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Santa Prassede |
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written
by joeplumb / 10.24.2005 |
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Assignment |
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In Santa Prassede one can see a very different personal connection to the church than can be seen in St. Peter’s basilica. Santa Prassede houses intricate mosaics which shows role models of Christianity. They show Prassede and Prudenziana, the sisters which helped hide Peter, next to Jesus, Peter, and Paul. One shows the benefactor of the church. When I see these mosaics, I see people who have gained glory for their deeds. They have become more than just people, they are recruiting posters for Christianity, showing some of the Church’s heroes in order to inspire others to join their ranks.
This is very different to St. Peter’s basilica, where the emphasis is not on individuals at all but on the grandeur of the Church. St. Peter’s dwarfs those who walk in and shows them their own insignificance. It is a basilica designed to show the Church as dominating over the individual, showing that the Church is greater than the sum of the people behind it. Here there are Saints and heroes of Christianity, but you won’t find them in the baldachin or in the central areas, instead they line the way to the baldachin. This shows the key difference between Santa Prassede and St. Peter’s: in Santa Prassed the heroes build the church, but in Saint Peter’s the church builds the heroes.
Santa Prassede is also interesting because of the great diversity of building materials. This is easiest to see when looking at the different kinds of columns and the support beams they hold. Some of these pieces match, but many do not. This accents the point that Santa Prassede was built by individuals interested in building a church, not the Church. These people sliced broken columns and used them as floor pieces; they found other intact columns and set them side by side. This church was built as an imperfect place to worship the Perfect One.
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