The hermitage of Santo Spirito in Majella. Vocation place of Pietro Celestino | AgenSIR

“Only through sacrifices and tribulation is the soul educated to virtue”. (Fra Pietro Angelerio). Everyone comes from a particular experience or life and chooses silence for needs that others do not have. This inevitably leads him to give himself a rule of life that is different from that of another. John Chrysostom wrote: “Jesus Christ does not use the name of a layman, nor that of a monk. […] it is therefore a monstrous mistake to believe that the monk should lead a more perfect life, while others can help but worry about it […]. Those who live in the world and the monks must arrive at an identical perfection ”(Against the opponents of the monastic life 3,14).
In a society where, to quote JRR Tolkien, “iron wheels spin continuously, hammers beat and plumes of smoke emanate from the pipes”, in the mountains of Abruzzo, today, as in past centuries, the Abbey of Santo Spirito a Majella keeps intact the austere essentiality of the ancient hermitages, where time seems to have stopped. It is precisely in places like these that the words of Jesus come to life: “If these were silent, the stones would cry out” (Lk 19, 40). Being able to enjoy an ideal place to live one’s spirituality is the rarest luxury of our contemporary society. Thanks to the assiduous commitment of the Ripa Rossa Cooperative, which manages the abbey complex since 2015, it is now possible not only to visit the monastic complex in its majesty and history, with the help of specific and competent guided services, but also to be able to enjoy the place through the experience of a secular hermitage, where you can spend time away from the noise of everyday life. The current guesthouse, called the Casa del Principe, is a legacy of Marino IV, Duke of Castel di Sangro, Marquis of Bucchianico and belonged to the Caracciolo family.
The Abbey of Santo Spirito a Majella brings to light one of the greatest Abruzzo anchorites: S. Pietro Celestino, born Pietro Angelerio but known as Pietro del Morrone, who made his home in the Abruzzo lands, his place of research of Truth and community life. Vincenzo Zecca, historian and writer born in Chieti in 1832, presents Catholic monasticism in Abruzzo in this way: “Catholic monasticism, almost as old as Christianity itself and as holy as it is, although it had sometimes had vices to pity and detractors to fighting, also a beneficial minister of civilization has always been always reputed ”. Abruzzo, a harsh, difficult, grim yet blessed land. A massif loved by shepherds, charcoal burners and hermits, the Majella mountain is considered a real sacred mountain, the scene of stories of very strong spiritual vocations that have changed the course of the history of the Church itself. Among these personalities Pietro del Morrone is certainly among those who most stands out in the caverns of history.
He was born near Isernia in 1210, from a peasant family; when he was very young he entered the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria in Faifoli in Campobasso, however, almost immediately realizing that he was not suitable for monastic life. He therefore decides to go to Rome, to the Pope, to ask him for permission to live as a hermit. His desire for absolute silence and meditation led him to an isolated cave on Mount Morrone, above the Municipality of Sulmona. In 1240 he moved to Rome, presumably near the Lateran, where he studied until he was ordained a priest and then returned to Mount Morrone, in another cave near the small church of Santa Maria di Segezzano. Five years later he also abandoned this place to take refuge in an even more inaccessible place on the Majella mountains, in Abruzzo, a place known today as the Hermitage / Abbey of Santo Spirito a Majella, in the Municipality of Roccamorice (Pe). It is here that in 1244 Pietro del Morrone built the first hermit nucleus of what would become the Celestine Order over time. The Abbey, immersed in a unique landscape and naturalistic context and located at an altitude of about 1132 m asl, was built along a limestone wall surrounded by a majestic beech forest, in the heart of the central Abruzzese Apennines. Vincenzo Zecca writes on the place: “Eternal ice, deep valleys, dark caves, thunderous streams fill the soul with that mystical terror that usually reminds us of the love of the good: and the immense families of animals, vegetable gods and mineral gods are concerned with mount as the principal theater of the Creator’s magnificence; they confuse our intellect, and with ineffable enthusiasm of admiration we allow ourselves to be screamed: “Oh how great are your works; with what wisdom You made them; how the earth is full of your omnipotence ”. Just two years after his arrival, the Church was also built and dedicated to the Holy Spirit, following a legendary vision that occurred at dawn on 29 August 1248, the day of the Beheading of John the Baptist: a white dove would have left a scroll at his feet by Pietro del Morrone on which it was written: “in this place you will build the Church in honor of the Holy Spirit”.
It was in 1264 that Pope Urban IV, with the Bull Cum sicut, recognized the brotherhood founded by Peter, the Brothers of Santo Spirito, a legitimate order and delegated the then bishop of Chieti Nicola De Fossa, with a brief, to recognize this order and to incorporate it into the Benedictine Order. The following day, with the bull Sacrosancta Romana Ecclesia, the Pontiff granted the community apostolic protection and confirmed its assets.
