Monte-Casino — Chambers's Encyclopaedia

Monte-Casino, the monastery built (529) by St Benedict, founder of the great Benedictine order, stands on beetling cliffs, in a magnificent situation, 70 miles by rail NW. of Naples and 92 SE. of Rome. It has been four times destroyed—in 589 by the Longobards, in 884 by the Saracens, in 1030 by the Normans, and in 1349 by an earthquake. It was dissolved in 1866; but a few monks still remain. In 1313 the abbot was elevated to episcopal rank, and from 1504 he was official 'head of all the abbots of the Benedictine order.' The existing church, replacing one erected in 1066, was built in 1727, and possesses an 11th-century Byzantine bronze portal, mosaics, frescoes, carvings, &c. The former monastic buildings contain valuable archives, a picture-gallery, a library of 40,000 volumes, 30,000 charts, 500 incunabula, and a seminary. See Tosti, Storia della Badia di Monte Cassino (1843), Archivio Cassinese (1847), and Mackey's Life of Bishop Forbes (1888).