Our Ambrosian writer Nicola de’ Grandi has been travelling on the Adriatic coast of Italy, in the Emilia Romagna region, and has a huge number of photos from visits to the churches of Ravenna, which we will be presenting over the next several weeks. We begin, however, with the abbey of St Mary in Pomposa, about 32 miles to the north of Ravenna, a beautifully preserved gem of the Italian Romanesque. The territory on which the abbey sits was originally an island, but the tributaries of the Po which surrounded it have long since dried up and disappeared. There were monastic communities in the area already in the 6th or 7th century; Pomposa Abbey is first mentioned in a letter of Pope John VIII to the Holy Roman Emperor Louis II in 874. The current abbey church was consecrated in 1026, but of course, like all churches of such an age, has undergone many alterations and decorative additions in the following centuries. It was an significant cultural center in the Middle Ages, not only for its important scriptorium, but also thanks to one of its monks, Guido d’Arezzo, the inventor of our modern system of musical notation. After a long period of decline, it was suppressed in 1653; in 1965, the title of abbot of Pomposa was united to the see of Comacchio, which itself was united to the archdiocese of Ferrara in 1986. The bell-tower, completed in 1063, is 48 meters tall (157½ feet.) As in many tall Romanesque structures, the number of windows increases in the upper stories, partly to reduce the weight of each level as it pressed down on the one beneath it.
New Liturgical Movement: The Abbey of Pomposa (Part 1)
New Liturgical Movement: The Abbey of Pomposa (Part 1)
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