Abbey

ABBEY. - I. DEFINITION AND HISTORY. - Abbatia over the centuries has assumed various meanings, always however in relation to the word abbas from which it is etymologically derived. Probably of Irish origin, it was born in France, whence it passed into Italy and then into Germany, but it was little in use until the beginnings of the 8th century. It then appeared frequently to indicate the abbatial office or dignity, even though abbas (according to an easy derivation or analogy), was used to designate the head of a basilical clergy and in its concept implied all the spiritual and material functions connected with such an office.

Gradually the meaning underwent a restriction, especially under the influence of the custom by which kings were wont to distribute in large measure to their faithful, even secular ones, the monasteries that they themselves had founded or received «per commendationem» from other founders. If in fact the monastic possessions always remained in theory and at root the property of the monastery, the revenues passed into the full use of the titular in office, who was free to provide for the monks in the manner and to the extent he believed. From this it therefore followed that the word abbatia was limited to indicating the goods of the monastery placed at the disposal of the abbot, almost in practice annexed and belonging to his office, as well as their enjoyment: in the abbatia one saw almost a benefice. And indeed with the distinction between abbatia and monasterium there was precisely being formed that concept of enjoyment and possession that is at the basis of the ecclesiastical benefice.

To this meaning another was soon added that became of more current use. Already at the end of the 9th century the word abbatia was employed in the sense, still today more common, of a community presided over by an abbot, and it was also attributed to the building inhabited by it. Abbatia and monasterium came to have the function of synonyms: the abbatia was a monasterium placed under the authority of an abbot and the monasterium was conceived as an abbatia, since it was entrusted to the care of an abbot. To make the two terms coincide more and more there contributed the fact that from the second half of the 10th century onward secular lords came to release the a.[abbey]s, previously retained by them, to the monks or to the monastery or to its patron saint. The concept however of abbatia as distinct from the monasterium did not disappear, indeed recourse was had to it whenever one wished to confer the abbatial office, as a benefice, on persons extraneous to the monastic life.

Besides these principal meanings, the term has assumed other derived and secondary ones. The territory belonging to the monastery and over which the abbot exercised his jurisdiction; the assembly of all the abbots of a region; a parish church, for the most part once monastic, were also called abbatia.

Even today in ordinary language by a.[abbey] is meant a community of canons or, more often, of monks to whom belongs the right of having an abbot as head. And the claustral buildings, the territory of the abbatial jurisdiction, certain churches formerly monastic, are still called a.[abbey]s.

The characteristics and prerogatives of a.[abbey]s are gathered from particular law, that is, from the peculiar constitutions and documents, since the CIC [Code of Canon Law], although treating of the abbots of monasteries sui iuris, does not expressly consider the juridical figure of simple a.[abbey]s.

It is more explicit, although even here it does not do so directly, in the case of a.[abbey]s nullius (v. Abate e abbazia nullius under the entry ABATE), whose physiognomy is varied and sometimes indeed entirely peculiar, according to the diversity of origin. Some in fact, e.g. Montecassino, were formed by entrusting to a monastery the jurisdiction over a pre-existing diocese that constituted its central nucleus; others derive their existence from patrimonial exemptions, still others from direct concessions. In any case all, including those currently existing, are or were monasteries.

The present-day a.[abbey]s nullius are, according to the Annuario pontificio, year 1948: 1) Montecassino (Ben. mon.) with the prepositure of Atina annexed; 2) Monte Oliveto Maggiore (Oliv. Ben. mon.); 3) Monte Vergine (Ben. mon.); 4) Ndanda (Ben. mon. in the N. Afr. missions); 5) Nonantola (formerly Ben. mon., now united in perpetuity to the arch. see of Modena); 6) Nuova Norcia (Ben. mon. in the Austral. missions); 7) Peramiho (Ben. mon. in the Centr. Afr. missions); 8) Pietersburg (Ben. mon. in the S. Afr. missions); 9) S. Martino al Monte Cimino (formerly Ben. mon., then Cisterc., now united in perpetuity to the bishop. see of Viterbo); 10) S. Martino on the holy Mount of Pannonia (Ben. mon. in Hungary); 11) S. Maurice of Agaune (of the Can. reg. in Switzerland); 12) St. Paul Outside the Walls of Rome (Ben. mon.); 13) St. Peter of Muenster (Ben. mon. in Canada); 14) St. Alexander of Orosci (formerly Ben. mon. in Albania); 15) St. Mary Help of Christians of Belmont (Ben. mon. in the Carolines); 16) St. Mary of Grottaferrata (Bas. mon.); 17) Most Holy Trinity of Cava dei Tirreni (Ben. mon.); 18) Most Holy Virgin Mary of Einsiedeln (Ben. mon. in Switzerland); 19) Sts. Vincent and Anastasius at the Three Fountains of Rome

(Ben. mon., then Cisterc. Trappist); 20) Subiaco (Ben. mon.); 21) Tokugen (Ben. mon. in the missions of Korea); 22) Wettingen-Mehrersu (Cisterc. mon. in Germany).

