Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption, St. Hermagoras and St. Fortunatus: A Christian Monument in Aquileia
Site at a Glance
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- 4.8
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- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical, Medieval
- Civilizations
- Carolingian, Holy Roman Empire, Roman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Basilica
On this page26 sections
History
The Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption, St. Hermagoras and St. Fortunatus is a Roman Catholic church in Aquileia, Italy, developed through repeated construction on the remains of earlier Christian complexes. Its origins reach back to the period after 313, when the Edict of Milan allowed Christian communities to build openly, and its present form is principally Romanesque with later Gothic elements. The basilica stands within the ancient Roman city of Aquileia, founded in 181 BC as a fortified outpost near the Natissa River and the Adriatic Sea.
Roman Aquileia and the early Christian community
Aquileia occupied a position that encouraged trade and contact between northern and eastern Europe. These connections helped the city become prosperous and culturally diverse. Christianity was present there during the early Christian period, and the community is associated with Gnostic religious movements that emphasized salvation through special or hidden knowledge.
Tradition states that the apostle Mark came to Aquileia on the commission of Peter. He is said to have converted Hermagoras and made him the city’s first bishop. Hermagoras and his deacon Fortunatus were later executed during the persecution under Nero. Alongside the Virgin Mary, they became the patron saints of the basilica. Their story is represented in the frescoes of the crypt.
During the persecutions, Christians reportedly gathered secretly in a private Roman house, or domus, on the eastern edge of Aquileia. Remains of that building survive beneath the present complex. After Constantine I ended official persecution of Christianity and the Edict of Milan in 313 permitted the open construction of churches, Bishop Theodore established the first major Christian complex on the site with the emperor’s direct support. The scale and expense of the project reflect the prosperity of Aquileia’s Christian community.
The Theodorian and late antique complexes
The first large complex was enlarged in the mid-fourth century under Bishop Fortunatianus and again during the episcopate of Chromatius, who served from 388 to 407. Chromatius’s phase coincided with the greatest splendor of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, a major ecclesiastical jurisdiction headed by a patriarch, and with the growth of a large Christian community.
Aquileia also maintained contact with the Christian church of Alexandria through Mediterranean trade. These connections influenced Aquileian theological thought during disputes over Arianism, a movement that contested the full divinity of Christ, and are associated with the presence of Athanasius of Alexandria in the region.
In 452, Attila and the Huns devastated Aquileia. The northern basilica was burned and never rebuilt. The city’s population declined sharply, and major building projects were abandoned. The remaining religious complex continued to function, including under Byzantine rule.
Maxentius and the medieval basilica
Beginning around 811, Patriarch Maxentius renovated the earlier buildings with financial support from Charlemagne and began constructing the predecessor of the present basilica. The southern hall was reused, while a crypt was created for relics belonging to local saints, including Hermagoras and Fortunatus.
An earthquake in 988 caused extensive damage. Patriarch Poppone then undertook a major Romanesque reorganization, completed when the basilica was consecrated on 13 July 1031, the feast of Hermagoras and Fortunatus. His program rebuilt the facade, raised the side walls, installed a wooden roof, reconstructed the altar, decorated the apse, and added the campanile, or bell tower.
An earthquake in 1348 caused further major destruction. Patriarch Marquard of Randeck directed the restoration, which introduced Gothic pointed arches and raised parts of the church. Venetian craftsmen later completed the principal wooden roof structure in the fifteenth century.
Ecclesiastical and modern history
The basilica retained patriarchal status from 432 until 1751. In that year, Pope Benedict XIV ended the Patriarchate of Aquileia and divided its ecclesiastical authority and treasures between the dioceses of Gorizia and Udine. The basilica became Aquileia’s parish church in 1781 and has retained that function. It remains a Roman Catholic church of the Roman rite under the Archdiocese of Gorizia.
Archaeological work begun by Austrian authorities in the late nineteenth century continued in and around the basilica under Celso Costantini during and after the First World War. Excavation continued despite wartime disruption and bombing, which caused damage described as limited. On Costantini’s initiative, the ancient cemetery around the basilica was cleared and moved in 1921. Its former area became the Cemetery of the Heroes, a First World War cemetery behind the basilica.
The basilica and the archaeological area of Aquileia were inscribed in 1998 as the UNESCO World Heritage Site called “Archaeological Area and the Patriarchal Basilica of Aquileia.” The church is also protected as Italian cultural heritage. It continues to serve the local population while forming part of Aquileia’s archaeological and museum complex.
Remains
The present basilica is a Romanesque church with later Gothic additions. It has a nave, two aisles, a transept, a central semicircular apse enclosed externally by square walls, two lateral apses, a portico, and a wooden roof. The building measures approximately 65 metres in length, 30 metres in width, and 23 metres in height. Its transept is approximately 43 metres long and 9.5 metres wide, while two rows of arcades divide the three principal naves.
