History

William of Vercelli (born 1085 in Vercelli, died 1142 at Goleto) is one of the most fascinating figures of 12th-century Italian monasticism: a wandering hermit who spent years in Galicia (at Santiago de Compostela) and in the Apulian mountains before settling in the Irpinia in the 1120s. His foundation of Montevergine on the mountain above Avellino (1124) created a Marian sanctuary that would become one of the most important in southern Italy; his foundation of Goleto in the valley below (1133) was his final project, and it was here that he spent the last decade of his life and is traditionally held to have died.

The unusual structure of Goleto — a female community with authority over a male one, under the personal direction of Abbess Febronia — reflects William's spirituality, which emphasized the equality of souls before God and the spiritual capacity of women as well as men for monastic perfection. Febronia, the first abbess, is venerated as a local saint; her tomb in the crypt of the tower became a pilgrimage point within a generation. The Torre di Febronia was built over her tomb as a combined monument and functional building: the colombario at the top, according to popular tradition, housed pigeons whose behaviour announced the death of abbesses (a tradition also found at a few French medieval monasteries). The Irpinia earthquake of 1980 destroyed much of the later fabric of the abbey but left the 12th-century tower largely intact.