An easy five-minute walk from Santa Sabina (see separate Tour) is the Little Aventine, the smaller eminence of the Aventine Hill, which is home to San Saba, a secluded church largely unknown to most tourists. Today a quiet neighborhood of older, comfortable apartments, in ancient times this area of the Aventine boasted mansions with luxurious gardens, fountains, and private baths. A short walk up the Via San Saba brings you to a street corner and a tall wall of ancient bricks, mortar, and rubble—you wonder what grand residences or temples supplied the flat brown bricks, their haphazard alignment a clue to the desperate exigencies of the time it was built. A very old flight of steps—at the top, to the right, is a forlorn ancient column with ionic capital--leads up to the spacious verdant courtyard of San Saba. The high brick walls and tall orange trees in the outer corners of the courtyard block out what minimal traffic passes by, and you can almost feel that you’re back in the early Middle Ages, when this area was rapidly becoming part of Rome’s disabitato, the wide swath of the once-teeming city that was abandoned and overgrown with vegetation as its population dwindled to only ten thousand or so.

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Whereas there is much we do not know about neighboring Santa Sabina—what structure it was built over, where the magnificent columns came from, what the now lost mosaics in the nave looked like--its provenance is definitely known: it was built de novo by Peter of Illyria from 422 to 432 AD. But the early origins of San Saba, like that of many other ancient churches in Rome, are shrouded in a time far more obscure—and dangerous--than that of the early 5th century. Rome in Peter’s time was a tad worn but by and large was still the grandest city in the empire—the Imperial Palace, in clear view from Santa Sabina, teemed with slaves and other staff to keep it up to snuff in case the remaining western emperors decided to visit, and as they had done for centuries, the aqueducts supplied the monumental thermal baths throughout the city, to relieve the masses after a hot day at the Colosseum or Circus Maximus. True, there were a few buildings destroyed in the sack by the Goths in 410, but the real indignity was how Alaric’s blockade reduced citizens of all ranks to eating rats (and probably each other) and ultimately parting with a lot of their gold and silver to lift the blockade. But Rome, always intent on projecting an image of eternal majesty despite the creeping shabbiness, was largely intact when the first mass was celebrated in Santa Sabina in the early 5th century.

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However, by the time refugee monks from the Holy Land, fleeing the invading Persians and Arabs, established a modest oratory, or monastic chapel, at the present site of San Saba in 645, Rome was a completely different place from the time of Peter of Illyria, much less imposing and definitely not a place that Augustus would have been proud of. Pope Gregory the Great, who reigned from 590 to 604, took over the administrative tasks of a tattered Roman state that was no longer fit for purpose. “The eagle has no feathers,” Gregory once observed about the imperial government. Indeed, by then the eagle was on life support.

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An overview of the devolution of Rome from the time of Peter of Illyria to that of Gregory the Great can help us better understand a place like San Saba. Whereas Alaric’s Goths inflicted minor damage on the city in 410, the Vandal sack in 455 was far more brutal, but the city limped along. When the emperor of the western provinces was gently deposed in 476, Italy was ruled by a succession of barbarian Goths, who gave nominal allegiance to the eastern emperor at Constantinople—they tried to assume the imperial aura of the emperors but, often illiterate and, well, barbaric, they never quite pulled it off. 476 is generally listed as the date Rome fell, but to most people back then, the thought of Rome “falling” was ludicrous—it was the same dynamic of an eternally grand image versus much-less-grand circumstances on the ground which has characterized Rome right up to modern times. To Romans of the late 5th century, there was still a Roman emperor, the putative Thirteenth Apostle of Christ and protector of orthodoxy, who resided in Constantinople and had a functioning state with coffers of gold and a real army. But in fact, the Goths ruled Italy, and one of the most remarkable among them was Theodoric, a wise and just king who ruled 493-526 from both Ravenna and Rome—he even made some additions to the Imperial Palace and tried to repair other public buildings. Under his rule, Italy was beginning to recover from the economic catastrophes of the 5th century. But his death in the early 6th century resulted in more chaos, with the final blow coming from the megalomaniacal designs of the Eastern Emperor Justinian (527-565), a man of fervent—and intolerant—Christian belief that it was his divine obligation to reunite the western provinces with those of his empire in the east. Imagine Philip II of Spain, Stalin, and Hitler all in one, and that’s Justinian. For several decades, he dispatched army after army to wrest control of the western provinces from the Goths, and for a very brief time, the Roman Empire again spanned the Mediterranean, but at a cost which finally kicked Rome into the Early Middle Ages. Perhaps the greatest calamity occurred when the Goths besieging the city cut off the water supply to the city’s aqueducts. The Byzantine general in charge of defending Rome compounded the crime by emptying out the entire city, and for many months, Rome had no human inhabitants. We can only imagine the violence, unrest, and human suffering during these years, made infinitely worse by the advent of a major outbreak of bubonic plague throughout the Mediterranean. Rome back then perhaps was most comparable to the post-apocalyptic scenes in movies like Mad Max. By the time people trickled back into the city, the population had been reduced to an estimated 10,000, most of whom were destitute, huddled in the crumbling ruins of mansions, baths, administrative building, and temples.

