Faith Filled Friday: The Madonna Advocata

I had never heard of this icon, and I thought I knew a lot about the Dominican Order, the Order of Preachers.  The story goes back 800 years ago when on February 28^th, 1221 St. Dominic de Guzmán established a monastery of nuns in Rome.  From the Catholic News Agency, "St. Dominic entrusted this Marian icon to nuns in Rome 800 years ago":  

Eight hundred years ago, a barefoot St. Dominic carried an icon of the Virgin Mary across Rome to entrust the Marian image to a new community of cloistered nuns, who have safeguarded the icon within the walls of their convent to this day.

 

The icon, known as the “Advocata,” can be found today in a small chapel on Rome’s highest hill, in the Church of Santa Maria del Rosario on Monte Mario.

The image is absolutely stunning.  Here is the entire image, which has been damaged.

 

Miraculously the face has not been damaged, and it’s well worth cropping that part of the painting.

 

My goodness, what a stately, beautiful face.  Who and when was it painted?  Apparently it “dates back to at least the 7th century and has been revered over the centuries as having been painted by St. Luke.”  I’m not sure how it could be dated to the 7^th century and be painted by St. Luke, but it says “at least the 7^th century,” so who knows. 

I find it amazing that this community of nuns have kept the icon in their possession for 800 years.  According to the article they have moved twice in those years, but careful to preserve the icon.  If the procession took place in February of 1221and St. Dominic died in August of that year, so it was six months before he passed away.  So I went looking through my St. Dominic biographies for this event.  I couldn’t find anything but I was looking toward the end of the biographies since it happened toward the end of his life.  But one of my Lay Dominican sisters found it in the Augusta Theodosia Drane biography, detailed in pages 112 through 117.  Let me quote some key passages.

 

The most refractory of these religious [sisters] were some who were living at the time in the monastery of Santa Maria in Trastevere, in which was kept a celebrated picture of our Blessed Lady, said to have been painted by St. Luke.  This picture was a particular favorite with the Roman people.  Tradition said that it had been brought to Rome, many centuries before, from Constantinople; that it was the same that had been borne processionally by St, Gregory in the time of the plague, on that Easter day when the words of the Regina Caeli were first heard sung overhead by the voices of the angelic choirs.  After that Sergius III had caused it to be placed in the Lateran Basilica, but in the middle of the night it found its own way back to the majestic old church which seemed its chosen resting place.  The possession of this picture was no inconsiderable addition to the power and popularity of the nuns; without it they were determined never to stir, and there seemed great difficulties in the way of removing it.  (Drane, 112-3)

 

Quotes taken from The Life of Saint Dominic by Augusta Theodosia Drane, sixth edition, Tan Books, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1988.  [First published in 1857, London]

 

Well, that’s quite a story of movement, from Constantinople to Rome to the nuns to the Lateran Basilica and then miraculously back to the nuns.  But Dominic proposed and convinced the nuns to relocate to the convent of St. Sixtus, associated with the Basilica of St.Sixtus, a Roman basilica dating back to the seventh century.  One of St. Dominic’s most notable charism was his power of speech and persuasion, and it was evident here.  Thinking on my engineering work, St. Dominic would have been a great project manager and leader.  The story continues onto Ash Wednesday, which in 1221 fell on February 28^th.

On Ash Wednesday, which fell that year on the 28^th of February, the cardinals assembled at St. Sixtus, wither the Abbess and her nuns also proceeded in solemn procession.  (115)

And later,

 

Four days after, on the first Sunday in Lent, the nuns took possession of their convent.  They were forty-four in all, including a few seculars, and some religious of other convents.  (116)

But the painting was still not at St. Sixtus.

 

Dominic waited until nightfall before he ventured to remove the picture so often named; he feared lest some excitement and disturbance might be caused by this being done in broad day, for the people of the city felt a jealous unwillingness to suffer it to depart.  However at midnight, accompanied by the two cardinals Nicholas and Stephen and many other persons, all barefoot and carrying torches, he conducted it in solemn procession to St. Sixtus, where the nuns awaited its approach with similar marks of respect.  It did not return; and its quiet domestication in the new house completed the settlement of the nuns.  They were soon after joined by twenty-one others from various other houses, and thus was formed the second house of religious women living under the rule of St. Dominic.  (117)

So the story in the book differs somewhat from the article.  Nonetheless a beautiful and historic painting with quite a story.

By the way, I posted on the book, The Life of Saint Dominic, when I first read the biography two years ago.