FONTE AVELLANA. – The hermitage of Santa Croce at Fonte Avellana, beneath Mount Catria in the Marche region, is described by Dante (Par., XXI).
The date of its foundation is uncertain: Grandi favours the year 979; Mittarelli prefers 977.
The first papal document in favour of Fonte Avellana dates to Sylvester II in 1003. The original structure was hermitical: a few small cells with a tiny church and other essential spaces for the life of hermits. It was Saint Peter Damian who oversaw the construction of the small cloister (part of which remains), the original monastery, and the church, which was enlarged in 1171 and in the 13th century in Romanesque style with slightly Gothic arches, a single nave, and a raised presbytery where three altars from the 12th and 13th centuries are still preserved. In 1795 the church was covered with stucco and plaster, but in 1940 it was restored to its original state with some reconstructions in local stone.
The Chapter House, also in Romanesque style, dates to the 12th century, and the guest hall, from the 13th century, with its original architecture featuring two tiers of windows, awaits restoration from the 18th-century additions.
The library was begun by Saint Peter Damian, who in his Opus XIV lists the books he himself compiled. The juridical collection known as the “collettivo Avellana” became famous. The archives, extremely rich, are almost entirely preserved in the Vatican Library; only a few documents and some precious codices remain at Fonte Avellana. The treasury was largely formed from offerings by Emperor Frederick (1177). An inventory of precious objects from 1425 survives, but they were gradually lost through the actions of the commendatory inhabitants. Notable is the Byzantine statuary collection brought to Fonte Avellana by Cardinal Zurla from Venice in 1535.
Fonte Avellana enjoyed exemption from the outset; Saint Gregory VII, in homage to his friend Saint Peter Damian, placed it under the protection of the Holy See. It grew into a congregation with over 100 churches and monasteries under its jurisdiction. It declined in the 14th century and in 1325 was transformed from a hermitage into an abbey. In 1569 it was placed under the authority of the General of Camaldoli. Despite the suppressions of the last century, it is today reviving to new life.
Fonte Avellana began as a hermitage following the model of Saint Romuald, with the personal imprint of Saint Peter Damian. The life there was marked by almost unbroken prayer, penance, fasting, vigils, disciplines, metanoias, solitude in the scattered hermit cells, and apostolic zeal.
More than other hermitages of the Romagna region, Fonte Avellana constituted a reaction to the ecclesiastical and monastic decline of the time. Without abandoning the Benedictine Rule, it embraced its spirit and integrated its practice with the principles of Eastern monasticism in a cenobitic-hermitic synthesis that allowed the individual’s spiritual personality full expression.
Its organization thus aimed to form hermits and maintain free hermitages, detached from monasteries or using them to serve the hermits, within a congregational or mixed-community system as circumstances required. The influence exerted by Fonte Avellana was immense, particularly in the Gregorian Reform, on moral customs, clerical culture, the use of property (which was accepted and then granted in emphyteusis to the poor for a nominal sum), and spiritual life, which was restored to its heights in the fundamental concepts of expiation for sin, contemplation of the mysteries of Christ, and spiritual (years of penance for the dead) and corporal (for the living) fraternal charity. In this way, it prepared and helped build the renaissance of the 13th and 14th centuries, including the spirituality of the mendicant orders.
Guido Monaco (1050) was very likely born and died at Fonte Avellana; Saint Ubald resided there frequently. From Fonte Avellana came 54 bishops and about 76 men distinguished for holiness, among them Saint John of Lodi (1105), Saint Raniero (1180), Saint Rinaldo (1225), and Saint Albertino (1244).