
program of renewal and embellishment of Rome’s extramural sanctuaries and reflected the cult of
relics that incited such fervor among the devout of the thirteenth century.
About a century later, a confraternity of “flagellants and devotees of the glorious Virgin Mary”
was established at the Annunziatella, which indicates its continuing importance as a Marian shrine.66
Attached to the small church were a hostel for pilgrims, lodging for the chaplain, a garden, and a

Wlsilla [?] and in its altar these relics are hidden: of the wood
of the cross, of the wood of the table at which Christ supped
with his disciples, of the sepulcher of the Blessed Mary and
Blessed John Evangelist, of the stone on which Christ wept, of
the relics of St. Andrew the apostle, St. James the apostle, St.
Thomas the apostle, Sts. Simon and Jude, Matthew and Law-
rence martyr, Sts. Fabian and Sebastian, Nicandrus priest, St.
Sixtus pope and martyr, St. Felicissimus and Agapitus martyrs,
Sts. Cosmas and Damian, St. Liberatus, St. Paternus and St.
Honoratus martyr, Sts. Dionysius, Rusticus and Eleutherius,
St. Quirinus bishop and martyr, Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, St.
Menna martyr, Felix and Audactus, St. Thomas martyr, the
Eleven Thousand Virgins, Secundina virgin, Lucilla virgin,
St. Domitilla virgin, of the column of Christ and of the tomb,
of the stone where Christ was transfigured, of the stone of
the cave where St. Mary Magdalene did penance, of the arm
of St. Maximus. And be it known to all men that in the time
Father Peter of the Church of St. Mary Sanctuary, our most
holy lord in Christ, father and master Boniface IX granted
to all those who visit the present Church of the Annunziata,
contrite and confessed on the day of the Annunciation in the
month of March, on the first Sunday in May, to the said two
days and to any of two days that same indulgence that has
been conceded in perpetuity to those who visit the Church
of St. Peter in Chains in the city of Rome on those eight days
of the month of August. Dated in Rome at St. Peter’s on the
ninth day of November in the sixth year of his pontificate,
the year of Christ MCCCLXXXIV (sic). Luca Leno, Giulio
di Mattei and Giovanni Arguitelli, guardiani (chief officers),
Giacomo Ceccarini, camerlengo (treasurer). The Company
of the Gonfalone restored all that had been done in the year
of our Lord MDXVIII, in the month of March, in the fifth
year of the pontificate of our most holy Lord Pope Leo X.
Placed by Giuliano Dati.
64
Huelsen 1975, v–vi. Cencio Savelli, known as Cencius
Camerarius, oversaw the completion of the Liber censuum
Romanae ecclesiae. For Honorius’s building projects, see
Krautheimer 1983, 174–175, 204–206. Savelli property
outside the city was in the southeast along Via Appia, most
importantly, the city of Albano. Papal patronage of the sacred
shrines could only serve to strengthen those territorial hold-
ings. See Brentano 1991, 202.
65
San Sebastiano 2000.
66
In the fifteenth century, this flagellant confraternity
dedicated to Mary had become affiliated with a group of
brotherhoods, which in 1486 were unified under the name
Gonfalone, referring to their processional banner with a
votive image of their protectress, the Madonna of Mercy. A.
Esposito 1984, 95–96; Pagano 1990, 21–23.
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 287

vineyard.67 On the feasts of the Annunciation (25 March) and the Annunziatella’s consecration (on 1
May), scores of Romans traveled to the sanctuary to receive generous donations of bread.68 In 1394,
Boniface IX (1389–1404) granted a rich indulgence on these days, which encouraged even greater
participation in these rural, springtime festivities. Thus we see that, by the dawn of the Renaissance,
the sanctuary’s possession of potent relics, elevated by indulgences as well as accommodations for
travelers, encouraged many pilgrims to include Santa Maria Annunziata on their itineraries.
The remarkable treasury of relics and the consecration of the Annunziatella during the reign
of Honorius III were carefully noted in guidebooks. Reiterated both in manuscript and in print,
these essential facts elevated the numinous quality of the small church and enhanced its association
with the papal program of embellishing the great pilgrimage churches outside the city walls. This
magnificent enterprise reified what pilgrims had come to believe with increasing certainty—that the
soil of the campagna beyond the southeastern walls had been hallowed by the blood and bones of
more early Christian martyrs than any other part of the Roman periphery. Although visits to these
relatively remote sites required a potentially dangerous foray into the sparsely inhabited countryside,
Romans and pilgrims alike traversed the ancient roads with renewed zeal, attracted by the redemp-
tive powers of the holy relics these sites contained.

