FOSSANOVA ABBEY. - In 1133 Innocent II granted a Benedictine monastery, on the southern edge of the Pontine marshes not far from Priverno and whose origin is traced back to St. Benedict himself, to the Cistercians, who reclaimed the site by building a canal for the drainage of the waters (fosso novo, whence the name), and began in 1173 a new church. This church, dedicated to the Virgin, like all the churches of the Order, and to St. Stephen, was consecrated in 1208 by Innocent III, and is the first building in the Cistercian style in Lazio.
The simple facade is enriched by a portal with Cosmatesque decorations and by a large rose window. The interior gives an impression of simplicity and clarity: it has three naves, of which the central one is very high, with pointed vaults and cross arches, and is characterized by the octagonal tiburium that rises above the presbytery; from a portal with a trefoil arch of singular architecture one enters the cloister, of which three sides, which date back to the original construction, have round arches grouped in sets of five, while the fourth was redone later (1280-1300) in Gothic forms by Roman marble-workers; at the center this side is interrupted by an aedicule that projects over the area fossanova, abbey of - Interior of the abbey church (1208).
left free and kept as a garden. The vast refectory and the chapter house are in a Romanesque-Gothic transitional style. On the whole the characteristics of this grandiose complex of buildings show the confluence in the region of various tendencies; so that the hypothesis of Giovannoni seems acceptable, who considers it as the result of the collaboration of foreign artists with local workmen and workmen from other regions of the peninsula, especially southern ones. In a room of the convent, later transformed into a chapel, St. Thomas Aquinas died in 1274. - See plate XCIX.
Bibliography
Mario Zocca