Subiaco

SUBIACO. - A small town in the province of Rome and a nullius abbey immediately subject to the Holy See. Subiaco is situated at 408 m. above sea level in the Aniene valley, at the confluence of the Fosso dell'Acquaviva. The nullius abbey has an area of 300 sq. km. with a population of 36,672 inhabitants, all Catholics, distributed in 25 parishes, served by 44 diocesan priests and 40 regulars; it has a seminary, 5 male religious communities and 11 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 675).

The name of Subiaco derives from Sublaqueum (under the lake). Nero dammed the course of the Aniene, forming three artificial lakes called "Simbruna stagna," shortly afterward reduced to two, and there built a villa in which he ran the risk of being struck by lightning during a banquet (Tacitus, Annales, XIV, 22). The first settlement is attributed to the Neronian period, made up of the slaves employed in the imperial constructions. Subiaco is the cradle of the Benedictine Order. St. Benedict (v.), coming from Affile, took refuge there, assuming the monastic habit, and dwelt in solitude for three years in the Speco; then, after having been for some time at Vicovaro, he returned to Subiaco and, as numerous disciples came to him, including men of the highest Roman nobility, he settled on the right bank of the first Neronian lake, in a building of the imperial villa. This was the monastery of St. Clement, later called that of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, and under that title it is mentioned in the 9th century by the Lib. Pont. (II, pp. 122 and 137, n. 42); it lasted until the 13th century, when it was destroyed by an earthquake. The place was afterward called "vinea columbaria."

For his ever-new disciples St. Benedict, besides the monastery of St. Clement where he resided, gradually founded other small monasteries. Of these the only survivor is the present St. Scholastica; since in the Lib. Pont. (II, pp. 117 and 136, n. 33) this monastery is called that of St. Sylvester, St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, one must presume that its original name was St. Sylvester (cf. R. Morghen, I primi monasteri sublacensi, see bibliography). Of the other eleven monasteries the probable names are: St. Angelo beyond the lake, St. Mary of Morrabotte (St. Lawrence), St. Jerome, St. John the Baptist (St. John "ab aquis," on the mountain: Benedictine nuns); St. Clement on this side of the lake (formerly "Columbaria"), St. Blaise (St. Roman), St. Michael the Archangel below the Holy Speco, St. Victorinus, at the foot of Monte Porcaro, St. Andrew or St. Donatus, Vita Eterna, St. Savior of Comunacqua. St. Benedict left Subiaco in 529 to go to Cassino.

