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.

Around the year one thousand most of the monasteries in the Catalan counties, as also of other European territories, had almost completely renewed their constructions. In most cases, the planning was composed of a set of monastic buildings that were arranged according to a central space, the cloister, which was both organizer and centre of the monastic life. Although from the twelfth century many of the structures were replaced, particularly the church and the cloistered galleries with the introduction of the sculptural decoration, the organization and overall dimensions of the monasteries did not change. In most cases, the space corresponding to the cloister of the eleventh century has been preserved along with some of the dependencies, despite the fact that new galleries were built in subsequent periods. The aim of this work is to try to acknowledge the spaces and functions of these cloisters as they were in their initial stages by using, however with caution, the preserved structures and the documentary data.

The monastery of St. Chrysogonus in Zadar was one of the most notable Benedictine abbeys on the eastern Adriatic coast. The monastery was first mentioned in the second half of the tenth century, but there is very little knowledge about the earliest (Benedictine) building. The presentday church of St. Chrysogonus, consecrated in 1175, is a monumental three-nave basilica and one of the most significant Romanesque religious monuments in the eastern Adriatic. One of the aims of the paper is to discuss the problem of the first church and monastery of St. Chrysogonus - therefore special attention will be given to the interpretation of Early Christian and Early Medieval fragments of liturgical furnishings and architectural decoration found in the well-preserved Romanesque monument. Attention will also be focused on the Romanesque church, especially on the interpretation of its architecture and surviving remains of architectural sculpture, and architectural influences that has always been in the centre of scientific interest. The purpose of this paper is to improve the existing knowledge of the Benedictine monastery in Zadar, which will contribute to a better understanding of Benedictine (medieval) monuments of the eastern Adriatic coast and the adjacent area.

The cloister of Santa Sofia in Benevento, of Lombard foundation, saves a group of capitals carved with various subjects. The main theme of the decoration is directed to the contemplation for the monastic community: scenes from the Old and New Testament stories, scenes from the monastic environment, scenes from the profane world. The decoration of the cloister is therefore a didactic path for the monks. The narrative that is seen in the capitals of the cloister of Santa Sofia in Benevento is one of the most important in South Italy, especially for the presence of the cycle of the months that finds the strongest iconographic comparisons with North Italy. But the realization of the sculptures is linked to a workshop of local artists in the late twelfth century, influenced by apulian and from the Abruzzo figurative culture.

The most ancient Norman Benedictine abbey in Sicilian area is S. Bartolomeo in Lipari. Count Roger I and his brother Robert Guiscard established it a couple of years before the death of the latter in 1085. In 1767, an earthquake damaged the church, which was rebuilt as a three naves basilica. The current right aisle has replaced the northern side of the cloister. The cloister is probably the oldest one in Southern Italy. The quality of the capitals’ sculptures, as well as the lack of narrative scenes, attests that the cloister was built some decades after the abbey’s foundation, during the first half of the 12^th century. The style of the sculptures has no comparisons in the Norman world, but it is possible to find similarities with the First-Romanesque production of Northern and Central Italy. The artists likely were part of the community of Lombard colonists invited in Sicily by count Roger and his wife Adelasia, as well as the first abbot, Ambrosius, and many monks. Both architecture and decoration of the monastic complex seem to have adapted themselves to the habits and the expectations of the first community of Lombard Benedictines, instead to them of their Norman patrons.

During the 9^th century, there was an important increase of monasteries in the Catalan counties. In few years, from 800 to 875, more than fifty new abbeys were founded; lots of them encouraged by the Carolingian authorities. Nevertheless, at the same time, some cloisters were established by founding pacts between their first monks and their abbot, without the intervention of any external power. In this article, I will study the survival of this pactual tradition, which was deeply connected to the Visigoth monasticism, during the Carolingian reform. The efforts made by their sovereigns in order to impose the Benedict’s Rule were not enough to eradicate the previous monastic tradition, which remained in some of those early monasteries until the first years of the 10^th century.

The contribution would like to offer some reflections on use of wood in the monastic building structures, considering both written and archaeological sources. Attention is particularly directed to the articulation of the monastic space, to constructive activities and to material culture.

The paper attempts to investigate, through the study of iron production, particularly in central and northern Italy, the development of the historical forms of property in close relationship with the unraveling control of the elites on the countryside. The entire set of sources (both archaeological and written), for the period under examination, seems to indicate that production was now strongly oriented/focused to meet the overriding interests of large landed property, a process to which the economic reorganization of the monasteries was certainly not alien but, on the contrary, it appears to have played a key role in the definition of new ways to control access to raw materials and to the territory in general.

