Affiliation Roman Catholic Completed 1729 Address 00186 Rome, Italy Architectural style Baroque | Architectural type Church Direction of façade West Opened 1729 Architect Filippo Barigioni | |
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Similar Sant'Angelo in Pescheria, Adventure Around Tours, Pons Fabricius, Santa Maria in Traspontina, Santa Caterina dei Funari | ||
San Gregorio della Divina Pietà is a small church in Rome, Italy, located in Rione Sant'Angelo, near the Great Synagogue of Rome. It is also known as San Gregorio a Ponte Quattro Capi or Pons Judaeorum due to its proximity to the bridge of that name, or San Gregorietto due to its small size.
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Location
The church is in the rione Sant'Angelo of Rome at the Piazza Gerusalemme, north of Tiber Island at the north end of the Pons Fabricius (Ponte Quattro Capi) and east of the Great Synagogue of Rome (Tempio Maggiore).
History and Art
The shrine has a very ancient origin, but the first document citing it stems only from the twelfth century.
It was built over the houses of the gens Anicia, and later dedicated to Pope St. Gregory the Great because of the tradition that the saint was born here.
San Gregorio was declared a parish church and remained so until 1729, although in the 16th century it lost almost all its territory due to the establishment of the nearby Ghetto. In 1729 the rectangular building was restored by Filippo Barigioni on behalf of Pope Benedict XIII, and given to the Congregation of the Operai della Divina Pietà (Workers of the Divine Mercy), founded in 1679 to help families once well off which had fallen into poverty—its modern appellation comes from that. Low on the external north wall is an 18th-century alms slot with an Italian inscription reading "Alms for poor, honorable and ashamed families". A few yards away is another slot inscribed "MEMORIALI", used to give the priests the names of the persons or families in difficulty.
The church belonged originally to the rione Ripa, but after the demolitions around the Theater of Marcellus between 1926 and 1930, it was assigned to the rione Sant'Angelo. Until 1870, the pope required the Jews living in the nearby ghetto to attend compulsory sermons (Italian: prediche coatte) every sabbath in front of the church, which faced two gates of the Jewish quarter, but they avoided hearing them by putting wax in their ears. Because of this, during a restoration in 1858, a bilingual (Hebrew and Latin) inscription with a passage from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 65:2–3), in which the Lord complains about the obstinacy of the Jews, was put on the facade.
The facade by Barigioni is decorated with Etienne Parrocel's painting of the Crucifixion, framed in an oval. The interior is rectangular with one nave: painted on the vault, the Assunzione di Maria of Giuseppe Sereni; on the main altar, the Madonna della divina pietà of Gilles Hallet. Andrea Casali painted on the altar to the right a St Philip Neri in ecstasy and two ovals representing Franciscan saints.