About ten years after the approval by the Pontiff, and more precisely in 1274, Pietro dal Morrone went on foot to Lyon, France, where the work of the Council of Lyon II, wanted by Gregory X, was about to begin to prevent that the monastic order he founded himself was suppressed. The mission was successful because the fame of holiness that accompanied the hermit monk was great, so much so that the Pope asked him to celebrate a mass in front of all the Council Fathers, telling him that: “[…] no one was more worthy of it ”. On March 22, 1275 Pope Gregory X granted the community a privilege that sanctioned the passage of what was called the Ordo Sancti Spiritus de Majella from a hermit reality to a constituent monastic order, within the composite Benedictine order. The following years saw the radicalization of his ascetic vocation and his detachment more and more from all contacts with the outside world, until he was convinced that he was about to leave earthly life to return to God. However, the dependent monasteries from Santo Spirito to Majella they spread rapidly in Abruzzo, Molise and Lazio.
Thus it was that in 1292 on the death of Pope Nicholas IV, the Conclave met in the same month, at that moment made up of only twelve cardinals who became eleven due to the death of a cardinal. The conflict between the Colonna and the Orsini paralyzed the Conclave for over two years. The long stasis ended with the election as Pontiff of Pietro del Morrone, which took place in Perugia on July 5, 1294, an election due to his reputation for holiness, no less than to the influence of Charles II of Anjou. At the throne he took the name of Celestino V, being consecrated in the basilica of Santa Maria in Collemaggio on 29 August 1294. He went down in history a few months later as the Pope of the great refusal: now very old, increasingly aware of being inadequate to because he was inexperienced in political matters and lacking in administrative skills, he wanted to abdicate on 13 December 1294, encouraged by the then cardinal Benedetto Caetani. The latter then became his successor with the name of Boniface VIII, who at first had him supervised and subsequently, following an attempted escape, confined him to the castle of Monte Fumone in Lazio. It is in this place that Pietro died on May 19, 1297.
Dante Alighieri clearly alludes to the renunciation of the Petrine ministry of Celestine V and the deceptive advice of Benedetto Caetani that would have determined it in the Inferno of the Divine Comedy: “He who made the great refusal for cowardice” (Inf. III 59-60) . In fact, Dante reproached Celestino for having favored, with his renunciation of papal dignity, the ascent to the papacy of the hated Boniface VIII, the architect with his plots of the political exile of Dante himself. Certainly Francesco Petrarca is of a completely different vision, who applauds Peter’s gesture in De vita solitaria, believing that “his work should be considered as that of a very high and free spirit, who knew no impositions, of a truly divine ”as well as the son of a correct evaluation of one’s limits. On May 5, 1313, Pope Clement V canonized Celestine V, convinced by the reputation of holiness expressed by the people.
However, despite Celestine’s death, the order he founded continued to expand and grow. After a few centuries of abandonment, the Abbey of Santo Spirito a Majella once again saw splendor thanks to the Celestinian monk Pietro Santucci from Manfredonia, who in 1586 obtained from Pope Sixtus V the consent to the rebuilding and expansion of what had been the original place erected by Pietro del Morrone. Vincenzo Zecca testifies to this by writing: “At the turn of 1586, Santucci, when he was not counting twenty-four years, alone but guided by the Spirit of God, ascended the crags of the Nicate. He prostrated himself reverently on that ground still imprinted with those footsteps of the Holy Archimandrite: he kissed the relics of the exalted Sanctuary, and thanks referring to God for having led him there for such a holy purpose, he went all in tears of tenderness. He began by returning the sacred Temple to religious worship, removing with great effort the shepherds, whom he found reluctant to give up the unjust and profane right of occupation. He then prepared himself for major works with an austere regime of life, consuming the days in continuous prayer, and cruelly disciplining his body, to which he granted no other nourishment than the herbs supplied to him by the mountain; other bed than the bare earth “.
Thanks, therefore, to Pietro Santucci the reality of Santo Spirito a Majella had new life: the whole building was restored and enlarged with a subdivision into two floors: in the lower floor the Church, the refectory and the common places; on the upper floor the real convent with the cloister and the bell tower. Higher still, an oratory dedicated to Mary Magdalene was erected. Having done this, the place was soon home to a large number of monks, thus becoming a place of Christian pilgrimages. Thus it was that in 1616 the then Pope Paul V raised Santo Spirito a Majella to the title of Badia with Santucci, the first Abbot of Santo Spirito. Thanks to Pope Benedict XIV in 1742 Santo Spirito received the same privileges as Loreto, Montecassino and Subbiaco, or the possibility of “Forgiveness”.
The subsequent Napoleonic suppressions of 1807 decreed a state of general abandonment of the place, aggravated by a fire in 1820. It will be necessary to wait until 1893 when Domenico Bonfitto of San Marco in Lamis restored the church and restored the practice of forgiveness still in force today.