The collegiate basilica of St. Barnabas is the main place of Catholic worship in the city of Marino, in the metropolitan city of Rome Capital and suburbicarian diocese of Albano.
The basilica, built out of the devotion of the Colonna family, is one of the largest churches in the diocese, as well as one of the most important: it was the seat of the venerable archconfraternity of the Gonfalone of Marino, founded around 1271 by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio; moreover, the chapter of St. Barnabas was the most important in the diocese along with that of the collegiate church of Santa Maria Assunta in Ariccia, as was established in the diocesan synods of 1668 and 1687.
History
The legend of St. Barnabas
Originally the patron saint of Marino was Saint Lucy, whose feast day is still celebrated in the town on December 13 each year.
A church was dedicated to St. Lucy, located in the lower-medieval part of the town, and erected probably in the 12th century on a Roman cistern, but rebuilt in the early 13th century at the behest of Jacoba of Settesoli. Part of this church, the only example of Gothic architecture in the Roman Castles, houses the Umberto Mastroianni Civic Museum.
St. Barnabas would become the patron saint of Marino following a natural calamity that struck the Marinese countryside: on June 11, 1615, a violent hailstorm devastated the crops of the people of Marino. The following year another hailstorm, on the same day, fell on the Marinese countryside. Finally, in 1617 a third hailstorm ravaged the local fields and vineyards again on June 11. In order to put an end to this scourge, a plenary popular assembly was convened on February 2, 1618, which voted to write a letter to Cardinal Francesco Sforza, cardinal bishop of Albano, asking to be allowed to venerate St. Barnabas, whose feast day falls precisely on June 11, as patron saint "appended to His Divine Majesty." On June 4, 1619, Cardinal Sforza responded affirmatively, and from that date the feast of St. Barnabas began to be solemnly celebrated.
The foundation
At the beginning of the 17th century Marino was divided into two parishes: the aforementioned parish of St. Lucy and the parish of St. John the Baptist, the parish church of which was located in what is now the Castelletto district, that is, in the early medieval part of the town, and of which only a few remains remain encompassed by houses. The latter parish was the oldest. Then the duke of Marino Filippo I Colonna and his son, Cardinal Girolamo Colonna, opted for the dissolution of the two parishes and the unification of them into a single parish title whose church was dedicated to St. Barnabas. This choice, endorsed by the ecclesiastical authority, was also inspired by reasons of public reason, since it seems that quarrels and fights were constantly breaking out between the residents of the two parishes.
Thus, on Oct. 28, 1636, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Altieri, vicar general of the suburbicarian see of Albano, by an act of visitation abolished the two Marinese parishes of Santa Lucia and San Giovanni Battista, amalgamating their rents and benefices into the constituting parish of San Barnaba. Duke Filippo I Colonna immediately allocated some funds to start the construction work, from which, however, the official treasurers of the Community of Marino drew, committing an almost sacrilegious crime, taking advantage of that money to "stroll to the taverns" of Rome. Despite the theft, the foundation stone of the new parish church was solemnly laid on June 10, 1640 with the blessing of Cardinal Girolamo Colonna and in the presence of Duke Filippo I Colonna and other members of the Colonna household.