BADIA OF SAINT BENEDICT. - Its origin is due to the abbey of Pomposa (v.) when, having become uninhabitable because of the conditions created there by the commendam and by malaria, the monks decided to move into the city. There Sixtus IV had already granted in 1476 to the Congregation of S. Giustina the priory of S. Marco, which had previously belonged to the canons of S. Frediano of Lucca, and this title of prior of S. Marco was joined with that of abbot of Pomposa, when this distinguished abbey too was entrusted in 1492 to the care of the same congregation. But, once the abandonment of Pomposa was decided, it was thought to erect a new monastery, whose first stone was laid on 3 July 1496, with their own hands, by Duke Ercole I and by the bishop of Adria, Niccolò M. d'Este.
The monks were expelled from the monastery, which was turned into a hospital for the wounded, on 23 March 1797. The following year came the decree of suppression; the church was then turned into a warehouse and, later, into a hospital as well; the bones of Ariosto, which had long found burial there, were transferred by order of General Miollis to the municipal Library in 1801.
In 1812 the temple was restored to worship and erected into a parish, while the monastery remained under military administration, and only in 1912 was it partly granted to the Salesians, who opened there the college named after S. Carlo, the Saint who had resided there in 1580. Already rich in works of art, it has three magnificent cloisters, damaged during the last war. The library and the archive, formerly of Pomposa, remained partly dispersed: more than 2000 parchments, however, came into the possession of the monks of Montecassino. The church, recently restored under the care of Msgr. Benedetto Pavani, was almost entirely destroyed by aerial bombardments. - See plates LXXVII-LXXVIII.
BIBL.: sources