BREME, ABBAZIA DI SAN PIETRO di. – Founded in 929 in the town of the same name (Bremetum, Bremitum or Bremidum) in Lomellina (today in the diocese of Vigevano) by Marquis Adalberto, father of King Berengario II, Novalesa (v.), dispersed after its destruction by the Saracens.
The abbey of B. soon rose to great prestige and power, so that in the 12th century it possessed churches and estates in the dioceses of Pavia, Vercelli, Asti, Ventimiglia, Turin, Geneva, Vienne, Embrun, Milan and Grenoble, as appears from the bull of Eugenius III of 9 February 1152. The abbey’s rich possessions were soon targeted by several noble families, who, later compounded by the system of commendation, gradually brought it, especially between the 14th and 15th centuries, to material and moral ruin; this became complete with the looting and violence perpetrated during the struggle between France and Spain (early 16th century). On 23 June 1543 the abbey of B. was in fact united with the Olivetan monastery of S. Bartolomeo in Strada di Pavia; some time later it regained its independence, but was definitively suppressed in 1785. Its last monks took refuge in the abbey of S. Maria delle Grazie in Novara. Its rich archive suffered the fate of the abbey’s turbulent history; the few documents concerning it, scattered here and there, have recently been collected and published by L. C. Bollea. The abbey of B. acquired all the rights of Novalesa, which became one of its priories after the restoration work commissioned there by the Bremetan abbot Gezone (ca. 980–1002). At the beginning of the 13th century, the said priory began working to make itself independent of the abbey of B.; this attempt was subsequently politically supported by the counts of Savoy, so much so that in 1601 it once again received the title of abbey.
The Chronicon Novaliciense was composed in the abbey of B. around 1050, as Bollea has demonstrated admirably (pp. 98–102), against its most recent editor C. Cipolla (Monumenta Novaliciensia vetustiora, II [Fonti per la Storia d'Italia, 32], Rome 1901).
The Bremetan abbot Pellegrino composed between 955 and 972 the hymn “Omnipotentis Dei et Genitoris,” sung in all the priories dependent on B. on the feast of the Assumption (cf. Chronicon Nov., V, 6).