Origin from 530
Monte Cassino is a Benedictine monastery on a rocky hill about eighty miles southeast of Rome in Italy's Lazio region, near the town of Cassino, founded around 529 by Benedict of Nursia as the first house of the Benedictine order and the community for which Benedict composed his Rule. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries it flourished as a major center of learning and culture, producing three popes among its monks. The abbey was sacked repeatedly across its history, by the Lombards around 570, by Saracens in 884, and by French forces in 1799, but its most severe destruction came on 15 February 1944, when Allied bombing during the Second World War nearly leveled the monastery and killed roughly 230 Italian civilians who had taken shelter inside. Rebuilt after the war, its basilica was reconsecrated by Pope Paul VI in 1964, and Monte Cassino continues today as a territorial abbey of the Catholic Church, with reduced jurisdiction following reforms in 2014 and a small resident community of monks.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Sources
1. Wikidata: Monte Cassino
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