For the part on Canon Law v. ABATE.

Tommaso Leccisotti

2. THE A.[ABBEY] IN ART. - The criterion that distinguishes, from the point of view of art history, the a.[abbey] from the monastery (a more comprehensive designation) is the accentuated organic quality and the greater constancy of formal characteristics. Therefore, if the history of the a.[abbey] is confused, in the most ancient times, with that of the monastery (v.), the a.[abbey] properly so called, that is, having a formal individuality, takes shape when the diffusion of the Rule of St. Benedict, requiring the establishment of numerous seats of the monks, marks the affirmation of a particular architectural type. This occurs from the 8th, and especially from the 9th century, and is favored by the constructive increase that goes back to the Carolingian movement.

Nevertheless the chief characteristic of a.[abbey]s, that is, the programmatic and preconceived, «rational», will that informs their construction, does not avoid, but rather establishes an intimate relationship with contemporary monuments: both because in the a.[abbey]s the acquired forms are conserved and strengthened, and because these are diffused by them in time and space.

Sometimes in abbey churches certain stylistic forms are originally determined (it suffices to recall that in the Cluniac priory of Wast, caused to be erected by St. Ida, mother of Godfrey of Bouillon, there appeared the first French examples of the pointed arch; at Vézelay, it seems, the first flying buttresses were adopted); and certain architectural elements become essential, and therefore formally defined, among which the most important is the cloister (v.).

Hence the extreme opinions of certain critics, who wish to attribute to the abbey the exclusive merit of having promoted, for example, Gothic architecture, or of having been the sole or preponderant cause of the spread throughout the world of certain stylistic forms; or who hold (Viollet-le-Duc) that constructive skill, both as conception and as execution, was the exclusive preserve of the monks, or, on the contrary, limit the monks to executive or at most administrative tasks (Hasak); or else, choosing an intermediate solution, but no less vague and more definitive for that, admit a mutual interference between monks and lay corporations (Springer).

One observes, from the distant origins of Eastern monasticism, that three fundamental criteria govern the establishment of a monastic community: the choice of the site (which then develops into the exploitation of local resources); the very clear differentiation of the architectural or merely constructive units according to their purpose; the absence or scarcity (especially in the West) of essential open-air communications between the various buildings, above all in the older types. Whence the corollary that the monastery had both to distinguish itself, that is, to be in some relationship with the surrounding environment, and to resolve itself internally into a characteristic organic unity; the more it was separated from the outside world, the more it realized, within itself, an efficient complex of natural resources capable of guaranteeing the life and spiritual activity of the monks.

Such criteria immediately reveal that the formal character of the abbey belongs, more than to the history of art, to that of urban planning. Consequently, abbey planning at once differentiates itself from the planning of lay centers. These, in the medieval artistic climate, appear as slow formations of complexes where the realization of their characteristics is entrusted to criteria that vary with persons and time, since unity of conception and simultaneity of execution are lacking. On the contrary, abbeys are distinguished by the geometric, rectilinear character — that is, unitarily and rationally preconceived — that informs their ground plan.

Of the oldest Benedictine monastic buildings, the reports are scanty and the monumental reconstructions uncertain. The Sacro Speco at Subiaco, born from the primitive dwelling of St. Benedict, constitutes by its very nature a link between Eastern monastic organization — eremitic and in any case separated from the world — and the opposite criterion that informs Western monasticism. And therefore it cannot constitute an "exemplum" of programmatic architectural conception. The original abbey of Monte Cassino, likewise, being difficult to reconstruct, does not provide reliable elements for the beginning of the history of the abbey.

Nevertheless the fundamental architectural criteria and the modes of execution are contained in the Rule of St. Benedict and confirmed and documented by a passage from the "legend" of that same saint, written by Gregory the Great. Indeed, in the Rule the individual tasks of the monks and the material organization of the community are minutely prescribed, and the developments and contingencies of monastic life are foreseen. Thus the sovereign functions of the abbot, the duties of the elders, the figure of the cellarer, how the scholars and artisans, the providers and pilgrims are to be regarded and to act, as well as the mutual relations between the residents and outsiders and, naturally, the norms for the manifestations of worship (at first strictly monastic), everything is defined and described; but everything is coordinated toward a twofold end: that of constituting a perfect community and of providing each participant with fullness of life, so that no monk has any need to leave the abbey (ut monachii non sit necessitas vagandi forii).

