Ancient history The history of Monte Cassino is linked to the nearby town of Cassino which was first settled in the fifth century BC by the
Volsci people who held much of central Italy. It was they who first built a citadel on the summit of Monte Cassino. The Volsci in the area were defeated by the Romans in 312 BC. The Romans named the settlement
Casinum and built a temple to Apollo at the citadel. Modern excavations have found no remains of the temple, but monumental remains of an amphitheatre, a theatre, and a mausoleum show the wealth of the Roman town.
Era of Benedict (530–547) According to
Gregory the Great's hagiography of
Benedict, the
Life of Saint Benedict of Nursia, the monastery was constructed on an older pagan site, a temple of
Apollo that crowned the hill. The biography records that the area was still largely
pagan at the time; Benedict's first act was to smash the sculpture of Apollo and destroy the altar. He then reused the temple, dedicating it to
Saint Martin, and built another chapel on the site of the altar dedicated to Saint
John the Baptist. Pope Gregory I's account of Benedict's seizure of Monte Cassino: Now the citadel called Casinum is located on the side of a high mountain. The mountain shelters this citadel on a broad bench. Then it rises three miles above it as if its peak tended toward heaven. There was an ancient temple there in which Apollo used to be worshipped according to the old pagan rite by the foolish local farmers. Around it had grown up a grove dedicated to demon worship, where even at that time a wild crowd still devoted themselves to unholy sacrifices. When [Benedict] the man of God arrived, he smashed the idol, overturned the altar and cut down the grove of trees. He built a chapel dedicated to St. Martin in the temple of Apollo and another to St. John where the altar of Apollo had stood. And he summoned the people of the district to the faith by his unceasing preaching. Pope Gregory I's biography of Benedict claims that Satan opposed the monks repurposing the site. In one story, Satan invisibly sits on a rock making it too heavy to remove until Benedict drives him off. In another story, Satan taunts Benedict and then collapses a wall on a young monk, who is brought back to life by Benedict. Pope Gregory also relays that the monks found a pagan idol of bronze when digging at the site (which when thrown into the kitchen gave the illusion of a fire until dispelled by Benedict). Archaeologist
Neil Christie notes that it was common in such
hagiographies for the protagonist to encounter areas of strong paganism. Benedict scholar Terrence Kardong examines why Benedict did not face stiffer opposition in his seizure of the site from the local pagans. He contrasts this with the 25-year struggle faced by St. Martin of Tours in western Gaul by pagans angry at his attacks on their shrines: "By the time of Benedict, paganism was in a weaker condition in western Europe than it had been in Martin's time. And, of course, it must be remembered that Martin as a bishop was a much more prominent churchman than Benedict. This was an isolated and unusual episode in Benedict's monastic career. Martin, however, was thrust out of his monastery into the role of a missionary bishop in the fourth century." Pope Gregory I's account of Benedict at Monte Cassino is seen by scholars as the final setting for an epic set in motion at Subiaco. In his earlier setting Benedict "had twice shown complete mastery over his aggressiveness, Benedict is now allowed to use it without restraint in the service of God." In 581, during the abbacy of
Bonitus, 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 by
Abbot Petronax, when among the monks were
Carloman, son of
Charles Martel;
Ratchis, predecessor of the Lombard King
Aistulf; and
Paul the Deacon, the historian of the Lombards. In 744, a donation of
Gisulf II of Benevento created the
Terra Sancti Benedicti, the secular lands of the abbacy, which were subject to the abbot and nobody else save the pope. Thus, the monastery became the capital of a state comprising a compact and strategic region between the Lombard
principality of Benevento and the
Byzantine city-states of the coast (
Naples,
Gaeta, and
Amalfi). In 884
Saracens sacked and then burned it down, and Abbot
Bertharius was killed during the attack. 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 abbey under Desiderius of the abbey from the late 15th-century
Nuremberg Chronicle (
folio 144
recto) Monte Cassino 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. Monks caring for the patients in Monte Cassino constantly needed new medical knowledge. So they began to buy and collect medical and other books by Greek, Roman, Islamic, Egyptian, European, Jewish, and Oriental authors. As Naples is situated on the crossroad of many seaways of Europe, the Middle East and Asia, soon the monastery library was one of the richest in Europe. All the knowledge of the civilizations of all the times and nations was accumulated in the Abbey of that time. The Benedictines translated into Latin and transcribed precious manuscripts. 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. Monks reading and copying the medical texts learned a lot about human anatomy and methods of treatment, and then put their theoretic skills into practice at monastery hospital. By the 10–11th centuries Monte Cassino became the most famous cultural, educational, and medical center of Europe with a great library in Medicine and other sciences. Many physicians came there for medical and other knowledge. That is why the first