The essay analyzes the function of the manual work in the monastic life between the late antiquity and the Middle Ages in South of Italy. The manual activities, before of the advent of St. Benedict, are little known because of the scarcity of sources, but with the great age of Benedictine monasticism the question of work becomes of great importance. The first communities strictly follow the rules of the founder, but in the big southern abbeys (as Montecassino and San Vincenzo al Volturno) the main care concerns the management of large land estates. A new impetus to manual labor comes only with the arrival of the Cistercians. Instead, from the tenth century, the work done by the Italian-Greek monks is completely different: they are known for the large land reclamations, for the foundations of monasteries and villages, for the abilities of amanuenses and for the pictorial exercises.

A research of “light” archeology conducted in the two year period 2002-2003 in the district of Urgup in Cappadocia has provided some significant information on the internal organization and the territory of the many rock monastic settlements still largely present. According to the recommendations that Girolamo sends to the monk Rustico di Tolosa in 411, the agricultural activity and the necessary channeling of water for irrigation has left signs referable to the monastic presence of VI-VIII century, but also other activities connected with it such as the breeding of pigeons and bees and the cultivation of vines, they have left substantial traces in the rock dwellings of the territory. A final chapter treats the places of the processing and consumption of food of Community.

The monks did not work the fields themselves; they only helped farm in cases of dire need. There was a tendency to entrust farm tasks to serfs-who were nearly slaves-and to farmers. As of the 10th century the latter were referred to as lay brothers, laymen who joined the monks. The lay brothers, their actions, and their need to work to earn their daily bread, to see to the community’s subsistence, yielded consequences essential to the formation of post- Roman European civilization. Serfs and lay brothers began tilling, irrigating, and draining the land around the monasteries to plant that necessary to their survival. They developed grain farming and zootechnics, cut down woods, and drained marshes, dug canals to irrigate the fields, planted vineyards, and prepared the ground for a type of economy that in the Early Middle Ages would classify as sustainable and perfectly integrated in an equal balance of resources and production capacity. Thus, it was the monks that sparked the development of an economic system, which provided adequate means and resources to organize fairs and markets in certain periods and to control important import-export activities. The profits were then used to purchase sculptures, paintings, gold objects, and precious stones.

Il santuario di San Michele ad Olevano sul Tusciano in provincia di Salerno, fu uno dei maggiori santuari mete di pellegrinaggio dell’età carolingia. La natura impervia del luogo consente di ammirare ancora oggi quasi inalterate le architetture e le decorazioni altomedievali. Scavi archeologici realizzati tra il 2002 e il 2015 hanno permesso di apportare dati utili alla ricostruzione della vicenda del santuario e alla conoscenza della società longobardo-meridionale.

Maintenance, enhancement or reconstruction, performed inside a monastery in any time period negatively affected the monastic life. This challenges equally impact males and females (both genders). Of course, nuns are more affected by the interventions of workers, whether lay or monastic inside the enclosure. Even if the textual sources are not explicit, archaeology reveals different strategies to approach these challenges.

The paper particularly analyzes the monastic culture in Early Middle Ages. A specific focus is made on the evidence of monastic status, with use of ‘monachus’ in subscriptions of mediaeval manuscripts before the 12^th century.

A typikon, stored in the library of the University of Turin under the signature Graecus 216 (ex-Royal Library Codex C III 17), portrays the industrious cultural activity of the monastery of St. Nicholas of Kasoulon, founded in 1098/99 by the monk Joseph, thanks to the patronage of Bohemund, prince of Taranto and Antioch, about a few miles south of Otranto (Lecce), in the south-eastern tip of Italy. According to the testimony of the manuscript, it can be given a broad outline of the scriptorium’s daily activity as a crucial centre of culture and knowledge’s transmission through the manuscripts’ copying. This factor allowed a considerable diffusion of texts both in the religious either in the secular milieu, by making the Hydruntine coenobium to become one of the Byzantine culture’s most outstanding centres in Southern Italy.

