medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Sunday, September 25, 2005, at 8:11 pm, Phyllis wrote:
> Today (26. September) is the feast day of:
> Nilus of Rossano (d. 1004) Nilus "the Younger" was the son of
> Greek
> parents in Calabria, born in c. 910. He became a Greek-rite monk
> and
> abbot of several monasteries.
Of which the last, founded shortly before N.'s death, deserves
particular mention. This is the Exarchic Abbey of St. Mary in
Grottaferrata (RM), usually known either more simply as the Greek Abbey
of Grottaferrata (a designation perpetuated in Italian through the name
of its scholarly journal _Bollettino della Badia Greca di
Grottaferrata_) or else, in honor of its founder, as the Greek Abbey of
St. Nilus at Grottaferrata. Its collection of Greek manuscripts, the
Cryptenses, is world-famous, and if much of that is really down to
Cardinal Bessarion in the fifteenth century and to others more recently
who made it a repository for books from the Greek-speaking world and
especially for Greek books from ecclesiastical libraries in the Italian
south, much too redounds to the credit of N. himself, who understood how
to work with princes of the Latin west and who had the foresight to
establish an Hellenophone institution for the divine cult and the
preservation of sacred learning located near Rome but not in it. N. is
also the subject of a really great Bios (BHG 1370).
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:
http://www.949.it/foto/grottaferrata/4.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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