9. The Annunziatella in the Matrix

By the fifteenth century, all of the Roman guidebooks and indulgence books included the Annun-
ziatella in their inventories of important sites. But its place in the order of visitation (in relation to
the obligatory Seven Churches) varied according to the formulae employed in these texts. When
the order depended on topographical proximity to the Seven, the sanctuaries outside the south-
eastern walls—including the Annunziatella—headed the list. If churches with Marian dedications
were the organizing principle, the Annunziatella appeared along with the others. If the liturgical
calendar determined the order, then 25 March marked the day that at this location “all sins would
be forgiven.” For this reason, stated a late fifteenth-century German guidebook, “pilgrims come.”69
Over time, a host of local legends endowed the church with even greater spiritual resonance.
Around 1450, the English Augustinian John Capgrave informed his readers that the Madonna had
appeared to a holy man who had dwelt there, promising that if a pure and devout man would visit
this church, he would never suffer the pains of purgatory.70 Nikolaus Muffel, who came to Rome in
the entourage of Emperor Frederick III in 1452, reported that: “If a priest says the mass [there], a
soul is freed from purgatory” and repeated the “fact” that “every day there is full remission from the
punishment and guilt of all sins.”71 The sanctuary’s association with the feast of the Annunciation
also aligned it with a day of more than usual power. As a poem recorded in the Golden Legend and
related by Capgrave proclaimed, “Hail good day that heals our wounds!” According to the Golden

67
Ugolini 1932, 18–19.
68
A. Esposito 1984, 124, who first published the confraternal
statutes of 1495. A complete English translation is available
at www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~nnew4107/Texts/.
69
Robijntje Miedema 2003, 32–34; 174: “Tot Onser Vrou-
wen Annunciacie oflaet van allen sunden,” from the Dutch
Haager Handschift N14, written during the pontificate of
Eugenius IV (1431–1437); 223: “Da is vergebung aller sunde,
welcher mensche in pilgrims wise dahin komet,” from the
printed text by Ludwig von Eyb, 1475; and 265.
70
Capgrave 1911, 160–161 attests that “an holy man dwelt
there sumtyme that seruyd god and oure lady in ful solitary
lif. . . . Up on a day our lady appered on to him and seide
that what man in clene lif deuoutely wil uisite this place he
schal neuyr com in the peynes of purgatorie.”
71
Muffel 1999, 64–65.
288 Barbara Wisch

Legend, this same day (25 March) also marked the occasion of Christ’s suffering and death, Adam’s
creation and fall, the sacrifice of Isaac, St. Peter’s deliverance from prison, and the rising of the
bodies of the saints with Christ, among many other portentous events.72 A Dutch indulgence book,
published around 1475, indicated that a pious visit to the Annunziatella on 25 March would conjure
Mary’s special protection: The pilgrim could not be harmed by lightning or thunder on that day.73
Powerful relics, generous indulgences, joyous festivities, the exhilaration of a rural excursion,
and a well-run hostel drew pilgrims to the Annunziatella as a locus of respite. The confraternity of
the Gonfalone, believed to be the oldest brotherhood in Rome, owned the small church and ran the
hostel, a single building attached to it, as we see depicted in Le sette chiese print. A mid-fifteenth-
century inventory records the presence of stalls, a larder, a cistern, and an oven. Gardens, fruit trees,
and vineyards surrounded the buildings, providing necessary foodstuffs for pilgrims.74 A low wall
for seating built along the nave accommodated weary travelers.75 Just inside the main portal, a large
slab in the pavement marked the entrance to the subterranean sepulcher for poor pilgrims who had
died in the countryside while on their sacred journey. Providing succor for pilgrims was crucial to
the economy of salvation—for those who needed shelter and for the charitable good works credited
to the celestial accounts of the confraternal brethren.
The Holy Year of 1550 had turned a new spotlight on such endeavors. The most famous par-
ticipants at this time were Filippo Neri and his followers, whose efforts tending to an extraordinary
number of visitors attracted considerable praise. A decade later, Neri’s group was officially instituted
as the confraternity of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini e Convalescenti and was further elevated to
the rank of archconfraternity in 1562.76 With its hostel and generous confraternal caretakers, the
Annunziatella’s reputation rose in tandem with that of its confraternal caretakers.
In April 1562, the Gonfalone officials decided to revive their traditions of sacred drama and
perform a sacra rappresentazione (mystery play) of the Annunciation on the first Sunday in May, but
unfortunately, we have no further information about it.77 Four years later, in July, “wood, boards,
rope, nails, and other similar things for the play done at our church of the Annunziata” were paid
for, suggesting another performance in early May.78
Through the various agencies described above, the stature of this small but powerfully endowed
church continued to grow. This increased standing was reflected not only by the shrine’s improved
physical situation but also in the area of indulgences. As we have noted, the Annunziatella was a
place where plenary indulgences could be earned twice annually. Although in the fifteenth century
a daily subtraction of 1,000 years from the sinner’s account in purgatory was offered, by the mid-
sixteenth century it had escalated to 10,000 years.79 And, by this time, the boisterous springtime
festivities created by the Gonfalone, especially lavish during Holy Year celebrations, had merged
with older pilgrimage traditions to transform the sacred topography of Rome. The Annunziatella
was the only church of this privileged group to have a confraternal provenance. This fact is highly
significant, especially given the new and central role that the confraternities played in the reception,

