San Vincenzo al Volturno

San Vincenzo al Volturno is an historic Benedictine monastery located in the territories of the Comunes of Castel San Vincenzo and Rocchetta a Volturno, in the Province of Isernia, near the source of the river Volturno in Italy. The current monastery, housing a group of American nuns, is located to the east of the river, while the archaeological monastery of the early Middle Ages was located on the west.

The medieval history of the monastery appears in the Chronicon Vulturnense, an illuminated manuscript. A monk of the monastery, Iohannes, composed the Chronicle in circa 1130, using sources from the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries which were available to him, probably in the monastery archives, as well as hagiographic inclusions about some of the historic figures. The aims of the Chronicle may have been to codify the memory of the community and its history in the face of Norman expansion in southern Italy. The manuscript, written in a Beneventan hand and including numerous images, is housed at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, BAV Barb. lat. 2724.

The monastery has been the subject of long-running archaeological investigation, which took place in a number of campaigns. In the 1970s Dom Angelo Pantoni, a monk from Monte Cassino excavated the area to the east of the river, where the later medieval monastery was built. The San Vincenzo Project began in 1980, led by Richard Hodges, then of the University of Sheffield, and the Soprintendenza archaeologica del Molise. Excavation continued between 1980-1986, in the area around the so-called Crypt of Epiphanius and the monastery on the west side of the river Volturno. These scientific excavations continued through the 1980s and 1990s under the direction of Hodges and with the support of the British School at Rome, the abbey of Monte Cassino, and the Soprintendenza archaeologica del Molise. From 1999, the project has been directed by Federico Marazzi, of the Istituto Universitario Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples.

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