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The Abbey of Monte Cassino (today usually spelled Montecassino) is a Benedictines monastery on a rocky hill about southeast of Rome, in the Valle Latina. Located on the site of the ancient Roman town of Casinum, it is the first house of the Benedictine Order, having been established by Benedict of Nursia himself around 529. It was for the community of Monte Cassino that the Rule of Saint Benedict was composed.
The first monastery on Monte Cassino was sacked by the invading Lombards around 570 and abandoned. Of the first monastery almost nothing is known. The second monastery was established by Petronax of Brescia around 718, at the suggestion of Pope Gregory II and with the support of the Lombard Duke Romuald II of Benevento. It was directly subject to the pope and many monasteries in Italy were under its authority. In 883, the monastery was sacked by Saracens and abandoned again. The community of monks resided first at Teano and then from 914 at Capua before the monastery was rebuilt in 949. During the period of exile, the Cluniac Reforms were introduced into the community.
The 11th and 12th centuries were the abbey's golden age. It acquired a large secular territory around Monte Cassino, the so-called Terra Sancti Benedicti ("Land of Saint Benedict"), which it heavily fortified with castles. It maintained good relations with the Eastern Church, even receiving patronage from Byzantine emperors. It encouraged fine art and craftsmanship by employing Byzantine artisans. In 1057, Pope Victor II recognised the abbot of Monte Cassino as having precedence over all other abbots. Many monks rose to become bishops and cardinals, and three popes were drawn from the abbey: Stephen IX (1057–58), Victor III (1086–87) and Gelasius II (1118–19). During this period, a monastic chronicle, , was written by two of its own, Cardinal Leo of Ostia and Peter the Deacon (who also compiled the cartulary).
By the 13th century, the monastery's decline had set in. In 1239, the Emperor Frederick II garrisoned troops in it during his war with the Papacy. In 1322, Pope John XXII elevated the abbey into a bishopric but this was suppressed in 1367. The buildings were destroyed by an earthquake in 1349, and in 1369 Pope Urban V demanded a contribution from all Benedictine monasteries to fund the rebuilding. In 1454, the abbey was placed in commendam and in 1504 was made subject to the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua.
In 1799, Monte Cassino was sacked again by French troops during the French Revolutionary Wars. The abbey was dissolved by the Italian government in 1866. The building became a national monument with the monks as custodians of its treasures. In 1944, during World War II, it was the site of the Battle of Monte Cassino, when the building was destroyed by Allied bombing. It was rebuilt after the war.
After the reforms of the Second Vatican Council the monastery was one of the few remaining territorial abbeys within the Catholic Church. On 23 October 2014, Pope Pope Francis applied the norms of the motu proprio Ecclesia Catholica of Paul VI (1976) to the abbey, removing from its jurisdiction all 53 parishes and reducing its spiritual jurisdiction to the abbey itself – while retaining its status as a territorial abbey. The former territory of the Abbey, except the land on which the abbey church and monastery sit, was transferred to the diocese of Sora-Cassino-Aquino-Pontecorvo. Pope Pope Francis at the same time appointed Father Donato Ogliari as the new Abbot who will serve as the 192nd successor of Saint Benedict. As of 2015, the monastic community consists of 13 monks. Catalogus Monasteriorum O.S.B. (SS. Patriarchae Benedicti Familiae Confoederatae: Curia dell'Abate Primate, Editio XXII 2015). Ogliari was succeeded as abbot by Antonio Luca Fallica in 2023.
Generations after the Roman Empire adopted Christianity the town became the seat of a bishopric in the fifth century AD. Lacking strong defences the area was subject to barbarian attack and became abandoned and neglected with only a few struggling inhabitants holding out.
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 hagiography 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."
