The carpet bombing of Monte Cassino on 15 February 1944 by the Allies obliterated much of the hilltop Benedictine monastery, but presented an opportunity to trace its origins. Reconstruction began soon after the war ended. Plans were drawn up to rebuild the monastery, effectively as it had been. This was essentially an immense baroque and modern mass of buildings that, in plan, followed the great rebuilding executed by Abbot Desiderius after 1066. Desiderius’ monastery was one of the wonders of Latin Christendom and a model for churches and monasteries throughout Europe. Such was its scale and ambition that Abbot Odersius, Desiderius’ successor, was concerned that all appreciation of Monte Cassino’s patchwork of earlier buildings would be forgotten. As a result, he commissioned a young monk, Leo of Ostia, to prepare a chronicle (Chronica monasterii Casinensis; hereafter, CMC) about its history up until this time in the late 11th century. Leo’s book was never finished, but it provides an important framework for the architectural genesis of this iconic place from its foundation by Benedict of Nursia – author of The Rule of St Benedict in the 6th century – through to Desiderius’ great works.
Don Angelo Pantoni, who joined the monastery as a monk in 1928, was fascinated by Leo’s chronicle. Being an archaeologist, he soon began to trace Monte Cassino’s origins. Like many of the brethren, Pantoni was despatched to safety when the Allies arrived close to the monastery in December 1943. On returning to the devastated ruins, as the rebuilding began, he managed to undertake several excavations that would bring to life key episodes in Monte Cassino’s first half-millennium. For the following 40 years, until his death in 1988, Pantoni in a series of books and studies wrestled with making sense of the first Monte Cassino and how it grew, beginning in the Carolingian age when Charlemagne’s mentor Paul the Deacon (c.720s-799) was a monk here, and then over the course of the 11th century, before Desiderius.
New excavations at Monte Cassino’s ‘twin’, San Vincenzo al Volturno, a Benedictine monastery 50km to the east (see CWA 112-113), have shed further light on Pantoni’s investigations. San Vincenzo al Volturno lies at the source of the river Volturno, separated by a mountain pass through the Mainarde range from Monte Cassino. The monasteries shared parallel histories from the 8th century, with both being sacked by an Arab warband in the 880s. After this, Monte Cassino prospered, whereas San Vincenzo failed to re-establish its status until Cassinese monks – that is, monks from Monte Cassino – became its abbots in the 11th and 12th centuries. In the 14th century, San Vincenzo and its property, by now diminutive in size, passed to Monte Cassino, who still maintain a small convent there, close to the excavated remains of the 8th- to 12th-century monastery. Forty years of excavations have uncovered the main buildings of San Vincenzo as it evolved from a small Late Antique villa to a small 8th-century Benedictine monastery and thence into a sprawling city-like settlement after c.800. The excavations also bring to life its step-by-step renewal in the 11th century after its sack on 10 October 881.
