Rome - Santa Prassede

A legend relates that two daughters of a Roman senator named Pudens, Pudentiana and Praxedes, were converted to the Christian faith by St Peter. The church, dedicated to St Praxades, has gone through a number of different building stages but has preserved the spatial character of an early Christian basilica, its high pillared nave rising into the presbytery with its triumphal arch and apse mosaics (ninth century, in the reign of Pope Paschal I). The mosaics are among the finest in Rome. On the triumphal arch is a representation of the heavenly Jerusalem; in the apse is the apocalyptic Lamb of the Revelation, and in the conch of the apse, above a frieze of lambs, SS. Peter and Paul leading Praxedes and Pudentiana, accompanied by Pope Paschal as the donor and by St Zeno. In addition to glorifying the saints the representations had a didactic purpose: the object, as in other religious painting, was to instruct the worshippers, who in the Middle Ages were mostly illiterate, in the doctrines of the faith. The Chapel of St Zeno (in the south aisle), built by Pope Paschal I to house the tomb of his mother Theodora, is like a medieval picturebook, every part of the walls and vaulting being covered with mosaics depicting saints and Biblical symbols.