Trisulti Charterhouse, Italy

Trisulti Charterhouse

Rome [ENA] Famous monasteries are often built in stunning isolated settings, on mountaintops or perched on rocky promontories not incorporated into the scene of a city. Monks could escape religious persecution in the wilderness and could live a safe life from the struggles that infested the Italian peninsula and devote themselves to meditation and good works.In Italy there are many interesting monasteries and abbeys

San Bartolomeo Church in Trisulti Charterhouse

that can be visited, ranging from evocative ruins to monasteries still in use today where it is possible to take a tour, have lunch, or sometimes even spend the night. One monastery that is worth a visit is Trisulti Charterhouse (Italian: Certosa di Trisulti), a sacred site and temple complex, in the outskirts of the town of Collepardo, near the city of Frosinone, Central Italy, about 50 miles south-east of Rome . It is located on the slopes of Monte Rotonaria, a peak of the Monti Ernici, at 825 meters above the sea level. A first temple was founded in the site in 996 and some remains can be seen today not far from the current building.

The Choir made by monks

A first temple was founded in the site in 996 and some remains can be seen today not far from the current building. This famous and stately Carthusian monastery was founded by Pope Innocent III in 1204 in the middle of secular woods. This Pope was the most significant pope of the European Middle Ages and shaped a powerful and original doctrine of papal power expanding the authority of the pope over emperor, kings, princes, and bishops. Innocent III, assigned the monastery of Trisulti to the Carthusians and today it is full of history, art, and architecture. The birth of the Carthusians and the figure of their founder San Bruno are part of the renewed attraction that the ideal of hermit life exercised on Western spirituality

The pharmacy

in the 11th century. Carthusians were monks who were hermitic and their way of life stressed community life. The Charterhouses present themselves as centers in which the ascetic and contemplative life is practiced in an extremely rigorous way; life stability was glorified by Saint Bruno, in contrast to the wandering and disorderly hermitism of the period. Isolation from the civil life,communism and poverty, at least on an individual level were other characteristic of the inhabitants of the charterhouse. The name Trisulti could derive from Latin language meaning "at the three jumps": this was the name of a castle which commanded the three passes ("jumps") leading to Abruzzo, Rome and Ciociaria and the mountaintop location is truly unique

Ceiling of the church of San Bartolomeo

and almost mystical as it appears to be part of the Ernici mountains itself. The complex was enlarged and modified several times in the following centuries. The monastery is surrounded by a massive line of walls. The entrance leads to a central square where there is a guesthouse, commonly known as the "Palace of Innocent III" (including a portico, a terrace and a library of 36,000 volumes), and the church of San Bartolomeo (St. Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus according to the Bible: according to legends he was skinned alive and he is often depicted holding his flayed skin or the curved flensing knife with which he was skinned).

A wonderful object from the Abbey's Pharmacy

The abbey church, an art and archaeology museum, was built in 1211. The Façade of the abbey church had originally been a tall narrow Gothic-style building, but was largely rebuilt as a Baroque one. The new façade (1798) was designed by the italian architect Paolo Posi. The interior, like other Carthusian churches, is divided by a decorated wall (iconostasis) which sheltered the cloistered monks. The canvases depicting St John the Baptist and St Michael Archangel are copies replacing stolen originals painted by Cavalier D’Arpino, a painter much patronized in Rome by Popes. The concave ceiling was frescoed with the Glory of Paradise (1683) by the italian painter Giuseppe Caci.

The main altarpiece depicts an Enthroned Madonna and Child with St Bartholemew and St Bruno by Vincenzo Manenti. On the walls are 19th century canvases depicting scenes from the bible with ovals depicting blessed and holy Carthusian monks by the italian painter Filippo Balbi. The complex also includes an 18th-century pharmacy, on two levels; it is decorated by trompe-l'oeil frescoes and contemporary furniture. The garden facing the pharmacy was once a botanic garden and monks had a particular knowledge of about 2500 medicinal herbs of the region. They had even ‘secret recipes’. The rooms of the pharmacy have genre-themed frescoes by Filippo Balbi, a painter born in Naples, Southern Italy, in 1806.