Wednesday, May 13, 2026

It is the 13th of May 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

Quick question: what’s a Basilica? That’s certainly a “church-y” word, and you likely have an image of a grand church, cathedral, etc, and you would be right. A Basilica is a church granted a special status because of its history, size, or place of importance in the church.

 

But that’s not what they originally were. A Basilica is a Latin term, borrowed from the Greek for a royal hall- a place where people gathered for legal, civic, and religious ceremonies.

 

It was after Constantine in the early 300s that Christianity was legalized and Christians could worship publicly. Constantine, wanting to give a special status to the religion, offered up the old pagan buildings for Christian worship. It’s a common occurrence in the early church to have civil and pagan buildings (and even words) transformed, and today marks one of the most remarkable transformations, when the famous Roman Pantheon became a church dedicated to Mary and all the Saints in 609.

 

The Pantheon was originally built in the days of the emperor Augustus, around 25 B.C. and seemingly dedicated, not to a specific God, but to “All Gods”- pan meaning all and theos meaning Gods. Two fires destroyed the original, but by about 126 AD, we have the building, in large part, as we know it today. The actor Stendhal wrote of it in the 1800s: “[it is] the most beautiful relic of ancient Rome, a temple so well preserved that it appears as the Romans must have seen it in their times.” A portico with 16 Corinthian columns leading into a rotunda- its gigantic concrete dome with an oculus, opening the top to the heavens. If you’ve seen the U.S. Capitol, the Jefferson Memorial, or the National Gallery of Art, they have all borrowed their facade from the great Pantheon.

 

It became a site of Christian worship under Pope Boniface IV in 609. With the fall of Rome over a century earlier, some of the older civic buildings were left in limbo. The emperor was now in Constantinople, and it turned out that the Emperor at that time was Phocus, a usurper who had killed the former Emperor and was trying to curry goodwill with as many as possible. The Pantheon was still technically “Imperial” property, and so Boniface asked if he could take the building and turn it into a suitable place for worship. When Phocus agreed, Boniface began arranging for the remains of Christians, buried in the catacombs, to be exhumed and brought for a burial in the building.

 

Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History, tells the story of Boniface and his men performing an exorcism on the building that used to offer sacrifices to the Gods and dedicated it to Mary and All the Saints. When this happened, on this, the 13th of May in 609, he also inaugurated a new feast day- the day for “All Saints”. It would eventually be brought together with another festival for the faithfully departed and would move to its current day of the 1st of November (was this done to counter program ghoulish pagan holidays? It seems that may have been part of the reason).

 

But what happened there in the heart of Rome, at one of the best preserved and holiest pagan sites, becoming a center for Christianity, serves as an apt picture of how Christianity transformed the ancient world- not by abandoning it, but by reinterpreting, reinventing, and renewing the old ways to now bear witness to Christ.

 

Michelangelo would call this building "the greatest temple ever built by human hands.” The Renaissance artist, Raphael, is entombed there underneath a famous statue of the Madonna and Child known as “Our Lady of the Rock. It is today the single most visited Roman heritage site according to the Italian Ministry of Culture, which recently noted almost 10 million yearly visitors- that’s more than the Coliseum, the Eiffel Tower, and Versailles.

 

Today, we remember the Pantheon turned church and the original All Saints Day, stemming from its dedication on this day in 609.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Ephesians 1:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 13th of May 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who wondered if the previous Roman emperor had been a little blurry… Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who admits- a pun for every show? Sometimes it's a reach. Go Angels. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.