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Such were the conditions in Rome when, in the mid-7th century, monks from the monastery of St. Sabas in Palestine decided to decamp to Rome. Although Rome was becoming increasingly dicey as civil government broke down, it was far less dangerous than Palestine, where Persians and later Arabs proclaiming the new religion of Islam were plundering towns and massacring monks, priests, and anyone else deemed a heretic. The monks settled into the Little Aventine, by then quickly emptying out, and built their little oratory into the aula, or apsed reception hall, of a large mansion built around 400, which was undoubtedly abandoned during the tumultuous 6th century, when the rich and powerful fled with their gold, silver, and slaves to Constantinople. As the centuries progressed, a variety of additions and embellishments were made to the oratory. Because they were Greek speaking, and because the Roman Church needed help in dealing with the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire and the theological disputes violently wracking Christianity back then, the monks enjoyed special status as diplomats during the first 200 years of the oratory’s founding. But by the early 900s, the relationship between the Roman and Byzantine churches was heading south—in the Great Schism of 1054 the pope and the patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated one another--and the chapel was taken over by the Benedictines, who rebuilt San Saba in its current form. But as often happened during those strapped times, the new church incorporated and reused much of the original 7th century oratory. Indeed, San Saba unfolded the way many early Medieval churches did throughout Rome: first a band of monks, often refugees from the east, scavenged around to find an abandoned mansion or temple, then they set up a small chapel with their monastery nearby, and after the site was shown to be a going concern, the Church would step in and renovate or rebuild it. The result in San Saba’s case is a church which is a fascinating mishmash of varying styles and structure, not at all like the classical harmony of Santa Sabina, but nonetheless beautiful in its own way.

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The narthex—the front porch—prepares you for what you’re about to see inside the sanctuary. Arrayed on the outer wall, almost like a mini-museum, are many forlorn fragments from antiquity, perhaps from the ancient mansion, which were found on the church grounds during renovations over the centuries. The doorway into the church is framed by five mismatched marble slabs—only the top frame, chipped and worn, could even remotely be described as elegant, completely unlike the imposing main doorway into Santa Sabina, with its massive, highly ornate marble slabs which definitely came from the same structure, perhaps the temple of Juno over which it was probably built. Above the doorway is a badly faded fresco of Mary with two saints. The outer wall of the church (the back wall of the narthex) is actually from the original aula, and to the left, with gracefully fluted decoration, is an impressive sarcophagus for a married couple from long ago—you wonder who the happy couple once was, perhaps even the residents of the mansion whose reception hall now provides much of the structure of San Saba. On the wall to the right of the sarcophagus is a fragmentary 8th century frieze of a nobleman with a falcon, the schematic crudeness mute testimony to the precipitous decline in sculptural technique in the early Middle Ages compared to the golden age in which the sarcophagus was carved. Two smaller sarcophagi lie nearby, again decorated with classical motifs. To the right of the main entrance are many ancient tiles, with tax stamps of the reigning emperor at the time.

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Whereas walking into Santa Sabina confronts you with the austere majesty of classical Hellenic aesthetics--the final burst of late ancient Roman glory--entering San Saba transports you back to the very early Middle Ages, a time of great privation and, perhaps paradoxically, of quiet, inward contemplation, when solace and beauty could be found only in Rome’s sacred sanctuaries, and not from shimmering imperial fora, imposing temples, or 5th century churches like Peter of Illyria’s. Indeed, unless a mass is underway, chances are good that you will have the church entirely to yourself—San Saba is visited even less frequently than Santa Sabina. The interior is a patchwork of different styles and materials and reflects the chaotic and desperate times from which it had sprung and which it has weathered over the centuries. As with Santa Sabina, the overall plan is basilican—a central nave with side aisles separated by ancient columns--but on a smaller, much less imposing scale. As opposed to the 24 majestic Corinthian columns of Santa Sabina, the 14 in San Saba are smaller, mixed and mismatched, of varying heights, color, and texture, along with different capitals, mostly ionic but with a few stray Corinthian ones; a couple of the ionic capitals on the right side are elegantly decorated, but the others are plain and worn. Whereas it is likely that Peter of Illyria had personally chosen the graceful columns for his church, the columns in San Saba were chosen primarily for their function of supporting the church’s high walls. Several columns are cracked and gnarled, reinforced with metal straps around them, and in a gesture to symmetry, the monks directed that the few columns that were identical be paired opposite from one another in the nave. The ancient Romans imported marble from all over the Mediterranean to adorn their mansions and temples, and almost more than gold and silver, they went berserk over fine, colored marble, often flocking to the Tiber to inspect that latest supply being shipped in. Experts have concluded that the marble in San Saba’s columns hails from Greece, Algeria, and different parts of Egypt. By the time San Saba was rebuilt in the early 10th century, the pickings were getting slim—for many centuries, marble columns and statues were being burned in lime kilns to make mortar for crude dwellings being built into the ruins of the city--and the workers had to make do with whatever they could find amid the densely overgrown environs of the Little Aventine. The few truly elegant columns they could find were used for the baldacchino over the alter—the front two of black and white marble and the back two black granite, polished as brightly as when they once graced an ancient portico overlooking a lush garden, or the entranceway of a luxurious mansion, or a walkway to a temple.

