SAN GIOVANNI IN FIORE. — Abbey founded in 1191 by Abbot Gioacchino, who, having left the Cistercians (v. GIOACHINO DA FIORE), first withdrew with a single companion to the grange of S. Martino di Canale near Pietrafitta and shortly thereafter took refuge among the mountains of the Florense Sila, where he gathered a small group of monks under the exceedingly strict Florense Rule, which is already recorded as having been approved by the bull of Pope Innocent III in 1196.
A different hypothesis was recently put forward, but without sufficient documentary support (S. Foglia, 1947): it would date the construction of the abbey to 1223 and attribute it to a + Fra Giuliano, master smith + who would have introduced to Calabria the architectural forms already established at Fossanova and Casamari.
The church, dedicated to the Baptist, arose at the same time as the convent, both standing alongside one another on the left bank of the Neto River; but it was not completed according to the original grandiose designs, which can still be perceived intact today in the apse and presbytery. Of distinctly Gothic conception, dependent on Burgundian and Cistercian forms, the building consists of a single great nave with a square choir, illuminated by an arrangement of lancet windows and rose windows set out to form a cross, and represents one of the characteristic manifestations of Gothic architecture in the region. The church façade, probably left unfinished, is Norman in type, with an acutely pointed portal; inside, the nave was entirely altered in the seventeenth century by Baroque superstructures. In the right arm of the transept, a chapel with groined vaults leads by a steep stairway into the crypt below, discovered and restored in 1931, where, in an arcosolium, the mortal remains of the proto-abbot were gathered. Few remains of the ancient monastery survive; some were exposed and restored a few years ago. Important studies on the original iconography, the structure, and the artistic importance of the monumental complex are currently under way.