HISTORY
The Abbey of San Mercuriale faces the south side of the Piazza Aurelio Saffi, the most significant monumental Romanesque complex of the entire province of Forlì. The reconstruction of its ancient origins remains difficult due to the lack of secure historic documentation of the foundation of the early church and of the legendary figure of San Mercuriale to whom the church is dedicated. The first document that attests to the existence of a Benedictine monastery located outside the walls (the medieval walled city was further west with respect to the modern), is an act of donation of April 8, 894 by the Archbishop of Ravenna to the abbot of San Mercuriale in Forlì. Prior to that, there are only uncertainties and suppositions. The tradition suggests that in the fourth century San Mercuriale, bishop of the ancient city of Forum Livii, founded the first Christian church dedicated to Santo Stefano—the original cathedral—east of the city walls. Some time after the foundation, the cathedral was transferred inside the walls to the church of Santa Croce and the early church, located in the present-day center of Forlì, was transformed into a sanctuary containing the remains of its founder and a Benedictine monastery was also founded there. The history of the period after the year 1000 is rich with bequests and donations that attest to the expansion of the monastery and the development of the city to the east. Forlì eventually engulfed the territory of San Mercuriale, resulting in its inclusion within its new walls. A ruinous fire of 1173 destroyed much of the city and the monastery. In its wake, works of reconstruction were begun to build a new abbey in the Lombard Romanesque style on the site of the former church’s ruins. Baroque additions followed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, and were later eliminated by the bombardments of the Second World War and the twentieth-century restorations that aimed to return the monument to the Romanesque physiognomy that had distinguished it since 1176.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
On the exterior, the façade, the result of modern reconstruction, is interesting primarily due to the portal lunette, containing an important Romanesque sculptural ensemble. In the center is the adoration of the Magi, the Virgin and child with Joseph to the right, and the story of the dream of the Magi to the left. These sculptures, originating from the School of Benedetto Antelami, can be ascribed to the thirteenth century, particularly resembling the hand of the Maestro dei Mesi di Ferrara. The seventy-five-meter campanile, located on the right side of the abbey is one of the tallest and most interesting Lombard Romanesque campanili. Built in 1178 under the direction of Francesco Deddi, it has a square plan and a conical spire, encircled by four turrets around the base of the spire. Blind arches connect the Lombard bands that divide the campanile sides in three. Transversally, cornices and corbel tables divide the tower into five stories. The fifteenth-century cloister of the Vallambrosian monks is behind the tower. Its two sides are constituted by loggias open to the outside and inside.
The interior of San Mercuriale is typically Romanesque: sober and severe nude brick. The reconstruction may well represent an attentive repetition of the twelfth-century Romanesque. The basilical plan has a three-aisled nave, without a transept, the nave divided into three super bays by round transverse arches. Each super bay is subdivided into three bays by longitudinal arches. The third bay was formerly divided into two floors—one elevated for the monks and a crypt below where the clergy officiated—but the division was not rebuilt following its collapse in 1505. The walls of the third bay suggest the original structure through the presence of two superimposed orders, the lower arches indicating the former crypt and the upper, the elevated presbytery.
Other monuments on the interior include the column-bearing lion from the porch that used to surround the portal; the chapel containing the fifteenth-century tomb of Barbara Manfredi, wife of the lord of Forlì, by Francesco di Simone Ferrucci from Fiesole, and a chapel with the frescoes of Marco Palmezzano (1459-1539). At the end of the southern aisle is an early-medieval stone cross and the Cappella Mercuriale, which contains the remains of the patron saint, as well as interesting frescoes of Livio and Gianfrancesco Modigliani, commissioned by the influential Gerolamo Mercuriali (1530-1606).
Suggested Reading:
G. Spinelli, San Mercuriale a Forlì, in Monasteri benedettini in Emilia-Romagna, Milano 1980.
S. Stocchi, "San Mercuriale a Forlì," in Italia Romanica. L’Emilia-Romagna, Milano 1984.
A. Colombi Ferretti, L. Prati, U. Tramonti, Il complesso monumentale di San Mercuriale a Forlì: restauri, Forlì 2000.
HISTORY
The first monastic community was probably already present in the area known as the “Insula Pomposia” between the 6th and 7th century. However, the first precise reference to the Abbey of Pomposa was not until 874. The abbey changed hands several times between the pope, emperor and the archbishopric of Ravenna, until finally achieving full autonomy in 1022.
The abbey’s flourishing over the following centuries was tied not only to its political and religious import, but also to its situation between major tributaries of the Po and the Via Romea, which connected pilgrims and merchants between northern Europe and Rome. The abbey’s economic and cultural influence reached their apex in the 11th century under the direction of Abbot Guido. It was at that time that the monastery was enlarged and the cloister, towers and the Palazzo della Ragione were added, giving it the appearance of a fortified city.