All this can only resolve itself into a constituted architectural unity, formed of various buildings clearly characterized. As if, as a corollary to the Rule, there were almost a "regulation," that is, almost a building science, which, devised by the founder, was entrusted to specialists, to whom it must in any case have been transmitted. Indeed the "legend" of St. Benedict relates that two monks who had arrived at Terracina to build an abbey there (and here is the proof of the generation of the type, of the multiplication of the original nucleus of a form established once and for all) succeed in carrying out the construction only after St. Benedict appeared to them in a dream to dictate the precise norms of execution.

The oldest concrete document which, beyond all deduction, reveals to us the form of the abbey complex, is the ground plan, executed around 820, for the abbey of St. Gall. Some hold it to be the work of Einhard, Charlemagne's architect; it was sent for execution to Abbot Gozbert, accompanied by a letter that confers notable importance on the fact (v. the letter in Mabillon, Ann. Bened., II, p. 571). However schematic, the ground plan certifies the geometric character of the whole and confirms, through the rational connection of the buildings, the organization of monastic life.

This admirable scheme finds no essential variations in later abbeys, even while obeying, but always and only extrinsically, the evolution of science, of taste and of progressive needs. Nevertheless particular characteristics of certain abbeys will allow either the church (Cluny), or the buildings destined for intellectual work (Clairvaux) or for manual work (Pontigny) to predominate. So much so that the greatest differences found between the older abbeys and the later ones, even across the Cluniac and Cistercian reforms, if one abstracts from what fits better into the general history of art, refer only to extension and development; without denying, but assigning to extrinsic reasons, the truly very notable importance of monastic action in favor of the great architectural flowering of the 11th and 12th centuries. (Let one recall, as testimony to this, the writing of Radulphus Glaber, a Burgundian monk: De innovatione ecclesiarum in toto orbe). Nor can such action ever be denied, if one remembers that from the founding of the Benedictine Order to the Council of Constance (1418) no fewer than 15,070 abbeys had been founded in every part of the world.

The scant architectural productivity of the 10th century did not serve to weaken the life of the abbey: in 909 the abbey of Cluny was founded by Abbot Berno. Berno was followed by St. Odo, the great reformer, whose name cannot be separated from that of his successor Hugh. The action of Odo and Hugh, followed by the measures issued by the abbey of Cîteaux (founded in 1098), served to strengthen the authority of the abbots, in whom a more intense and more extensive jurisdiction was centralized. Thus the Cluniacs and the Cistercians, in different ways restoring and exalting the original Benedictine spirit, were able to signify their reforms in those monuments which, for their importance, are customarily gathered into two distinct and rich chapters of the history of architecture. (v. CLUNIACENSE, ARCHITETTURA; CISTERCENSE, ARCHITETTURA).

The power acquired by the monastic center of Cluny, even if political history were not enough to prove it, had a most evident manifestation in the development of the dependent abbeys. To such an extent that the entire economy of the regions began to center around these abbeys; and just as the surrounding lands enriched them, so the abbey itself extended, so to speak, beyond its own proper bounds: the laity were in a certain sense incorporated into the zone of influence of the religious center, and the monastic building saw the houses and, gradually, the inhabited centers of the seculars cluster around it. And true cities were born, which, while losing at the periphery the organic character determined by the normetric plans of the abbey buildings, they nevertheless remained in some way connected to these even formally: for example, Cluny itself, Charlieu, Vézelay, Clairvaux, Pontigny, and those which — very numerous — preserve in their name the memory of their religious origin: Paray-le-Monial, Marcigny-les-Nonains, Badia, Monaco, Münster, etc.

In the increased architectural importance certain elements proper to abbey buildings are realized, such as for example the galilee (v.) and the characteristic narthex of unusual breadth, and the decorative repertoire proper to abbeys is confirmed and more clearly declared. Among the works of sculpture and painting, which grew in importance and number until the Cistercian reaction, the rich sculptures on the entrance door of the church were notable and constant (almost always the subject was drawn from the Apocalypse) surmounted from above by the figure of the Redeemer, and the representation of the Last Judgment in the refectory.

Toward the end of the 11th century Robert, Alberic and Stephen, monks of Molesmes, withdrew into the forest of Cîteaux with the intention of restoring the Benedictine Rule to its most austere severity: banishing every showy and decorative form in monastic building, just as they wished to banish the political interference that had gradually come to be established among the powerful Cluniac abbeys, the holy monks founded what is customarily called the monastère de bois (1098-99).

