August 5 keeps the dedication of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, the oldest church in the West dedicated to the Mother of God. Sixtus III built it in the 430s, immediately after the Council of Ephesus of 431 had defined Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer; the mosaic inscription on the triumphal arch — XYSTUS EPISCOPUS PLEBI DEI — is his. The nave mosaics above the colonnade are fifth-century work and among the earliest narrative cycles in Christian art.
The popular name comes from a story first attested in the thirteenth century: that a Roman patrician and his wife, childless and seeking a use for their estate, were told in a dream to build where snow fell, and that on the morning of August 5 snow lay on the summit of the Esquiline. Pope Liberius is said to have traced the outline of the church in it. The account is medieval rather than contemporary, and the basilica's older name, the Liberian basilica, is what fixed Liberius into it. Every August 5 white petals fall from the coffered ceiling during Mass.
The basilica holds the Salus Populi Romani, the icon of the Virgin that Roman tradition ascribes to Luke and that popes have carried through the city in time of plague. Beneath the high altar is the reliquary of the Holy Crib, five boards of sycamore. Bernini is buried here without ceremony, under a plain slab. Santa Maria Maggiore is one of the four papal basilicas of Rome and a station church of the Roman rite.