When the banks of the Po flooded in 1152, the whole area was turned into a swamp, and the monks were decimated by malaria. The last monks left the abbey definitively in 1671. While the church became a parish in 1663, the abbey remained abandoned for centuries. Following the Napoleonic suppressions, the conventual structures were utilized for agricultural storehouses and service areas, until 1920-1930, when the whole complex was restored to its original configuration as an abbey.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
The abbey church is a three-aisled basilica. The central apse is a semi-decagon, a typology characteristic of the area of Ravenna, as far back as the church of Sant’Apollinare in Classe. It was probably built between 751 and 874: parts of the church’s building materials are spolia from Ravenna, which fell in 751 to the Lombard dominion under King Liutprand. The church that was built at that time only partially coincides with the present church, up to the seventh bay. The structure of the church underwent various modifications, as excavations have shown. Between the 9-10th centuries, a narthex was added on the left side. The church probably terminated in three apses. From an inscription inserted on the pavement, we know that on May 7, 1026 it was rededicated, during the abbacy of Guido (1008-46), a period of important transformations and expansions in the whole monastery. Between 1000-26, the crypt was reimagined in the form of an oratory, the narthex was inserted and two new bays were added. The windows of the narthex were filled and a portal was added to the main entrance. The present-day atrium and the campanile were also built at this time.
HISTORY
The church of Santa Maria Assunta, located in the area of Castione Marchesi, is all that remains of the old Benedictine abbey complex, founded in 1033 by the Marquis Adalberto, ancestor of the Pallavicino family. Even though numerous land donations are from that date, it is not until the mid-12th century that the construction of the complex can be assigned. The abbey remained in the hands of the Benedictines, to later be entrusted to the Olivetan monks, who upheld it until its transfer to the diocese of Parma in 1764. In the 19th century, the church began to assume all the functions of ordinary parishes. After continual reconstructions, proper restorations were carried out between 1954-58, which brought back the building’s Romanesque appearance on the internal structure.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
Contrary to the interior, the gabled façade shows the evident signs of a Romanesque of restoration, and therefore of dubious authenticity. The three-aisled basilica is supported on alternating cruciform pilasters, with five bays in the aisles, and two in the nave, covered by groin vaults. The structure seems to repeat the architectural principles of the Cistercian order, though it was not a Cistercian abbey. The 20th-century restoration campaign revealed its affinity with the abbey of Chiaravalle della Colomba and Fontevivo, particularly in the dichromatic brick/plaster. In any case, it is easy to distinguish the authentic Romanesque from the work of restoration. The most interesting element of the abbey is the mosaic pavement, uncovered during the 20th-centuiry restorations, when it was decided to return the pavement to its original level. The remains of the mosaic pavement reveal an affinity with that of San Savino in Piacenza and San Colombano at Bobbio.
HISTORY
In an isolated place at the top of a woody mountain that dominates the town of Galeata rises the Abbey of Sant’Ellero.The abbey was founded in the fifth century by Ellero, from materials that came from the lost Roman city of Mevaniola. The site functioned as a hermitage for nine years, after which it became an active monastic community near the town of Galeata. The Abbey quickly became a very important spiritual center and grew in importance and power, such that it assumed control over approximately forty surrounding parishes, extending out into a territory from Romagna to Tuscany. After a continual conflict with the Church in Ravenna, which assumed control of the Abbey, a major earthquake of 1279 destroyed the monastery down to its foundations. The frequent seismic activity that has plagued the High Valley of Bidente over the centuries has left only the Abbey church remaining of the entire monastic complex. Most of the Abbey’s subsequent reconstructions are datable to the sixteenth century. Despite these subsequent constructive phases and numerous restorations, the modern structure seems to have preserved a large part of its original Romanesque forms.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
The church is characterized by a typically Romanesque façade (11th-12th century) in large limestone blocks. The façade is dominated by a noble portal, which, recently restored and splayed toward the interior, represents the most interesting part of the exterior structure. The portal is constituted by a cluster of colonnettes with sculpted capitals, and is surmounted by a large rose window. The sides of the building are marked by a series of limestone pilasters. The church has a single nave, articulated by lateral chapels, which house some of the decorative and sculptural elements from the older structure. The rectilinear apse is deep, and preceded by a raised choir, accessed by two lateral staircases. The crypt below the choir contains the sarcophagus of Saint Ellero, a Byzantine work of refined sculpture. It is presumed that the crypt was the first resting place of the saint, the place from which the construction of the whole Abbey then developed. Almost the entire choir is original: the slightly depressed apsidal arch, on corbelled capitals, decorated by archaic palm motifs. Much of these details were damaged by the addition of polychrome stucco in the Baroque period, and recovered in later restorations.
