The monastery indeed of the blessed martyr Vincent which is situated near the source of the river Volturnus and is now celebrated for its great community of monks … (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards VI.40).
INTRODUCTION
Little is known about the topographic history of San Vincenzo al Volturno before its expansion under Abbot Joshua in the first decades of the ninth century. The twelfth-century Chronicon Vulturnense describes the building of three churches within the monastery during the century following its foundation and the establishment of an initial monastery church, presumably dedicated to Saint Vincent, in c. ad 703. Abbot Taso (729–39) built Santa Maria Maior; Abbot Ato (739–60) constructed San Pietro, and Abbot Paul (783–92) added Santa Maria iuxta flumen (CV I: 155, 162, 204). Even less is known about the size and wealth of the community at this time. One small clue exists from early ad 784, when the monastic community was engaged in a dispute about saying prayers for Charlemagne. Some 42 monks took oaths at a papal court in support of their arraigned abbot, Poto (Gundlach, Reference Gundlach1892: 597; Costambeys, Reference Costambeys2008: 160). This large number appears to confirm the assessment of Pope Hadrian I (772–95), who referred in a letter to Charlemagne to ‘such a large congregation’ of monks at San Vincenzo al Volturno (Gundlach, Reference Gundlach1892: 594). Where these monks lived and ate, and how they were provisioned, of course, begs many questions.
San Vincenzo al Volturno is now, perhaps, the most extensively excavated early medieval monastery in Europe, with excavations having been conducted by two successive teams since 1980. Following the first fifteen seasons, between 1980 and 1995, it was proposed tentatively that the layout of the eighth-century monastery was essentially based around the Garden Court, with the abbey-church on the north side, and a possible Refectory forming its south side (Hodges, Reference Hodges and Hodges1995b: 156–7, fig. 12.3). Fifteen years on, with more extensive excavations between 1999 and 2008 by the Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples, many more elements of the eighth-century monastery are now apparent (cf. Marazzi, Reference Marazzi, De Rubeis and Marazzi2008; Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell, Reference Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell2011). Perhaps the most important discovery of the recent excavations is that the hypothetical identification of one of the core structures of the later eighth-century monastery — its refectory — has now been confirmed as being accurate; and to its immediate east are the likely remains of the kitchen that serviced it. This, then, invites the question as to where the other principal buildings and service units of the monastery were located. On this hypothetical basis, San Vincenzo al Volturno in this phase (3c), late in the eighth century, first possessed the elements of a claustrum, one of the earliest so far documented in Latin Christendom.
THE EIGHTH-CENTURY CLAUSTRUM
The eighth-century monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno began as little more than a church, the so-called (phase 3a) San Vincenzo Minore, built over the footprint of its late antique predecessor, part of a fifth- to sixth-century estate centre, possibly the seat of a bishop (Hodges and Mithen, Reference Hodges, Mithen and Hodges1993: 182–3; Bowes, Reference Bowes, Bowes, Francis and Hodges2006). Situated at the foot of Colle della Torre, beside the river Volturno, San Vincenzo Minore, the earliest monastic church, lay directly in front of an earlier, late antique bridge, known in modern times as the Ponte della Zingara.Footnote 1 Nothing of the associated buildings of this first monastery, such as the refectory, the monks' dormitory or the abbot's house, is known. Its second eighth-century phase (3b) amounted to a simple addition to the principal church, an ambulatory, as well as the reconstruction of an adjacent late Roman apsidal building as a new church, the so-called Crypt Church, immediately to its north (Hodges and Mitchell, Reference Hodges, Mitchell and Hodges1993: 70–2). Using clay as a mortar, both of these two churches were unprepossessing in architectural terms. However, in a third eighth-century phase (phase 3c), the architecture of the monastery changed significantly. In previous publications, phase 3c has been ascribed to the period when Abbot Paul (787–92) was in office, on the grounds that the monastery appeared to have been conspicuously supported by the Franks at this time (Hodges, Reference Hodges and Hodges1995b: 156–7; Hodges, Reference Hodges1997: 74–6). However, a slightly earlier or later date for this phase cannot now be ruled out. The archaeology of phase 3c is readily identifiable. Lime mortar was now used in construction and in significant amounts to make a much more architecturally imposing ambulatory for the principal church (Hodges and Mithen, Reference Hodges, Mithen and Hodges1993: 134, fig. 9.9). This church, with its distinctive apsidal end, it was argued in San Vincenzo 2, belongs to a new monastic plan; with more archaeological evidence now available, this hypothesis now appears to be confirmed to have been the case. On its south side, separated by a garden, elements of a claustrum were constructed (Fig. 1). Beyond, almost certainly extending southwards some hundred metres, other buildings made of pisé also were erected now (Marazzi, Reference Marazzi, De Rubeis and Marazzi2008: fig. 6; Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell, Reference Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell2011: 129–35, 412–13, fig. 5.3) (Fig. 2).