Early Christian buildings and archaeological layers
The Theodorian halls
The original Theodorian complex had a horseshoe-shaped plan formed around three principal halls. Two parallel halls ran from west to east, each measuring approximately 37 by 20 metres. A transverse hall, approximately 29 by 13 metres, extended from south to north. A passage connected the halls, which had no apses. Each hall contained six columns supporting a richly decorated coffered ceiling and a mosaic pavement made with white tesserae.
One parallel hall served as the church proper. The other was used for Christian instruction and preparation for baptism, while the transverse hall provided space for changing clothes and confirmation. The northern hall was later enlarged under Fortunatianus to approximately 73 by 31 metres and divided into three aisles by twenty-eight columns. Its ground plan is marked on the grass in the northeastern part of the complex. Attila’s forces destroyed the hall, and it was never rebuilt.
The southern hall and connecting passage
The southern hall was enlarged under Chromatius, or possibly after Aquileia’s destruction in 452. The dating and attribution remain debated. In its enlarged form, it measured approximately 65 by 29 metres and was divided into three aisles by twenty-eight columns. It stood before a portico and courtyard connected to the baptistery.
The foundations of the former halls are preserved in the Crypt of the Excavations. Much of the northern hall’s mosaic pavement has been reconstructed there, except in the area lost beneath the campanile. The southern hall’s pavement remains visible in the nave of the present basilica. Most of the connecting passage remains buried, although its southernmost section is exposed. The oldest transverse hall had a cocciopesto pavement, a hard floor made from crushed brick or stone mixed with lime or cement, while the southern part of the passage had a comparatively simple mosaic pavement.
Archaeological excavation areas
The Crypt of the Excavations extends from the basilica toward the campanile. It was created through archaeological excavation rather than as a historical liturgical crypt and now functions as a museum space. It preserves parts of the earlier mosaics and buildings, including a prestigious Roman structure and earlier houses.
Excavation exposed three superimposed periods extending from the beginning of the Roman Empire to the end of the fourth century. The remains include earlier Roman structures, Christian buildings, mosaics, foundations, baptismal installations, and successive floor levels. Beside the Holy Sepulchre, the lowest pavement belongs to a Roman villa of the Augustan age. Above it is a middle cocciopesto pavement, followed by an upper geometric pavement bearing traces of blackening attributed to Attila’s fire.
The former bishop’s residence was incorporated into the expanded late antique complex by covered galleries. Its outline is marked by white lines on Capitoline Square. Protective glass walkways cover sections of the exposed mosaic pavement and also indicate the floor level of the cathedral in the fifteenth century.
The late antique mosaic pavements
The southern hall mosaic
The fourth-century mosaic pavement of the southern hall covers approximately 760 square metres and is exposed in the main church. It was uncovered between 1909 and 1912 after the red and white tiled floor installed under Poppone was removed. The polychrome pavement is arranged in four principal sections. It includes portraits of donors, male and female portraits set within circular frames, personifications of the seasons, and images of animals, birds, fish, deer, gazelles, storks, grapes, and the Solomon’s knot.
Among the Christian images is the Good Shepherd carrying a sheep on his shoulders, a composition influenced by classical representations of Mercury. Another panel shows a winged Victory holding a crown and palm. A marine scene presents the story of Jonah. The prophet prays during a storm, is swallowed by a sea monster, expelled by it, and then rests beneath a pergola of pumpkin vines. The monster is a pistrix, a fantastical sea creature from Greco-Roman artistic tradition that, in Christian art, could evoke death and resurrection. Fish, octopuses, mollusks, and ducks fill the surrounding sea.
Near the center of the marine pavement, a mosaic inscription dedicated to Bishop Theodore states that, with God’s help and that of the congregation entrusted to him, he completed and consecrated the church. Other Christian imagery includes the fish, or ichthys, an early Christian symbol formed from the Greek initials of “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior,” together with fishing imagery and repeated Solomon’s knots.
The cock and tortoise panels
A later mosaic panel shows a cock confronting a tortoise. The same scene is repeated in the northern hall and in the Crypt of the Excavations. Its meaning remains uncertain. It has been interpreted as a struggle between good and evil, a contrast between light and darkness, or a reference to the Arian controversy.
In the panel, a small column bears a victor’s prize beside symbols interpreted as infinity and the Trinity or the cross. The repeated image demonstrates the importance of the motif within the mosaic decoration, while its precise theological meaning remains unsettled.
