The Abbey of San Nicola di Casole, a bridge between East and West

A few kilometers south of Otranto, the remains of the monastery of San Nicola di Casole tell of one of the most important places in Salento, and perhaps in Southern Italy, on a historical, artistic and cultural level.

The monastery was built by order of Bohemond I, Prince of Antioch and Taranto, firstborn son of the Norman Robert Guiscard, Duke of Puglia and Calabria, at the end of the 11th century AD.

The Normans had conquered southern Italy a few decades earlier, taking it from the control of Byzantium. In a political act aimed at making relations between the new rulers and the Orthodox clergy more peaceful, they donated vast tracts of land where an important Basilian monastery arose, that is, governed by monks who followed the rule of Basil the Great.

On the site there already existed altars, crypts and huts where the monks went to pray (casole, in the Salento dialect, hence the name S. Nicola di Casole).

Il monastero ospitò un circolo di poeti in lingua greca, guidato dall’abate Nettario, a cui appartennero anche Giorgio di Gallipoli, Giovanni Grasso e Nicola di Otranto, figure di spicco dell’Umanesimo italo-bizantino nel Salento.

One of the richest libraries in Europe was created in the monastery, with numerous Greek and Latin volumes, almost all the knowledge of the time.

Over the years, the monastery grew in importance at a national and international level.

Its fame reached its peak when, in the 13th century, it became the first “public” school in Terra d’Otranto with the first “Student House” in Europe attached.

This institution attracted young people from all over the old continent, to whom it offered lessons in numerous disciplines: astronomy, music, rhetoric, grammar, theology, philosophy and natural sciences.

This fascinating place of study also increased its prestige thanks to the existing “Scriptorium”, from which, between the 13th and 14th centuries, the codices of the writings of John of Damascus, Gregory of Nazianzus and Cyril of Alexandria emerged.

The monks masterfully copied classical texts, and these works reached the major theological institutes of the East, in cities such as Constantinople, Alexandria, and Athens.

The Casolani codices are today kept in the most well-known and well-stocked medieval libraries in the world: Vatican (Rome), Marciana (Venice), Medicea (Florence), National (Madrid), Sorbonne (Paris), etc.

The history of the monastery of San Nicola di Casole reached its saddest epilogue when, in 1480, the Turks landed on the coast of Salento, occupying Otranto and raiding the entire surrounding territory. The Basilian monastery was the first to submit to the will of the Ottomans and to such an unfortunate fate. Today, only ruins remain. Something was saved, however, thanks to the work of Sergio Stiso, a Greek humanist, and Cardinal Giovanni Bessarione, a diplomat and man of culture, patriarch of Constantinople, who, fearing its destruction, removed and brought with him to Rome some of the best Greek-Byzantine manuscripts kept in Casole, which in 1468 flowed into the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice.

In this monastery, the Greek-Hydruntine mosaicist Pantaleone was very likely trained, leaving us one of the most important and theologically controversial testimonies of his time, a time in which Casole incredibly succeeded in becoming a bridge between East and West: the floor mosaic of the Cathedral of Otranto, a 12th-century masterpiece.

Today, only a few ruins of Casole can be admired. The rectangular plan remains legible, with parts of the perimeter walls and the apse, almost intact. The meeting points between the sides were finely decorated, in the corners, with ribs, typical of the Gothic. The apse is semicircular.

There remains a small mysterious fresco, depicting a bearded character who raises his hands, angrily, towards the sky. That to see what remains of this noble forgotten story would be tempting to imitate him.