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Much of San Saba preserves the brick structure of the original 4th to 5th century aula of the mansion expropriated by the monastic refugees in the 7th century, and the flat brown bricks from this ancient audience hall can be seen in the arches and walls along the left side of the church, which otherwise is a hodge-podge of architectural materials, seemingly thrown together without much regard for harmony or grandeur. As with all the public and private buildings throughout ancient Rome, including the outside walls of Santa Sabina, the aula’s bricks are neatly aligned and laid out with the care, unlike the slapdash technique of the Middle Ages. Like many other medieval churches in Rome that were built into ancient buildings, modern day renovations of the side walls of San Saba’s nave have occasional gaps intentionally made to expose the ancient bricks behind the modern plaster, sort of a tongue-in-cheek reminder that the place is very, very old. The left wall has some beautiful 13th century frescos, the most evocative of which is St. Nicholas Giving a Dowry to Three Poor Girls—they were impoverished nobility whose father despaired that their lack of means meant they couldn’t marry and would be forced to become sex workers, until, that is, jolly old St. Nick threw a bag of gold at them. The left side of the nave has two side aisles separated by two small fluted columns; the outermost aisle was probably once a portico leading to the adjacent monastery, now long gone. As was customary with churches in Palestine, from which the founding monks had fled, there are two smaller side apses flanking the central one, above which is a lovely fresco of the Annunciation, the Archangel Gabriel seemingly frozen forever in his mad dash to give Mary the good news from on high. The left apse has a small alter fashioned from an ancient sarcophagus—you wonder whose mortal remains once resided in it. The pulpit to the right of the alter is an ancient fragment. And take time to admire the elaborate mosaic designs of the flooring inside the entranceway. The 13th century pavement is called Cosmatesque, after the Cosmati family of Roman architects and sculptors whose art has ornamented countless churches throughout Italy. The multi-colored stones came from the almost endless supply of marble fragments littering the city from ancient times—the three large purple discs were made by literally slicing a large porphyry column, which probably was once a very important adornment to a mansion or temple, the ancient Romans especially prizing this imperial-like color. The pavement stones in San Saba are now dull, cracked, and chipped, worn from centuries of foot traffic, but you can easily imagine how their once bright hues dazzled the eye, giving resplendence to what was otherwise the Dark Ages.  

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Whereas Santa Sabina bespeaks ancient and majestic grandeur from that brief but glorious century when Rome was both Christian and still an empire, you can sometimes feel dwarfed and overwhelmed by its imposing columns and austere solemnity, the weight of the centuries bearing down on you. But San Saba, while less awe-inspiring on first glance, feels more intimate and, well, welcoming, like a comfortable pair of slippers. Sitting in the chilled silence of the empty sanctuary on a cold winter’s day, the rain drizzling down outside and the old wooden entrance doors creaking and groaning from the wind, smelling the whiff of incense lingering from the last mass and focusing on your breath, you can feel yourself deeply immersed in an otherworldly contentment, a timelessness, perhaps even a grateful and accepting sense of your own mortality. Looking up at the Annunciation fresco above the apse, you realize you are the latest of untold millions of souls who have gazed at this commemoration of hope, yearning for it to actually be true, that there was a loving God who really cared when the sparrow, let alone human beings, would fall in a world of violence, privation, and desolation. Weary and worn, the scruffy columns—the architectural equivalents of stray mongrel dogs—embrace you, reminding you that countless fellow sufferers have also passed this way over the last 1300 years. Even when your mind wanders to your personal worries and problems, San Saba’s silence pulls you back into its welcoming dimension of eternity, making you hope that your final moments on this earth evoke the deafening and reassuring calm of this church. A contemplative life is one which understands and lovingly embraces the community of sufferers it is a part of, knowing and accepting that no one’s anguish is greater than that of anyone else's in this weary sojourn called life. Indeed, enveloped in the silence of San Saba, you can feel acutely the fears and desperation of the legion of supplicants over the centuries who came here to pray, to ask for intercession and release from their unfathomable pains. In Rome, especially in the exceptional silence of a place like San Saba, you should always be open to being “ambushed” by moments of singular insights, usually when you least expect it.

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You will probably be reluctant to leave the peace of San Saba and return to the bustling city outside, but before you do, look back and take one last look at this tranquil space, cement it into your memory, and promise yourself to return to it whenever the stresses and ugliness of the outside world threaten to pull you down.