A notable setting for Pope Innocent III’s “physical piety,” the Ospedale di Santo Spirito served many functions beyond healing the sick. The hospital also served as a hostel, an orphanage, a maternity ward, and place for fallen women to redeem their sins. Scholars, such as Richard Krautheimer, have debated whether Innocent built the hospital as a way to reconcile the proud, sinful character of the Tor de’Conti. While Innocent’s motivation to build the hospital is unclear, his reasons behind Santo Spirito’s location are obvious. Robert Brentano describes Innocent’s dream of infanticide along the river, where fishermen had nets of not fish, but dead babies, leading the Pope to build his hospital dedicated to foundlings and orphans next to the river. A relic of this time can still be seen in the Foundling’s Wheel, a contraption outside the walls of the hospital that mothers used to abandon unwanted babies. A worker would turn the wheel, taking the child into the hospital to be raised there. Innocent built the hospital as an expansion of the Schola Saxonum compound, a former complex dedicated to the British pilgrims of Rome. The Schola Saxonum had existed since 725, alongside many other similar communities dedicated to pilgrims coming to Rome to visit the tomb of St. Peter. In 1208, after the Norman Conquest effectively put a hold on English pilgrimages to Rome, the complex was officially decreed to be a hospital. Unfortunately, little remains of the original structure, as much of it decayed during the fourteenth century during the Avignon Captivity due to the lack of papal support. In 1474, Pope Sixtus IV completely renovated the hospital, creating the structure we see now. The long, rectangular building is topped by an octagonal bell tower and is also attached to a ward known as Corsia Sistina. The modern hospital is still attached to this structure, which now functions as a conference center and church. The ward, now a courtyard, attaches to another square bell tower. It has been noted that this bell tower survived Sixtus’ reconstruction, implying that it was built in the medieval times, perhaps even in the hospital’s first construction. There are two courtyards between the medieval ward and the modern hospital, that were used to house the monks and nuns who lived and worked for Santo Spirito. Both cloisters have fountains in the center; the fountain in the nuns’ cloister is decorated by charming Renaissance-style dolphins. Today, these cloisters are part of the modern hospital. Despite all of its changes, the Ospedale di Santo Spirito still seems to parallel its medieval form as it continues to serve the people of Rome in different ways.
Madison McBride (2016), Zobeida Chaffee (2019)
Brentano, Robert. Rome Before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth Century Rome. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Krautheimer, Richard. Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Presciutti, Diana. “Dead Infants, Cruel Mothers, and Heroic Popes: The Visual Rhetoric of Foundling Care at the Hospital of Santo Spirito, Rome.” Renaissance Quarterly 64 (2011): 752-799. Priester, Ann. “Bell Towers and Building Workshops in Medieval Rome.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 52 (1993): 199-220.
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