Fig. 1. Plan of San Vincenzo phase 3c (including wall 468), showing the hypothetical location of the dormitory and the abbot's house or palace. (Plan by Sarah Leppard.)
Fig. 2. Plan of San Vincenzo phase 3c showing the location of the pisé buildings south of San Vincenzo Maggiore. (Plan by Sarah Leppard.)
Let us look at these elements in detail. There is no conclusive evidence for the existence of the Garden Court in this period (Riddler, Reference Riddler and Hodges1993a: 192). On the other hand, this area appears to have been a courtyard or garden in the late antique period, so it can be presumed to have been retained as an open space in the eighth century, essentially separating the abbey-church, San Vincenzo Minore, on its north side, from the Refectory to the south (Hodges, Reference Hodges and Hodges1995b: 157). The outer south wall of the ‘South Church’ (the ninth-century Palace) probably defined the north side of the garden (Hodges and Mithen, Reference Hodges, Mithen and Hodges1993: 172). The Refectory defined the south side of the garden, and on the west side, wall 468, a well-mortared wall (in construction similar to the ambulatory apse of San Vincenzo Minore), apparently extended southwards from San Vincenzo Minore and appears to have continued to become the west side of the phase 3c Refectory (Fig. 1) (Hodges et al., Reference Hodges, Coutts, Gibson, Mitchell and Hodges1995: 66–7; Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell, Reference Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell2011: 4–6).
South of the Garden Court, we proposed in San Vincenzo 2, lay the earliest (phase 3c) Refectory (Hodges et al., Reference Hodges, Coutts, Gibson, Mitchell and Hodges1995: 66–7). As already mentioned above, the new excavations by Suor Orsola Benincasa have confirmed this. This building, we now know, was exactly as was hypothesized: 21 m long and 11.6 m wide (Fig. 3), that is approximately twice as long as it was wide. Built with rubble walls and friable mortar, its construction differed from the well-made phase 3c mortared walls of the ambulatory apse of San Vincenzo Minore and indeed wall 468. However, tellingly, unlike the phase 3c buildings found to the south, below San Vincenzo Maggiore, it was not constructed of pisé, presumably the vernacular form of this period. Whether it was roofed with thatch, as was proposed for the subsequent, much larger, phase 4 Refectory, or covered with tiles, is not known. None the less, this was a major building by the standards of the time, with sufficient space for two long tables about 15–20 m long (cf. Hodges et al., Reference Hodges, Coutts, Gibson, Mitchell and Hodges1995: 80; Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell, Reference Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell2011: 4–6). Taking 0.60 m as the space for each monk, there was seating for at least 20 m × 2 tables × 0.60 m per person = 66 monks, or if the monks sat on both sides of the table, double this number, 132 monks. No other service building of this period is known in Italy, although we must assume large monasteries such as Monte Cassino and San Salvatore in Brescia, as well as major palaces like the Lateran, would have had refectories designed on this scale.
Fig. 3. Comparison of the phase 3c and phase 4 refectories. (Plans by Sarah Leppard; phase 4 after K. Francis in R. Hodges, San Vincenzo al Volturno 2: the 1980–86 Excavations Part II: fig. 4.23.)
Immediately to the east of the phase 3c Refectory, sealed below the floor level of the phase 4 enlarged Refectory, the first kitchen was discovered in the Suor Orsola Benincasa excavation campaigns (Carannante et al., Reference Carannante, Chilardi, Fiorentino, Pecci, Solinas, De Rubeis and Marazzi2008). Like the early Refectory, the kitchen also was built with rubble and mortared walls, a rectangular building that measured just under 10 m north–south, by approximately 5 m east–west. Remains of ash deposits associated with the ovens, displaced by phase 4 (ninth-century) hypocausts for the east end of the enlarged Refectory, were observed in the section below the phase 4 tile floors, on visiting the site.
This then begs the question of where the monastic dormitory was situated. There appear to be two options: either immediately west of the phase 3c Refectory, that is, a precursor of the phase 4 Assembly Room, or, alternatively, north of the kitchen.
