History

Benedict of Norcia arrived at the hill above Casinum around 529, after spending years as a hermit at Subiaco. He demolished the temple of Apollo that stood on the summit, built an oratory over it dedicated to Saint Martin, and gathered the monks who would live according to his Rule. The Rule of Saint Benedict, finalised around 540, was not the only monastic rule in circulation — the Irish and Gallic traditions had their own — but its balance of prayer, work and study, its humane treatment of monks, and its administrative practicality made it the preferred model first of the Carolingian reform of the 9th century, then of the Cluniac and Cistercian movements of the 11th and 12th centuries.

The abbey’s fortunes mapped the history of southern Italy. The Lombards destroyed it in 577; the monks fled to Rome, taking Benedict’s original Rule and a portable copy of the text. The Saracen raid of 883 destroyed it again; the rebuilding of the 10th century produced the great Romanesque church and the scriptorium that made Montecassino a major centre of manuscript production, art, and scholarship — the Montecassino scriptorium developed the distinctive Beneventana script used throughout southern Italy and created illuminated manuscripts of European importance. The earthquake of 1349 collapsed much of the structure; the subsequent rebuilding created the Baroque complex that would last until 1944.

The bombing of 15 February 1944 destroyed a structure that had taken five centuries to accumulate. Allied commanders believed the Germans were using the abbey as an observation post; the German Army maintained that they had respected its neutrality. The debate continues; what is documented is that the bombing killed about 230 Italian civilians who had taken shelter in the abbey, and that the Germans subsequently did occupy the ruins as a defensive position. The Battle of Monte Cassino lasted until 18 May 1944, when Polish troops of the II Polish Corps finally took the hill. The rebuilt abbey was reconsecrated in 1964.