La Trinita della Cava - accessing the charter trove of Southern Italy
Hi everyone,
I just wanted to post here to share my great hope -- and anxiety -- of potentially exploring the contents of the most extensive collection of medieval charters in South Italy.
The briefest of backstories: La Trinita della Cava is a Benedictine abbey nestled in the hills just north/northwest of Salerno, a little ways down the Italian coast from Naples. Like most events from this era, the story of its foundation is disputed. Tradition holds that Alferius, a disillusioned monk whose pedigree included service to Guiamar, Prince of Salerno and an extended stint at Cluny, "founded" the abbey around 1010-1011, when he and a couple of other monks retreated to a cave in the hills to undertake the hermetic way. A surviving foundation charter exists from 1025, leading some to hold the belief that the abbey was simply founded by the Lombard Salernitan princes for political reasons. Personally I have a feeling it was a bit of both.
The abbey thrived in the latter half of the 11th century under the invading Norman rulers, who were eager to win the favor (and wield the power) of the local church, becoming great patrons of abbeys like Cava and Montecassino, granting them huge amounts of land and churches across South Italy (even in Sicily) in the process. The foundation of the Kingdom in 1130 only cemented their status.
While there's lots to admire about the abbey, its claim to fame in the modern era is the survival of a dazzlingly extensive collection of medieval charters, including investitures, legal cases, marriages and births and deaths, etc.
And to make a long story only slightly shorter, I reached out to the abbey to arrange a visit while I'm in the area later this month, hoping to conduct a little independent research there. I'm waiting anxiously for a reply, so to abate that anxiety, I decided to post this. It isn't really working.