«Spelunca aliquando pravitatis hereticae». Observations on the basilica of Sant’Agata dei Goti in Rome

Abstract

The church of Sant’Agata dei Goti, among the best preserved early Christian basilicas of Rome, is primarily known because, during the 5^th and the 6^th century, it was a place of Arian worship. Its founder is commonly identified with the powerful “barbarian” general Ricimer, the donor of the mosaic in the apse, and its present name still recalls the Ostrogoths, followers in the majority of the Arian confession as their king Theodoric. But a new study of the architectural features and the most ancient written sources suggests for the church an earlier dating, and allows to question the widely accepted connection between heresy and barbaritas at the origin of this building. It also makes possible to see in a new perspective some little-known aspects of the political, ethnic and religious situation in Rome from the last years of the Western Empire until Justinian’s occupationof Italy and the Lombard invasion.