Although monastic rules are neither a penal code nor a treatise of moral theology, they provide some reflections on the nature of sin, whose origins are ascribed to the demon’s action, to the weakness of the flesh and to secular temptation. This is particularly evident in the Regula Magistri and in saint Columbanus’s Regula monachorum. To atone for sins, monastic rules suggest specific penances, the most important of which is excommunication. This includes or, alternatively, considers other forms of mortification, especially corporal punishment and fasting. The closer and closer relationship between a sin and its specific penance finds its culmination in saint Columbanus’s regula cenobialis and penitential, which will spread the Irish system of tariff penance on the continent, extending it to the secular clergy and the laity, as well.

The speech focuses on how disease and care are perceived and lived inside the monastic tradition. The sources, which have been used (hagiographies and monastic rules), show how in eastern monasticism, hermits and anchorites accept physical illness as a tool to reach the individual ascetic perfection, while the complex organisation of the coenobitic life introduces “diagnosis” as a new practice in order to distinguish the physical disease from the spiritual illness, and to uncover simulations. As a matter of fact, some monks pretended to be sick in order to avoid work and prayer spreading envy and disappointment inside the community. Therefore, it was necessary to create a designated room, the infirmary, not only in order to treat sick monks, but also to separate them from the others. Starting with S. Benedict, western monasticism, influenced by the Basilian tradition, accepted this kind of organisation and accorded a greater value to the care of the sick brothers, recognizing in this loving attention the spiritual enrichment of the monks (both the sick and the healthy ones) and of the whole of the monastic community. The custom of Cluny, moving from this theological and humanistic conception of care, includes disease and its spaces within the complex rites, whose forms appear as a severe anticipation of death.

A significant amount of land and marine malacofauna remains have been uncovered during the perennial excavations of St. Peter’s monastery in Osor, Croatia. This paper examines the dietary significance of edible land snail and marine shell based on extensive taphonomical analyses. In the theoretical part of the paper the interpretation of dietary restrictions in regard to the Rule of St. Benedict and specifically its interpretation by the monks of St. Peter’s monastery is given. Filtering the results of taphonomical analyses of this indirect evidence for subsistence through theoretical frameworks socially mediated food acquisition and consumption choices of Benedictine monks at St. Peter’s monastery are explored.

This paper aims to study the productive assets of the monastery of Sant Cugat del Valles between the 10th and 11th centuries from a territorial perspective. Georeferencing the information in its rich cartulary and through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we intend to approach to the progressive increase of its possessions in the county of Barcelona and to the diversity of productive spaces (farmland, livestock, fisheries, food processing areas: mills and bread furnaces) that constituted their heritage. The maps resulting from this process will allow us to know the territorial evolution of the monastic property and their asset management strategies, designed to ensure both food sustenance of the monks and economic development of the community.

In early Middle Ages, the western tradition requested to those who wanted to enter a monastic community to choose poverty by renouncing to their earthly assets, and at the same time to maintain the awareness of the existence of the involuntary poor, embodying the image of Christ. Monastic rules and practice reveal that helping the poor was a marginal aspect in the monks’ life, which gave preminence to searching for a spiritual path to get closer to God, by means of fasting, praying, and daily labouring. However, hospitality functions in monasteries changed according to social classes, hospitale pauperum, hospitale divitum, hospitale religiosorum. The exclusion from the monasteries was balanced with, sometimes substantial, alms to the outside, thus confirming that the poor had only a symbolic and liturgical function in the monastic life. In the evolution of monasticism, the tendency is to delegate more and more to laymen the assistance to the poor, by means of a network of outside hospitals and xenodochia, controlled by the monasteries.

The new information, deduced from the last archaeological excavations in San Vincenzo al Volturno, complete our knowledge about the organisation of work in the benedictine settlement. The analysis of masonries and the religious buildings census between Northern Campania and Molise, allow us to propose some theories about the diffusion of these technical choices from the IX century to the XII century in this area. Also, in this work we’ll prove how the communities of San Vincenzo and Montecassino, contributed to encourage the diffusion of the culture, particularly in the architectural experimentation.

Archaeological researches have been led since 2013 at Monte Santa Croce, a small settlement not so far from the early medieval city of Capua, on the Volturno turn. The community - referred to as a monasterium by the written sources - was settled at the end of the X^th century by the Lombard aristocracies of Caiatia and got developed in the Norman Age, as the little cenoby was donated to the Benedictine monastery of Saint Laurent ad Septimum: this last large monks’ complex was situated in the town of Aversa (southern part of ager Campanus), the main site from where Normans programmed their expansion to most of Campania region since the end of XI^th century. According to archaeological data, Monte Santa Croce’s monasterium probably declined at the beginning of modern age.