Santissimo Nome di Maria

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Santissime Nome di Maria al Foro Traiano is a church in Rome.

[edit] History

The feast of the Holy Name of Mary was introduced by Pope Innocent XI victory over the Turks at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Giuseppe Bianchi instituted a cult of it in Santo Stefano del Cacco in 1685, and soon afterwards established the Congregation of the Most Holy Name of Mary, which was formally approved in 1688.

In 1694 they moved to San Bernardo a Colonna Traiani ^[1] but the next year, realizing that there was a need to built a new church, they acquired the adjacent plot and had SS Nome di Maria 1736-41 built by the Frenchman Antoine Derizet. Seven years after SS. Nome's completion, San Bernardo was demolished.

The interior is elliptical. There are seven small chapels, decorated in polychrome marble.

[edit] Notes

^ A tiny church next to standing on the site of a small 15th century church belonging to the Company of St Bernard, next to Trajan's Column. Around 1430 this confraternity was given the icon of the Blessed Virgin, once in the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Laterano, transferred to SS. Nome in 1741 and now hanging above its high altar in a gloria. Once a year, it is taken in solemn procession from the now destroyed church of San Bernardo to its present place in this church.