Of the first two centuries after St. Benedict almost nothing is known. A tradition no earlier than the end of the 16th century (Capiscacchi and Mirzio) says that the Subiaco monasteries were destroyed by the Lombards under Agilulf in 601 and that the monks found refuge for more than a hundred years in Rome in the monastery of St. Erasmus on the Caelian. But the double invasion of the Lombards in the Duchy of Rome under Agilulf took place in 591-93 (not in 601) and the Subiaco monasteries were not destroyed, because St. Gregory the Great, writing his dialogues between the end of 593 and 594, says that Honoratus still presides over the Subiaco monastery (Dial., II, proemium); and neither the same Gregory the Great in other writings, nor the Regesto Sublacense, nor any other source ever speaks of the destruction by the Lombards. On the other hand the monastery of St. Erasmus was founded by Greek monks and inhabited by them in the 7th-9th centuries (cf. F. Camobreco, Il monastero di S. Erasmo sul Celio, in Arch. Soc. R. St. P., 1905, pp. 278-80). It is certain, however, that the monasteries in the 9th century were on several occasions damaged by the Saracens. The monastery of St. Scholastica and the ancient St. Clement (Sts. Cosmas and Damian) were restored and endowed by Gregory IV (827-44) and by Leo IV (847-55), who dedicated in the Holy Speco two altars, one in honor of Sts. Benedict and Scholastica, the other in honor of St. Sylvester (P. Egidi and others, I monasteri di S., cited in bibliography, I, p. 57), and offered fabrics to the churches of the two above-mentioned monasteries (Lib. Pont., II, pp. 117, 122, 137, n. 42). The Subiaco abbey received gifts from John X (18 Jan. 926), from Leo VII (936-39), through the good offices of the Roman prince Alberic II, from John XII (958), from Benedict VII (979), from Gregory V (997), from John XVIII (1005), from Benedict VIII (1015), from Leo IX (1051), who declared: "Hoc monasterium caput est omnium monasteriorum per Italiam constitutorum." Paschal II, on 29 Aug. 1109, dedicated in the Holy Speco the altar in honor of St. Benedict and St. Maurus. The abbey flourished especially from the middle of the 11th century to that of the following century. Great abbots were Humbert (1051-65) and above all John V (1065-1117). In the 13th century the abbots Romanus (1193-1216), Lando (1227-43) and Henry (1245-1273) built a great part of the buildings still existing at the Holy Speco and at St. Scholastica. The abbey had protection and aid from the popes Innocent III, Gregory IX and Alexander IV, who was born at Jenne, a village belonging to the abbey. Clement III (1187-91) took the monastery under apostolic protection; it received privileges in 1252 from Innocent IV; Callistus III, in 1455, gave the abbey in commendam; the first commendatory was Card. J. Torquemada, whom, after Paul II, who retained the abbey for himself, there succeeded Card. Rodrigo Borgia, later Alexander VI, who rebuilt the "Castrum Sublacense" and erected the residence of the commendatory cardinal. Urban VIII, with the apostolic letter Sacrosanctae militantis Ecclesiae of 15 Nov. 1638, established the boundaries of the territory and gave the abbot or the commendatory quasi-episcopal ecclesiastical jurisdiction; Benedict XIV, with the constitution of 7 Nov. 1753, removed the temporal jurisdiction, leaving the ecclesiastical and spiritual one unchanged. Commendatory abbot was Pius VI; the abbey was suppressed by the French government, but restored by Pius VII. In 1873 the Italian government declared St. Scholastica a national monument, and from 1897 twelve monks were recognized as canons. Benedict XV, with the apostolic constitution Coenobium Sublacense of 21 March 1915, restored to its former state the abbey, with the same rules, privileges, honors and faculties as the abbey nullius of Montecassino, with quasi-episcopal jurisdiction and with the temporal rights of the abbatial mensa; it established that the secular Chapter of the cathedral church of S. Andrea and the Seminary of the secular clergy should be dependent on the ordinary abbot of S. Scolastica; furthermore, that the abbatial church of S. Scolastica, with its regular Chapter, should have the title, privileges and honors of a cathedral "cum iure potioritatis super ecclesia et canonicis s. Andreae", the latter of which is a co-cathedral (AAS, 7 [1915], pp. 197-200). The monastery of S. Scolastica is situated on the slope in a gorge. The first cloister is from 1580, it was bombed in 1944, and is now rebuilt; the second cloister is from the 13th century; on a rough bas-relief an inscription was later carved that recalls the consecration of the church (981); another stone tablet lists the abbey's possessions in 1052. The third is a Cosmatesque cloister with a rectangular plan: the inscriptions attest that three sides are the work of Cosmas and his sons Luke and Jacob (1227-43), while the southern side was executed by Jacob, father of Cosmas. The abbey church was consecrated by Benedict VII in 981; it was rebuilt in Cistercian architecture in the 13th century and then transformed by G. Quarenghi in 1769. The Romanesque bell tower was erected in 1052 by Abbot Umberto on the base of a massive Roman tower (Neronian?). In the underground areas is the chapel of the Angels with frescoes from 1426, redone in 1855. The oldest part of the monastery is from the 13th century. Precious are its Library and its Archive, where there are found a Rule of St. Benedict from the 10th century; a psalter from the 11th century; the Treatise on the Trinity by Alcuin (10th-12th centuries), the register of the 11th century, papal bulls, imperial and royal diplomas.

