Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva

This is the Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, not the Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Asissi. Though it seems to me like some was going around building churches on top of Temples to Minerva. In front of the basilica, which is about twenty steps away from the Parthenon, is a beautiful Bernini sculpture of an elephant with an obelisk on his back. Inside the church are some of the remains of St. Catherine of Siena. If you’ve ever been to Siena, you’ll remember her head in a reliquary in the duomo. Recently I’ve learned that some hagiographers now think St. Catherine was definitely anorexic, and possibly crazy. Still, she convinced the pope to end the Babylonia Captivity and surely your average woman in that time couldn’t have done that.

Santa Bibiana

Careful readers of the New Yorker some months ago would have noticed a reference to Santa Bibiana, who is known as the patron saint of hangovers. Anyone who remembers what a hangover feels like has no reason to doubt the condition needs a patron. An “insider guide” to Rome on the web assured me that St. Bibiana’s Church at 154 Via Giovanni Giolitti was open every day all day. Tom and I had walked past it often on our last trip to Rome and never remembered seeing it open. Both the façade and a statue of the saint over the high altar were made by a 27 year old Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

I did find a reliquary which held (well, held once; I can’t tell now) Santa Bibiana’s relics in the treasury under Santa Maria Maggiore.