The renovation of Benedictine monasteries in Rome between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries: a preliminary research

Abstract

After the defeat of the schismatic pope Anacletus II, even in Rome the Benedictines declined, outpaced by the Cistercians. In the 1140s there is record of the first Cistercian settlement ad aquas salvias, while the Benedictine abbeys did not experience significant building interventions until the second half of the century, at least at the current state of knowledge. The monastic architecture in Rome, in fact, is yet to be investigated in detail, in particular with regard to cloistered areas where little remains because of copious restorations. The first important construction site which can be dated to this period (and specifically to 1189) is that of San Lorenzo fuori le mura, where the residential structures for the monks were organized around a cloister, a characteristic hitherto very rare in Rome and in south-central Italy in general. Only later, during the first half of the following century, and under the auspices of pope Innocent III, the cloistered plan started to characterize the renovation of all the main abbeys, such as Santi Quattro Coronati, San Saba and especially San Paolo fuori le mura and Santa Scolastica in Subiaco. The latter must be considered within the Roman context both in terms of the origins of the artists, and for its political and cultural ties with the papal Rome. In all these monuments, a particular kind of cloister developed which can be defined as typically Roman, its highest expression being San Paolo. It is a structure characterized by a strong reference to antiquity: in the marble panelling, in the sculptures and in the use of the scriptura exposta as an expression of the symbolic meaning of the place and its patronage.