DOMINUS CONSERVATOR ECCLESIAE PUDENTIANAE

DOMINUS CONSERVATOR ECCLESIAE PUDENTIANAE

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Jn 13: 14 ANTIPHONA 5
SI ego Dominus, et Magister vester
lavi vobis pedes: quanto magis debetis alter alterius lavare pedes? Ps.
48: 2. Audite hæc, omnes gentes:
auribus percipite qui habitatis orbem. Si ego...

If I your Lord and Master, have washed
your feet, how much more ought you to
wash one another's feet? Ps. Hear these
things, all ye nations: give ear, ye that inhabit the world. If I...

Circa 390 A.D.
Mosaic
Apse, Basilica of St. Pudentiana, Rome
Female figures place crowns on the heads of St. Paul (on the left) and St. Peter (on the right). The figures are often taken to be St. Pudentiana and St. Praxedes, but historians consider it more likely that they represent the Gentiles and the Jews respectively.

The codex in Christ's left hand reads DOMINUS CONSERVATOR ECCLESIAE PUDENTIANAE, which can mean either "God is the preserver of Pudentiana's church" or "God is the preserver of the Pudentian [i.e. of St. Pudens] church."

The lower right corner of the mosaic is a restoration from 1588; otherwise, this is the oldest church mosaic in existence. It is also one of the earliest images in which Christ is represented as a human figure rather than a symbol. (Directly above this naturalistic image, he is represented symbolically by the Cross.) It also includes one of the oldest examples of the use of the angel, ox, lion, and eagle to represent the evangelists, a concept taken from early Christian commentary on Revelation 4:6-8. The creatures are, left to right, St. Matthew as the creature "having the face, as it were, of a man," St. Mark as a lion, St. Luke as an ox, and St. John as an eagle.

PUDENS, PUDENTIANA, AND PRAXEDES, SS.
Early Christian saints and titular churches. The earliest source in which the name Pudentiana appears is an inscription of 384, Leopardus lector de Pudentiana (G. de Rossi, Inscript. Christ. 1:384). This refers to a titulus, i.e., a place of cult and not a saint, because in the fourth century it was not the custom to dedicate a church directly to a saint.

Pudentiana is an adjective, and in the present church the old inscription reads: Dominus conservator ecclesiae Pudentianae, meaning that the founder was a certain Pudens. Sometime in the sixth century the titulus Pudentis was reevaluated and Pudens was canonized. Misreading the adjective Pudentianae as a person created "St." Pudentiana.

In the seventh century there appeared a legendary Gesta Pudentianae et Praxedis that states that Praxedes, after the death of her sister Pudentiana, "who was buried on May 19 beside her father Pudens in the cemetery of Priscilla, with the consent of Pope St. Pius I, dedicated the Baths of Novatus as a church, under the name of the Bl. Virgin Pudentiana, in the vicus patricius "—the patrician suburb. Prior to this, the same Gesta narrates that Pudens had constructed a church over the same house. The author of the Gesta thus identified the titulus Pudentis with the titulus Pudentianae, and since there was only one church on the site, he concluded that it referred to a Sancta Pudentiana, who could only be a real person, a virgin, saint, and martyr.

Ago Deo gratias per instrumenta ex archive.org pro bono rei publicae, confer: https://archive.org/details/lp_gregorianische-gesnge-aus-assisi-gregoria_coro-cappella-papale-di-san-francesco-dass

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