HOLY MARY OF PIANTO

Day 243: January 10

Holy Mary of Pianto, Rome, Italy



A vile and impious bloodshed that took place in the Regola district on January 10, 1546 near the Arco dei Cenci, which unites the various parts of the Palace to which the tragedy of Beatrice executed on September 11, 1599 for having her father Francesco killed is connected, gave rise to the church of Holy Mary of Pianto.

Two young people were playing in the street even though an order from the Governor Monsignor forbade it. The game ended in a quarrel. One of the young men knocked down the other and, drawing a dagger in anger, was about to kill him. He asked for the grace of his playmate in the name of the Virgin Mary depicted in a fresco with the Child in her arms on a wall of a building on the street. The young man, at the invocation of clemency made in the name of Our Lady, threw the dagger on the ground and helped his rival to get up, but the latter picked up the dagger "and as a reward for having given him life, impiously killed him."

Faced with this fact, "the Holy Image flowed from her eyes with abundant tears" that a Spanish priest, present at the event, collected in a handkerchief.

In the same year, the fresco on which Our Lady was portrayed, was detached from the wall and placed in the nearby church of the Most Holy Savior in Cacaberis, by the workshops of manufacturers of boilers, basins and copper vases, who still today give their name to the street on which the church stands, and had their own church nearby, in San Carlo ai Catinari.

The name of the church, which was built on the demolished church of Holy Mary of the Angels in Cacaberis, takes its name from the caccabarii, that is, from the 'calderari' who carried out their activity in the area. In the same year the confraternity of Holy Mary of Pianto was established, to which the church of the Most Holy Savior was entrusted, recognized by Paul III, occupying a strategic position in the ghetto, for the purpose of catechizing Roman Jews.

In 1608 the old church was demolished to build the new one dedicated to Holy Mary of Pianto which was solemnly inaugurated in 1612 even if it is still unfinished and remains without the façade.

The church has two entrances, one on Via Santa Maria del Pianto and another on Via Santa Maria de' Calderari, in memory of the old trade. The church underwent various interventions until about 1900. The portal on Via Santa Maria del Pianto was rebuilt by Virginio Vespignani in 1875 and bears the inscription IN HON. B. MARIAE DE PLANCTU.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"You are Queen by nature, as the mother in a family, because in this world of souls, you are the Mother of Divine Grace, which is supernatural life for all the Elect."

(Justin Russolillo, Spirit of Prayer, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, Newark, 1996, p. 153)

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