Images: Artifexinopere
Clavis number: ECMA 101
Other descriptors: none
Location: Basilica of St. Mary of the Altar of Heaven (Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara Coeli)
Category: altars
Related literature: Sybilline Oracles, Tiburtine Sibyl
Featured characters and locations: Augustus (emperor), Jesus Christ, Mary (Virgin), Sibyl.
1. DESCRIPTION
Material: Cosmati stone
Size: undetermined
Image and inscription: the twelfth-century altar, located in the Helena Chapel, portrays a kneeling figure of Augustus and a representation of the Virgin and Child in a mandorla. Around the top of the altar is found the inscription: LVMINIS HANC ALMAM MATRIS QVI SCANDIS AD AVLAMCVNCTARVM PRIMA QVE FVIT ORBE SITA, NOSCAS QVOD CESAR TVNC STRVXIT OCTAVIANVS HANC ARA CELI SACRA PROLES CVM PATET EI (You who climb to this church of the Virgin, which was the first such site in the city, should know that Caesar Octavian has constructed this when from an altar in the heaven, the holy child is revealed to him).
Former images: in the later, Franciscan basilica, Pietro Cavallini depicted the legend of Augustus in an apse fresco in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. The fresco included a portrayal of Mary and the child Jesus adored by Augustus. It was destroyed in the sixteenth-century remodeling (Noreen 2008: 101–102).
Original inscription: allegedly written on the original high altar: Nocus quod Caesar tunc Octavianus hanc ara, celi sacra proles cum patet ei (You know that then Caesar Octavian erected this altar, when the offspring of heaven was revealed to him)
Dates: ca. 1st cent. BCE (according to legend); ca. 7th cent. (according to church establishment); ca. 12th cent. (Cosmati altar)
Provenance: The Augustus Altar is associated with the Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara Coeli (previously named the Santa Maria in Capitolio), which is proposed to have been established around the seventh century by Greek-speaking Byzantine-rite monks on the Capitoline Hill (Arx Capitolina) of Rome. According to a legend found in various texts, notably in the Mirabilia Urbis Romae (ca. 1140) and in the Golden Legend, the Augustus Altar was built prior to the founding of the Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara Coeli by Caesar Augustus, after he experienced a vision that foretold the advent of Christ (possibly in the first century BCE) (Lanciani 1892: 24). According to the legend, after speaking with the Tiburtine Sibyl about whether he should be worshiped as a deity, Augustus had a vision that involved the appearance of the Virgin Mary with Jesus in heaven while a voice relayed that the world’s saviour (Jesus) is to be born from a virgin (Mary) and another voice proclaimed the area of the vision the “altar of the Son of God.” In response, Augustus built the Ara Primogenti Dei (Altar of the Firstborn) at this site, which happened to be on the Capitoline Hill and where the founders of the Santa Maria in Capitolio decided to establish their church; the legend also influenced church leaders to change the name of the church in alignment with the legend, thus resulting in the name of the Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara Coeli in the thirteenth century.
Prior to the establishment of the church, the area was the site of the Temple of Juno Monetah up until the fourth century CE (Meadows and Williams 2001: 28). Arx Capitolina, the temple’s position on the Arx Capitolina would have made it one of the more prominent temples in Rome. This pivotal position in the city and the established legend of Augustus allowed for the Basilica di Sta. Maria in Ara Coeli to attract the interest of various religious groups over the centuries who in turn shaped the Augustus Altar and its church into what it is today.
Ownership of the church was transferred to the Benedictines by the tenth century and then to the Franciscans in the twelfth. Under the Franciscans, the church was subject to various changes including the embracing of the legend of the Augustus Altar by changing the institution’s name to the Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, enlarging the church’s physical structure, and importantly, the addition of a Marian icon to the altar’s tabernacle (Noreen 2008). This icon of Mary is said to be painted by Luke, a fact that, when combined with the legendary importance and historic background of the church, helped this church increase in its prominence. In the 1560s, significant renovations were made to all sections of the church, including to the main altar.
2. RELATION TO APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE
The Sibylline literature (including the Sibylline Oracles and the Tiburtine Sibyl) contain oracles in pagan guise about the coming of Jesus. In Tib. Sib. 3, the Sibyl addresses the citizens of Rome on the Aventine Hill, predicting the life of Jesus during the reign of Augustus. The Sibylline Oracles contain various Christian interpolations; book 6 is entirely a hymn to Christ.
The earliest reference to the Augustus legend is by John Malalas (491–578):
Augustus Caesar Octavianus, in the fifty-fifth year of his reign, in the month of Hyperbereteus, or October, approached the oracle. He sacrificed a hecatomb and asked the Pythian, “Who will rule the city of Rome after me?” There was no answer from the Pythian. Again he performed a sacrifice, and he asked why the oracle had remained silent. No response was given to him. Then he received these words from the Pythian: “A Hebrew child, God ruling over the blessed, bids me to leave this temple and to go again to Hades. Therefore, go away from our altars [leaders].” And Augustus Caesar having come away from the oracle and having arrived at the Capitoline, built there a large, tall altar, on which he wrote with Roman letters: THIS IS THE ALTAR OF THE FIRST-BORN GOD. This altar is still on the Capitoline even now… (Chronography 10.5; see also the Laterculus Imperatorum, 7th cent.)
