Three - Emblems of Time and Political Power

Summary

One of the most important documents for dating Santi Quattro Coronati’s extensive ensemble of mural decorations is the marble slab embedded in the south wall of the Sylvester Chapel (Figure 3.1). The neatly chiseled inscription records Stefano Conti’s patronage, and lists the numerous relics contained in the oratory’s altar. It also reveals a great deal about how time was measured in papal Rome during the thirteenth century:

This chapel was dedicated in praise of almighty God and in honor of the blessed Sylvester, pope and confessor, by Rainaldus, Bishop of Ostia, who embraced the prayers of Stefano, cardinal priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere, who commissioned the construction of the chapel and residence. In the name of God, Amen. The year of our Lord 1246, indiction IV, on the Friday before Palm Sunday, in the fourth year of the pontificate of Innocent IV.

The inscription declares that the Bishop of Ostia (i.e., Rinaldo de’ Conti di Segni, a relative of Stefano Conti and the future Pope Alexander IV) consecrated the chapel on a precise historical date that can be rendered according to the modern Western calendar as March 30, 1246. Yet, as it was presented to thirteenth-century viewers, the date came swaddled in a series of parameters that publicized the papacy’s power in the arena of time reckoning. More specifically, viewers were impelled to understand the chapel’s moment of consecration in relation to four ecclesiastical parameters: the birth of Christ, the liturgical calendar year, the papacy’s fiscal calendar, and the reign of the current pontiff. In other words, the conception of time conveyed by the inscription can be seen as a multifaceted expression of ecclesiastical authority.