Monte Cassino
For information about the famous WW2 battle, see the Battle of Monte Cassino. |
The restored Abbey |
Monte Cassino is a rocky hill about eighty miles (130 km) south of
Rome,
Italy, a mile to the west of the town of
Cassino (the Roman
Cassinum having been on the hill) and 520 m (1700 ft) altitude. It is noted as the site where
St. Benedict of
Norcia established his first
monastery, the source of the
Benedictine Order, around
529, and of major battles towards the end of
World War II.
As so often with early
Christian institutions, the monastery was constructed on an older pagan site, a temple of Apollo that crowned the hill, enclosed by a fortifying wall above the small town of Cassino, still largely pagan at the time and recently devastated by the
Goths. Benedict's first act was to smash the sculpture of Apollo and destroy the altar. He rededicated the site to
John the Baptist. Once established there, Benedict never left. At Monte Cassino he wrote the
Benedictine Rule that became the founding principle for western
monasticism. There at Monte Cassino he received a visit from
Totila, king of the Ostrogoths, in 580 (the only secure historical date for Benedict), and there he died.
Monte Cassino became a model for future developments. Unfortunately its protected site has always made it an object of strategic importance. It was sacked or destroyed a number of times. In
584 the
Lombards sacked the Abbey, and the surviving monks fled to Rome, where they remained for more than a century. During this time the body of St Benedict was transferred to Fleury, the modern
Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire near Orleans, France. A flourishing period of Monte Cassino followed its re-establishment in 718, when among the monks were Carloman, the son of
Charles Martel;
Ratchis, predecessor of the great Lombard Duke and King
Astolf; and
Paul the Deacon, the historian of the Lombards. In
883 Saracens sacked and then burned it down. Among the great historians who worked at the monastery, in this period there is
Erchempert, whose
Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum is a fundamental chronicle of the ninth-century
Mezzogiorno.
 |
The façade of the church |
It was rebuilt and reached the apex of its fame in the
11th century under the abbot Desiderius (abbot 1058 - 1087), who later became
Pope Victor III. The number of monks rose to over two hundred, and the library, the manuscripts produced in the
scriptorium and the school of manuscript illuminators became famous throughout the West. The unique
Beneventan script flourished there during Desiderius' abbacy. The buildings of the monastery were reconstructed on a scale of great magnificence, artists being brought from Amalfi, Lombardy, and even Constantinople to supervise the various works. The abbey church, rebuilt and decorated with the utmost splendor, was consecrated in 1071 by
Pope Alexander II. A detailed account of the abbey at this date exists in the
Chronica monasterii Cassinensis by
Leo of Ostia and
Amatus of Monte Cassino gives us our best source on the early
Normans in the south.
|
The Polish flag flies over the rubble of Monte Cassino, 1944 |
An earthquake damaged the Abbey in
1349, and although the site was rebuilt it marked the beginning of a long period of decline. In 1321,
Pope John XXII made the church of Monte Cassino a cathedral, and the carefully preserved independence of the monastery from episcopal interference was at an end. In
1505 the monastery was joined with that of St. Justina of Padua. The site was sacked by Napoleon's troops in
1799 and from the dissolution of the Italian monasteries in
1866, Monte Cassino became a national monument. There was a final destruction on
February 15,
1944 when during the
four battles of Monte Cassino (January - May
1944), the entire building was pulverized in a series of heavy air-raids. The Abbey was rebuilt after the war, financed by the Italian State.
Pope Paul VI reconsecrated it in 1964.
The archives, besides a vast number of documents relating to the history of the abbey, contained some 1400 irreplaceable manuscript
codices, chiefly patristic and historical. By great foresight on the part of Julius Schlegel, a Vienna-born German officer from the Panzer-Division Hermann Göring, these were all transferred to the Vatican at the beginning of the battle.
Catholic Encyclopedia 1908.
*
THE POLISH 2nd Corps Website*
Abbey of Monte Cassino official website*
MilitaryImages.Net Pictures and discussion about Monte Cassino*
Satellite photo from Google Maps
