Hortus Artium Medievalium

The monastic life - explored through the eyes of monks and, so to speak, seen from the inside - is the perspective of the XXIII International Symposium dell’IRCLAMA. The meeting, through the study of the spaces and the time of the monastic observance, intends to penetrate deeply one of the fundamental structures of development of medieval society between East and West. The history, the art, the architecture and the archeology are the key tools whereby - through the words said and written by the protagonists, the places of prayer, the work and daily life, the images and the buildings (church, cloister, chapter, refectory, kitchen, library, scriptorium, dormitory, infirmary, garden, warehouses, guest house, etc.) untill the last home of the graves (common or elitist) in the cemetery - the forms of the small and great abbey complexes and their uses are examined, from the late antiquity to the magnificent cluniacense blooming, such as formative archetypes of the Christian medieval Europe.

Milano nei secoli alto medioevali ha conosciuto una singolare pluralità di fondazioni monastiche urbane, la cui vita cultuale si sviluppava nel quadro della tradizione rituale ambrosiana. Il paradigma di tale tradizione era rappresentato dalle solenni celebrazioni proprie dell’arcivescovo e dei cardinali della Chiesa milanese; in contesto monastico veniva riproposta una specifica declinazione di tale paradigma, adattata alla realtà del cenobio. Di tali comunità monastiche ambrosiane ci sono pervenute in particolare due significative testimonianze manoscritte: il Messale di Armio e il Messale di S. Simpliciano, al quale va aggiunto il messale palinsesto del ms. Harleian 2510 della British Library. Fuori Milano la prassi liturgica ambrosiano-monastica ha conosciuto nel XIV secolo una singolare fortuna nella Praga di Carlo IV, dove un monastero di rito ambrosiano fu dall’imperatore affiancato al cenobio glagolitico, da lui precedentemente istituito. Se le guerre hussite misero fine a tale presenza ambrosiana sulle rive della Vltava, a Milano, con l’affermarsi dei Mendicanti e della loro esenzione, vennero progressivamente meno le condizioni canoniche e istituzionali, che nei secoli alto medioevali avevano permesso quell’organica interazione tra le diverse componenti della Chiesa ambrosiana, interazione, efficacemente manifestata anche nei libri di culto.

It is important to have a clear understanding of the monastic day, ordered by all the offices specified by the Rule of St. Benedict. However this does not say anything specific about chant. We are referring to Gregorian chant, ‘the chant known as Gregorian’, whose history is briefly traced. This highlights the importance of a geographical area corresponding to present-day Belgium and the southern regions of Belgium, with Metz as centre, where Bishop Chrodegang played a leading role. For centuries all chant was performed using memory alone, for there was no musical notation. The ninth century will see the development of neumes, as simple memory aids, like tropes. Only in the eleventh century, especially with Guido d’Arezzo, will the designation of notes and writing on staff lines appear. Only then can one sing what one reads. This study then focuses on the Benedictine monastery of St Trond where musical annotation was introduced at the end of the eleventh century by Rudolph of St Trond. The question is how Gregorian chant was performed at St Trond. One cannot avoid the question of the possible contrasts between the beauty of the liturgical chant and the many troubles that gripped the abbey at the time. A question valid for the eleventh century: a question of contrast valid for our time. Like the romanesque art of its time, this chant was of the eleventh century and remains forever the meeting point of the human and the divine.

Recently, theatre studies have focused on the relathionships between dramatic action and both the rhetorical mechanisms of writing and reading - based on locational memory’s techniques - and the construction of mental or artistic images. This article aims to demonstrate that in monastic circles, throught ninth and eleventh centuries, there is a deep change in the rhetorical memoria’s device for visualizing the Passion of Christ. It is a change that characterizes both silent, daily prayer and the public rites of Good Friday, especially the adoratio Crucis’ cerimonies. I will describe this change using three textual exemples of prayers to the Cross: we shall see that when the point of view changes, at the same time there is a change in the textual structure and in the dramatic system; in addition, the emotional response from the beholder also changes. From Peter Damian to Anselm there seems to be a process that moves from an ostensive intention of Christ’s body (quite a ‘seeing’ the broken body, covered with blood and injuries) to an affective sense of the Passion’s event (quite a ‘feeling’ and ‘sharing’ the pain for those wounds). The analysis would try to highlight how this change represents the historical foundation of the ‘theater of mercy’, so important in late Middle Age.

Rupestrian architecture has been traditionally linked to hermits' environments, considering them as isolated because of their topographical features and ‘disconnected’ from the rest of the world. But if we look carefully to their places of location in relation to the existing network of settlement, roads and circuits of production and consumption, the reality is somewhat different. In this sense, the rupestrian architecture linked to monastic communities formed authentic rural settlements, while Christian cult complex, in which a community not exclusively dedicated to religious activities conduct their daily life, because there would not be composed only of monks (as evidenced by their burial areas), forming what we might call “agricultural monasteries” or “village communities”, in which the religious element would be a factor of social cohesion. In the Iberian Peninsula these are generally cult spaces of individual or collective character, with annexed spatial areas equipped with various functionalities. The topographical location of these sites in Hispania is very characteristic, taking advantage of mountainous areas and crags. Nevertheless, his situation is not defined by its “isolation” or “the flight to the desert”, but because of its proximity to the settlement and communication network system.

