Rome’s Miracle Snow in August

Rome recreates a miracle snowfall each summer.

Each year on 5 August Rome’s Basilica di S. Maria Maggiore celebrates La Madonna della Neve (Our Lady of the Snows) by recreating a miracle snowfall during the height of summer.

The tradition is based on a legend told by friar Bartolomeo da Trento in the first half of the 13th century in Liber epilogorum in gesta sanctorum:

“On the morning of the 5th of August 352 the inhabitants of the Esquiline Hill had a strange surprise: during the night snow had fallen and a soft blanket covered part of the soil.

For a long time the elderly couple, who had no children, had wanted to use their wealth in a work that would honor God, and to that end, they had prayed fervently they would be shown how to fulfill their desire.

Moved by their religiosity, a vision appeared to them in a dream, saying a place where the next morning they would find snow fallen miraculously overnight, where they should build a church at their own expense.

Excited by the dream and the miraculous snowfall, the next morning Giovanni went to Pope Liberius, to tell him what happened: the pontiff had, during the night, dreamed the same!

Liberius, followed by the patrician Giovanni and a large procession of people and prelates, went to the Esquiline hill, and on the still intact snow marked the limits of the new church, which was built at the expense of the patrician and his wife.”

The early church was demolished in the 5th century, under Pope Sixtus III (432-440) to be rebuilt more sumptuous, with the name of Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, in remembrance of the Council of Ephesus of 431 AD.

Actually, the basilica was named “ad Nives” not before the 10th century, and there is no trace of the legend of the snow before that time.

In the 12th century the Feast Dedicationis Sanctae Mariae ad Nives was established and even today in the basilica on August 5, during the celebration of the Mass, white flower petals descend over the altar.