72
Voragine 1995, 1:201. 425–430.

73 77
Robijntje Miedema 2003, 348 n. 10. Vattasso 1903, 88–89.

74 78
Ugolini 1932, 18–19. Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Fondo Arciconfraternita del
Gonfalone, 178, fol. 33v: “legnami, tavole, corde, chiodi
75
Described in 1639 by Baglione 1990, 98 before the church e latre cose smli p la representasion fatta alla nostra chiesa
underwent restorations. See note 62 above. dela Nonciata.”

76 79
Fiorani 1998; Maroni Lumbroso and Martini 1963, Howe 1991, 111.
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 289

lodging, and feeding of pilgrims, whom they also guided to the principal basilicas during Holy Years.
The eminent place of the Annunziatella sheds new light on these activities and demonstrates how
confraternities became active agents in the spiritual renewal and festal reordering of cities.80 The new
ritual matrix of the Nine Churches was incised, to a considerable degree, with a confraternal burin.

10. Exclusions from the Matrix

Le sette chiese presents a powerfully codified vision of the sacred geography of Rome. The pilgrims,
who are shown following well-trodden paths to the major sanctuaries, seem to be fully aware of
the significance of visiting all Nine Churches. They stride quickly past Santa Maria del Popolo and
San Pietro in Montorio as they enter the gates from the north and west. But they stream toward
(and away from) the two mid-sized churches depicted in the upper right, Tre Fontane and the
Annunziatella. The question that arises, then, is why the sanctuaries of Santa Maria del Popolo
and San Pietro in Montorio, so famous today and well situated and endowed with such religious
significance, did not develop the same status for pilgrims and thus become elevated to the position
of eighth or ninth in the sacred hierarchy.
In 1586, the stature of Santa Maria del Popolo was, in fact, promoted by papal mandate. As
part of Sixtus V’s efforts to revive the liturgical stations, on 13 February of that year, six days before
the beginning of Lent, the pope raised the Popolo to the status of a “substitute” seventh pilgrim-
age church. His bull, Egregia populi romani, decreed that the ancient and most holy basilica of San
Sebastiano was not sufficiently venerated, thanks to its location far from the city center and its
dimensions, which were too small to accommodate a suitably magnificent papal chapel. For these
reasons, Santa Maria del Popolo, which was spacious and easily accessible in its location next to the
city’s main northern gate, was selected as a substitute. Sixtus also proclaimed that it was necessary
to invoke Mary more fervently since she had worked wonders on behalf of the people, the clergy,
and women. San Sebastiano was not deprived of its privileges or its indulgences but was conserved
in the ambit of the second visit that the people should perform with pious devotion. Therefore,
Santa Maria del Popolo was conceded the same privileges as San Sebastiano (fig. 6).81 In 1588, the
Mirabilia was updated to record these changes.82 This special status lasted only a short time, until
the Jubilee of 1625, when Santa Maria del Popolo was demoted from a principal church.
San Pietro in Montorio never received this kind of honor, even temporarily, which may seem
surprising. If St. Paul’s place of martyrdom was a major pilgrimage site, should not the location of
St. Peter’s crucifixion receive equal veneration? The main reason, I suggest, was that the hallowed
place on the Janiculum, honored by Bramante’s Tempietto (ca. 1502–1510) in the cloister of the
church and carefully depicted in the print (fig. 7),83 was not accepted with absolute certainty as the
site of Peter’s martyrdom until the second half of the fifteenth century. The earliest tradition, whose