The following four selected monasteries, which are situated in the so called Phoenice Libanensis (Phoenice II), belong to the early Byzantine and Late antique rock monasteries of Syria: Deir Zağal in the region of Palmyra, Ma˙garet el- Ruhban, Wadi el- Ruhban in the Hermon Mountain and Deir el- Cherubim in the Qalamoun mountain range.

In these cave-monasteries diverse eremitical practises have been shown, which take place in a coenobitic monastery or in a laura/lavra, which is a loose union/connection of hermits. But also an honourable hermit could withdraw himself from the community, which in the 6^th-7^th century was something very usual in Syria. These hermits had an alternative monastic life in comparison to other Syrian monasteries. The roots of this phenomenon however are to be found very deep in the Syrian ascetical literature.

Frankincense in late antique monastic contexts is analysed in Hispania. It is possible to see the few archaeological testimonies and the low attention given to the matter by archaeologists. However, we notice that the liturgical use of frankincense in the Iberian Peninsula appears always related to oriental clerics and monks, and we also identify a place of production (a monastery) of this substance.

During the building works carried out between 1868 and 1869 for the construction of the head-offices of the Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde in Milan, a large mixed group of Early medieval and Romanesque sculpture fragments was uncovered (now in the Sforza Castle Museum). Thanks to topographic coincidences, this group was immediately connected to the so called Aurona nunnery, a monastery probably founded by the Lombard king Liutprandus in the first half of VIII century, that took its name from the unfortunate king’s sister, Aurona, mentioned by Paul Deacon in his Historia Langobardorum. However only in 1944 Alberto de Capitani d’Arzago found the plan of the old building, giving finally an architectural frame to the fragments. Many doubts still remain on the chronological distribution of the pieces, their arrangement in the building and their liturgical function. Nevertheless, some new speculations can be now proposed after the cataloguing of all pieces in the museum’s stores.

The essay analyzes the image of Giulia, the carthaginian martyr - crucified for not having renounced of her faith - along with the large and well-known cross of Desiderio, in the liturgical and devotional practices of the monastery of San Salvatore - Santa Giulia in Brescia. The precious relics, preserved in the crypt of the monastery founded by the Lombard king, Desiderio, and his wife, Ansa, and in particular the relics of Saint Julia become, before the beginning of the eleventh century, the ideological horizon for self-representation of the nuns that, around the cross, build their path of monastic asceticism where the cross of Desiderio becomes the natural corollary in connection with the passion of Christ in a very original, clever and erudite mix of art and faith.

The monastery of San Salvatore of Brescia, after the suppression of the late eighteenth century, was the scene of numerous interventions of functional adaptation that have profoundly changed the appearance and the destination of use. These works, which ended with the recent organization in the city’s Museum, allow you to not only understand the architectural evolution of the ancient monastic foundation but also the complex role that it has had in representing the construction of the city’s identity with the Unity of Italy. The contribution, which is part of a scientific research project directed by Gabriele Archetti, presents the first significant results on the nineteenth-century reconstruction of the crypt and on the structural work carried out in the basilica of San Salvatore. The parametric modeling of Santa Giulia complex is being built.

In the middle of the eleventh century, a fresco was made in the apse of the so-called oratory above the underground basilica of Saint Hermes, excavated in the homonymous catacombs of the Via Salaria Vetus. After the restoration, directed by the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, it is quite clear now the solemn decorative program, which focuses on Christ between angels and the Virgin Mary, along with St. Hermes, St. John the Evangelist and St. Benedict, depicted here with an early iconography, but already canonical.

Although it can seem paradoxical, our knowledge on the Hispanic monastic phenomenon in the Late Antiquity surpass to which we have for the High Middle Ages. In the case of the written sources, the superiority is unquestionable, because for centuries VIII-X we lack testimonies like offered by San Fructuoso or San Isidoro in century VII, authors of two visions very different from the monastic life that were reflected in two monastics regulae. Respect to the space in which the monastic life was developed in Hispania, Archaeology has contributed very little to already known by the sources; and these, which seems to indicate is that during centuries IX-X in the Hispanic monastic space still was anarchic, difficult to restrict in typologies. So that personages like San Genadio, bishop of Asturica Augusta or San Rosendo, bishop of Dumio, two abbot-bishops, will be who now inform into the guidelines of habitability (infrastructure and organization) of the Hispanic High Middle Ages monastic space to us.