Ample space existed for a dormitory west of the Refectory. If wall 468 marked the east side of a passage a metre or so wide, we might envisage a large room, of about 16 m (east–west) × 8 m (north–south), immediately to the west, which essentially filled the area of the later Assembly Room and extended as far as the back wall of the Upper Thoroughfare, where a substantial north–south wall made of rubble blocks and poor mortar was discovered in recent excavations; traces of this were found turning eastwards (that is forming the south wall of this building) beneath (the phase 4) steps 427 (Hodges, Reference Hodges and Hodges1995a: 22, fig. 2.4). A dormitory located here would have provided accommodation for the monks until, with the creation of the adjacent Upper Thoroughfare, a new, larger Dormitory (room CL/W) was created, alongside a large building that can be identified as the Abbot's House (room W/A) (Marazzi et al., Reference Marazzi, Filippone, Petrone, Galloway and Fattore2002: 263–4, tavv. 13, 17; Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell, Reference Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell2011: 421). Only then, in phase 4, with the existence of the new Dormitory, would the eighth-century dormitory have been demolished, at which point the new Refectory and Assembly Room would have been created (connected by a dog-leg passage via the Vestibule to San Vincenzo Minore, now reconfigured as a palace) (cf. Hodges, Reference Hodges and Hodges1995c: 1–3, fig. 1:3) (Fig. 1). Following this hypothesis, we propose that the tile-lined drain, belonging possibly to phase 3c and encased in the short phase 4 west wall of the Vestibule (wall 316; see Hodges, Reference Hodges and Hodges1995c: 1, figs 1.1–2), might have channelled effluent from an associated privy as well as roof water from the north side of the proposed phase 3c dormitory to the Garden Court. This drain would have continued eastwards, passing alongside the Refectory and then beneath the south side of the later Distinguished Guests' Refectory to end at the river-bank.
This proposed dormitory would have occupied an area of 128 sq. m and, following our hypothesis for the bed-plan of the phase 4 dormitory (Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell, Reference Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell2011: 453, fig. 10.12), using the Plan of Saint Gall as an index for the arrangement of the beds, there would have been space for approximately 40 beds.
An alternative location would have been below the later, phase 4 Distinguished Guests' Refectory — a refectory for the ninth-century palace complex — located on the river side of the Garden Court (Fig. 1). The recent excavations by Suor Orsola Benincasa have shown that a major building measuring between 12.4 m and 10.8 m east–west by approximately 8 m north–south, with lower walls constructed in substantial cut blocks of local travertine, pre-dated the Distinguished Guests' Refectory (and the outer south wall of ‘the South Church’, which clearly cuts and post-dates itFootnote 2), though its exact form is not clear (Fig. 4). Immediately beside, that is east of this major building, remains of four major contiguous timber structures aligned in a ‘saw-tooth plan’ (Marazzi, Reference Marazzi, Sauterel and Trümpler2010: 24) were found in 2008, when the river Volturno was drained. Each of these structures was braced into the riverside directly below this major building. This substantial building beside the river and the recently discovered timber structures made with sizeable beams merit further consideration.
Fig. 4. View of the northeast corner of the palace preceding the Distinguished Guests' Refectory and timber structures in the river Volturno. (Photo by Richard Hodges, November 2008.)
This exceptional block-built building lay beside the main entrance to the monastery over the Ponte della Zingara, and, being almost contiguous with San Vincenzo Minore, had easy access to the church. Given its scale, this was either a dormitory or a palace of some kind. A dormitory located here, of course, would have been a very public building. Such a location, it seems to us, being so prominent, was better suited to being either the abbot's house, later moved with the rearranging of the claustrum in the early ninth century to the Upper Thoroughfare, or alternatively the prototype for the phase 4 (early ninth-century) Beneventan royal palace that, it is now proposed, occupied the site of San Vincenzo Minore (the ‘South Church’) after c. ad 800 (Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell, Reference Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell2011: 434, 439–40). It is not possible to determine which interpretation is more likely, although this major eighth-century building, given its location next to the kitchen and the Garden Court, with privileged but separate access to the major church, possessed all the elements of the larger, grander palace complex.
