Abstract

This chapter examines Monte Cassino's long-standing reputation as a sacred mountain. It asks how the abbey conditioned, reinforced, and engendered its place in the history of the Western religious tradition. Its physical location and environment are critical to understanding its history of settlement and inhabitation, time and again, after repeated episodes of destruction and exile. But how exactly did the abbey achieve this sacralised status? And what historical conditions contributed to Monte Cassino's growth and prosperity beyond a localised influence? As argued throughout this chapter, the abbey's spiritual and historical allure are defining features of its past, demonstrating formative qualities for understanding the abbey's identity and sense of its own history, culture, and tradition.

Keywords: mountain; locus sanctus; library; scriptorium; reputation; Visitors

Monte Cassino was broken ground well before the advent of Christianity. At the mountain's base stood the ancient town of Cassinum, a Volscian settlement transformed from the third century BC into a flourishing site under Roman rule. ‘Antiquity reports that the well-known [Marcus Terentius] Varro, famed throughout so many generations and, as Cicero bears witness, the wisest of all the Romans, was the founder of this dwelling place.’ This ‘consul of the Romans’, the abbey's eleventh-century chronicler attests, ‘chose this place for himself out of all the places of the Roman Empire, built it up, and made it notable with many monuments. After his death, Caesar turned over the aforesaid Castrum Casinum to Antony.’

On the mountain's summit stood an ancient acropolis, which served more than a strategic military purpose. On this site there existed also ‘a very old temple [of Jupiter], in which the ignorant country people still worshipped Apollo as their pagan ancestors had done, and went on offering superstitious and idolatrous sacrifices in groves dedicated to various demons’. This area of worship was surrounded by groves and a portico, enclosed within the ancient walls, which defensive structures the Romans rehabilitated and fortified.

This sacred landscape changed with Saint Benedict's arrival in the early sixth century.