When a civilization ends, it does not leave behind a tombstone. Instead, it leaves stackings of stones (i.e. buildings.) We lose the remembrance of individual people, the things they said, did, and wrote, but we remember what they built because those things endure for much longer. The Ancient Greeks and Romans tell us about themselves through their Classical Architecture. We remember the Medieval period in Europe from its castles and Gothic Cathedrals. We remember the early 20th century from the Art Deco buildings it left behind. The style tells us something about their priorities, what they believed, what they knew, and what their hopes were. In a sense, the buildings a culture leaves behind are a kind of epitaph.
Let’s look through the structural epitaphs of our ancestors.
Abbey of San Galgano (Chiusdino, Tuscany, Italy)
Coordinates
43°8′57.87″N 11°9′20.26″E
Architecture
Style
Italian Gothic
Groundbreaking
1218
I sometimes look at ruins and think that they are a shadow of the building when it stood whole. Well, here’s my reaction to this place:
Wholly apart from the Italian Gothic ruins still being better looking than most modern building, this abbey has one of the most interesting and intriguing histories in all of Europe. It was built in the 13th century near the former hermitage of 12th century Saint Galgano Guidotti, a local saint and knight who is known for a very famous relic that survived the raiding and destruction of the abbey. The despoiling happened in the 14th century (so not that long after the abbey was finished) by the Englishman John Hawkwood.
Here’s the timeline. In 1181, Galgano (more on him below) died. In 1218, groundbreaking for the abbey occurred. It was completed around 1280 – roughly a century after Galgano’s death. The monastery was raided in 1363. It stood completed for less than a century before it began the process of becoming a ruin.
Something interseting transpired in all of this. Though the relic did not move, its legend seems to have left Italy with Hawkwood for England.
What was the relic? The Sword in the Stone. The real version is a bit different than the English one, though.
The son of a feudal lord, Galgano became a knight, and is said to have led a riotous life before his conversion. According to legend, while on the road near Siena, his horse threw him into the dust. An invisible angel, the archangel Saint Michael, lifted him to his feet and led him to Monte Siepi, a rugged hill close to his home town of Chiusdino. In a vision, he saw a round temple on the hill, with Jesus and Mary surrounded by the Apostles. The angel urged him to repent his sins, but Galgano protested that he could no more do this than to split a rock with a sword. To prove his point, he drew his blade and thrust at the stony ground, but the sword slid easily into the living rock, where it remains stuck fast to this day.
Galgano settled on the hill as a poor hermit. He befriended wild animals, and once, when the Devil sent a wicked monk to kill him, the wild wolves brought down the killer and gnawed his bones. He died in 1181 aged 33 years.
If you think about the effort necessary to build a large Gothic Abbey, and how quickly this one went up, then you’ll understand that Galgano’s story spread like wildfire locally. It’s likely he was a well-known holy many for the last years of his life. He was canonized only 4 years after his death – a relatively speedy process, even at the time. It takes time for legends to take root and to spread. This one happened quickly, though. That suggests that there was something tangible that did some legwork convincing people.
(more on the abbey, the relic, and the legent… via wiki)
The Abbey of Saint Galgano was a Cistercian Monastery founded in the valley of the river Merse between the towns of Chiusdino and Monticiano, in the province of Siena, region of Tuscany, Italy. Presently, the roofless walls of the Gothic style 13th-century Abbey church still stand.
The abbey formed around the site of the former hermitage of Galgano Guidotti (San Galgano), and construction of the church began around 1220, and was completed some six decades later. The abbey grew in wealth and became allied with the Republic of Siena. Monks from the abbey routinely served as Camarlinghi di Biccherna, i.e. high magistrates of the main financial institution of the republic.
However within a century, the republic failed to protect it from roving condottieri, and John Hawkwood and his men despoiled the monastery beginning in 1363. By the end of the 14th century, only the abbot remained in the monastery.
The abbey stayed impoverished and kept decaying for nearly four centuries. Cardinal Giuseppe Maria Feroni was abbot from 1765 to 1767. In 1786, the campanile fell, taking with it the roof of the church. The ruins were looted. Some restorations occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries, but the church remains a ruin. The long tall nave with its windows and an apse rose window still stand. The abbey’s chapter house and part of the scriptorium also remain.
The Rotonda chapel was restored in 1924 and retains its peculiar medieval shape, similar to earlier Ancient Roman mausoleums.
Perhaps if we are waiting for the return of King Arthur, we might be waiting in the wrong place if we are waiting in England. Or… maybe the legendary King’s realm was a bit more vast than we realize. Perhaps it spanned much of western Europe. He might have ruled in Italy and England. I’ll save that speculation for the Grail questers.
As is my custom, I am going to encourage you to view the virtual tour of this place. Even in a ruined form, it’s still beautiful.
