Saint Francis and the Church of San Francesco a Ripa
Title
Description
The Church of San Francesco a Ripa (or Ripa Grande) represents the oldest and perhaps the most significant Franciscan memory in Rome. Before the foundation of the church in 1229, there was a Benedictine monastery including a pre-existing church of San Biagio. Saint Francis of Assisi (1181/82 – 1226) in his lifetime paid more than six visits to Rome starting in 1209, and had always stayed there, thanks to the arrangements made by a faithful friend of his, Giacoma Frangipane de’ Settesoli (later known as “Fra Jacopa”). During his 1219 visit, Saint Francis with his fellow Franciscans began to support the hospice of San Biagio to host pilgrims, who arrived from the nearby harbor of Ripa Grande.
Three years after Saint Francis’s death, Pope Gregory IX handed the San Biagio complex over to the Franciscans, who immediately restructured and expanded the small church and renamed it as San Francesco a Ripa, and the hospice was turned into a convent. While the Franciscan tradition claims that Fra Jacopa funded the renovation, recent studies indicate that the benefactor might have been the Anguillara family. This church used to be decorated with frescos depicting Saint Francis’s life by Pietro Cavallini (who also did the Last Judgement in Santa Cecilia, and Mary’s cycle in Santa Maria in Trastevere). This cycle probably served as prototype for the frescos in the Upper Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi. The current church was built in the 17th century.
What was this quarter of Trastevere like during the 13th century? At that time, Trastevere was yet to see a growth in its inhabitants and population. Within the Aurelian walls, the inhabited area (abitato) was mostly concentrated along the Tiber river bank, due to the prosperity of some river ports and the shortage of water supply inland. Located a bit inland from the port of Ripa Grande, and near Trastevere’s southern-most gate of Porta Portese, the Church of San Francesco a Ripa was on the borderline between the abitato and the disabitato. However, the existence of a Franciscan community at San Francesco a Ripa re-defined the area around it. From the early 13th century onward, the Franciscan community continued to be active, so much so that Porta Portese was commonly referred to as Porta San Francesco and Ripa Grande was nicknamed the “Pilgrim’s Bank.”
The 13th-century configuration of Saint Francis can be maintained after all because San Francesco a Ripa was considered geographically marginal. In the 1250s, the Franciscan brothers settled in the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria Aracoeli on Campidoglio and made it the most important Roman seat of Franciscanism. Faced with the central and prestigious position of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome, the modest complex of San Francesco a Ripa with some surrounding premises gradually lost attention. No influential patrons believed that a peripheral church located in an area lacking urban planning and in bad conditions deserved any investment. It is precisely because of this geographical marginalization of San Francesco a Ripa that it preserves the Franciscan integrity. Saint Francis and his lifestyle also bear ideological significance to the 13th-century Roman society. There was a social phenomenon for sensing the contrast between the begging Franciscans and the cardinals at their luxurious dinners in intense juxtaposition to each other. Robert Brentano argues that Saint Francis’s way of life “both met a taste and threatened the security of his own time; in both these ways it heightened and extended and symbolized existing or already potential tastes and fears and tensions.” In this way, Saint Francis answered the needs and threatened the fears of 13th-century Rome.
The room where Saint Francis slept still exists; so does the stone on which he lay his head. Against the wall where Francis’s bed used to be, there is a baroque machine in which a great number of relics of later Franciscan revolve, and in its center there is a 13th-century portrait of Saint Francis attributed to Margaritone d’Arezzo. The room can be visited by request. Visitors go into the sacristy and enter a narrow corridor to their right. Before taking a stair up to reach the room, visitors can see two relics of Saint Francis displayed in the glass window on their right-hand side.
Creator
Source
Brentano, Robert. “The Spiritual Family.” in Rome Before Avignon, a Social History of Thirteenth Century Rome. 211 – 260. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1991.
Krautheimer, Richard. Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Mondadori, Francesco. “San Francesco a Ripa.” in Trastevere, Guida ai Luoghi Dove Inizio il Cristianesimo a Roma. 57 – 68. Rome: Sant’Egidio, 2015.
Robbins, Deborah King. “A Case Study of Medieval Urban Process: Rome’s Trastevere (1250-1450).” Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1989.
San Francesco a Ripa Grande: Shrine, Convent and Parish. “Saint Francis and Rome,” “The Monastery of San Francesco a Ripa,” and “Room of St. Francis.” Accessed May 22nd, 2017. http://en.sanfrancescoaripa.com.