As is well known, the cloisters of monasteries and cathedrals were being designed as quadrilaterals with porches and rooms arranged around the perimeter by the end of the eighth century. We know how they developed from philological (Fontanelle), documental (Sankt Gallen) and archaeological studies (Munstair, Lorsch or Fulda). The same formula was used in France throughout the 10th and 11th centuries, as is evidenced by the cloisters of Autun, Vezelay and Cluny II, which was originally made of wood until Odilo (994-1049) rebuilt it in marble. Recent findings at the Catalan monastery of Ripoll raise the possibility that full square cloisters were being built south of the Pyrenees before 1000. This cloister should be studied in relation to other Catalan enclosures such as Sant Cugat (beginning 11th c.) which had a stone portico from the outset, or the lower cloister at Sant Pere de Rodes. The morphology of these enclosures can be explained through comparison with other early Catalan examples. Nevertheless, the international literature has ignored the possibility that there were regular square or half square cloisters in the Iberian Peninsula from the Visigothic period onwards. It is possible that Carolingian proposals were not the only way of experimenting with quadrangle cloister layouts in both monasteries and cathedrals in Mediterranean Europe during the High Middle Ages.

During the Middle Ages, the urban structure of Benevento was characterized by the presence of many churches and monasteries, located in crucial areas of the city, enclosed by walls built in the fourth century as part of the reconstruction and reorganization process. Indeed, after damages due to a strong earthquake, in 346 AD, and because of new defense needs due to both international and domestic political plight in the third century, to readapting the walls was mandatory and not delayable. From a critical analysis of documents, it turns out that about ten monastic institutions were located in the city limits, from the north-eastern area to the so-called ‘Civitas Nova’, from the ‘Insula episcopalis’ to the area close to the Trajan’s arch (which the medieval texts call ‘Porta Aurea’, i.e. the Golden Gate). However, also outside the city walls, along the main roads, such as Via Appia and Traiana, the presence of monastic centers is well documented. The most part of churches and monasteries is largely attributable to decisions of Dukes of Benevento, who probably ran the urban space, land, labor and production through the real estates of those religious complexes, some of which became important and renowned in culture preservation and transmission. Noteworthy, thanks to accumulated wealth and to the devotion of Lombard aristocracy, monasteries were able to play, at least in some cases, a significant role in the political scene.

All’inizio del X secolo, per iniziativa di Alfonso III, monarca di León, e del monaco-vescovo Genadio, venne fondato un monastero dedicato a san Giacomo nei monti del Bierzo. Accanto alla pietra alba (Peñalba) si conserva tutt’oggi la chiesa dedicata a san Giacomo nella cui abside occidentale, luogo di sepoltura privilegiata, era venerato il corpo del santo fondatore. Questa chiesa è fra le architetture più rilevanti del X secolo ispanico. Recentemente è venuta alla luce, dopo il restauro, una straordinaria decorazione pittorica; l’affresco copre per intero i muri dell’edificio e non c’è dubbio che siamo di fronte alla prima decorazione pittorica della chiesa. L’iscrizione dipinta nella modanatura da cui parte la volta dell’abside, il cui contenuto è il soggetto del mio intervento, condivide con quella decorazione tecnica e momento di esecuzione. Nonostante la difficile restituzione del testo integrale, la lettura che propongo ci consente di aprire nuovi interrogativi sulla cronologia dell’edificio. Non c’è dubbio che esso fu cominciato nel 937 ma altri documenti conservati suggeriscono che ci furono donazioni nel X secolo, durante tutto il processo di costruzione. Quindi, la conclusione dei lavori, e con essi degli affreschi, la cui analisi in relazione alla recezione dei modelli califfali mostra gli stretti contatti fra il regno di León e il Califfato di Cordova, non poté essere anteriore alla metà del X secolo.

Il territorio del basso Adige, già dipendente dalla città romana di Este e in età carolingia comitato di Monselice, tra il 952 (istituzione della Marca di Verona da parte di Ottone I) e la fine dell’XI secolo (nell’età di Matilde di Canosssa) diviene strategico nei rapporti tra l’impero e l’emergente Venezia. Vi dominano personaggi di grande rilievo pubblico che, in qualità di marchesi, si muovono al vertice dell’impero: da Almerico II, morto nel 955, a Ugo il grande di Toscana (dal 970 al 1001) ad Alberto Azzo I (agli inizi dell’XI secolo). Il figlio di questi, Alberto Azzo II (996-1097), è il padre del duca di Baviera Guelfo IV ed uno dei protagonisti della lotta per le investiture al fianco di Matilde che nel 1089, a 43 anni, ne sposa il sedicenne nipote Guelfo V. Il ruolo di primo piano di queste aristocrazie si coglie, nel basso Adige, nell’alto livello architettonico delle fondazioni religiose, delle quali, grazie a recenti ricerche, è ora possibile proporre piante, sequenze e ipotesi di datazione. In questo contributo vengono analizzati due complessi (Santa Maria della Vangadizza e Santa Maria di Carceri), fondati come collegiate poco prima, rispettivamente, del 955 e del 1078, trasformati poi entrambi in monasteri.