Sant'Antimo

SANT'ANTIMO. - Ancient abbey 8 km. from the diocese of Montalcino, in the small valley of the Starcia stream, a tributary of the Orcia river.

The origins of the monastery go back to the time of Charlemagne, who founded it in thanksgiving to God for the cessation of the plague that was decimating his army in the Val d'Orcia. There were placed relics of Sts. Antimo and Sebastian, which Charles had obtained from Pope Adrian I. In the very year of Charles's death, 814, his son Louis the Pious, by a diploma issued at Aachen, granted in fief to the abbot of S. A. Montalcino and its territory. The primitive church is the one that presently serves as the sacristy, a small oratory with a single nave, with a small apse behind the altar. The right wall has monochrome frescoes with events from the life of St. Benedict, attributed to Giovanni d'Asciano (14th century). Beneath the little church is the crypt, with access from the outside, with vaults supported by 4 small columns that divide it into three small naves. The large present church (44 × 16 m.) was built in the first twenty years of the 12th century and is certainly one of the most beautiful and characteristic Romanesque churches in Italy, all the more so because it has undergone no alterations or disfigurements and, especially in its interior, may be called intact. It is entirely of stone, internally as well, with three naves, with a beamed roof over the main nave and vaulting over the lesser ones, with a matroneum, an ambulatory behind the altar and radiating chapels; this motif is proper to Burgundian architecture and was perhaps imported by monks from France. On the high altar, a Madonna seated on a throne, with the Child, a polychrome wooden sculpture of the 13th century; on the facade wall, on the left, a large wooden Crucifix, likewise of the 13th century. In the small crypt beneath the high altar, a funerary slab of the 6th century serves as the altar table. On the outside, the walls of the side naves are today deprived of the blind arches that ran over the remaining half-columns: this absence is due, almost without doubt, to the collapse of the upper part of those same walls (afterwards rebuilt with ordinary masonry) owing to the pressure of the vaults of the matroneum. The simple facade too originally had, in its lower part, four arches: two blind; in the two central ones opened a twin portal, later replaced, perhaps in the early 13th century, by the single portal seen at present. The fine bell tower in Romanesque style is somewhat later than the church: one of the bells bears the engraved date 1219. Of the monastery only a few remains are left, among which noteworthy, on the ground floor, is a triple-mullioned window, flanked by an arched door, which looked out onto the cloister; perhaps it gave light to the chapter hall.

The abbots of S. A. had, as has been said, civil jurisdiction as well over Montalcino, lost during the 13th century in the conflicts with Siena; they then had purely ecclesiastical jurisdiction over many monasteries and churches in the territory of Siena, Grosseto, Arezzo and Pistoia. The abbey was suppressed in 1462 by Pius II, because the number of monks was by then small, discipline relaxed and the patrimony squandered. The remains of this patrimony constituted the mensa for the bishop of Montalcino.

Sante Fanti