A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church, or temple, and may also serve as an oratory, or in the case of communities anything from a single building housing only one senior and two or three junior monks or nuns, to vast complexes and estates housing tens or hundreds. A monastery complex typically comprises a number of buildings which include a church, dormitory, cloister, refectory, library, balneary and infirmary, and outlying granges. Depending on the location, the monastic order and the occupation of its inhabitants, the complex may also include a wide range of buildings that facilitate self-sufficiency and service to the community. These may include a hospice, a school, and a range of agricultural and manufacturing buildings such as a barn, a forge, or a brewery.
Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957.
Jacopo della Quercia, also known as Jacopo di Pietro d'Agnolo di Guarnieri, was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance, a contemporary of Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and Donatello. He is considered a precursor of Michelangelo.
A hermit, also known as an eremite or solitary, is a person who lives in seclusion. Eremitism plays a role in a variety of religions.
Saint Giles, also known as Giles the Hermit, was a hermit or monk active in the lower Rhône most likely in the 6th century. Revered as a saint, his cult became widely diffused but his hagiography is mostly legendary. A town that bears his name grew up around the monastery he purportedly founded, which became a pilgrimage centre and a stop on the Way of Saint James. He is traditionally one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.
Christian monasticism is the devotional practice of Christians who live ascetic and typically cloistered lives that are dedicated to Christian worship. It began to develop early in the history of the Christian Church, modeled upon scriptural examples and ideals, including those in the Old Testament, but was not mandated as an institution in the scriptures. It has come to be regulated by religious rules and, in modern times, the Canon law of the respective Christian denominations that have forms of monastic living. Those living the monastic life are known by the generic terms monks (men) and nuns (women). The word monk originated from the Greek μοναχός, itself from μόνος meaning 'alone'.
Zita, also known as Sitha or Citha, is an Italian saint, the patron saint of maids and domestic servants. She is often appealed to in order to help find lost keys. She is often confused with St. Osyth or Ositha, an important English Saint with a town named after her.
The province of Lucca is a province in the Tuscany region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Lucca.
Consecrated life is a state of life in the Catholic Church lived by those faithful who are called to follow Jesus Christ in a more exacting way. It includes those in institutes of consecrated life, societies of apostolic life, as well as those living as hermits or consecrated virgins/widows.
Prosper of Reggio is an Italian saint. Tradition holds that he was a bishop of Reggio Emilia for twenty-two years. Little is known of his life, but documents attest that he was indeed bishop of Reggio Emilia in the fifth century.
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, an oratory is a place which is set aside by permission of an ordinary for divine worship, for the convenience of some community or group of the faithful who assemble there, but to which other members of the faithful may have access with the consent of the competent superior. The word oratory comes from the Latin verb orare, to pray.
The Holy Face of Lucca is an eight-foot-tall (2.4 m), ancient wooden carving of Jesus crucified in the cathedral of San Martino, Lucca, Italy. Medieval legends state that it was sculpted by Nicodemus who assisted St. Joseph of Arimathea in placing Christ in his tomb after the crucifixion. The same legends placed its miraculous arrival in Lucca to AD 782.
Saint Saturius of Soria (493–568) is a hermit-saint of Spain. Born in Soria, Saturius, according to Christian tradition, dedicated himself to a life of solitude and prayer. He took care of his parents until their death, after which Saturius gave away his inheritance to the poor and at the age of forty, retired to a cave on the hill of Santa Ana. He lived for the rest of his days in complete austerity and dedicated himself to mortifications of the flesh.
San Frediano in Cestello is a Baroque-style, Roman Catholic church in the Oltrarno section of Florence, region of Tuscany, Italy. The name cestello derives from the Cistercians who occupied the church in 1628. Previously the site had a 1450s church attached to the cloistered Carmelite convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli.
San Frediano is the name of an early Christian Irish pilgrim, who became bishop of Lucca, Tuscany, Italy. Named after him are:
Richard the Pilgrim or Richard of Wessex was the father of the West Saxon saints Willibald, Winnibald, and Walpurga. He led his family on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land but died en route in Lucca, where he was buried in the church of Saint Fridianus.
Pellegrino of Ireland, Irish prince and hermit, fl. 7th-9th centuries. Returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he became a hermit in the mountain forests of Tuscany. His feast day is August 1.
Ludovico Barbo, O.S.B. (1381–1443), also referred to as Luigi Barbo, was a significant figure in the movement to reform monastic life in northern Italy during the 15th century. Originally a canon of the community which became the Canons Regular of San Giorgio in Alga, he died a Benedictine abbot and Bishop of Treviso (1437–1443).
Saint Ceccardus of Luni, otherwise San Ceccardo, was a bishop of Luni in Liguria, Italy, who was believed to have been killed by Viking pirates, probably in 860 when they sacked the city of Luni.
