FARFA, ABBEY OF. – Diocese of Sabina, province of Rieti, municipality of Fara Sabina. The abbey is canonically united with that of St Paul’s in Rome, which maintains some monks there.
The abbey stands on the north-east slope of Monte Motilla (now called Monte S. Martino) on a property known as Acuziano. Near the summit of the mountain are the ruins of a hermitage, traces of Roman buildings (a brick stamped with the mark of Caesar Germanicus points to the 1st century), and a crypt with a Christian fresco probably dating from the 5th century. The abbey itself was built on the remains of Roman structures. Tradition assigns the foundation of the church of F. to a St Laurence who came from the East in the 5th century. The Lombard invasion is said to have destroyed everything. Only at the beginning of the 16th century did the Savoyard pilgrim St Thomas of Moriana settle at F. and found a monastery there, thanks to the benevolence of Faroald II, Duke of Spoleto. St Thomas died in 720. Under his successors the abbey rapidly flourished, first under the protection of the Lombard kings and then under that of the Carolingians. At the height of its
FARFA, ABBEY OF – Interior of the abbey church, rebuilt in the 16th and 17th centuries; the columns come from the 12th-century church.
prosperity, Pope Pius VII in 1808 assigned its property to the procuratorship of the Cassinese Congregation. In 1842 the commendatory system was suppressed, and the diocese and territory of F. were incorporated, in part into the diocese of Sabina and in part into that of Poggio Mirteto. The Italian suppression of 1860 brought about the collapse of the procuratorship’s patrimony as well. Among the custodians of the venerable Marian sanctuary was the Venerable Servant of God Placido Riccardi, a monk of St Paul’s, whose heroic virtues have recently been proclaimed.
Almost nothing remains of the Lombard-period buildings. Of those from the 11th century substantial remains survive, including notable frescoes. The present structures date for the most part from after the mid-15th century. The church contains a number of fine works of art.
The archaeological study of F. was carried out with great diligence and care by P. Markthaler, though death prevented him from publishing all his important findings. He did, however, leave a substantial article, “Sulle recenti scoperte nell’abbazia imperiale di F.”, in Rivista di architettura critica, 3 (1928), pp. 37–89.
Near the abbey of F. the monks also maintained an active scriptorium. The earliest evidence, drawn from the Chronicon Farfense, dates to the 8th century; in the 11th century the Sacramentarium Sublacense provides direct testimony. The surviving manuscripts, numbering more than twenty and now divided mainly between the Vatican Library, the National Library, the Casanatense Library and the Vallicelliana Library in Rome, and Eton College in England, display the characteristics of the scriptorium, closely related to the type known as “minuscola romanesca.” Certain particular forms (especially in the ligatures et, st, ri, etc.) and the influences that shaped the “type of F.” remain to be studied.
Alongside the scriptorium there arose and grew the abbey library, which reached its peak in the 11th century under Abbots Hugh and then Berard I, when Gregory of Catino was active at F. The monastery’s subsequent troubled history led to the almost total dispersal of its library.
– See pl. LXX.