SANTA MARIA D'ARABONA. - The abbey of S. M. A. rises in the territory of Manoppello (Chieti), near a place where there was a temple dedicated to the goddess Orbona, or Ara Deae Bonae.
Founded in 1208 by Cistercian monks coming perhaps from Casamari (Enlart), or from the Roman abbey of the Tre Fontane near St. Paul's (Bertaus), it is one of the most conspicuous monuments of Burgundian architecture in central Italy. Its first abbot was St. Aldemar. Built, like Casamari and Fossanova, of travertine, it is very similar to them in ground plan. Inside, the very dense crossing of the ogives and ribs, which stretch nervously from the capitals and corbels to the keystones, links it closely to the prototypes of Burgundy. The construction, begun from the choir, was however not carried through to completion: the work was interrupted for unspecified reasons at the second bay of the nave, which one may suppose was to have comprised at least five more. In a recently completed restoration (1951) the unstable foundations were consolidated, the apses isolated, the interior and exterior freed from later additions, and the facade wall renewed on the section that today serves as the front. The present plan is therefore a Greek cross. The choir is rectangular and the transept has on both sides two small chapels arranged on the axis of the apse. On the walls of the end walls and at the back of the choir three large rose windows open. The system of the triple arch, or double archivolts, already used in Abruzzo in S. Clemente at Casauria, a typical structural element of the Burgundian style, predominates in the building. The sculptural decoration of the capitals and corbels, with stylized caulicles and foliage, is likewise of transalpine derivation.
The constructive rigor that is evident in the choir and transept slackens, however, in the nave: from this one may infer that the construction must have dragged on into the 13th century, first under the direct supervision of the Cistercian builders and then with the involvement of local workshops. From the documents it appears that the monastery, after a brief flourishing life, was already in decline by 1330. In 1587 it became a commendam of the College of St. Bonaventure in Rome. In the choir, besides the ciborium and the candelabrum for the paschal candle, datable to the same time as the beginning of the building, and notable examples of the vast Abruzzese sculptural production of the Middle Ages, two frescoes are preserved, a Madonna and Child and a Crucifixion signed by the painter Antonio d'Atri in 1373, with insistent Sienese echoes.
Of the ancient convent, today used for private purposes, scanty remains are left, almost all altered over the centuries. Of great interest, however, is the chapter house, whose original structures are recognizable beneath the 19th-century facing.