A Hole in the Walls: The Hospital-cum-Monastery at San Tommaso in Formis
Perched about halfway up the Caelian Hill is San Tomasso in Formis, built into the side of the Aqua Claudia. The history of the complex largely begins with John of Matha, a Provencal priest. Shortly after his ordination, he was inspired to found a religious order dedicated to ransoming captives from the Crusades. Innocent III confirmed John’s request. The new order – the Trinitarians – was the first of the great religious orders that would be founded over the course of the 13th and 14th centuries. The remains of a monastic church were refurbished and a hospital was constructed adjacent to it. The adjacent Arch of Dolabella – once part of Rome’s Servian walls – was also pressed into service. John, after establishing the order, had become drawn to a life of monastic isolation. He retreated to a room over the arch until his death in 1213. In many ways, the establishments of such “caritative” orders functioned more like franchises than outposts. Trinitarian branches, for instance, were responsible for funding themselves, which made them less inclined to obey central authority. San Tommasso was less a headquarters and more a working hospital. Nevertheless, the church’s location – immediately next to the major cardinal churches of San Stefano Rotondo and Santa Maria in Domnica, and a short walk from papal residence at the Lateran – seems unlikely to be a coincidence. Though the reason remains unclear, international missionary work was a top priority of Innocent’s. As pope, he certainly had some authority over the order. He would later influence staff appointments within the order itself. It is possible that the pope himself picked the location to easily observe and influence the order’s actions. Finally, John’s decision to retreat to isolation testifies to a common tension in the early thirteenth century. He began a trend of activist religious orders, yet opted personally to live like a religious hermit of an older tradition. San Tommasso offered a unique space for this: Trinitarians entered the outside world in search of the sick, but they brought them back behind walls to care for them.
Brentano, Robert. Rome Before Avignon. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990. Brodman, James W. “Community, Identity, and the Redemption of Captives: Comparative Perspectives Across the Mediterranean.” Anuario di Estudios Medievales 36 (June 2006), 241-252. Brodman, James W. “Crisis in Charity: Centrifugal and Centripetal Influences upon Medieval Caritative Orders.” Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum 5 (2011): 163-173
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