80
Wisch 2006.
81
See Gamrath 1987, 133–142 for a detailed analysis of
the papal bull. Although not mentioned in the bull, Sixtus
probably elevated Santa Maria del Popolo, in part, because it
honored his namesake, Sixtus IV (1471–1484), a prominent
devotee of Mary who had begun extensive renovations of
the church and was particularly devoted to its miraculous
icon, attributed to St. Luke. However, and most important,
Santa Maria del Popolo demarcated the start of Via Felice,
one point of the great star that formed the new papal network
of roads interconnecting the principal churches with Santa
Maria Maggiore, the spiritual heart of Marian devotion for
Sixtus V.
82
Labrot 1997, 155 n. 17.
83
It is worthwhile to note that de’ Nobili did not include the
Tempietto in the depiction of San Pietro in Montorio in his
Le sette chiese di Roma.
290 Barbara Wisch

Fig. 6. Nicholas van Aelst, Le sette chiese privilegiate di Roma, engraving, 1589.
London, British Museum (photo © The Trustees of the British Museum).

sources included the authoritative Liber pontificalis (Book of the popes), located the site near the
Circus of Nero, by the obelisk that had stood on the south flank of St. Peter’s until 1586, when
Sixtus V had it transported to the piazza in front of the basilica.84 Between the eighth and twelfth
centuries, new theories located Peter’s crucifixion near Hadrian’s tomb (the Castel Sant’Angelo).
The earliest Mirabilia placed it close to the naumachia (circus or theater used for mock naval battles),
adjacent to “the Sepulcher of Romulus, which is called Meta or the Goal . . . near . . . the Terebinth
of Nero”—probably the first appearance in a written source that St. Peter was crucified near a
meta (goal post of a Roman circus or hippodrome).85 It is presumably from this association with
the ruined pyramid tomb, known popularly as the “Meta Romuli,” that the tradition of St. Peter’s
martyrdom between two metae evolved.
In the fifteenth century, humanist scholars in the court of Eugenius IV (1431–1447) worried
about unraveling the truth from these knotted and contradictory traditions. Flavio Biondo posited
his theory in his Roma instaurata, arguing that St. Peter’s crucifixion occurred near the banks of the
Tiber, where a terebinth, or turpentine tree, marked the site where the Church of Santa Maria in
Traspontina was later erected (on today’s Via della Conciliazione). Biondo’s colleague Maffeo Vegio

84
The following discussion depends on Huskinson 1969, 136:
“Sepultus est via Aurelia in templo Apollonis iuxta locum
ubi crucifixus est iuxta palatium Neronianum in Vaticano
iuxtum territorium triumphale.” See also Vannicelli 1971.
85
The Marvels of Rome 1986, 35, 86.
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 291

Fig. 7. Anonymous
(attrib. Stefano
Duperac), detail
of San Pietro in
Montorio from Le
sette chiese di Roma
(Rome: Antonio
Lafreri 1575), etching
with engraving.
Rome, Bibliotheca
Hertziana (photo
© Bibliotheca
Hertziana–Max-
Planck-Institut für
Kunstgeschichte).

