Italian
The new column “Art, Culture, History and Archaeology” curated by Carlo Franchini continues. A journey to discover the beauty, curiosities, and charm of Italy yesterday and today.
Text by Gloria Zarletti
Photos and videos by Carlo Franchini
SUBIACO – Saint Benedict of Norcia is not only credited with the religious merit of founding Western monasticism. He is also a witness to the troubled end of the Roman Empire and one of the main protagonists of the subsequent era: the Middle Ages. In addition to this, Benedict also provided a socio-cultural reference point for the entire peninsula, devastated by barbarian raids, wars, and abandonment, while the inhabitants fled from the cities seeking refuge, work, and something to live on in the countryside.
Benedict was born in Norcia to a noble family in 480, about 20 years after the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor who no longer had any of the dignity of the ancient rulers. He was just a teenager when he came to Rome, visiting as was customary for every scion of a good family. But here he did not find the splendid city of the tales he had heard, but only ruins, destruction and decay, corruption, in fact the same situation as the entire territory governed by Rome, to which he himself, as an adult, would provide an economic system to sustain.
What we know about him is in the “Dialogues” of Gregory the Great, who dedicates an entire chapter to demonstrate the importance he had assumed for the Church, which is still recognized today. With him, in fact, the monastery became a point of reference and protection for the populations that gradually fled from the cities, now reduced to places of encampment and epidemics, famine. The first experience of this kind was precisely that of Subiaco, where Benedict spent his early years in a cave (the Sacred Speco, in the photo), imitating the life of Christ based on Eastern hermitage, always a step away from heresy since its first manifestation, at the initial spread of the new religion.
The contemplative life in the solitude of the Sacred Cave, however, after a few years led Benedict to choose an active life that would also be useful to others. Thus began the construction of the architectural structure visible today, two churches on two levels (which date back to around 1000), and the monastery, which would become the model for Montecassino and all the Benedictine monasteries that soon spread in Italy and France.
With the choice of a communal life (cenobium), the monks (from monos meaning one), while living their solitude, collaborated to produce everything needed for the convent and created an economy in the surrounding territory where the inhabitants could find work and sustenance in an organization that can be considered a first form of feudalism. Here, the monastery was a defensive element (which would later be represented by the lord’s castle), and the economic and social hub of an entire community.
In a Italy transitioning from barbaric Roman kingdoms to Lombard domination, Subiaco, with its view of the Aniene River and its woods, represents the first happy island of well-being and nature in a difficult historical context of abandonment and devastation. In the depths of the Middle Ages, this monastery, one of the most significant spiritual places of Christianity, was born from the fusion of high religiosity with human ingenuity that managed to build it on the steep rock. Notable are the frescoes of the Sacred Speco and the two Churches. It features the oldest portrait of Saint Francis, who visited here in 1223.
The complex, which overlooks the Aniene River, has amazed visitors from all over the world for over a thousand years and stands as a testament to how the Middle Ages were anything but a dark period; rather, it was a continuous discovery of ingenious and timeless solutions for beauty and functionality.
