VINCENZO AL VOLTURNO, SAN, ABBAZIA di. — Near the sources of the Volturno River, on a vast deserted plateau 500 m above sea level and surrounded by mountains, are the ruins of the Benedictine abbey of S. Vincenzo Martire, founded in 703 by three nobles of the Beneventan court.
Established 180 years after Montecassino, it soon became a flourishing religious and cultural centre and reclaimed the wild area through industrious farming communities. To the east stand the great abbey church, together with the palace and ruined buildings; to the west, beyond the river and the bridge, the abbots had small churches and oratories built at the foot of the mountain, eleven of which are mentioned in the Chronicon Vulturnense. Only 15 years after its foundation, monks and inhabitants hastened to rebuild the abbey of Montecassino, destroyed by the Lombards of Zotone. Among its abbots, Giosuè is remembered: in 808 he consecrated the abbey church in the presence of the Carolingian court. After the Saracen invasion of 854 came the massacre of 10 October 882, in which 800 monks perished together with the abbot Majone. The survivors took refuge in Capua, but after three decades the abbey entered a new period of life, which the Chronicon recalls with the church consecrated by Pasquale II. From 703 to 1154, 36 abbots are recorded, and considerable remains survive from the less well-known later periods.
In 1885, a few metres from the bridge, a crypt-oratory came to light again, entirely painted during the time of Abbot Epifanio (826–43). On the central vault, the Saviour and the Virgin are represented within two large star-studded circles. On the lower walls and in the apse are winged archangels, the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the baptism of Jesus; near the altar, the Crucifixion, the Madonna, the female Saints, and scenes from the lives of s. Stefano and s. Lorenzo, etc., form an important Carolingian-period pictorial cycle. In the large rectangular enclosure leading to it, with its ancient entrance, a few metres from the bridge, there is an atrium of a sacred character, owing to the fragments of wall decoration, but perhaps a church, judging from the remains of small walls built against the front of the crypt, between the ancient window that illuminates the painted crypt below and the altar above, of which remains survive. Above the painted crypt, carved from the same natural tuff mass, is a three-apsed structure, preserved to a height of approximately two metres, with walls entirely painted to imitate fabrics. At the centre, « in situ », there remains a circular marble base that must have supported an altar with a mensa.
dell'ist. stor. it., 1909, pp. 75-80 V. FEDERICI, GIACOMO, Chronicon Vulturnense del monaco Giovanni, I-II, Roma 1925, III, ivi 1938; Cottineau, II, coll. 2918-19.