Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps and Charts
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Note on the Organisation and Publication of the Cava Archive
- Dates
- Currency, Weights and Measures
- The Abbots of Cava, c. 1020-1300
- Maps
- I The Family of Vivus Vicecomes
- Introduction
- Part I The Abbey of Cava
- Part II Society and Economy
- Conclusions
- Appendix: Purchase and Expenditure by the Abbey of Cava, at Selected Periods between 1175 and 1230
- Bibliography
- Index
- Other volumes in Studies in the History of Medieval Religion
1 - The Origins of the Abbey of Cava: From Hermitage to Monastery
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps and Charts
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Note on the Organisation and Publication of the Cava Archive
- Dates
- Currency, Weights and Measures
- The Abbots of Cava, c. 1020-1300
- Maps
- I The Family of Vivus Vicecomes
- Introduction
- Part I The Abbey of Cava
- Part II Society and Economy
- Conclusions
- Appendix: Purchase and Expenditure by the Abbey of Cava, at Selected Periods between 1175 and 1230
- Bibliography
- Index
- Other volumes in Studies in the History of Medieval Religion
Summary
We are, unfortunately, almost entirely dependent for what we know about the foundation and early years of the abbey of Cava on a hagiographical work, The Lives of the First Four Abbots of Cava. This was written by Peter, Abbot of Venosa, a former monk of Cava who was sent with a group of twelve fellow monks to reform the moribund abbey of Venosa in the Basilicata in 1141. Peter may well have written the bulk of this text while still a monk at Cava, but even so this was still more than a century after the beginnings of the abbey, and at least eighty years after the death of its founder. For the earlier part of this work, concerning the first two abbots, our author seems to have been dependent on stories about them which had been handed down orally. Some of these were undoubtedly in circulation as early as the 1070s, when Abbot Desiderius of Montecassino recounted stories about two of the miracles attributed to Abbot Alferius, both of which were later included in Peter’s account, in his Dialogues about the Miracles of St Benedict. Desiderius claimed to have had one of these tales directly from Abbot Leo, and he himself had very briefly been a monk at Cava in the late 1040s before entering Montecassino, so it is possible that they were circulating during the lifetime of Alferius. But we still have to take the account of the latter’s early career given by Peter very much on trust.
According to this, Alferius was a favoured courtier of the prince of Salerno – unnamed in the account, but clearly Guaimar III, ruler from 999 onwards. Since he was an aspiring scholar, he was presumably a cleric, although this is not made explicit. The prince sent him on a diplomatic mission to the king of Germany, but while he was approaching the Alps he fell dangerously ill at the monastery of St Michael at Chiusa. By chance a famous French abbot, Odilo of Cluny, was also there, and Alferius, thinking that he was dying, begged him to give him the monastic habit and admit him as a monk of Cluny. When he recovered, he went back to Cluny with Odilo and joined the community there.
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- Information
- The Social World of the Abbey of Cava, c. 1020-1300 , pp. 13 - 24Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021