The next reference appears in the Mirabilia Urbis Romae (comp. ca. 1140–1150 CE), a tourist guide for pilgrims to the city of Rome:
“In the time of Emperor Octavian the senators, seeing him to be of such great beauty that none could look into his eyes and of such great prosperity and peace that he made all the world render tribute to him, said to him, “We desire to worship you because the godhead is in you; for if it were not so all things would not prosper with you as they do.” But he was reluctant and demanded a delay and called the Sibyl of Tibur to him, and he repeated all that the senators had said. She begged for three days time, during which she kept a strict fast, and then answered him after the third day. “These things, lord emperor, shall surely come to pass: Token of doom: the earth shall drip with sweat; / From heaven shall come the king for evermore, / And present in the flesh shall judge the world.” And other verses that follow. And while Octavian diligently listened to the Sibyl, heaven opened, and a great brightness shone on him, and he saw in heaven a virgin exceedingly fair standing on an altar holding a man-child in her arms. Octavian marveled greatly at this, and he heard a voice from heaven saying: “This is the Virgin who shall conceive the Savior of the World.” And again he heard another voice from heaven saying, “This is the altar of the Son of God.” The emperor straightaway fell to the ground and worshiped the Christ that should come. He showed this vision to the senators and they likewise marveled exceedingly. The vision took place in the chamber of Emperor Octavian where the Church of Santa Maria in Capitolio is now and where the Friars Minor are. Therefore it is called Santa Maria in Aracoeli. Another day when the people had decreed to call Octavian “Lord” he immediately stopped them with his gesture and glance. He did not allow himself to be called “Lord” even by his sons saying: “Mortal I am and you will not call me Lord.” (2.1; trans. Francis Morgan Nichols, Mirabilia urbis Romae: The Marvels of Rome, or A Picture of the Golden City [London: Ellis and Elvery, 1889])
Reference is made also in Sermon II by Pope Innocent III (1196–1216):
The Lord performed a miracle with this sign: When Christ was born, a star appeared to the Magi, according to the seer Balaam. The Star of Jacob rose, he said, and a Virgin will come out of Israel. Octavian Augustus is said to have seen the Virgin holding a Child, shown to him by the Sibyl, and from then on he prohibited anyone from calling him Lord, because the King of kings had been born, and the Lord of the lords. Whence the poet says: A new child will be sent from high heaven.
And most recently by Jacob of Voragine (1228–1298):
The emperor Octavian (as Pope Innocent says) had brought the whole world under Roman rule, and the Senate was so well pleased that they wished to worship him as a god. The prudent emperor, however, knowing full well that he was mortal, refused to usurp the title of immortality. The Senators insisted that he summon the sibylline prophetess and find out, through her oracles, whether someone greater than he was to be born in the world. When, therefore, on the day of Christ’s birth, the council was convoked to study this matter and the Sibyl, alone in a room with the emperor, consulted her oracles, at midday a golden circle appeared around the sun, and in the middle of the circle a most beautiful virgin holding a child in her lap. The Sibyl showed this to Caesar, and while the emperor marveled at the vision, he heard a voice saying to him: “This child is greater than you, and it is he that you must worship.” That same room was dedicated to the honor of Holy Mary and to this day is called Santa Maria Ara Coeli. The emperor, understanding that the child he had seen was greater than he, offered incense to him and refused to be called God, With reference to this Orosius says: “In Octavian’s day, about the third hour, in the limpid, pure, serene sky, a circle that looked like a rainbow surrounded the orb of the sun, as if to show that the One was to come who alone had made the sun and the whole world and ruled it.” So far Orosius. Eutropius gives a similar account of the event. And Timotheus the historian reports that he had learned from ancient Roman histories than in the thirty-fifth year of his reign Octavian went up the Capitoline hill and anxiously asked the gods who would succeed him as ruler of the empire. He then heard a voice telling him than an ethereal child, begotten in eternity of the living god, was presently to be born of a virgin undefiled, the God-man without stain. Having heard this, he erected an altar on which he inscribed the title: THIS IS THE ALTAR OF THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD. (Golden Legend 6; trans. William Granger Ryan [2 vols.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993])
3. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Casimiro da Roma. Memorie istoriche della chiesa di S. Maria in Aracoeli di Roma. Rome, 1736.
Cellini, Pico. “L’opera di Arnolfo all’Aracoeli.” Bollettino d’Arte 47 (1962): 180–95 (pp. 190–95, figs. 22, 24–25, 27).
Cutler, Anthony. “Octavian and the Sibyl in Christian Hands.” Vergilius 11 (1965): 22–32.
Lanciani, Rodolfo. Pagan and Christian Rome. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1892 (p. 24).
Malmstrom, R. E. “The Twelfth Century Church of S. Maria in Capitolio and the capitoline Obelisk.” Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 16 (1976): 1–16.
Meadows, Andrew, and Jonathan Williams. “Moneta and the Monuments: Coinage and Politics in Republican Rome.” Journal of Roman Studies 91 (2001): 27–49.
Noreen, Kirstin. “The High Altar of Santa Maria in Aracoeli: Recontextualizing a Medieval Icon in Post-Tridentine Rome.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 53 (2008): 99–128.
White, Cynthia. “The Vision of Augustus: Pilgrim’s Guide of Papal Pulpit?” Classica et Mediaevalia 55 (2004): 247–78.
4. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
“3-2-1 L’apparition à Auguste: la vision de l’Ara Coeli sur la droite.” Artifexinopere. Posted 29 May 2019.
Nalli, Massimo. “ROMA – Basilica di Santa Maria in Aracoeli.” YouTube, 9 September 2019.
“Santa Maria in Aracoeli.” Churches of Rome Wiki.
“Santa Maria in Ara Coeli.” Wikipedia.
“Tiburtine Sibyl.” Wikipedia (includes a selection of artistic works based on the Augustus legend).
Entry created by Robby Donato, under the supervision of Tony Burke, York University, 6 April 2021.