FARFA, Abbey of. - Diocese of Sabina, province of Rieti, comune of Fara Sabina. The monastery is canonically united to that of St. Paul in Rome, which keeps some monks there.
The abbey arose on the north-east slope of Monte Motilla (now S. Martino) on an estate called Acuziano. Near the summit of the mountain are the ruins of a hermitage, traces of Roman buildings (a brick with the stamp Coesaris Germanici takes us back to the 1st century) and a crypt with a Christian fresco probably of the 5th century. The abbey too stands on remains of Roman buildings. Tradition assigns the foundation of the church of F. to a St. Lawrence who came from the East in the 5th century. The Lombard invasion is said to have swept everything away. Only at the beginning of the 8th 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 prospered, under the subsequent protection of the Lombard and Carolingian kings. At the height of its architectural splendor and its territorial power the abbey was attacked and occupied by the Saracens (898) and fell into ruin. The monks took refuge in their possessions in the Marches, where they founded the monastery of S. Vittoria on the Matenano. Once the Saracen danger had passed, the monks returned to F. and began its reconstruction; but throughout the 10th century they found themselves in the saddest material and spiritual conditions. A true revival came with the government of Abbot Hugh (997-1038), a vigorous administrator, who introduced Cluniac observance into the monastery. The German emperors were no less zealous than the Frankish ones in protecting F.; and the abbey ended up being an imperial ecclesiastical fief, with all the advantages and all the burdens of such a political situation. On July 6, 1060 Nicholas II consecrated the new basilica. But, when the investiture struggle broke out, F. sided with the Emperor, drawing upon itself the wrath of Gregory VII and Paschal II. On the other hand the abbot Adinolfo, later cardinal (1125-44), a friend of St. Bernard and of the Cistercians, had much to suffer for his fidelity to Innocent II. Eugene III, a fugitive from Rome, took refuge at F. and was consecrated pope there. In the 12th-14th centuries there was a growing decline, both spiritual and economic. The transformation of the economy that took place in those times, the incessant wars and guerrilla warfare, the interminable lawsuits, the usurpations of powerful neighbors, the excessive fiscalism of the Avignon Curia, and inept or unworthy abbots were fatal also to monastic life. In 1406 Boniface IX gave the abbey in commendam to his nephew Cardinal F. Tomacelli, already a Cistercian. He removed the few monks and put in their place a colony of German monks who had come from Subiaco. The subsequent commendatory abbots were for the most part cardinals of the great papal families, Orsini, Farnese, Barberini, etc. The church, first restored, was completely rebuilt with a different orientation and consecrated in 1496. In 1567 F. was united to the Cassinese Congregation; the territory of the abbey had the commendatory abbot as its Ordinary, while the monastic community was governed by a triennial abbot elected by the General Chapter of the congregation. The monks were entirely extraneous to the affairs of the prelature, and attended to their observance in a calm but rather dull life. Things went on this way until the French invasion (1798) which
(phot. Gab. fot. 602)
FARFA, ABBEY OF - Interior of the church of the abbey, rebuilt in the 16th and 17th centuries; the columns come from the church of the 12th century.
in fact put an end to monastic life at F. Pius VII in 1808 assigned its patrimony to the procurator general of the Cassinese Congregation. In 1812 the commenda was suppressed and the diocese and territory of F. were incorporated, part into the diocese of Sabina, part into that of Poggio Mirteto. The Italian suppression in 1860 brought about the collapse also of the patrimony of the procurator. Among the guardians of the venerable Marian sanctuary was that d. Placido Riccardi, a monk of St. Paul, whose heroic virtues were recently proclaimed.
Of the buildings of the Lombard period almost nothing remains. Of those of the 11th century conspicuous remains survive, among them notable frescoes. The present buildings are almost all later than the middle of the 15th century. The church has a certain number of good works of art.
The archaeological study of F. was carried out with great diligence and acumen by P. Markhale, whom an untimely death prevented from publishing all the important results. There remains, however, a long article of his, Sulle recenti scoperte nell'abbazia imperiale di F., in Rivista di arch. crist., 5 (1928), pp. 37-89.
Near the abbey of F. there also flourished, through the work of the monks, a busy writing center. The first indications, drawn from the Chronicon Farfense, go back to the 8th century; in the 11th century the Sacramentarium Sublacense gives direct notice of it. The surviving codices, more than 20, divided for the most part among the Vatican Library, the Nazionale, the Casanatese and the Vallicelliana in Rome, and Eton College in England, show the characteristics of the school, very close to the type of script known under the name of "minuscula romanesca". There nevertheless remain to be studied certain particular forms (especially in the ligatures et, et, ri, etc.) and the influences that acted upon the formation of the "type" of F.
Alongside the writing school there arose and grew the abbey library, which reached its greatest development in the 11th century, in the times of Abbot Hugh and then of Berard I, when Gregory of Catino worked at F. The painful vicissitudes to which the monastery was subject later brought about its almost total dispersion. - See pl. LXX.