Date
Identifier
Coverage
Spatial Coverage
Description
The Church of San Francesco a Ripa (or Ripa Grande) represents the oldest and perhaps the most significant Franciscan memory in Rome. Before the foundation of the church in 1229, there was a Benedictine monastery including a pre-existing church of San Biagio. Saint Francis of Assisi (1181/82 – 1226) in his lifetime paid more than six visits to Rome starting in 1209, and had always stayed there, thanks to the arrangements made by a faithful friend of his, Giacoma Frangipane de’ Settesoli (later known as “Fra Jacopa”). During his 1219 visit, Saint Francis with his fellow Franciscans began to support the hospice of San Biagio to host pilgrims, who arrived from the nearby harbor of Ripa Grande.
Three years after Saint Francis’s death, Pope Gregory IX handed the San Biagio complex over to the Franciscans, who immediately restructured and expanded the small church and renamed it as San Francesco a Ripa, and the hospice was turned into a convent. While the Franciscan tradition claims that Fra Jacopa funded the renovation, recent studies indicate that the benefactor might have been the Anguillara family. This church used to be decorated with frescos depicting Saint Francis’s life by Pietro Cavallini (who also did the Last Judgement in Santa Cecilia, and Mary’s cycle in Santa Maria in Trastevere). This cycle probably served as prototype for the frescos in the Upper Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi. The current church was built in the 17th century.
What was this quarter of Trastevere like during the 13th century? At that time, Trastevere was yet to see a growth in its inhabitants and population. Within the Aurelian walls, the inhabited area (abitato) was mostly concentrated along the Tiber river bank, due to the prosperity of some river ports and the shortage of water supply inland. Located a bit inland from the port of Ripa Grande, and near Trastevere’s southern-most gate of Porta Portese, the Church of San Francesco a Ripa was on the borderline between the abitato and the disabitato. However, the existence of a Franciscan community at San Francesco a Ripa re-defined the area around it. From the early 13th century onward, the Franciscan community continued to be active, so much so that Porta Portese was commonly referred to as Porta San Francesco and Ripa Grande was nicknamed the “Pilgrim’s Bank.”
The 13th-century configuration of Saint Francis can be maintained after all because San Francesco a Ripa was considered geographically marginal. In the 1250s, the Franciscan brothers settled in the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria Aracoeli on Campidoglio and made it the most important Roman seat of Franciscanism. Faced with the central and prestigious position of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome, the modest complex of San Francesco a Ripa with some surrounding premises gradually lost attention. No influential patrons believed that a peripheral church located in an area lacking urban planning and in bad conditions deserved any investment. It is precisely because of this geographical marginalization of San Francesco a Ripa that it preserves the Franciscan integrity. Saint Francis and his lifestyle also bear ideological significance to the 13th-century Roman society. There was a social phenomenon for sensing the contrast between the begging Franciscans and the cardinals at their luxurious dinners in intense juxtaposition to each other. Robert Brentano argues that Saint Francis’s way of life “both met a taste and threatened the security of his own time; in both these ways it heightened and extended and symbolized existing or already potential tastes and fears and tensions.” In this way, Saint Francis answered the needs and threatened the fears of 13th-century Rome.
The room where Saint Francis slept still exists; so does the stone on which he lay his head. Against the wall where Francis’s bed used to be, there is a baroque machine in which a great number of relics of later Franciscan revolve, and in its center there is a 13th-century portrait of Saint Francis attributed to Margaritone d’Arezzo. The room can be visited by request. Visitors go into the sacristy and enter a narrow corridor to their right. Before taking a stair up to reach the room, visitors can see two relics of Saint Francis displayed in the glass window on their right-hand side.
Creator
Russell Li (2019)Date
n.d.Coverage
1200sSource
Brentano, Robert. “The Spiritual Family.” in Rome Before Avignon, a Social History of Thirteenth Century Rome. 211 – 260. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1991.
Krautheimer, Richard. Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Mondadori, Francesco. “San Francesco a Ripa.” in Trastevere, Guida ai Luoghi Dove Inizio il Cristianesimo a Roma. 57 – 68. Rome: Sant’Egidio, 2015.
Robbins, Deborah King. “A Case Study of Medieval Urban Process: Rome’s Trastevere (1250-1450).” Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1989.
San Francesco a Ripa Grande: Shrine, Convent and Parish. “Saint Francis and Rome,” “The Monastery of San Francesco a Ripa,” and “Room of St. Francis.” Accessed May 22nd, 2017. http://en.sanfrancescoaripa.com.