Montecassino: History

The history of Montecassino Abbey began around 529, with the arrival of St. Benedict, who left Subiaco in search of a place to settle with his monks. The first community settled among the ruins of the ancient acropolis of the Roman city of ‘Casinum’, where an oratory dedicated to St Martin and a church for St John the Baptist were built. Here, Benedict wrote his ‘Rule’, a set of directives for monastic life, and died in around 547.

Thirty years later, in 577, the Lombards, who were advancing to conquer southern Italy, destroyed the Abbey. The monks probably took refuge in Rome. Reconstruction began in 717 under Abbot Petronace. In the 8th and 9th centuries, the number of monks increased and the Abbey strengthened its political role. In 744, the Duke of Benevento, Gisulfo II, donated extensive surrounding territories to the monastery, laying the foundations for the creation of the Land of St. Benedict (‘Terra Sancti Benedicti’), over which the abbot gained full power.

This phase of development was interrupted in 883, when the Saracens devastated the monastery. The monks fled once again. In the mid-10th century, the community returned to Montecassino with Abbot Aligerno. This marked the beginning of a period of rebirth that culminated in the years of Abbot Desiderius (1058-1087). A loyal ally of the papacy and the new overlords of southern Italy, the Normans, he became pope in 1087 under the name Victor III. Starting in 1066, he promoted the reconstruction of the abbey church [internal reference to the site, Category 4, article 3], consecrated in 1071, embellishing it with marble, frescoes, mosaics and precious accessories, most of which were destroyed by an earthquake in 1349. Evidence of this extraordinary artistic period can be found in the descriptions of the monks Leone Ostiense and Alfano da Salerno, in the surviving artefacts, now housed in the Abbey Museum, and above all in the splendid illuminated manuscripts preserved in the Archive

From the 17th century onwards, the Abbey took on a Baroque appearance. During the Second World War, it was destroyed by heavy bombarment and subsequently rebuilt after the war. Declared a national monument in 1866, the Abbey now belongs to the Italian State but is entrusted to the monks, who keep its thousand-year-old memory alive.