Belonging to the monastery are three separate churches. The first, the
Church of St. Paul of Three Fountains, was raised on the spot where
Paul of Tarsus was beheaded by order of
Nero. Legend accounts for the three springs (
fontane) with the assertion that, when severed from Paul's body, his head bounced and struck the earth in three different places, from which fountains sprang up. These still flow and are located in the sanctuary. The second church,
Santa Maria Scala Coeli, dedicated to
Mary under the title "Our Lady of Martyrs", is built over the relics of
Zeno the Tribune and his 10,203 legionaries, who were martyred at the order of
Diocletian in 299. In this church is the altar of the
scala coeli ("ladder to heaven"), from which the church receives its present name. The half-dome of the tribune has mosaics, executed after cartoons by
Giovanni de' Vecchi, and presented to the church by
Pope Clement VII and by Cardinal Aldobrandini. Third are the church and monastery dedicated to
Vincent of Saragossa and
Anastasius of Persia, built by
Pope Honorius I in 626 and given to the
Benedictines. They were to care for the two older sanctuaries, as well as their own church. Toward the middle of the seventh century, the persecutions inflicted on the Eastern monks by the
Monothelites obliged many of them to seek shelter in Rome. The pope committed this abbey to them as a refuge. The abbey was richly endowed, particularly by
Charlemagne, who bestowed on it the
Isola del Giglio off the Tuscan coast, as well as
Orbetello and eleven other towns with a considerable territory. Its abbot exercised ordinary jurisdiction (
abbatia nullius) over this area. In the tenth century, it was given to the
Cluniacs. In 1140 Pope
Innocent II withdrew the abbey from them, and entrusted it to
Bernard of Clairvaux. He assigned a
Cistercian colony from
Clairvaux to the abbey, with
Peter Bernard of Paganelli as their abbot, who five years later became Pope Eugene III. When Innocent granted the monastery to the Cistercians, he had the church repaired and the monastic quarters rebuilt according to the usages of the order. Of the fourteen regular abbots who governed the abbey, several besides Eugene III became
cardinals, legates, or bishops. Pope
Honorius III restored the Church of Saints Vincent and Anastasius and personally consecrated it in 1221. At the same service, seven cardinals consecrated the seven altars within. Cardinal
Branda da Castiglione became the first
commendatory abbot in 1419. Subsequently, this office was often filled by a cardinal. The cardinals and future popes
Clement VII and
Clement VIII held this position. In 1519
Pope Leo X authorized the religious to elect their own regular superior, a
claustral prior independent of the commendatory abbot, who from this time forward was always to be a cardinal. From 1625, when the abbey was affiliated to the Cistercian
Congregation of St. Bernard in
Tuscany, until its suppression at the Napoleonic invasion in 1812, the local superior was a regular abbot, but without prejudice to the commendatory abbot. The best known of this series of regular abbots was the second,
Ferdinand Ughelli, who was one of the foremost literary men of his age, the author of
Italia Sacra and numerous other works. From 1812 the sanctuaries were deserted, until
Leo XII removed them from the nominal care of the Cistercians in 1826, and transferred them to the
Friars Minor of the Strict Observance. The purpose of the pontiff was not accomplished: the surroundings were so
malarial that no community could live there. In 1867
Pius IX appointed as commendatory abbot of Tre Fontane his cousin Cardinal
Giuseppe Milesi Pironi Ferretti, who worked to improve the physical surroundings. To ensure the sanctuaries were cared for, he committed the monastery to the Cistercians. A community was sent there in 1868 from
La Grande Trappe to institute the regular life and to try to improve the healthiness of the lands. From long neglect they had been called the
tomba (graveyard) of the Roman Campagna. When the
Papal States were incorporated at the
unification of Italy in 1870, the friars remained at Tre Fontane. They first rented and then purchased the secularized properties from the government in 1886, including an additional tract of . They inaugurated modern drainage methods to eliminate conditions that allowed the prevalence of chronic malaria, which had adversely affected local health. They also planted numerous
eucalyptus and other trees, an experiment insisted upon by the government in the contract of sale. The trial proved a success, so that the vicinity became nearly as healthful as Rome. In May 2015, Tre Fontane became the eleventh
Trappist monastery to produce and sell
Trappist beer. ==Our Lady of Revelation==