CHAPTER V.

GROTTA FERRATA AND MARINO.

(This is a very pleasant excursion from Rome, and may be taken between two trains from the Frascati station; or, both Grotta Ferrata and Marino may be visited in driving from Frascati to Albano.)

THE

HE great castellated monastery of Grotta Ferrata is only about two miles from Frascati on the slopes of the Alban hills. It is the only Basilian monastery in the Papal States, and its monks perform the service in Greek according to the Greek ritual. The story of its foundation is that of S. Nilus.

S. Nilus was a Calabrian Greek, born near Tarentum. He did not embrace a religious life till his old age, when his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, was dead, and then he became a Greek monk of the order of S. Basil, and soon was elected abbot of his convent.

Driven by the Saracens from the east of Italy, he fled with his brotherhood to Monte Cassino, where the abbot received them kindly, and appointed them a residence in the neighbourhood. While he was here, Aloare, widow of Pandolfo, Prince of Capua, who had incited her two sons to the murder of their cousin, came to S. Nilus to beseech absolution for her crime. He refused, unless she would yield up one of her sons to

the family of the murdered man, but she could not make up her mind to the sacrifice, upon which S. Nilus denounced her sin as unforgiven and foretold her punishment. Shortly after, one of the princes was assassinated in a church by his brother, who was himself put to death by order of Hugh Capet, King of France.

S. Nilus next took up his abode at Rome in the convent of S. Alexis, where he wrought many miracles, among others the cure of an epileptic boy. Rome was at this time distracted with internal dissensions, and had been besieged by the Emperor Otho III., who had persuaded Crescentius, Consul of Rome, by his false promises, to deliver up S. Angelo, and had there murdered him; and, putting out the eyes of Pope John XVI., had set up Gregory V. in his place. S. Nilus alone ventured to oppose the marauders, rebuking them as the enemies of God, and writing to the Emperor, "Because ye have broken faith, and because ye have had no mercy for the vanquished, nor compassion for those who had no longer the power to injure or resist, know that God will avenge the cause of the oppressed, and ye shall both seek for mercy and shall not find it.” He then fled to Gaeta, and afterwards to a cave at the spot now called Grotta Ferrata.

Two years after, Gregory V. died miserably, and Otho, on his knees at Grotta Ferrata, implored the intercession of Nilus, promising a rich endowment for his convent. But his offers were all sternly refused by the saint, who said with solemnity, that he asked nothing from him but that he would repent of his sins and save his own soul. A few weeks after, Otho was obliged to fly from the people, and was poisoned by the widow of Crescentius. Nilus had betaken himself in

1004 to the solitudes of Grotta Ferrata because of the certainty of canonization if he remained at Gaeta. Here, asleep in a grotto, he had a dream of the Virgin, who commanded him to build a church on that spot, placing a golden apple in the foundations, as a pledge of her protection. Nilus built the church, but first placed in the grotto, where he had received the mandate, a picture of the Virgin which he had brought with him from Gaeta, and guarded it with an iron railing, which gave it the name of Grotta Ferrata. S. Nilus died in the same year with Otho, commanding that his burial-place should be concealed, in order that no undue honours might be paid to his remains; but over the cavern where he had lived, his friend and successor Bartolomeo began to raise the church and castellated convent of Grotta Ferrata, in which, in memory of the Greek Nilus, the rule of S. Basil should always be followed, and mass celebrated in the Greek language. The Count of Tusculum protected the work, which rose rapidly, and the church was consecrated by John XIX., only twenty years after the death of its founder. Several of the popes resided here, especially the boy Pope Benedict IX. (nephew of the Count of Tusculum), who had resigned the honours of the Papacy, of which he was most unworthy, in 1033, at the entreaty of the first Abbot, S. Bartholomew. Pope Julius II. (Della Rovere) had been Abbot here, and began the buildings on which the Rovere oak may still be seen. He, the warlike Pope who commanded at the siege of Mirandola, built, as Abbot, the picturesque fortifications of the monastery. Benedict XIV. ordained that the Abbot, Prior, and Fathers of Grotta Ferrata should always celebrate in the Greek rite. The last Abbot Commendator was Cardinal Gonsalvi, who renounced the baronial juris

diction which had hitherto belonged to the abbots in 1816.

Grotta Ferrata, at a distance, looks more like a castle than a monastery. It is surrounded by walls with heavy machicolations and low bastion towers. Within, the greater part of the two courts have been modernized, but the church retains its campanile of the tenth century. In the atrium is a black cross supposed to mark the exact height of our Saviour, and a model of the golden apple given by the Virgin to S. Nilus and buried in the foundations of the belfry. Over the western door (now enclosed) is the inscription :

οἴκου Θεοῦ μέλλοντες εἰσβαίνειν πύλην
ἔξω γένοισθε τῆς μέθης τῶν φροντίδων
ἵν ̓ εὐμενῶς εὔροιτε τὸν κριτὴν ἔσω.

[Ye who would enter here the house of God
Cast out the leaven of pride and worldly thought
That kindly ye may find the Judge within.]

Above, is a very interesting mosaic of 1005, representing
the Saviour between the Virgin and S. J. Baptist, with a
small standing figure supposed to represent the Abbot S.
Bartholomew. The doors are beautifully carved. At the
end of the right aisle is a curious piece of perforated carving
found in the Campagna, and believed to have belonged
to a screen between the nave and choir through which the
voices of the monks could reach the congregation it is
inscribed with the names of the thirteen first abbots.
the end of the left aisle is the tomb of Pope Benedict IX.,
with the imperial eagle in mosaic, and above it two angels
with torches in their hands. In the middle of the floor is
an enormous dish of porphyry: it was broken by the French
in their attempts to remove it. Over the entrance of the
choir is a second mosaic, of the Twelve Apostles, with the

At

Saviour, typified by the Lamb, represented below, not on the throne. The high altar, decorated with two angels of the Bernini school, sustains a reliquary of bronze with agate pillars, which was intended for S. Peter's, but, being found too small, was given to Grotta Ferrata by Cardinal Barberini.

From the left aisle we enter the famous chapel of the first Abbot, S. Bartholomew. It is a parallelogram with a small dome over the east end. The wall on the left is occupied by the famous frescoes of S. Nilus praying before the crucifix; the visit of Otho III. to S. Nilus; and, in the choir, the healing of the demoniac by S. Nilus. The frescoes on the right represent Nilus and Bartholomew, who by their prayers avert a thunder-storm from the crops which husbandmen are gathering in; the building of the Monastery; and, in the choir, the vision of the Madonna who gives the golden apple. At the sides of the altar are: S. Eustace, because he was the protector of the Farnese family, and S. Edward, because of the name of the Cardinal who built the chapel. In the dome, beneath the figure of the Almighty, are the Roman saints, Agnese, Cecilia, and Francesca Romana. All the frescoes are by Domenichino. The altarpiece, representing Nilus and Bartholomew with the Virgin, is by Ann. Caracci. At the west end of the chapel is a curious urn used as a baptismal font.

"About the year 1610, when Cardinal Odoardo Farnese was Abbot of Grotta Ferrata, he undertook to rebuild a defaced and ruined chapel, which had in very ancient times been dedicated to the interesting Greek saints S. Adrian and his wife S. Natalia. The chapel was accordingly restored with great magnificence, rededicated to S. Nilus and his companion, S. Bartolomeo, who are regarded as the two first Abbots; and Domenichino, then in his twenty-eighth year, was employed to represent