The apogee of Monte Cassino

This article is from World Archaeology issue 124

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The majority of Monte Cassino’s 500 tombstones are believed to date to the period before it was sacked by an Arab band in AD 883. Angelo Pantoni, the great 20th-century excavator of the monastery, identified two types of tombs. The first was excavated into the rock and approximately followed a human form, often with a base made of two or three tiles, each deliberately punctured to permit the draining of decomposing bodily liquids. The second type of tomb was block-built, the stones being mortared together. These were covered with travertine slabs. One of these, dating to the 11th century, was covered with tiles. Many of these block-built tombs were lined with white mortar. Like the simpler first type, their bases were composed of tiles punctured with lines of holes. Two other types of tombs found at San Vincenzo – a neighbouring Benedictine monastery 50km to the east – appear not to occur at Monte Cassino. Major tombs set inside arcosolia (large arched niches) were absent. At San Vincenzo, arcosolia tombs served as pivotal points in the 9th-century topography of the monastery. Similarly, no painted tombs were discovered at Monte Cassino, in contrast to San Vincenzo, where many had decorated interiors adorned with prominent crosses and occasionally red flowers. Other 9th-century tombs at this monastery also included painted inscriptions, following formulae that are known from decorated tombs in Lombardy.

Several lines of the Type 1 rock-cut graves discovered by Pantoni lay close to the entrance of the basilica of St Benedict on the hilltop at Monte Cassino. These graves, a number with punctured tile bases, formed part of a larger cemetery that greeted visitors who arrived at the top of the flight of monumental stairs leading to the hilltop sanctuary. Other graves were located either side of the north and south walls. These seem to have been irregular inhumations made in order to be close to the shrine of St Benedict and St Scholastica, which now occupied the chancel of the earlier church. A second, more expansive cemetery is proposed to the east of St Martin, on the midslope portion of Monte Cassino, in an area later occupied by the library and the cloister of the Prior. Pantoni’s excavations were restricted in this area by the ruins of the major Early Modern buildings, so the exact number and arrangement of graves could not be defined. What is clear is that these were all rock-cut tombs of Pantoni’s first type. No less evident from Pantoni’s plan of the excavations is that these were loosely arranged in at least 11 groups of 3-5 tombs, often with an additional tomb close by. This graveyard closely resembles the cemetery of rock-cut groups of tombs found in the extensive hillside cemetery overlooking the monastic buildings at San Vincenzo al Volturno. These tombs have been interpreted as belonging to lay families, donors to the 9th-century monastery. Excavations show that the hillside cemetery had its own church in the 9th century, and, importantly, was effectively abandoned by the early 11th century, when a substantial tower was erected over many graves.

Given the San Vincenzo evidence, the likeliest interpretation is that the burials directly in front of Monte Cassino’s St Benedict represent the monks’ cemetery. The lower midslope cemetery at Monte Cassino, in the shadow of the shrine, was perhaps intended for donors and their families. We should note, though, that other cemeteries existed at San Vincenzo, illustrating how varied burial practice had become by the 9th century. Towards the northern limits of 9th-century San Vincenzo, the small church known as the Crypt Church, associated with the Beneventan princely palatium (palace), had its own small graveyard set within a sunken atrium. Notably, a block-built tomb with a painted inscription was placed in the little narthex on the threshold of the church, as if to suggest this was a key lay donor over whom any visitor passed. In addition, the palatium alongside the Crypt Church appears to have used its grand entrance hall flanking its south side as a place for privileged burial in block-built tombs during the 9th century.

The Arab sack in AD 883 and its aftermath

The Arab attack on Monte Cassino on 22 October AD 883 led to the murder of Abbot Bertharius in the church of St Saviour within Eulogimenopolis, the lower monastery that lay at the foot of the mount that was crowned by the upper monastery. Bertharius’s peer at San Vincenzo, Abbot Maius, was almost certainly one of the main targets of the earlier attack there in AD 881, judging from the devastation of the abbot’s house (see CWA 113). The other focus of the attack at San Vincenzo was the collective workshop producing rich objects, including metal ties for books. Neither the main church, San Vincenzo Maggiore, nor the lay palatium at the northern end of the site, show any signs of damage from the attack. Could it be that with the assassination of Monte Cassino’s abbot, and the likely destruction of the economic activities in the lower monastery, the Arabs’ objectives were fulfilled, and they left the precious sanctuary on the hilltop? As at San Vincenzo, the surviving monks promptly fled and found refuge at Teano, then Capua (close to the monks of San Vincenzo, but at opposite ends of the ancient town) before Abbot Aligernus re-established Monte Cassino in AD 949/950.