Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome

Today we commemorate the dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. This church is sometimes called “Basilica Liberiana” in a desire to identify it with a church built by Pope Liberius (352–66) on Rome’s Esquiline Hill. Pope Sixtus III (432–40) is said to have reconstructed Pope Liberius’s earlier church, and on August 5, as stated in the Hieronymian Martyrology (about 450), he dedicated (434) it to our Lady. The dedication was in memory of the definition of the Council of Ephesus (431) that Mary was indeed Theotokos, that is, the Mother of God. Sixtus’s church may have been the first church dedicated to Mary in Rome. The basilica is now called St. Mary Major, not only because it may be the oldest church honoring our Lady, but because it is the largest and most important of all churches dedicated to her. This feast, which was at first only celebrated in Rome, was at one time also known as that of Our Lady of the Snow. A legend going back to the tenth century states that the Virgin Mary appeared to a Roman patrician in a dream (on August 4) and told him to build a church on the site, where he would find snow the following morning. The next morning, he went to tell Pope Liberius of his dream, but the Virgin had also appeared to the pope on the previous night and told him that he would find snow on the Esquiline Hill, and there he was to outline the dimensions of the new church. The pope found the miraculous snow as our Lady had predicted, and on that very spot he built his basilica.