But what are we to make of the four contiguous timber structures located directly beside this grand building? These make little sense as a wharf or wharves, as the river Volturno was navigable only by light craft for the length of the Rocchetta plain, a mere 3 km. An alternative interpretation is that these are the lower structures of four undershot water-mills that were braced by beams that passed beneath the stone-built building above. The mills would have been fed by a controlled channel taking water from the widened Volturno approximately 30 m to the south, past the mills, and to the west (that is left) of the stone bridge abutment for the Ponte della Zingara. Examples of single undershot mills have been found at Augsburg in Germany and Tamworth in England (Kind, Reference Kind and Henning2007; Rahtz and Meeson, Reference Rahtz and Meeson1992). The external wooden wheel would have been connected to a timber-framed building of two floors, with the grinding by millstones occurring on the upper floor. The close association of water-mills in this period with a major monastic building or even a palace is not at all surprising (cf. Lohrmann, Reference Lohrmann and Atsma1989), although the contiguous arrangement of the large, seemingly rather grand, stone building and the four mills next to it might suggest that the mills pre-existed this (phase 3c) stone building and were erected next to, but slightly separated from, an earlier (phase 3a–b), smaller version of the proposed palace.
One further issue: if this building was indeed a Beneventan palace as opposed to an abbot's house, we could conclude that the palace complex and the claustrum were already separate zones within a rectangular spatial arrangement in the later eighth century. Such a date is not inconsistent with Walter Horn's view that the medieval cloister was an invention of the age of Charlemagne, albeit in this case at San Vincenzo rather early in the period (cf. Horn, Reference Horn1973: 48; see also, Meyvaert, Reference Meyvaert1973). The palace comprising the Garden Court had ready access to the church, while the claustrum connected by a corridor (of which only wall 468 has survived) had its own access to the church through the later blocked south door found in the phase 3c south wall (Hodges and Mithen, Reference Hodges, Mithen and Hodges1993: 128, figs 9.6, 9.7, 9.9).
The other parts of the late eighth-century monastery still elude us. For example, where were the monks buried? Graves of this date were found beyond the west end of San Vincenzo Minore, although whether this was the main graveyard has yet to be substantiated (Wilkinson, Reference Wilkinson and Hodges1995: 87–8). Similarly, far to the south of this tightly arranged group of buildings, several pisé structures have been found beneath San Vincenzo Maggiore and immediately to the south of it. Did these more modest buildings, constructed in a vernacular form, serve as modest workshops as early as the later eighth century, or were these the very earliest phase 4 workshops, as has been presumed previously (Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell, Reference Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell2011: 129–35)? With the discovery of these pisé buildings, finally, it has become clear that we do not know what other ranges of buildings may have existed between the phase 3c Refectory and these pisé structures at the southern end of the monastery.
CONCLUSION
Little, then, remains of the later eighth-century monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno. However, notwithstanding its material poverty, the architectural ambition of the phase 3c ambulatory apse of San Vincenzo Minore, coupled with the evidence for a major monks' refectory with capacity for seating up to 50 monks, shows that San Vincenzo was already a significant centre at this time, as Paul the Deacon, then living at nearby Monte Cassino, recorded. The overall plan seems to have two different alignments: a new alignment comprising the kitchen, refectory and dormitory, linked by at least one corridor, grafted onto a pre-existing axis based on the location of the preceding late Roman buildings. This combination of plans, then, was the context for a major replanning of the monastery, following the intervention of the Beneventan court, in the years around 800, creating a palace complex overlying and in part reusing the earlier abbey-church, and a new abbey-church, San Vincenzo Maggiore, on the open ground to the south (Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell, Reference Hodges, Leppard and Mitchell2011: chapter 11). The vaunting ambition of this new ninth-century monastery is all the more remarkable because at its zenith the community of monks probably numbered only an estimated 110–20 in total. This was scarcely more than double the size of the later eighth-century monastery. It now appears, therefore, that the new monastic city of Abbots Joshua, Talaricus and Epyphanius embodied an architectural and historical rhetoric that had its origins in debates and aspirations that took place in the phase 3c monastic claustrum of the 780s. This discovery appears to support the growing body of archaeological evidence showing that prior to the late eighth century there was no apparent distinctiveness to monastic environments in Latin Christendom. However, before the beginning of the ninth century a major change occurred in these settlements, lending them a distinctiveness that they have retained to this day. As a result, archaeology, as in this case at San Vincenzo al Volturno, has now begun to open ‘a window onto a cognitive world barely adumbrated in the textual record’ (Dey, Reference Dey, Dey and Fentress2011: 25; cf. Bowes, Reference Bowes, Dey and Fentress2011).
