Chiaravalle della Colomba

History

Cistercian monastery and village of the same name in the municipality of Alseno (province of Piacenza). The name Colomba (Dove) is said to come from a legend that a dove marked the site of the future abbey with a wisp of straw, although it is more likely to refer to the bird that symbolizes the Holy Ghost.

A daughter-house of Clairvaux, the abbey was founded in 1136 thanks to the intervention of the Bishop of Piacenza, Arduin, who asked St. Bernard, as the latter was returning from the Council of Pisa in 1135, for a colony of monks for an abbey to be built in his diocese. The canonical foundation of the, however, did not take place until February 1137. The first abbot was called John, and he went on to become Bishop of Piacenza. In the first two centuries of its existence, the abbey of Chiaravalle della Colomba founded numberous daughter-houses including: Fontevivo in the diocese of Parma in 1142; Quartazzola, or Santa Maria di Ponte Trebbia, in the diocese of Piacenza in 1217; Brondolo in the diocese of Chioggia in 1229; Santa Maria in Strada in the diocese of Bologna in 1250; and Valserena, or San Martino de’ Bocci, in the diocese of Parma in 1298.

The monastery’s prosperity took an initial blow when it was sacked by the armies of Parma, Cremona and Reggio Emilia during the invasion of Piacenza in 1214, but far worse was to come when destruction was visited upon the abbey by the troops of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Despite the monks’ personal appeal to the Emperor to protect the community, his army destroyed the cloister, while sparing church and chapter house. The abbey was put into commendation in 1444. In 1497 it was merged with the Lombard Province of the Cistercian Congregation of St. Bernard in Italy. In the baroque period the monastery was rebuilt in the style that can still be seen. It was suppressed for the first time in 1768, and attached to the Rome Province of the above-mentioned Congregation in 1786. In 1805 all its assets were taken over by the state, and in 1810 even the monks themselves had to leave the monastery. Soon after the monastery’s assets were made over to the civil hospice in Piacenza. The abbey and the parish were entrusted to the care of the Cistercian Congregation of Casamari in 1937 thanks to the efforts of Monsignor Bertuzzi, the then parish priest.

The church still maintains for the most part the original Lombard romanesque lines in which one can begin to perceive elements of the gothic style alongside others in the local architectural idiom. It comprises a nave of four bays and two side-aisles of eight; the rib vaulting in the nave and groin vaulting in the side-aisles are divided into bays by a series of large round arches in juxtaposed brick and stone, but the two side chapels to the right of the chancel and the transept in front of it are covered by pointed barrel vaults. Most of the church is built in brick, with a light-coloured stone being used to pick out decorative details and white plaster to conceal the building’s jointed brick courses. The arcades are supported by piers that are square in section with half-shafts bonded in and flanked by setbacks; the half-shafts supporting the arches that break the nave up into four bays end at some distance from the ground, resting on conical corbels set in the piers; while those bonded into the piers that mark the intermediate stage between one bay and the next, thus breaking the side aisles up into eight bays, reach the ground but terminate in conical corbels placed upside-down and set at a given height into the walling midway along each bay of the nave. The capitals are decorated with archaic stiff-leaf patterns, or in some cases they are carved to resemble the keel of a boat with stylized vegetable and geometric designs. The typically Bernardine square-ended chancel is flanked by six chapels. The highest point of the vaults in the two chapels immediately adjacent to the presbytery is the same height as the nave, while the other four are considerably lower. The chancel is lit by a rose window comprising five oculi, set above two rounded single-light windows. The façade has a tripartite tympanum, split lengthwise by flat buttresses, decorated with projecting arches under a dog-toothed string course; the arches run above and below the rose window that is in turn surmounted by two bonded half-shafts flanking cross cut into the walling. In the center of the façade there is a decapartite rose window with marble spokes that in all likelihood dates back to the 13th century, as does the galilee porch built onto the façade. This porch echoes the tripartite tympanum motif with its four buttresses flanked by two open wings each containing a window divided into three equal lights surmounted by a projecting arch motif. Over the door leading into the church we find a lunette containing a 15th century fresco depicting the Virgin adoring the Christ Child. The cloister, built between the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th, is decidedly French in character. It is square and arguably one of the best preserved examples of a Cistercian cloister in terms of its wealth of pink brick and light coloured stone carved ornamentation. It is divided up into bays with rib vaulting in which the ribs are carried on the monastery side on corbels decorated with stiff-leaf and other botanical and geometrical motifs. Each bay frames a four light unglazed window giving onto the cloister garth; a series of intertwined arches runs above the windows on the side giving onto the garth, while a plain arch motif decorates the outside walls of the church. The chapter house collapsed in 1892 but was restored in 1917. It is divided up into three bays, and it has a splayed door comprising multiple mouldings embellished with brick and stone geometric motifs, standing between two large three light windows; the window on the left displays trefoil arches framed in a trefoil moulding, while the right hand window comprises three intertwined pointed arches resting on eight paired shafts and framed by two pointed arches, the nearside one being quinquefoil. The abbey is currently inhabited by a community of Cistercian monks with the Congregation of Casamari who are responsible also for running the adjacent parish under the monastery’s care.

Bibliography

BERTUZZI G., L’abbazia cistercense di S. Maria della Colomba in Chiaravalle Piacentino, Fiorenzuola d’Arda, 1931.

BERTUZZI G., L’abbazia di Chiaravalle della Colomba attraverso i documenti di quattro secoli. Dalla fondazione alla istituzione della Commenda: 1135-1444, in “Archivio Storico per le Provincie Parmensi”, XXVII, 1927, pp. 17-49.

CORVI P. – SPINELLI G., S. Maria di Chiaravalle della Colomba, in Monasteri Benedettini in Emilia Romagna, Milano, 1980, pp. 83-95.

NASALLI ROCCA E., Note giuridiche sui documenti difondazione del Monastero di Chiaravalle della Colomba, in “Archivio Storico per le Province Parmensi”, XXVII, 1927, pp. 1-15.

RAPETTI A. M., La formazione di una comunità cistercense. Istituzioni e strutture organizzative di Chiaravalle della Colomba tra XII e XIII secolo, Roma Herder editrice e libreria 1999.

ROSSI G. F., La fondazione di Chiaravalle della Colomba prima abbazia di San Bernardo in Italia, Piacenza, 1954.

VALENZANO-GUERRINI-GIGLI, Chiaravalle della Colomba, Biblioteca Storica Piacentina, 3, Tip.Le.Co. 1994.

VITI G., Chiaravalle della Colomba, in “D.I.P.”, II, 1975, coll. 892-893.

Le antiche pergamene dell’Abbazia Cistercense di Chiaravalle della Colomba, Tip.Le.Co. 2010.

Notes

3-5-1937

Photos

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