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It stands near the Portico of Octavia, and its appellation Massima comes from the nearby outlet of the Cloaca Massima into the Tiber. It was erected, according to tradition, on the paternal home of the saint, who would have lived here with his mother and sister Marcellina before being transferred as consul to Milan, where he later became bishop.

The house was also the seat of his sister Marcellina's religious community, but later became the property of a certain Maxima who, under the pontificate of Leo III, had a Latin cross church with a monastery built there. And it then had two different denominations, Santo Stefano de Maxima and Santa Maria in Formosa; in the fifteenth century the complex was restored to its original title and the Benedictines entered it.
There was a new reconstruction in the 17th century with the ofndi of Beatrice Torres, sister of the abbess, and the project was drawn up by Orazio Torriani, active in Rome between 1601 and 1657, Giovan Battista Mola and Carlo Maderno. In 1814 the Benedictines were succeeded by the Poor Clares and in 1860 by the Benedictine Sublacensians. After 1870 the complex was expropriated by the Italian state, but later the church and part of the monastery were returned to the Benedictines, while the rest of the complex passed to the Municipality of Rome-Roma Capitale.
In the refectory is a fresco attributed to Antoniazzo Romano.