The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

Pope Innocent III sleeps in red under a canopy while two of his household sit below and keep watch, and in his dream a poor man in a brown habit sets his shoulder under a leaning church and holds it up. The church is the Lateran, and the poor man is Saint Francis. The basilica stands where the palace of the Laterani family stood in ancient Rome; it came to Constantine, the first Christian emperor, through his wife Fausta, and under Pope Saint Sylvester it became the Basilica of the Saviour, the cathedral of the bishops of Rome. The title of Saint John came later, from a Benedictine monastery beside it. Its inscription calls it the mother and head of all the churches of the city and of the world. For about a thousand years the popes lived beside it, and the councils of the Lateran met there; an earthquake nearly destroyed it in 896, and fires in 1307 and 1361 did harm that could not be undone. Innocent X had it remade, with Borromini for his architect. Within the papal altar is the wooden altar on which Saint Peter is believed to have said Mass. The feast keeps the dedication of a building, and the Gospel says what a temple is: every church we enter is held up, as Giotto knew, by somebody.

Arthur Barnes, “Saint John Lateran”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 9 (1910): newadvent.org