Our Lady of Good Health

The icon of Salus Populi Romani is found in the Lady Chapel of the basilica known as St. Mary Major in Rome and has long been considered a wonderworking image, especially in times of plague or epidemics.

Pope Gregory the Great welcomed the image now known as Salus Populi Romani (“Salvation/Health of the Roman People”) in AD 593 and placed it in the basilica known as St. Mary Major. He had the icon carried throughout Rome and prayed for an end to the Black Plague. Pope Gregory XVI also venerated the image in 1837 to pray for the end of a cholera epidemic.

The Mother of God is shown with a ceremonial embroidered handkercheif in her right hand, an indication that she is the Queen of Heaven (another popular title for the image). For several centuries, both she and Christ also wore metal crowns which were attached to the icon but which have been removed and are now kept in the sacristy of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. The stars on the cloak of the Mother of God also indicate that she was a vrigin before-during-after the birth of her Son (the stars said to be the last glimmers of heavenly light that filled the cave in Bethlehem when Christ was born, seen in the folds of her cloak by the midwives when they finally arrived–too late).

The image of Salus Populi Romani is related to the church in Venice, Our Lady of Good Health, which was built in thanksgiving for the end of a plague there. You can read more about the church in Venice here.

St. Nicholas is Coming to Town!

An icon of St. Nicholas with scenes from his life around the edge. Christ and the Mother of God are shown returning his vestments to him, based on a dream-vision he had while he was in prison, deprived of serving his flock because the emperor disagreed with his theology.

St. Nicholas was a bishop in 4th-century Turkey but is commonly known as “Santa Claus” in much of the Western World. He brings gifts to good children on his feast day (December 6) or on Christmas Day; in some places, he is said to take away bad children in his empty gift bag. He is sometimes accompanied by a servant or devil who takes away the bad children or leaves switches for their parents to beat them.

His tomb is in Myra (a small town in modern Turkey) but many of the remains were stolen by Italian sailors and taken to Bari in 1087. The sailors from Bari only took the main bones of Nicholas’s skeleton, leaving all the minor fragments in the grave. The city of Venice had interest in obtaining the remaining fragments of his skeleton and, in 1100, a fleet of Venetian ships sailed past Myra on their way to Palestine for the First Crusade. The Venetians took the remaining bones of Saint Nicholas, and brought them to Venice. This story was lent credence in two scientific investigations of the relics in Bari and Venice, which confirmed that the relics in the two cities are anatomically compatible and may belong to the same person.

In the late 1950s, while the crypt was undergoing much-needed restoration, the bones were removed from it for the first time since their interment in 1089. A special Pontifical Commission permitted Luigi Martino, a professor of human anatomy at the University of Bari, to examine the bones under the Commission’s supervision. Martino took thousands of measurements, detailed scientific drawings, photographs, and x-rays. These examinations revealed the saint to have died at over seventy years of age and to have been of average height and slender-to-average build. He also suffered from severe chronic arthritis in his spine and pelvis.

Another test in 2017 in Oxford involved radiocarbon dating, which confirmed that the bones date to the fourth century AD, around the same time that Saint Nicholas would have died, and are not a medieval forgery.

Protection of the Mother of God (Part 2)

A medieval bas relief in Venice of the Mother of God protecting the faithful gathered under her veil.

An archway atop a small pedestrian bridge in Venice depicts the Mother of God protecting the faithful with her veil.

Western Christian depictions of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God are often called “the Virgin of Mercy” and are sometimes associated with Christ’s remarks that He “longed to gather your children [the people of Jerusalem] together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings….” (Matthew 23:37) The Mother of God is shown with the faithful of many social ranks and classes gathered on their knees beneath her outstretched cloak. As she is the bridge that unites earth to heaven, having nurtured Christ in her womb and giving birth to God-made-man, her image is frequently seen near bridges. (The Latin word for “priest” (pontifex) comes from the Latin for bridge-builder because priests also act as bridges between Heaven and earth, divinity and humanity.

Probably the oldest Western version of this image is a small panel by Duccio of c. 1280, with three Franciscan friars under the cloak, in Siena. The Franciscans seem to have been devoted to the idea of the Virgin’s protecting veil and were important in spreading this form of iconography, which remains important in much of Latin America.

The image of Our Lady in Walsingham was not the Virgin of Mercy with her protecting veil but the shrine of Walsingham did celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Mercy as its patronal feast day. The popularity of the Walsingham shrine led many to call England “the dowry of the Virgin” and thus celebrate the Virgin of the Dowry on the same day as well.

The importance of the Virgin’s mercy and protection underlines the communal nature of Christianity and the dependence of the faithful on each other–as well as on particular saints–in times of adversity. In the gospel, it is rare that a sick person is healed because of their own faith; usually the sick are healed because their friends had the faith to approach Christ and ask that He heal the sick or cast out the demon(s) from the possessed. It is the faith of their friends which heals and saves those most in need.