Santi Sergio E Bacco - Early Churches of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus in Rome

Early Churches of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus in Rome

The Liber Pontificalis attests four institutes in Rome by the ninth century dedicated to Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, such was the popularity of these saints, though sometimes unclearly as to which one is meant:

• an oratory and deaconry at St. Peter's, rebuilt by Pope Gregory III (731-41) (Liber Pontificalis 92.13).

• a monastery at St. John Lateran, to which Pope Leo III (795-816) gave gifts of silver (LP 98.79) and to whose monks Pope Paschal I (817-24) assigned choir duties at the Lateran (LP 100.22).

• a deaconry in the Roman Forum, established as one of the original seven cardinal deaconries of Rome in 678 by Pope St. Agatho (678-681). This church, founded on its own ground in the Forum and not on the foundation of another building, was situated just under the Capitoline Hill between the Temple of Concord and the Temple of Vespasian and Titus. The Temple of Concord in the Roman Forum had served the church as a diaconia until it began to collapse by 790 AD. Pope Adrian I (772-95) rebuilt it after the collapse of the Temple of Concord (LP 97.90). Pope Paul III (1534–49) began demolishing it about 1536 and the church was suppressed as a cardinal deaconry, vacant from 1559, in 1587 by Pope Sixtus V (1585-1590). Demolition was mostly completed during the term of Pope Paul V (1605-1621), though parts of the apse remained until 1812.

• the church and monastery of Sergius and Bacchus in Callinico.