(1407–1458) also located the site between two metae but identified them with monuments on op-
posite sides of the city: the aforementioned Meta Romuli, near the Vatican, and the so-called Meta
Remi (the funerary pyramid of Gaius Cestius, traditionally believed to contain the ashes of Remus)
near the Porta San Paolo. Peter’s crucifixion, Vegio posited, occurred equidistant from these widely
dispersed monuments, “on Montorio or the Janiculum.” Eugenius seems to have supported Vegio’s
argument, which he presented in a detailed treatise in 1455. During the second half of the quat-
trocento, the belief that Peter suffered martyrdom on the Janiculum successfully ousted the other,
conflicting theories. In the early 1470s, Pietro del Massaio labeled the church on his map of Rome:
S. Petri in Montorio ubi cruci fuit afixus (“San Pietro in Montorio where the cross was affixed”). In
1492, the Florentine priest and poet Giuliano Dati concluded his Stazione, indulgenzie e reliquie:
quadragesimale de l'alma città di Roma (Lenten stations, indulgences and relics of the city of Rome)
by noting the church where “St. Peter was crucified between two columns.”86
One result of the site’s new prominence was the commission for Bramante’s Tempietto, around
1502. And, as we might expect, San Pietro in Montorio quickly became a popular destination for
pilgrims. Fra Mariano da Firenze, in his Itinerarium urbis Romae (Itinerary of the city of Rome) of
1517, reported that many indulgences could be acquired by visiting the church during Lent and on
the feasts of St. Peter, while on other days one hundred days of indulgence were granted.87 There
was no special mention of the Tempietto itself. Pope Paul III seems to be the first to have granted
indulgences for the Tempietto’s chapel, in 1536 (for Masses celebrated on behalf of the dead), as
recorded on the “marble tablet over the door leading to the chapel,” which Andrea Palladio cited
in 1554 and is still in place.88
Despite this official acceptance of the site, its achievement of that status may have been too recent
a development, no matter how convincing the “evidence,” rich the indulgences, or magnificent and
86 87
Newbigin 2004, 257: “San Pietro in Montorio a mezo el Mariano da Firenze 1931, 98.
monte una chiesa vedrai / dove fu santo Pietro crucifisso /
88
fra dua colonne, le qual troverai— / i’ dire’ più ma io sarei Howe 1991, 87. I have benefitted greatly from discussions
prolisso. / Sotto l’altar magiore è collocato / la corda e croce about the Tempietto with Jack Freiberg.
di Pietro beato.”
292 Barbara Wisch

Fig. 8. Stefano Duperac, detail of the district of print dealers from Map of Rome (Rome: Antonio Lafreri 1577), etching with
engraving. Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana (photo © Bibliotheca Hertziana–Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte).

famous the architectural marker, to inspire its addition to the top tier of Rome’s pilgrimage churches.89
Moreover, Spanish royal patronage of the Spanish Franciscans at the Church and Convent of San
Pietro in Montorio since the 1480s and the deepening Spanish presence and power in the papal city
were also likely to have been strong deterrents in the site’s being officially elevated to such preemi-
nence.90 The sanctuaries at Tre Fontane and the Annunziatella had come to be included in the Nine
Churches following a century-long era of devotion by pilgrims following well-worn paths, as Panvinio
reported. As we have seen in the case of Santa Maria del Popolo, even something as powerful as a
papal mandate was not sufficient, in itself, to permanently alter these deeply rooted ritual patterns.

11. Marketing the Matrix

It is not coincidental that the many print dealers, booksellers, printers, and stationers were located
predominantly in the district of Parione, near Ponte Sant’Angelo, the most important bridge to the
Vatican (fig. 8). Via del Parione (today’s Via del Governo Veccho) was part of Via Papale, a major
processional and commercial route leading to the bridge. Lafreri’s shop was located on that street;
89
The Catholic Encyclopedia 1912, 13:173 still noted that conjecture hazarded by Marco Vegio, and which is yet
Ferdinand the Catholic had “the church and convent rebuilt, keenly debated.”
and they were dedicated to St. Peter, following a belief which
90
had gained acceptance owing to a somewhat unfortunate Dandelet 2001, 1–33.
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 293