High Medical School in the world was soon opened in nearby
Salerno which is considered today to have been the earliest Institution of Higher Education in Western Europe. This school found its original base in the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino still in the 9th century and later settled down in Salerno. So, Montecassino and Benedictines played a great role in the progress of medicine and science in the Middle Ages, and with his life and work St. Benedict himself exercised a fundamental influence on the development of European civilization and culture and helped Europe to emerge from the "dark night of history" that followed the fall of the Roman empire. The buildings of the monastery were reconstructed in the 11th century 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. 's 1703
Il regno di Napoli in prospettiva Abbot Desiderius sent envoys to Constantinople some time after 1066 to hire expert
Byzantine mosaicists for the decoration of the rebuilt abbey church. According to chronicler
Leo of Ostia the Greek artists decorated the apse, the arch and the vestibule of the basilica. Their work was admired by contemporaries but was totally destroyed in later centuries except two fragments depicting greyhounds (now in the Monte Cassino Museum). "The abbot in his wisdom decided that a great number of young monks in the monastery should be thoroughly initiated in these arts" – says the chronicler about the role of the Greeks in the revival of mosaic art in medieval Italy. Architectural historian
Kenneth John Conant believed that Desiderius' rebuilding included
pointed arches, and served as a major influence in the nascent development of
Gothic architecture. Abbot
Hugh of Cluny visited Monte Cassino in 1083, and five years later he began to build the third church at
Cluny Abbey, which then included pointed arches and became a major turning point in medieval architecture.
Later history 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. That situation was reversed by
Pope Urban V, a Benedictine, in 1367. In 1505 the monastery was joined with that of St. Justina of Padua. The abbey was sacked by the
French Revolutionary Army in 1799. From the dissolution of the Italian monasteries in 1866, Monte Cassino became a national monument.
Battle of Monte Cassino In the
Italian Campaign of
World War II the town of Cassino formed part of the German forces' 161-kilometre (100-mile)
Gustav Line, which aimed to prevent Allied troops from advancing northwards. The abbey itself however, was not initially utilised by the German troops as part of their fortifications, owing to General
Kesselring's regard for the historical monument. The Gustav Line stretched from the
Tyrrhenian to the
Adriatic coast in the east, with Monte Cassino itself overlooking Highway 6 and blocking the path to Rome. During the
Battle of Monte Cassino (January–May 1944) the abbey was heavily damaged. On 15 February 1944 it was nearly destroyed in a series of heavy, American-led air raids. General
Sir Harold Alexander, with the support of numerous Allied commanders, ordered the bombing, which was conducted due to several reports from
British Indian Army officers suggesting that German forces were occupying the monastery; the abbey was considered a key observation post by all those who were fighting in the field. However, during the bombing no German troops were present in the abbey. Subsequent investigations found that the only people killed in the monastery by the bombing were 230 Italian civilians seeking refuge there. Following the bombing the ruins of the monastery were occupied by German
Fallschirmjäger paratroopers of the
1st Parachute Division, due to the ruins providing excellent defensive cover.
Postwar history The Abbey was rebuilt after the war. In the early 1950s, President of the Italian Republic
Luigi Einaudi gave considerable support to the rebuilding.
Pope Paul VI consecrated the rebuilt Basilica on 24 October 1964. During reconstruction, the abbey library was housed at the
Pontifical Abbey of St Jerome-in-the-City. Until his resignation was accepted by
Pope Francis on 12 June 2013, the Territorial Abbot of Monte Cassino was
Pietro Vittorelli. The Vatican daily bulletin of 23 October 2014 announced that with the appointment of his successor Donato Ogliari, the territory of the abbey outside the immediate monastery grounds had been transferred to the Diocese of Sora-Aquino-Pontecorvo, now renamed
Diocese of Sora-Cassino-Aquino-Pontecorvo. == Gallery ==