St. Paschal I

Paschal · 817 – 824

Built and decorated Roman churches with stunning mosaics, many of which survive today, while navigating Carolingian politics.

Paschal was a Roman who had served as abbot of the monastery of St. Stephen near St. Peter's. As pope from 817 to 824, he was a prolific builder. The churches of Santa Prassede, Santa Maria in Domnica, and Santa Cecilia in Trastevere all contain mosaics he commissioned, and they remain among the finest surviving examples of early medieval art. He also received Greek monks fleeing iconoclasm in the East and gave them shelter in Rome. His relationship with Emperor Louis the Pious was sometimes strained, and accusations of violence within the Lateran shadowed his later years.

Mosaics That Still Speak

Walk into Santa Prassede in Rome today and you are looking at Paschal's work. The gold and blue mosaics in the apse and the Chapel of St. Zeno are twelve hundred years old and still take your breath away. Whatever else Paschal did or failed to do, he left beauty behind that has outlasted everything else from his era.