SUBIACO. – A town in the province of Rome and an abbacy *nullius* immediately subject to the Holy See. S. is situated at 408 m. above sea level in the Aniene valley, at the confluence of the Fosso dell'Acquaviva. The abbacy *nullius* has a surface area of 300 km² with a population of 36,672 inhabitants, all Catholic, distributed in 25 parishes, served by 44 diocesan priests and 40 regular clergy, and has a seminary, 5 male religious communities and 11 female ones (Ani. Pont. 1953, p. 675).
The name S. derives from *Sublaquium* (below the lake). Nero dammed the course of the Aniene, forming three artificial lakes called *Simbruina stagna*, later reduced to two, and erected a villa there where he narrowly escaped being struck by lightning during a banquet (Tacitus, *Annales*, XIV, 22). The first settlement is attributed to the Neronian period, consisting of slaves employed in imperial constructions. S. is the cradle of the Benedictine Order. S. Benedict (v.), coming from Affile, took refuge there, donning the monastic habit and dwelling in solitude for three years in the *Speco*; then, after spending some time in Vicovaro, he returned to S. and, as numerous disciples, even from the highest Roman nobility, came to him, he settled on the right bank of the first Neronian lake, in a building of the imperial villa. This was the monastery of S. Clemente, later called that of SS. Cosma and Damiano, and under this title it is recorded 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 subsequently called *vicus columbaria*.
For the ever-growing number of disciples, S. Benedict, besides the monastery of S. Clemente where he resided, gradually founded other small monasteries. The only one to survive is the present S. Scolastica; since in the *Lib. Pont.* (II, pp. 117 and 136, n. 33) this monastery is called that of S. Silvestro, and since S. Benedict and S. Scolastica are mentioned, it must be presumed that the original name was S. Silvestro (cf. R. Morghen, *I primi monasteri sublaoceni*, V. BIBLICA.). Of the other eleven monasteries the probable names are: S. Angelo oltre il lago, S. Maria di Morrabotte (S. Lorenzo), S. Girolamo, S. Giovanni Battista (S. Giovanni *ab aquis*, on the mountain: Benedictine nuns); S. Clemente al di qua del lago (first called *Columbaria*), S. Biagio (S. Romano), S. Michele arcangelo sotto lo Speco, S. Vittorino, at the foot of Monte Porcaro, S. Andrea or S. Donato, Vita Eterna, S. Salvatore di Communacua. S. Benedict left S. in 529 to go to Cassino.
Little is known of the first two centuries after S. Benedict. A tradition not earlier than the end of the 16th century (Capisacchi and Mirzio) states that the Subiaco monasteries were destroyed by the Lombards under Agilulf in 601 and that the monks found refuge for over a hundred years in Rome in the monastery of S. Erasmo al Celio. But the double Lombard invasion of the Duchy of Rome under Agilulf took place in 591-593 (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 Honorius still presided over the Subiaco monastery (Dial., II, proemium); and neither Gregory the Great in other writings, nor the *Regesto Sublacense*, nor any other source ever mentions the Lombard destruction. On the other hand, the monastery of S. Erasmo was founded by Greek monks and inhabited by them in the 7th-9th centuries (cf. F. Cambrocco, *Il monastero di S. Erasmo sul Celio*, in *Arch. Soc. R. St. P.*, 1905, pp. 278-80). Instead, it is certain that in the 9th century the monasteries were repeatedly damaged by the Saracens. The monastery of S. Scolastica and the ancient S. Clemente (SS. Cosma and Damiano) were restored and endowed by Gregory IV (827-44) and by Leo IV (847-55) who dedicated two altars in the S. Speco, one in honor of SS. Benedict and Scolastica, the other in honor of S. Silvestro (P. Egidi and others, *I monasteri di S.*, cited in bibl., I, p. 57) and offered fabrics to the churches of the two aforementioned 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 interest 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 S. Speco the altar in honor of S. Benedict and S. Mauro. The abbey flourished especially from the mid-11th to the mid-12th century. Notable abbots were Umberto (1051-65) and above all John V (1065-1117). In the 13th century the abbots Romano (1193-1216), Lando (1227-43) and Henry (1245-1273) built much of the structures still existing today at the S. Speco and at S. Scolastica. The abbey enjoyed the protection and assistance of the popes Innocent III, Gregory IX and Alexander IV, who was born in Jenne, a village belonging to the abbey. Clement III (1187-91) placed the monastery under apostolic protection; it received privileges in 1252 from Innocent IV; Callistus III, in 1455, granted the abbey in commendam; the first commendatory cardinal was J. Torquemada, to whom, after Paul II who kept the abbey for himself, succeeded cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, later Alexander VI, who rebuilt the *Castrum Sublacense* and enlarged 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 to the abbot or commendatory cardinal quasi-episcopal ecclesiastical jurisdiction; Benedict XIV with the constitution of 7 Nov. 1753 removed the temporal jurisdiction, leaving unchanged the ecclesiastical and spiritual one. Commendatory abbot was Pius VI; the abbey was suppressed by the French government but restored by Pius VII. In 1873 the Italian government declared S. Scolastica 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 the abbey to its former state, with the same regime, privileges, honors and faculties of the abbacy *nullius* of Montecassino, with quasi-episcopal jurisdiction and with the temporal rights of the abbatial table; he established that the ordinary abbot of S. Scolastica should be dependent on the secular Chapter of the cathedral church of S. Andrea and the seminary of the secular clergy; moreover, 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 Andreae», the latter being 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 dates from 1580, was bombed in 1944, and is now rebuilt; the second cloister is from the 13th century; a rough bas-relief was later carved by a sacristan recalling the consecration of the church (981); another slab lists the abbatial possessions in 1052. The third is a Cosmatesque cloister with a rectangular plan: 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 abbatial 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 (Neronian?) tower. In the undergrounds is the chapel of the Angels with frescoes from 1426, restored in 1855. The oldest part of the monastery dates from the 13th century. Precious are its Library and Archive where are found a Rule of S. Benedict from the 10th century; a psalter from the 11th century; Alcuin’s *Treatise on the Trinity* (10th-12th centuries), the regesta from the 11th century, papal bulls, imperial and royal diplomas.
