An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christian monks and nuns.
The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict, are a mainly contemplative monastic religious order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. The male religious are also sometimes called the Black Monks, in reference to the colour of their religious habits, in contrast to other Benedictine orders such as the Olivetans, who wear white. They were founded in 529 by Benedict of Nursia, a 6th-century Italian monk who laid the foundations of Benedictine monasticism through the formulation of his Rule. Benedict's sister, Scholastica, possibly his twin, also became a religious from an early age, but chose to live as a hermit. They retained a close relationship until her death.
Monte Cassino is a rocky hill about 130 kilometres (80 mi) southeast of Rome, in the Latin Valley, Italy, 2 kilometres west of Cassino and at an elevation of 520 m (1,710 ft). Site of the Roman town of Casinum, it is widely known for its abbey, the first house of the Benedictine Order, having been established by Benedict of Nursia himself around 529. It was for the community of Monte Cassino that the Rule of Saint Benedict was composed.
The Camaldolese Hermits of Mount Corona, commonly called Camaldolese, is a monastic order of Pontifical Right for men founded by Saint Romuald. Its name is derived from the Holy Hermitage of Camaldoli, high in the mountains of central Italy, near the city of Arezzo. Its members add the nominal letters E.C.M.C. after their names to indicate their membership in the congregation. Apart from the Roman Catholic monasteries, in recent times ecumenical Christian hermitages with a Camaldolese spirituality have arisen as well.
The Badìa Fiorentina is an abbey and church now home to the Monastic Communities of Jerusalem situated on the Via del Proconsolo in the centre of Florence, Italy. Dante supposedly grew up across the street in what is now called the 'Casa di Dante', rebuilt in 1910 as a museum to Dante. He would have heard the monks singing the Mass and the Offices here in Latin Gregorian chant, as he famously recounts in his Commedia: "Florence, within her ancient walls embraced, Whence nones and terce still ring to all the town, Abode aforetime, peaceful, temperate, chaste." In 1373, Boccaccio delivered his famous lectures on Dante's Divine Comedy in the subsidiary chapel of Santo Stefano, just next to the north entrance of the Badia's church.
A commendatory abbot is an ecclesiastic, or sometimes a layman, who holds an abbey in commendam, drawing its revenues but not exercising any authority over its inner monastic discipline. If a commendatory abbot is an ecclesiastic, however, he may have limited jurisdiction.
Subiaco is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, in the Italian region of Latium, 40 kilometres (25 mi) from Tivoli alongside the River Aniene. It is a tourist and religious resort because of its sacred grotto, in the medieval St. Benedict's Abbey, and its Abbey of Santa Scolastica. It is one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia. The first books to be printed in Italy were produced here in the late 15th century.
The Benedictine Confederation of the Order of Saint Benedict is the international governing body of the Order of Saint Benedict.
Farfa Abbey is a territorial abbey in northern Lazio, Central Italy. In the Middle Ages, it was one of the richest and most famous abbeys in Italy. It belongs to the Benedictine Order and is located about 60 km (37 mi) from Rome, in the commune of Fara Sabina, of which it is also a hamlet.
Sansepolcro, formerly Borgo Santo Sepolcro, is a town and comune founded in the 11th century, located in the Italian Province of Arezzo in the eastern part of the region of Tuscany.
Casamari Abbey is a Cistercian abbey in the Province of Frosinone, Lazio, Italy, about 10 kilometers east-south-east of Veroli.
Tre Fontane Abbey, or the Abbey of Saints Vincent and Anastasius, is a Roman Catholic abbey in Rome, held by monks of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, better known as Trappists. It is known for raising the lambs whose wool is used to weave the pallia of new metropolitan archbishops. The pope blesses the lambs on the feast of Saint Agnes on January 21. The wool is prepared, and he gives the pallia to the new archbishops on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, the Holy Apostles.
Valvisciolo Abbey is a Cistercian monastery in the province of Latina, central Italy, near the towns of Sermoneta and Ninfa.
The Abbey of Saint Scholastica, also known as Subiaco Abbey, is located just outside the town of Subiaco in the Province of Rome, Region of Lazio, Italy; and is still an active Benedictine abbey, territorial abbey, first founded in the 6th century AD by Saint Benedict of Nursia. It was in one of the Subiaco caves that Benedict made his first hermitage. The monastery today gives its name to the Subiaco Congregation, a grouping of monasteries worldwide that makes up part of the Order of Saint Benedict.
The Church of Santi Giusto e Clemente is a Roman Catholic church in Volterra, Pisa, region of Tuscany, Italy. It is also known as San Giusto or San Giusto Nuovo. For some 850 years, the church was affiliated to an adjacent Benedictine monastery, the Abbey of Sts. Justin and Clement, which is no longer extant.
Volterra Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Volterra, Italy, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is the seat of the bishop of Volterra.
The Abbey of San Giusto is a former Cistercian monastery located in the valley of the river Marta approximately 4 km south of Tuscania, Province of Viterbo, Italy.
Morimondo Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery located at Morimondo, a few kilometers south of Abbiategrasso in the Metropolitan City of Milan, Lombardy, northern Italy. The surviving structure is Romanesque and Gothic. It was founded in 1134 as a daughter house of Morimond Abbey near Dijon, from which it took its name.
Christ in Glory with Four Saints and a Donor is a c.1492 tempera on panel painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his studio.
The Abbey of Leno, or Badia leonense, was an ancient Benedictine monastic complex founded in 758 by the Lombard king Desiderius in the territory of the present-day town of Leno, in the Lower Brescian region. Demolished at the behest of the Venetian Republic in 1783, today only stone fragments of the ancient abbey remain, largely preserved in the Brescian museum of Santa Giulia, while burial mounds were found on site as a result of archaeological excavations held in 2003 by the Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Lombardy.