Mario Cartaro (fl. ca. 1560–1620) had his establishment directly opposite. Converging with Via del
Parione near the Tiber was the area called Banchi, seat of the great banking houses as well as the
esteemed publisher, print dealer, and Lafreri’s archrival, Lorenzo Vaccari.91 The great pilgrimage
thoroughfare, Via del Pellegrino, also joined the Banchi district as it approached the Vatican bridge.
A report of May 1575 mentions that every morning between 8,000 and 10,000 pilgrims passed along
this route on their way to St. Peter’s.92 The extraordinarily heavy traffic of pilgrims, tourists, and
courtiers made this already densely populated district an especially rich center of information and
communication concerning the Church, international affairs, and the city itself.93
Inventories inform us that Le sette chiese print was a mainstay in the Lafreri shop for decades,
even after his heirs took over.94 But we have no record of how many were reprinted or sold. Printer
publishers often included a dedication to a cardinal in hope of financial support. Significant, too,
was the practice of securing of a papal privilegio (“privilege” or copyright) to protect the publisher’s
investment and thwart the production of unauthorized copies.95 Both the dedication and the privile-
gio were important conditions for success of the independent printmaker. It is worth noting in this
regard that, although Lafreri was no stranger to this practice,96 Le sette chiese was issued without
the protection offered by either of these means, unlike the two other significant Holy Year prints
produced by Cavalieri, The Opening of the Holy Door (fig. 9) and Sancta Roma (see fig. 2).
The literature has reiterated the supposition that the print could have functioned as an actual
map or guide for pilgrims.97 In light of recent scholarship on print culture and sacred and secular
cartography, we need to define carefully what the cinquecento expectations were for a “tourist”
map, as well as whether and how the reading public might have availed themselves of such a
tool.98 Although the dimensions of this sheet are “reduced” compared to the large maps of Rome,
such as the Mario Cartaro map of 1576, which measures 910 × 1130 mm,99 I am not convinced
that the decision to issue the print as a foglio reale assured the “great manageability” that some
scholars have claimed.100 It is also worth pointing out that there are no roads depicted on this map,
despite the fact that Gregory had been deeply concerned with providing access to pilgrims and
had intervened with a systematization of relevant streets.101 How, then, did the pilgrim find his or
her way around the city?
91 97
Still fundamental is Massetti Zannini 1980. See also Prosperi Valenti Rodinò 1998, 293. Witcombe 2008, 263.
Massetti Zannini 1981; Bury 2001, 117; Woodward 2007c,
98
775–779; Witcombe 2008. Mączak 1995, 4–29, 254–267. Woodward 1996, 79: “It is
hard to imagine, however, given the burgeoning interest in
92
Bury 2001, 121–122. Even today, a print dealer is located purchasing topographical and geographical images at the
on the Lungotevere, where the two streets join, facing Ponte time, whether for display, study, or topical information, that
Sant’Angelo. the wide dissemination of the idea of the map during the
second half of the sixteenth century had no effect on the way
93
Burke 2002. the middle classes viewed their world.” Woodward 2007a.

94 99
For the inventories, see Ehrle 1908, 43–66. Frutaz 1962, 1:185; 2:pls. 238–246.

95
For the use of the dedication, see Woodward 1996, 69;
Bury 2001, 78. Witcombe 2004, passim, esp. 73–74; xxxi: the
earliest papal privilegio document found for single prints is
dated 1575, but evidence on the prints themselves indicates
that it was granted earlier.
96
Witcombe 2004, 304. The earliest privilege Lafreri held
(that we know with certainty) was in 1557 from the Venetian
senate for Juan de Valverde’s Historia de la composicion del
cuerpo humano, with engravings by Nicolas Beatrizet.
100
Labrot 1997, 188, 215 n. 21.
101
Nicolaus Van Aelst’s Le sette chiese privilegiate di Roma
(The seven privileged churches of Rome) of 1589 (fig. 6) in-
dicates the main thoroughfares with dotted lines, not in terms
of realistic vedute. Perhaps he was responding to Sixtus V’s
1586 bull mandating that streets leading to the basilicas be
widened and constructed so the churches would be joined,
providing greater accessibility, decorum, and frequency of
celebrating Mass. See Gamrath 1987, 136 and note 81 above.
294 Barbara Wisch

Fig. 9. Giovanni Battista de’ Cavalieri, The Opening of the Holy Door, engraving, 1575.
London, British Museum (photo © The Trustees of the British Museum).
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 295

During the cinquecento, city streets were not marked, although they did have names. Most were
generalized descriptions of the great thoroughfares: Via Recta (Straight Street), Via Pubblica (Public
Road), Via Lata (Broadway), Via Maggiore (Great Way), Via Papale (Papal Way), Via del Pellegrino
(Pilgrim’s Way). The multi-folio, large maps of Rome, such as the one designed and engraved by
Duperac and published by Lafreri in 1577, name very few streets. Guidebooks, even those like Pal-
ladio’s that provided itineraries, named the ancient roads leading into the city with their milestones,
not the names of streets within the walls. Churches are located by a gate to the city, at a large piazza,
near a famous ancient monument, adjacent to a contemporary palace, or on one of the famous hills.
Papal heraldry, familial coats of arms, confraternal insignias, commercial and inn signs marked
property holdings and businesses. Renaissance Rome, continuing the medieval traditions of most
cities, was rife with signs attached to or painted on house façades.102 A scene in the Third Loggia of
the Vatican Palace, frescoed by Antonio Tempesta and Paul Bril for Gregory XIII, shows a view of
Via della Scrofa, which is “identified” by a large sow (scrofa) painted high on a wall, representing
the pork butchers who plied their trade in that area. It seems unlikely that maps with streets in a
“pocket” format—of which we have no examples—were ever even produced. Guidebooks, profes-
sional guides, and, in 1575, members of confraternities, served devout visitors as ciceroni (guides).

