Browning pieces

I asked the hotel receptionist what three things not on the main tourist route she would recommend seeing, and the first thing she said was to see the mosaics in the Basilica of Saint Praxedes, (Santa Prassede,) so off I went to find it.
Along the way I passed a nice green park with plastic bags covering the grass. Nothing to remark on except that the municipal groundsman was carefully going over the area on a ride-on mower, leaving plastic confetti everywhere.
Eventually, on a narrow lane adjacent to Santa Maria Maggiore, I found the unsigned entrance on the side of the church that was commissioned by Pope Hadrian I c. 780 to house the bones of St Praxedes and St Pudentiana; and built on top of the remains of a 5th-century structure.
+ The famous mosaics, Byzantine, years 817-824, cover the funerary Chapel of Saint Zeno that Pope Paschal built for his mother, Theodora.
+ The main altarpiece is a canvas of St Praxedes Gathering the Blood of the Martyrs (c. 1730-35) by Domenico Muratori.
+ Allegedly, this segment of the pillar upon which Jesus was flogged and tortured before his crucifixion in Jerusalem was retrieved from the Holy Land in the early 4thC by the 80 year old mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine I. She also found a surprising number of other authentic artifacts, such as pieces of the True Cross, which no doubt Con found useful when establishing his new state religion.
PS Remember Robert Browning?
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43746/th…
This is the church that evidently inspired him. If you understand the poem, keep it to yourself.En savoir plus