SAINT Mary Major is a fifth- century basilica in Liberiana 27 in the upper town of Bergamo, Northern Italy. It is dedicated to the Blessed Mother of God.
The word major indicates its importance and historical rarity.
It is called a patriarchal cathedral to emphasize that it is one of the three great churches in Vatican, headed by a patriarch, the pope of Rome.
Liturgical ceremonies on the high altar are reserved for the pope on certain occasions notably on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Heaven. It was a local feast until the 14th century.
This feast was included in the Roman calendar in 1586.
Because of a dream
The church on the summit of Esquiline Hill, one of the seven hills in Rome, was built because of a dream. John and his wife, a wealthy childless couple, often prayed to the Virgin Mary on how their wealth could be put to good use.
The Blessed Mother appeared in a dream one summer night in August, requesting that a church be built on a spot identified by heaps of snow.
Pope Liberius also dreamt of the site. So, it was built and it was named Liberian Basilica, after the pope who was head of the church in 352-366.
Saint Pope Sixtus III (432-440) in 435 reconstructed and restored the basilica. On August 5 it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary as Mother of God, “the first, and for many years, the only church to be so dedicated in Rome,” according to Fr. Nil Guillemette, SJ, in Stars Forever.
The event was significant since the pope took office after the Council of Ephesus in 431, which approved that Mary is the Mother of God, or Theotokos, as used in the Eastern Orthodox Church as a title of the Virgin Mary. It negated Nestorianism, the doctrine that there were two separate persons, one human and one divine, in Christ. Nestorianism believes that “Jesus was not God: therefore Mary could not be called Theotokos, Mother of God.”
Magnificent center of worship
The basilica is 246 feet high and 302 feet in width, with a bell tower of 240 feet in height, the highest in Rome.
It has miraculously retained its original structure—traditionally Roman and classical with fifth-century mosaics despite the 1348 earthquake.
The basilica enshrines Salus Populi Romani (Salvation of the Roman People), a famous icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary, perhaps the oldest Marian image. It was painted by Saint Luke, the Evangelist, using a wooden table in Nazareth.
The crystal reliquary of the Holy Crib of the Infant Jesus is also in the Basilica. Designed by Guiseppe Valadier, the Bethlehem crypt, a relic of the manger which consists of five boards of sycamore wood is believed to have been brought to the church during the papacy of Theodore I (642-649). Marian advocates call it Santa Maria ad Praesepem because of the manger.
Because of the legend, the church was also named Our Lady of Snows from 1568-1969. On the feast day of Our Lady of Snows on August 5, rose petals from the dome are dropped.
The coffered ceiling is gilded with Inca gold from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela of Spain. The semicircular vaulted apse of the church depicts the coronation of the Blessed Mother, a 1925 artwork of Jacopo Torritti, a Franciscan friar.
The nave of the basilica represents stories in the Exodus, where Moses was striking the waters of the Red Sea, and the Egyptian soldiers with their horses drowned in the sea.
Saint Jerome, one of the four original Doctors of the Church, was buried in the basilica. He translated the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into Latin, which became known as the Vulgate.
The basilica has also a museum, which was opened by Saint Pope John Paul II in 2001. Located underground, it is accessed through the Saint Michael Chapel. The collections include excavated parts of the ancient basilica, liturgical items, reliquaries, vestments pictures, manuscripts and musical scores.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization declared the Basilica of Saint Mary Major a World Heritage Site in 1980.
It has the status of a foreign embassy and guarded by the police of the Vatican City State.
Damo-Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.