HISTORY
The Benedictine monastery of Bobbio, founded in 614 by the Irish monk Colomban in 614, was for the entire medieval period one of the most important monastic centers of Europe, from a religious, political and cultural point of view. This early monastery, during the tenure of the abbot Agilulfo (883-896), was abandoned and rebuilt in a different location with a new abbey church. In 1040 the abbots of Bobbio obtained an Episcopal See, separating it from the abbey, leading to the decay of the original monastery and to a separation between the two churches. Apart from the abbey, the Bishop-Count Guarnerius built a new Cathedral in 1075. These two major monuments underwent notable modifications in the intervening centuries, which impede a reconstruction of the medieval traces. Like Guarnerius’s Cathedral, the abbey church of San Colombano was also radically transformed, enlarged in the fourteenth century, rebuilt in 1456, and frescoed starting in 1526. Thus, from the Romanesque abbey complex, only the bell tower, apse, and a splendid mosaic pavement in the modern crypt remain.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
The original abbey church was a three-aisled Latin cross, with three apses and a barely projecting transept. It was divided in half by an iron screen, which separated the monks’ choir from the space reserved to the parishioners. The nave was painted by Bernardino Lanzani from San Colombano al Lambro between 1526 and 1530. The building preserves many of its objects of art: in the crypt is the sarcophagus of San Colombano, with episodes of his life. Along the stair to the crypt, beneath the pavement, is an extensive segment of early-twelfth-century mosaic pavement from the old building, which was discovered in 1910. The mosaic, like those in San Savino in Piacenza and San Michele in Pavia, includes episodes from the second book of Maccabees, fights between fantastic animals and the labors of the month. The complex also contains the abbey museum, which houses a collections of archaeological materials and works related to the figure of San Colombano from the fourth to the eighteenth century.
HISTORY
The Abbey of San Basilde is located in Lesignano de’ Bagni, a small town in a hilly area, not far from the city of Parma. The road that reaches the abbey, called the Pass of Lagastrello, has been historically important in travel between Parma and Tuscany, particularly by pilgrims, merchants and artisans who lodged at Benedictine monasteries. The basilica was founded by San Bernardo degli Uberti, a Vallombrosan monk and Bishop of Parma from 1109, who moved the monastic community to the isolated hill of Badia Cavana. As is the case for many Romanesque sites, there is little documentation about its production, leaving us without a precise chronology of construction, though it is mentioned in one document as early as 1115. An additional document mentions damage from an earthquake in 1117, which required at least some reconstruction, adding a narthex to the façade, which was not part of the original structure.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
The abbey’s architecture follows the Vallombrosan prototype, with a single nave, projecting transept and a semicircular apse. The porch added in the twelfth century has two arcades with a loggia above, decorated with capitals featuring the evangelists. Going inside the church, we find a double staircase along the lateral wall, descending to the crypt where the relics of San Basilide can still be found today. The cloister is along the west side of the building, today engulfed by surrounding structures and thus not accessible. To the south of the church are the refectory and the Chapter House, while the sepulchral crypt of the abbots and the monks’ entrance are on the north side. Like most churches in Emilia-Romagna, the church is built from local stone, cut in precise ashlar blocks in a perfect curtain wall of opus quadratum.
HISTORY
The Abbey of Marola was built between 1076 and 1092 under the patronage of the Countess Matilda of Canossa, as a demonstration of her gratitude to the hermit Giovanni of Marola, who encouraged her to pursue the fight against the emperor Henry IV. In the seventeenth century, it was transformed into a fortified residence, and in 1747 it underwent a radical Baroque restructuring that completely altered the building's original appearance, particularly the façade, and added the transept and dome. The church was closed in the Napoleonic period, and after the Restoration was turned into a seminary. Restorations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries imposed a return to the church’s Romanesque past.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
The sober façade of the church is adorned with a stone portal, flanked by semi-columns and chiseled interlace capitals. The church is a three-aisled basilica, without a transept, containing five bays on a round-arch arcade. The first two supports are cylindrical columns, while the rest are rectangular piers. The aisles are covered with a wood roof, and the presbytery, which occupies the fifth bay, has a barrel vault. There is but one original Corinthian capital on the interior, carved with leaves in relief and elegant volutes on the angles. The other capitals are the clear work of modern restorations but a few Romanesque fragments were preserved in the Seminary’s lapidarium. Among these, a particularly interesting capital records the total eclipse of the sun in 1239 in an etched graffito.
