FARFA, ABBEY of. - Diocese of Sabina, province of Rieti, municipality of Fara Sabina. The monastery is canonically united to that of S. Paolo in Roma, which maintains some monks there.
The abbey arose on the north-eastern 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 bearing the stamp Coesaris Germanici takes us back to the 1st century), and a crypt with a Christian fresco probably dating from the 5th century. The abbey too stands upon the remains of Roman buildings. Tradition attributes the foundation of the church of F. to a s. Lorenzo 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 s. Tommaso di Moriana settle at F. and found a monastery there, thanks to the benevolence of Faroaldo II, duke of Spoleto. S. Tommaso died in 720. Under his successors the abbey rapidly prospered, under the successive protection of the Lombard and Carolingian kings. At the height of its
architectural splendour and landed power, the abbey was attacked and occupied by the Saracens (898) and fell into ruin. The monks took refuge in their possessions in the Marche, where they founded the monastery of S. Vittoria sul 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 most wretched material and spiritual conditions. A genuine revival came under the government of Abbot Ugo (997–1038), a vigorous administrator who introduced Cluniac observance into the monastery. The German emperors were no less generous than the Frankish ones in their protection of F.; and the abbey eventually became an imperial ecclesiastical fief, with all the advantages and all the burdens of that political status. On 6 July 1060 Niccolò II consecrated the new basilica. But when the struggle over investitures broke out, F. sided with the Emperor, thereby attracting the wrath of Gregorio VII and Pasquale II. Abbot Adinolfo, later cardinal (1125–44), a friend of s. Bernardo and of the Cistercians, on the other hand, suffered greatly for his fidelity to Innocenzo II. Pope Eugenio III, a fugitive from Roma, sought refuge at F. and was consecrated there. During the 12th–14th centuries there was an increasing spiritual as well as economic decline. The transformation of the economy occurring in those times, incessant wars and guerrilla warfare, interminable lawsuits, the usurpations of powerful neighbours, the excessive fiscal demands of the Avignon Curia, and incapable or unworthy abbots were likewise fatal to monastic life. In 1406 Bonifacio IX granted the abbey in commendam to his nephew, Cardinal F. Tomacelli, formerly a Cistercian. He dismissed the few remaining 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 from the great papal families—the 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 wholly strangers to the affairs of the prelature, attending to their observance in a quiet but rather languid life. Matters continued thus until the French invasion (1798), which
(fot. Gab. fot. 602)
FARFA, ABBEY of - Interior of the abbey church, rebuilt in the 16th and 17th centuries; the columns come from the 12th-century church.
effectively put an end to monastic life at F. In 1808 Pio VII assigned its patrimony to the general procuratorship of the Cassinese Congregation. In 1812 the commendam was suppressed and the diocese and territory of F. were incorporated, partly into the diocese of Sabina and partly into that of Poggio Mirteto. The Italian suppression of 1860 also dealt a severe blow to the patrimony of the procuratorship. Among the custodians of the venerable Marian shrine was d. Placido Riccardi, a monk of S. Paolo, whose heroic virtues were recently proclaimed.
Almost nothing remains of the buildings of the Lombard period. Considerable remains survive from those of the 11th century, including noteworthy frescoes. The present buildings are almost all later than the middle of the 15th century. The church contains a certain number of fine works of art.
The archaeological study of F. was carried out with great diligence and acumen by P. Markhale, whose premature death prevented him from publishing all the important results. There remains, however, his extensive article 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, an active scriptorium. The earliest indications, drawn from the Chronicon Farfense, date back to the 8th century; in the 11th century the Sacramentarium Sublacense provides direct evidence of II. The surviving manuscripts, more than 20, for the most part divided among the Biblioteca Vaticana, the Nazionale, the Casanatese, and the Vallicelliana of Roma, and Eton College in England, display the characteristics of the school, very close to the type of writing known as « minuscula romanesca ». Certain particular forms, however, still remain to be studied (especially in the ligatures et, et, ri, etc.), as do the influences that acted in the formation of the type of F.
Along with the scribal school, the abbey library arose and grew, reaching its fullest development in the 11th century, in the time of Abbot Ugo and later of Berardo I, when Gregorio di Catino was active at F. The grievous vicissitudes to which the monastery was subject subsequently brought about its almost total dispersal. - Vedi tav. LXX.