ABSTRACT
Although the body of the Church resided everywhere, its center was Rome, which the Protestants criticized for its immorality. As a result, Counter-Reformation popes used the cleansing of the spiritual Church as the impetus for literally cleaning its corporeal house in Rome. Rome's new water infrastructure provided more than rhetoric; now there was what we would call today an "action plan", for a rational framework for urban organization and expansion. Water literally re-formed the city and one's relationship with it, while at a personal level, water made quotidian life easier, and could even provide a symbolic path to salvation for former prostitutes and other women who used the new laundry fountains. Above and below ground, water's materiality refreshed and reformed Rome creating a more beautiful and healthful environment. Now Rome reflected, at least metaphorically, the magnificence of the reborn Church, both in the eyes of the annual hordes of pilgrims and to the world at large.