HISTORY
Built within the Samoggia valley, the Abbey of Monteveglio, dedicated to the Madonna, was erected to celebrate the victory of Matilda of Canossa over Henry IV. The emperor was defeated in the siege of Matilda’s castle at Monteveglio in 1092. As an act of thanks, the Countess had the Abbey built there, added to the preexisting church. The monastery was affiliated with the Augustinian Order of San Frediano of Lucca, but in 1455, it passed to the Lateran Canons of San Giovanni in Monte of Bologna. The church was particularly remembered for having taken in Ugo Foscolo, traveling in disguise. He was imprisoned for suspicion of being an Austrian spy.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
The Abbey’s present appearance is the result of the restoration led by the architect Rivani between 1925 and 1934. The restoration aimed to bring the convent back to its original state, eliminating later interventions considered inauthentic to the medieval building.
Founded in the fifth century, the church still preserves its appearance from the Romanesque period, including its twelfth-century façade, which faces west. It is a three-aisled plan, with a raised presbytery over the older crypt. It is divided into four bays by pilasters and columns, terminating in three altars, corresponding to three apses. In the central apse is an authentic sepulchral stone from the Roman period, decorated by concentric cornices.
From the nave, a Baroque staircase leads up to the presbytery, illuminated by monocuspid windows, faced in alabaster. In the center of the three apses is an altar in red marble of Verona, supported by five columns. A splendid walnut choir dates from the Renaissance.
Inside the complex are two cloisters, the larger from the fifteenth century, with an elevated loggia that led into the canons’ cells. The lower portico contains plaques that recount the history of the monastery. The older cloister, located to the rear, was mostly destroyed, with only a single side remaining with twelfth-century anthropomorphic capitals.
HISTORY
The monastery was probably already built in a place called Monte Giardino by the 11th century, and is documented at least by 1073. In addition to the Romanesque church of the 12th century, the choir shows traces of an earlier building. The church was later consecrated by the Bishop Giovanni IV in 1178, while in 1241, chronicles report that the Bishop Henry II della Fratta wanted to retire at the monastery and end his life in prayer and poverty. The complex seems to have originated as a hermitage, later becoming an Abbey affiliated with the Regular Lateran canons, and remained thus until the suppressions of 1798. In 1892, under the control of the Ministry of Public Instruction, the secularized building was given back to the Church, who reopened it. A major restoration campaign was begun in 1914, which partially cleaned up, partially restored the Romanesque identity of the religious buildings, the cloister and the monastery.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
The plan of the church is a single nave, and formerly had a squared apse, prior to its destruction in the 19th-century. The beautiful Romanesque church is divided into two parts by an imposing choir screen, lightened in the upper story by two loggias, each consisting of four arches. The screen demarcated the inferior church, reserved for the parishioners, from the superior church, reserved for the canons. The cloister was completed, as were several of the contiguous monastic buildings, in the 15th century. San Vittore preserves some of the most important 13th-century frescoes of the region. They were removed from the walls in the 1960s and installed on panels on the walls of the church. Some of the frescoes are hidden by the 15th-century wooden choir, which occupies three sides of the superior church (north, west, south).
HISTORY
The origin of Santa Maria in Regola is probably from the Latin term “arenula,” which indicates the existence of a church, arena or theater in the Roman period. We also should not exclude the possibility that “regola” refers to the rule of the Benedectine monks who resided there. The first written source that mentions the complex is from September 16, 998, but archaeological research and the presence of particularly old works of art inside the church, confirm the hypothesis that the church was built around the 6th century. In the second half of the 11th century, the Bishop Morando granted a concession to the citizens of rights over goods in transit, and exacting tariffs. The 14th-century reconstruction, of which faint traces remain on the perimeter walls, such as paintings stylistically related to the work of Vitale da Bologna, was completely erased by the reconstruction of 1780-86 by Cosimo Morelli, commissioned by Cardinal Bandi. The present building is a single nave, almost square in plan, covered by a vault decorated by Alessandro Della Nave and Antonio Villa with sloping coffers and at the center a perspectival cupola.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
The oldest part of the complex is the circular campanile, cited in a document of March 23, 1080, which referred to the church of Santa Maria in Regola with cloister and a “torre longa.” The brick tower has a polyhedral plan of sixteen sides, which reduces in circumference towards the top, reaching 23 meters in height. Based on the wall structure, it is possible to distinguish two distinct sections: from the base to the height of 13.5 meters, the tower lighter disconnected and reused, while the bricks in the upper section are more uniform. Recent hypotheses suggest that the lower structure utilized Roman bricks. The most believable hypothesis is that there was not a major chronological break, but that the change indicates a technical shift within the same workshop, necessitated by structural concerns and precise functional choices. The dating oscillates between the 10-11th centuries.
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