medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (26. September) is the feast day of:

Nilus of Rossano (Nilus the Younger; d. 1004).  Today's less well known
saint of the Regno was born to an aristocratic family in Rossano, an
important town in Greek-speaking eastern Calabria.  He received a good
religious education and was orphaned early.  At the age of thirty he
abandoned the world for the ascetic life, travelled to the mountainous
border region of the Mercurion, and there came under the influence of
St. Fantinus the Younger and other holy fathers.  To evade a
gubernatorial ban on his becoming a monk, he took the habit at a Greek
monastery in the Lombard principality of Salerno.  N. then returned to
Fantinus’ lavra.  Living first here and then in a nearby cave, he
learned and later taught calligraphy.  During this time he also traveled
to Rome to visit the tombs of the apostles and to consult books whose
identity, alas, is unknown.

Muslim raids caused N. to retreat in the late 940s to one of his
properties near Rossano, where together with some of his students he
founded a monastery of his own, dedicated to St. Adrian.  He resided
here as a penitent for the next quarter-century, achieving considerable
repute as a holy man and miracle worker.  He is said to have declined
being named bishop of Rossano and to have obtained from the emir of
Palermo the liberation of three of his monks who had been captured and
enslaved.  Around 980, fleeing further Muslim incursions and his growing
fame, N. and his comrades left the eastern empire for good and were
welcomed in the Latin West by the prince of Capua, Pandulf Ironhead.  At
the behest of Pandulf’s successor Landulf IV, abbot Aligern of
Montecassino installed them in 981 at the abbey’s daughter house at what
is now Valleluce (FR) in southern Lazio.  From here they participated to
a limited extent in the life of the neighboring Benedictine community. 
Here too N. composed an Office for St. Benedict and probably some of his
other poetry.

After Aligern’s death relations soured between the two groups and in 994
or 995 N. founded a new monastery at tiny Serperi in the duchy of Gaeta
(now Sèrapo [LT] in Lazio).  He made journeys to Rome, where he failed
to persuade his fellow Rossanese, John Philagathus, to renounce the
papacy he had assumed in 997 (as John XVI) after the ouster from the
city of the imperially selected incumbent, Gregory V, and where too,
after John had been deposed and later blinded, he unsuccessfully
attempted in an interview with the emperor Otto III to have the former
antipope released to his custody.  In 1004 the aged N. left Serperi and,
staying at a small Greek monastery in the Alban Hills not far from Rome,
obtained land for a new foundation from Gregory I, count of Tusculum. 
He died here shortly after his monks had arrived at the nearby site and
had begun work on what would become the famous Greek abbey of Grottaferrata.

N.’s surviving verse production, all in his native Greek, is not large.
Specimens of his scribal work and of that of his students also survive.
He is the subject of an extremely impressive Bios (BHG 1370), written
about a generation after his death but while some who knew him well were
still alive.

N.'s monastery of Sant'Adriano at today's San Demetrio Corone (CS) in
Calabria was dissolved in 1794.  A recent article on its history and its
artwork is Caterina Martino, "Kloster und Kirche S. Adriano in S.
Demetrio Corone bei Rossano (10.-18. Jahrhundert)," _Römische
Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte_ 93
(1998), 251-66.  A page of expandable views of its late eleventh-century
church, with twelfth-century frescoes and thirteenth-century mosaics, is
here:
http://tinyurl.com/f7j7v

A brief English-language history of the Greek Abbey of Grottaferrata is
here:
http://www.abbaziagreca.it/en/origini.htm
and a better Italian-language one is here:
http://www.hurricane.it/castelliromani/grottaferrata/snilo.html
together with pages on the abbey's museum:
http://www.hurricane.it/castelliromani/grottaferrata/museo.html
and on its architecture:
http://www.hurricane.it/castelliromani/grottaferrata/snilo_archi.html
and on its decor:
http://www.hurricane.it/castelliromani/grottaferrata/snilo_decos.html
The abbey's church has recently been restored on the outside to an
approximation of its original appearance; similarly for its late
twelfth-century belltower.  A lot of work has been going on the inside
as well.  A recent publication outlining much of this is Luigi Devoti,
_L'Abbazia di Santa Maria di Grottaferrata nel millenario della
fondazione_ (Frascati: Il Minotauro, 2004), a copy of which is described
here:
http://www.artbooks.com/titles/042/Item42415.htm
Two front views of the church are here:
http://www.949.it/foto/grottaferrata/5.jpg
http://www.949.it/foto/grottaferrata/6.jpg
The wooden panels of this portal are said to be of the eleventh century
(are there older wooden doors still in use anywhere in Europe?):
http://www.949.it/foto/grottaferrata/4.jpg
Grottaferrata was built in and over what had originally been the
cryptoporticus of a Roman villa.  Two views showing this adaptation are
here:
http://www.abbaziagreca.it/images/arte/crypta/crypta.jpg
and here:
http://www.arbitalia.it/speciali/san_nilo_millenario/0407j11a.jpg

Best,
John Dillon

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