ANSELM OF NONANTOLA, Saint. - Formerly duke of Friuli, brother of Giseltruda, wife of the Lombard king Aistulf. Having embraced the monastic life, he received by donation from Aistulf, in 749, the present-day Fanano, where he founded a monastery and a hospice, and, in 751-52, the territory of Nonantola (v.), on which he built the famous monastery of the same name and the church, dedicated to all the holy Apostles and consecrated on 9 June 753 by Archbishop Sergius of Ravenna. The author of the life points to three other foundations of monasteries and hospices at S. Ambrogio, in the Vicentino, and in the locality called Susonia.
A., finding himself with his brother-in-law Aistulf at the siege of Rome, in 756, carried off from the cemetery basilica of Priscilla part of the body of St. Sylvester the Pope, which he placed in the church of the monastery of Nonantola, where he had an oratory and an altar dedicated in honor of the aforesaid Pontiff on 20 Nov. of the same year by the bishops Romanus of Bologna and Apollinaris of Reggio; from that moment the monastery, besides its original title of the Holy Apostles, was also called by the name of St. Sylvester. The historicity of this translation, attested by genuine ancient sources, but later distorted by late sources, cannot be called into doubt, even though the Liber Pontificalis of Rome (cf. ed. Duchesne, I, p. 464) says that Paul I transported the body of St. Sylvester into the interior of the city in 761. Bortolotti, with whom De Rossi agrees (letter to Bortolotti), reconciles the two traditions by means of the hypothesis, truly reasonable, that A. had brought to Nonantola not the whole body, but only part of it, so that Paul I in 761 was able to transport the rest into the city. The sources speak in both cases of the body, but this is evidently a case of part for the whole.
A. was relegated to Montecassino for seven years by King Desiderius, probably because he was a supporter of Ratchis; freed, as is believed, around 764, he returned to Nonantola with a rich handful of codices, resuming the direction of the abbey, which he governed until his death, which occurred on 3 March 803.
The life of A., which is entitled: Actus vel transitus beati Anselmi Abbatis, written in all probability in the first half of the 11th century, is a composition in which commonplaces abound and historical information is scarce, sometimes even interpolated, despite the genuine sources used by the author.