12. Memory and Meditation

Le sette chiese print might best be understood as a kind of didactic memory guide for reliving the
Holy Year experience or transforming the potential pilgrim into an actual one. In the text, Lafreri
addresses “you,” the Christian viewer, as does Cavalieri in his 1575 engraving of the procession
to open the Holy Door at St. Peter’s on Christmas Eve 1574. In the long Latin text in the lower
margin of Cavalieri’s print, the explanation concludes by exhorting the viewer to undertake earnest
meditation and reflection. The last word before supplying the place and date is contemplare (to
contemplate).103 I believe that we should take Cavalieri at his word and consider this idea of per-
sonal contemplation in relation to late cinquecento methods of individual spiritual enlightenment.
When gazing at Le sette chiese print, the owner might be expected to reflect on the sanctity
of each of the represented churches, through his or her appreciation of their accurately rendered
architecture. The same person could also be inspired to meditate by observing the pilgrims’ pious
gestures and by reciting the prayers associated with each of these locations. In the opening chapters
of Le sette chiese principali di Roma, Panvinio described pilgrims’ proper spiritual preparation in
the two or three days before their actual visits to the churches. He also provided the prayers that
were to be said at each stage of the pilgrim’s progression through the spiritual matrix. From this, we
begin to understand the extent to which real pilgrimage, not just the “virtual” one as experienced
in images and text, was becoming ever more carefully ritualized, with new rules governing prepa-
ration, entries, itineraries, even the gestures of penitential performance, as Borromeo and Paleotti
had instructed. Printed texts and images served to reinforce and to disseminate these increasingly
rigorous ideals, whether at home or during the actual journey.
It has also been suggested that this “invitation to pilgrimage and prayer [was] visualized for a
less cultured public by presenting the passage from one basilica to another by groups of pilgrims.”104

102
Burroughs 1990, 40–41. I have benefitted greatly from
discussions with Charles Burroughs.
103
Bury 2001, 158–159 with a full transcription of the text.
104
Prosperi Valenti Rodinò 1998, 286: “l’invito al pellegri-
naggio e alla pregiera visualizzata per il pubblico meno colto
nel tragitto da una basilica all’altra dei gruppi di pellegrini.”
296 Barbara Wisch

I would advise caution when attempting to characterize this particular marketing “niche.” Pilgrims
coming to Rome, as well as local inhabitants who desired the plenary indulgence, did not neces-
sarily come from the lower or less cultured classes. Holy Year accounts proudly enumerate the
aristocrats and churchmen who arrived daily to participate in the pageantry. The grand confraternal
processions to earn the indulgence also attracted the Roman nobility. The Jesuit Riera reports that
among the 5,000 brethren of the “very old and noble” Gonfalone were members of the aristocratic
Colonna family, who were “recognized dressed in sackcloth, like the most poor of the multitude,
having uncovered their faces when kissing the relics.”105 The rich and famous wore sackcloth and
hoods to ensure their anonymity before God and man alike but were nonetheless differentiated by
a retinue of servants carrying silvered staves, a hierarchical distinction that was much commented
upon (and admired) by onlookers and chroniclers.
Printed maps like the ones we are concerned with here were much more than merely utilitarian
objects. They served as objets de virtù in a domestic setting and epitomized their owners’ cosmopoli-
tan knowledge and experience. Scholars and collectors pasted printed maps into albums alongside
figurative prints and kept them in libraries for study and discussion.106 The splendid Speculum
Romanae Magnificentiae, for which Le sette chiese di Roma was so often selected, was just this kind
of volume. Most examples of the print are preserved in these extraordinary books. Created by a
purchaser who chose the individual prints from which the volume was assembled, these precious
tomes were treasured and often expanded by later owners in succeeding centuries.107
Le sette chiese has also been described as “neo-medieval” in conception, for its privileging of
spiritual values over the mathematical principles of other Renaissance-era representations. 108 Rather,
as I have tried to show, these two aspects have been innovatively and effectively fused. By delineat-
ing the churches “from the original,” the print has been said to invest “all possibility of progress
and change within the grandiose physical fabric of the basilicas, rather than the bodies that move
between them.”109 This statement might be tempered by considering, for example, the observations
of the fifth-century bishop Paulinus of Nola, who perceived a metaphor for the process of spiritual
transformation in his own restorations of churches. Churches “are old and new at the same time,”
he wrote in a poem, “and also neither new nor old, the same and not the same simultaneously,
which is the symbol of future and present good.”110 The ecclesiastical architecture represented in
the print—which records and preserves the physical properties of these churches as they were in the
Holy Year of 1575 (to the extent of showing the progress of reconstruction on St. Peter’s Basilica
by that time)—might have been conceived to inspire serious meditation on the concept of spiritual
metamorphosis as it was understood in those years.111 This process of transformation seems to be
embodied by the pilgrims kneeling in devotion before the major churches, who have emerged twice
as large as those still processing to them.