Benedict scholars (such as Adalbert de Vogüé and Terrence Kardong) note the heavy influence of Sulpicius Severus' Life of Martin on Pope Gregory I's biography of Benedict, including the account of his seizure of Monte Cassino. Benedict's violence against a pagan holy place recalls both Martin's assault against pagan shrines generations before and the Biblical story of conquering Israel entering the Holy Land (see Exodus 34:12–14). De Vogue writes "this mountain had to be conquered from an idolatrous people and purified from its devilish horrors. And like conquering Israel, Benedict came precisely to carry out this purification. No doubt Gregory had this biblical model uppermost in his mind, as is clear from the terms he uses to describe the work of destruction. At the same time, neither Gregory nor Benedict could have forgotten the similar line of action taken by St. Martin against the pagan shrines of Gaul."
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." Scholars note that this striking contrast is not stressed by Gregory but rather both settings are portrayed as part of a single battle account against the same demonic enemy. Where Satan concealed himself behind underlings at Subiaco, at Monte Cassino he drops the masks to enter into a desperate attempt to prevent an abbey from being built, and "that the sole cause of this eruption of satanic action is the suppression of pagan worship on the high places." While scholars see some similarities between the story of Benedict's encountering demonic phenomena and diabolic apparitions at Monte Cassino with the story of Saint Anthony the Great's temptation in the desert, the influence of the story of St. Martin is dominant – with the resistance of Satan substituting for Martin's outraged pagan populace. Unlike the stories that may have influenced Pope Gregory's structure of the biography, Benedict's victories are practical, preventing Satan from stopping work on the abbey at Monte Cassino. Benedict's prayers are portrayed as the driving force behind the building of the abbey and the triumphs over Satan, through prayer: "Benedict the monk wrests from the devil a well-determined base which he never leaves." After the completion of the abbey, Satan's appearances in the story diminish back to the same level as Subiaco, "Only after the saint's death and by God's permission would other enemies, the Lombards, succeed in sacking it."Once established at Monte Cassino, Benedict never left. He wrote the Benedictine Rule that became the founding principle for Western monasticism, received a visit from Totila, king of the Ostrogoths (perhaps in 543, the only remotely secure historical date for Benedict), and died there. According to accounts, "Benedict died in the oratory of St. Martin, and was buried in the oratory of St. John."
The Rule of St. Benedict mandated the moral obligations to care for the sick. So in Monte Cassino St. Benedict founded a hospital that is considered today to have been the first in Europe of the new era. Benedictine monks took care of the sick and wounded there according to Benedict's Rule. The monastic routine called for hard work. The care of the sick was such an important duty that those caring for them were enjoined to act as if they served Christ directly. Benedict founded twelve communities for monks at nearby Subiaco (about 64 km to the east of Rome), where hospitals were settled, too, as adjuncts to the monasteries to provide charity. Soon many monasteries were founded throughout Europe, and everywhere there were hospitals like those in Monte Cassino.
Pope Gregory I's account of Benedict's construction was confirmed by archaeological discoveries made after the destruction of 1944. Adalbert de Vogüé recounts that "Traces have been found of the oratories of St. Martin and of St. John the Baptist, with additions from the eighth and eleventh centuries, together with their pre-Christian cellars. The first one which Benedict built in the temple itself was only twelve meters long and eight wide. From this, we can infer a fairly small community. The second oratory, on the mountain-top, where the pagan altar had stood in the open air, was of the same width but somewhat longer (15.25 meters)."
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 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 Southern Italy.
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. Abbot Desiderius sent envoys to Constantinople some time after 1066 to hire expert 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 , 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.
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.
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. "When I Landed the War Was over", by Hughes Rudd, American Heritage, October/November 1981. 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.Hapgood & Richardson, p. 211 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.Atkinson (2007), pp. 432–441
Another account, however, from revisionist author Franz Kurowski's The History of the Fallschirmpanzerkorps Hermann Göring: Soldiers of the Reichsmarschall, notes that 120 trucks were loaded with monastic assets and art which had been stored there for safekeeping. Robert Edsel (2006), on the other hand, speculates it might have been looting. The trucks were loaded and left in October 1943, and only "strenuous" protests resulted in their delivery to the Vatican, minus the 15 cases which contained the property of the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. Edsel goes on to note that these cases had been delivered to Göring in December 1943, for "his birthday". This is, however, unproven.
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