If this reactionary movement coincides with the decline of customs and of feudal power, it in no way marks an architectural impoverishment of abbeys. On the contrary, the Cistercian churches began an architectural rebirth. At Clairvaux, through the work of St. Bernard, arose the celebrated abbey that dictated architectural norms even to the mother abbey of Cîteaux. In it is confirmed how the change of certain particularities does not alter the most ancient character of abbey town-planning.

But the agricultural centers in some way dependent on the abbey grow in importance. The mutual relations of practical influence between monks and laymen now therefore assume their greatest development. The granaries, previously enclosed within the abbey precinct, extend their function giving rise to genuine lay organizations managed by monks or by conversi. And the new rural centers, identified as they are by the name of villae (where cult installations were not always necessary) or under the ancient appellation of granges (v.), gradually become independent villages, towns and cities.

But just as abbey town-planning sometimes undergoes certain deviations, especially where the intention to exploit the terrain (Pontigny), the countryside (Vaux-de-Cernay), or to organize secular industries (Fontenay) manifests itself, so the lay character in some cases prevails over the typical configuration of abbeys. For example, that of Mont-Saint-Michel, in the reconstruction of 1203, decidedly assumes the appearance of a military city.

This distancing from the strictly monastic character, evident in the changed planimetric layout, accompanies the decline of abbey peculiarities both in political and in artistic history. Nevertheless, as proof of the vitality of the original abbey spirit one could cite even today, for example, a school of painting proper to certain Austrian and Italian abbeys, distant heir of the glorious Benedictine painting of the Middle Ages; and, on the whole, at every time the original architectural and town-planning criterion is always recognizable, both in abbeys of new and even recent foundation (St. Anselm of Rome, Cistercian abbey of Cordemois) and in those rebuilt.

But it is certain that, from the 13th century onward, taking into account also the contributions of the new religious Orders, the history of abbeys as artistic entities is no longer clearly separable from that — more comprehensive — of art.

The same can be said for the abbeys geographically more distant from the French ones. The Italian ones, moreover, either constitute independent chapters of artistic and civil history, as, for example, that of Farfa (v., therefore, the individual entries), or are indissolubly connected with more general treatments; especially because their establishment (Fossanova was consecrated in 1208) is inscribed in (and in a certain way subject to) the great artistic movement of the so-called "Italian Gothic", which asserts itself as an intrinsically autonomous art. Suffice it to recall that the abbey of Fossanova (Cistercian) gave origin to those of Casamari, of St. Galgano, of Badia a Settimo, of St. Martin al Cimino, of St. Mary d'Aragona, of the two Chiaravalle, of Valvisciolo, of St. Clement at Casauria, etc., where the unchanged iconographic scheme resolves itself into an acquiescent exterior mannerism that allows elements of taste and style proper to Italian art to prevail without any hindrance. - See Tavy, II-III.

For town-planning problems, cf.: P. Lavedan, Qu'est-ce que l'urbanisme?, Paris 1926; G. Giovannoni, Vecchie città ed edilizia nuova, Turin 1931.

See moreover, for references to generalities: D. B. Camm, Pilgrim Paths in Latin Lands, London 1923; F. Behn, Die vavolingische Klosterkirche von Lorach an der Bergstrasse, Berlin 1934 (see also review by P. Verzone, in Palladio, [1938], pp. 191-92); A. Gardner, An Introduction to French Church Architecture, Cambridge 1938; D. G. Morin, Pour la topographie ancienne du Mont-Cassin, in Revue Bénédictine, 25 (1908), pp. 277 ff., 468 ff.; I. Schuster, A proposito d'una nota di topografia cassinese in un codice del secolo andecimo, in Casinentia, 1929, 1, p. 65; E. Scaccia Scarafoni, L'atrio della chiesa di Montecassino, in Bollettino d'Arte (1932), pp. 22-33; id., Architecture cinquecentesche in Montecassino, in Bollettino d'Arte, (1938), pp. 9-24; A. Pantoni, Su di un'antica chiesa del Monastero cassinese, in Rivista di Archeol. cristiana, 13 (1936), pp. 305-330; R. Bordenache, La S.ma Trinità di Venosa, in Ephimeris Dacaromana, Rome 1937; E. Olivero, L'a. cistercense di Santa Maria di Casanova presso Cormagnola, Turin 1939. For the Spanish abbeys cf. B. Bevan, History of Spanish Architecture, London 1938. For the Eastern abbeys, cf. B. Gariador, Les anciens monastères bénédictins en Orient, Lille-Paris 1912.

Adriano Prandi