At 640 meters is situated the monastery of St. Benedict or Sacro Speco, with two superimposed churches situated above a series of 9 arches. The first corridor is partly carved into the rock; there are frescoes of Sts. Gregory I, Agatho I, Leo IV and St. Benedict; on the door one reads: « Sit pax intranti sit gratia digna praecanti »; and the signature of Lorenzo with his son Jacob. In the second corridor are frescoes with a Crucifixion and saints, from the 14th century, and also Christ with the 4 Evangelists, Madonna and Child, from the school of Perugino. A third corridor leads into the upper church, composed of several rooms, the first with a groin vault and scenes of the Passion and Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, from the Sienese school of the 14th century; there is a pulpit from the first half of the 13th century; the second room is decorated with frescoes of the life of St. Benedict; in the third room are two chapels with a fresco representing the supper of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. A staircase leads into the lower church. Above a fresco by master Consolus from the second half of the 13th century is painted the scene of Innocent III (v.) handing a bull to St. Benedict; other frescoes by the same painter represent episodes from the life of St. Benedict. Transformed into a chapel is the grotto of St. Benedict, who is represented there praying on a boulder (sculpture by A. Raggi); beside it a small stairway leads to the chapel of St. Gregory, where there is a fresco representing St. Francis (inscribed with « Frater Franciscus ») who visited the place around 1223; there are also depicted St. Gregory, Job, Christ among the princes of the Apostles, St. Onuphrius, Ugolino bishop of Ostia (later Gregory IX) who consecrates the chapel; on another staircase, called the holy one, painters of the Sienese school at the end of the 14th century painted on the walls the triumph and contemplation of death and in the adjoining chapel episodes from the life of the Madonna. A fragment of a fresco from around the 9th century is found in the lower grotto called that of the shepherds. In the little garden a rose bush is said to have sprung up in place of the brambles into which, according to St. Gregory (Dial., II, 2), St. Benedict threw himself in penance. The Sacro Speco is a sanctuary unique of its kind and Petrarch called it « Paradisi limen » (De vita solitaria, II, 3, 9). The church of St. Francis, beyond the medieval bridge of the same name, was built in 1327 on the primitive oratory of St. Peter in the desert. It has a single nave, with a carved wooden ceiling, executed in 1736. On the high altar a triptych by Antoniazzo Romano with the date 2 March 1467, representing the Madonna and Child between St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua; above, a second later triptych with the Most Holy Trinity; in the predella Sts. Peter, Paul, Bonaventure and Luke d'Angelo, St. Francis receiving the stigmata, Nativity of the Madonna, miracle of the mule that prostrates itself before the Most Holy. The wooden choir with carvings and inlays bears the signature of a Rheatinus from 1504. Frescoes attributed to Sodoma are in the third chapel on the left. Romanesque bell towers are also those of the churches of St. Peter and St. John. The co-cathedral of St. Andrew is in the form of a Latin cross with three naves, with a neoclassical facade from 1795.

ART OF PRINTING

In the small locality of S. the Italian prototypography was founded and the first printed books to appear in Italy were produced. Its initiators were two Rhenish printers from the dioceses of Mainz and Cologne: Conrad Sweinheim (Sweynheim) and Arnold Pannartz, probably refugees from the Sack of Mainz of 1462, who came to Italy at the invitation of Benedictine monks, their fellow countrymen, dwelling in the monastery of S., as tradition affirms.

Having arrived there, the two partners spent no short time equipping the workshop and casting those elegant and original semi-Gothic types which were never afterwards used again. There are four books which, according to direct and indirect evidence, were certainly printed in the monastery of S., namely: 1) Donatus pro puerulis, the first printed book to appear in Italy, "unde imprimendi initium sumpsimus" as the printers themselves attested (it is the Ars minor of Aelius Donatus, very widely circulated in medieval schools); it was printed in 300 copies, presumably in 1464; no copy or fragment has survived; 2) Cicero, De oratore, s. n. t., but printed before 1 October 1465 in 275 copies, as a manuscript note confirms, with the aforesaid date on a copy of the work owned by the Kunstgewerbemuseum of Leipzig; 3) Lactantius, De divinis institutionibus, printed on 29 October 1465 "in venerabili monasterio Sublacensi", in 275 copies; the only book that bears the indication of the place, and the first dated book to appear in Italy; 4) Augustine, De civitate Dei, printed on 12 June 1467 in 275 copies. All are first editions. The surviving copies of the Sublacensian editions existing in Italy are at present 34, namely: 5) of the De oratore, 16 of Lactantius and 15 of St. Augustine.

On a date to be placed not later than September 1467, the two partners brought out in Rome the Epistolae ad familiares of Cicero, beginning with that book their Roman activity. - See pl. CIV.