The northern hall mosaic
The mosaics of the northern hall contain difficult-to-interpret images, including lobsters in treetops, baskets of mushrooms, snails, a hippogriff, a goat, a ram, a rabbit, a Star of David, a cock, a tortoise, and numerous birds. Some interpretations connect these unusual images with Alexandrian Gnosticism and the text Pistis Sophia, but their meanings remain uncertain.
Liturgical buildings and medieval additions
The Church of the Pagans and baptistery
The early Christian complex included a porticoed area known as the Church of the Pagans, where catechumens, people receiving instruction before baptism, assembled. A portico connected it with the basilica and formed part of a west-to-east ritual route from instruction and baptism toward entry into the church.
The baptistery dates from the fifth century and stands opposite the basilica entrance. It is square on the outside and octagonal within. Its original arrangement included an ambulatory, six columns, and a dome. A medieval rebuilding removed three of the four large corner niches, and the ancient dome collapsed in 1790.
The present hexagonal baptismal basin was restored in 1739 at the expense of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor. Excavations in the early 1980s revealed an earlier octagonal basin. An earlier oval font dating from after the Theodorian complex is displayed in the Crypt of the Excavations.
The Maxentian basilica and crypt
The predecessor of the present basilica, built under Maxentius, reused the southern Theodorian hall. It added a short transept, a central semicircular apse, two lateral apses, a narrower forward portico, and the Church of the Pagans. The ninth-century crypt was created during the same reorganization.
The Crypt of the Frescoes lies beneath the presbytery. It began as a square, three-aisled room built under Maxentius to house relics of local saints. During Poppone’s eleventh-century work, it acquired its present form, including an apse.
The Crypt of the Frescoes
The crypt contains Byzantine-style paintings depicting episodes from the lives of Jesus and Mary, saints, the Dormition of the Virgin, and the lives of Mark and Hermagoras. A lower scene shows a western knight confronting an eastern archer on horseback. The frescoes are generally dated to the second half of the twelfth century and associated with Ulrico di Treffen, although some scholars place them in the first half of the eleventh century.
The cycle presents the legendary origins of Christianity in Aquileia. Scenes include Mark’s arrival, the consecration of Hermagoras, the baptism of converts, and Hermagoras’s martyrdom and burial. The cycle also includes Christ’s Passion and figures connected with the history of the basilica.
The apse contains frescoes of the enthroned Virgin and Child, saints, martyrs, and Bishop Poppone. Poppone presents a model of the basilica to the Virgin, while Emperor Conrad II appears between Hermagoras and Fortunatus. A long inscription records the consecration of 13 July 1031.
The Holy Sepulchre
Near the entrance in the left aisle stands the Holy Sepulchre, an eleventh-century reproduction of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It was used during Holy Week liturgies and remains one of the basilica’s medieval features.
Tribune, chapel, and bell tower
The Tribuna Magna and high altar
The Tribuna Magna is a marble tribune made by Bernardino da Bissone in 1493. Around 1498, Sebastiano and Antonio da Osteno created bas-reliefs for the high altar. They depict the Virgin and the basilica’s patron saints, Hermagoras and Fortunatus.
The Chapel of Saint Ambrose
The Chapel of Saint Ambrose, also called the Torriani Chapel, was commissioned in 1298 by Patriarch Raimondo della Torre as a burial chapel for his family. It contains the tombs of Raimondo, Pagano, Rainaldo, and Ludovico della Torre, the tomb slab of Allegranza da Rho, and wall paintings of the Crucifixion and the Della Torre family.
The campanile
The campanile rises 73 metres and was completed in 1031. It is built in opus quadratum, a Roman masonry technique using regularly cut rectangular blocks laid in horizontal courses, with large marble blocks reused from the Roman amphitheatre. Tradition holds that its design was inspired by the Pharos of Alexandria and influenced later bell towers. Its base was widened after the earthquake of 1348, although the tower itself survived that event.
Portico, museum spaces, and the First World War cemetery
The portico and Chromatius Hall
The Church of the Pagans and the baptistery are linked to the basilica by a portico. A mosaic of a peacock, associated with eternity and the salvation of the soul, once decorated it. A surviving fragment, including eyes apparently inlaid with gold, is displayed in the Chromatius Hall.
The Chromatius Hall, also called the Südhalle, is a museum space built in 2011 over one of the former ninth-century rooms beside the baptistery. The foundations of these rooms were rediscovered in 1893, and the rooms probably disappeared after a medieval earthquake.
The Cemetery of the Heroes
The Cemetery of the Heroes lies outside the basilica, behind and around the apse. It contains First World War graves, including those of Maria Bergamas, ten of the eleven Italian Unknown Soldiers, General Alessandro Ricordi, and Captain Riccardo della Torre. Maria Bergamas selected the body of the Italian Unknown Soldier whose remains were transferred to the Altare della Patria in Rome in 1921.
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