The exact date of the first church here is uncertain. Tradition claims that it was founded some time after 750 by nuns of the convent of St Anastasia in Constantinople, who had fled from the East to avoid the iconoclast persecutions. Pope Zacharias (741-752) is said to have built a convent for them, and the nuns later built this church as well as one dedicated to St Gregory Nazianzene, whose relics they brought from Constantinople.
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