Il Monastery of Saint Scholastica stands just downstream from the Sacred Cave. Saint Scholastica was the sister of Saint Benedict, and this building is part of the 14 monasteries he founded along his preaching journey, the most important of which is certainly the Abbey of Montecassino. For a long time, until the end of the 12th century, that of Saint Scholastica was the only Benedictine monastery that resisted earthquakes and Saracen devastations. Initially, it was called “Monastery of Saint Sylvester” and only later (around the 9th century) took the name “Monastery of Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica,” reaching the current denomination only in the 14th century. The period of greatest splendor, however, was reached between the 11th and 13th centuries. The entire complex appears as a collection of buildings constructed in different eras and styles: the entrance, marked by a portal bearing the Benedictine motto “Ora et labora,” is decidedly modern. Through it, however, one reaches, one after the other, the three internal cloisters, each built in a different era. The first cloister, or “Renaissance Cloister,” dates back to the 16th century; from it one passes into the second, the “Gothic Cloister,” built in the 14th century, and finally to the “Cosmatesque Cloister,” from the 13th century. The bell tower, instead, dates back to the 12th century, while the church was rebuilt in the 18th century. The monastery’s history boasts, in 1465, the establishment of the first Italian printing press inside, by two German clerics A. Pannartz and C. Sweynheym, thanks to which its library, located on the north side of the Gothic cloister, was enriched with valuable books and incunabula. The valley in which the building is located was so characterized, over the centuries, by monks and hermits who lived there in prayer and meditation, that it is still remembered today as the “Holy Valley.”
Information about Monastery of Saint Scholastica
Via dei Monasteri, 22
00028 Subiaco (Rome)
077485525
pm-laz@beniculturali.it
https://www.polomusealelazio.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/263/monastero-di-santa-scolastica
Source: MIBACT
