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Subiaco – Innocent III’s Version of Elijah’s Cave
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
In Biblical history and Christian literature alike, caves or grottoes, those works of nature,’as if cut painstakingly but elegantly in the rocks or the cliff side without any tool’, have always played their significant part. Had not Benedict of Nursia, father of western monasticism, spent three years in eremitical solitude in just such a grotto beneath Monte Taleo in the Simbruini range of the Apennines? It was no surprise then that it was to this, the Sacro Speco or Holy Cave, that Innocent III (1198–1216) came in person during the summer of 1202. Drawn to Subiaco in no small part by his reading of Book II of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, in which his distinguished papal predecessor had described Benedict’s Life and Miracles, Innocent’s visit was notable on several counts.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 46: God’s Bounty? The Churches and the Natural World , 2010 , pp. 111 - 123
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2010
References
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