At an altitude of 640 meters lies the monastery of St. Benedict, or St. Speco, with two superimposed churches situated above a series of nine arches. The first corridor is partly hewn from the rock; it is frescoed with images of Sts. Gregory I, Agatho I, Leo IV, and St. Benedict; above the door is the inscription: «Sit pax intranti sit gratia digna praecanti»; and the signature of Lorenzo with his son Jacopo. In the second corridor are frescoes of the Crucifixion and saints from the 14th century, as well as Christ with the Evangelists and the Madonna and Child, attributed to the school of Perugino. A third corridor leads to the upper church, which consists of several chambers. The first has a ribbed vault and scenes of the Passion and Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost, by a Sienese school artist of the 14th century; there is a pulpit from the first half of the 13th century. The second chamber is decorated with frescoes depicting the life of St. Benedict. In the third chamber are two chapels with a fresco of the Last Supper of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. A staircase leads down to the lower church. Above a fresco by Master Concolus from the second half of the 13th century is a scene of Innocent III (v.) presenting a bull to St. Benedict; other frescoes by the same painter depict episodes from the life of St. Benedict. The grotto of St. Benedict has been transformed into a chapel, where he is represented in prayer upon a rock (a sculpture by A. Raggi); beside it a staircase leads to the chapel of St. Gregory, which contains a fresco of St. Francis (inscribed «Frater Franciscus») who visited the place c. 1223. Also depicted are St. Gregory, Job, Christ among the princes of the Apostles, St. Onuphrius, and Ugolino, Bishop of Ostia (later Gregory IX), who consecrates the chapel. On another staircase, called the holy staircase, Sienese school painters 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 9th-century fresco was found in the lower grotto known as the grotto of the shepherds. In the small garden a rose bush is said to have grown in the place where, according to St. Gregory (Dial., II, 2), St. Benedict threw himself among thorns as penance. St. Speco is a sanctuary unique in 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 site of the original oratory of St. Peter in the desert. It has a single nave with a carved wooden ceiling executed in 1376. The high altar features a triptych by Antoniazzo Romano dated 2 March 1467, depicting the Madonna and Child between St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua; above is a later triptych of the Holy Trinity; on the predella are Sts. Peter, Paul, Bonaventure, and Louis of Anjou, St. Francis receiving the stigmata, the Nativity of the Madonna, and the miracle of the mule that prostrates itself before the Blessed Sacrament. The wooden choir stalls with carvings and inlays bear the signature of a Rheatinus from 1504. Frescoes attributed to Sodoma are in the third chapel on the left. Romanesque bell towers also belong to the churches of St. Peter and St. John. The co-cathedral of St. Andrew is in the shape of a Latin cross with three naves and a neoclassical façade from 1795.
ART OF PRINTING. — In the small locality of Subiaco the first Italian printing press was established, and the earliest printed books in Italy were produced there. The venture was begun by two Rhenish clerics from the dioceses of Mainz and Cologne: Conrad Sweynheim (Sweynheim) and Arnold Pannartz, likely refugees from the Sack of Mainz in 1462, who came to Italy at the invitation of Benedictine monks of their homeland residing in the monastery of Subiaco, as tradition maintains.
Once there, the two partners spent a considerable time equipping the workshop and casting those elegant and original semi-Gothic typefaces which were never used again. Four books are certain to have been printed in the monastery of Subiaco, based on direct and indirect evidence: 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, widely used in medieval schools); it was printed in 300 copies, presumably in 1464; no copy or fragment has survived; 2) *Cicero, De oratore*, undated but printed before 10 October 1465 in 275 copies, as confirmed by a manuscript note with that date on a copy of the work held by the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Leipzig; 3) *Lactantius, De divinis institutionibus*, printed on 29 October 1465 «in venerabili monasterio Sublicensi» in 275 copies; the only book to bear an indication of 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 Subiaco editions extant in Italy number 34 in total: 3 of *De oratore*, 16 of Lactantius, and 15 of St. Augustine.
By a date no later than September 1467, the two partners issued in Rome the *Epistolae ad familiares* of Cicero, beginning with that book their Roman activity. — See plate CIV.