105
Riera 1580, 73–74: “Et per essere questa Compagnia molto
antica, & nobile, i Signori Colonne si furono riconosciuti
vestiti di sacchi, come i più poveri del numero nel basciare
le Reliquie, havendo scoperto il loro viso.”
106
Woodward 1996, 76.
107
The editions that eventually entered the great libraries
differ greatly in the choice and number of prints, although
they bear the same title and editor. See note 13 above.
stampo neomedievale.”
109
San Juan 2001, 115.
110
Hansen 2003, 169, quoting Carmen 28, lines 218–220.
111
Higginson 2003, esp. 205, who sees “in the politics of
spectatorship” that the experience of simultaneity of past and
present in St. Peter’s around the year 1600 served as a site of
“ascendancy over time and, consequently, of papal triumph.”

108
Prosperi Valenti Rodinò 1998, 287: “Una spiritualità di
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 297

Fig. 10. Giacomo Gherardi, Septem primariae romanae Urbis ecclesiae, engraving, 1590.
Rome, Biblioteca Angelica (photo Biblioteca Angelica).

13. The Matrix Reincised

Le sette chiese di Roma played a dynamic role in formulating the historic memory of Catholic Eu-
rope. In remarkable ways, the print powerfully codified the sacred topography of the Eternal City
and the Roman Church’s pivotal role in the process of salvation. As the first in a series of printed
images that increasingly promoted and preserved the memory of the Jubilees,112 it also captured the
transformative potency of this special pilgrimage and the Holy Year indulgence. In the process, it
focused visual attention on the two additional churches that had augmented the original seven in
the pilgrims’ experience.
Giacomo Gherardi published an updated version of Le sette chiese di Roma in 1590. Among
the revisions to the 1575 original, Tre Fontane and the Annunziatella are provided with labels (fig.
10). In 1599, Antonio Tempesta transformed the Lafreri model in his Septem Urbis ecclesiae cum

112
Huelsen 1915, 10 n. 1.
 298 Barbara Wisch

Fig. 11. Antonio Tempesta designer, Giacomo Lauro engraver, Septem Urbis ecclesiae cum earum reliquiis, stationibus et indulgentiis (Rome:
Giacomo Lauro 1599), engraving. London, British Museum (photo © The Trustees of the British Museum).

earum reliquiis, stationibus et indulgentiis (The seven churches of Rome with their relics, stations
and indulgences) by including only the Nine Churches as well as Latin texts that provide a list
of relics and the days on which the pilgrim might earn the most indulgences (fig. 11). Tempesta’s
design, engraved and published by Giacomo Lauro, officially codified in pictorial form the Nine
Churches of Rome and bore the papal privilegio.113 Then in 1630, Giacomo Lauro revised Tem-
pesta’s design by translating the texts into Italian and adding a schematic diagram delineating
the route for visiting the Nine Churches (fig. 12).
Looking back at the highly competitive and ambitious print culture of cinquecento Rome,
Lafreri’s Le sette chiese di Roma was a remarkable achievement. It literally inscribed new patterns
of pilgrimage and production on a venerable matrix.

113
Del Pesco 1985.
 The Matrix: Le sette chiese di Roma of 1575 and the Image of Pilgrimage 299

Fig. 12. Giacomo Lauro, detail of the route of the Nine Churches from Septem Urbis ecclesiae cum earum reliquiis,
stationibus et indulgentiis, engraving, 1630. Chicago, University of Chicago, Library,
Special Collections Research Center (photo Library).
300 Barbara Wisch

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