The hermit movement and the use of caves for cult purposes. The journey of Saint Nilus toward Crypta Ferrata (Grottaferrata, Rome, Italy)

The present study retraces the journey made by Saint Nilus, the leading representant of Byzantine monasticism in Italy, to escape from the Saracen raids and from his own renown. He was a Basilian monk, hermit and abbot. He founded the Greek monasticism with the aim of restoring the unity between the Churches of the East and the West. He stayed on for about twenty years in the Mercurion, a territory in the Pollino where the Greek-Oriental monasticism flourished for many centuries. With his disciples he founded many monasteries, but Nilus always preferred rocky shelters and natural caves: places where he had the privilege of isolation for praying and meditating. Traces of these structures can still be found, sometimes evident, sometimes vague, which allow to make conjectures on his passage. In 2004, on the occasion of the millenary of Saint Nilus' death, the speleological groups Egeria CRS and A.S.S.O. (Rome) undertook a campaign of speleological investigations in the Abbey of Saint Nilus in Grottaferrata, with the purpose of finding the graves of the founders Nilus and Bartholomew. After completing this study, some researchers of the Egeria CRS went on with the investigations on Saint Nilus retracing the journey which led him from Rossano Calabro to Grottaferrata. In this paper the various locations are dealt with following the original route made by the Saint (fig. 1). The research has been mainly a geographic and speleologic one, since the evidences of Saint Nilus passage on the Italian territory are scarce and due mainly to local scholars (except for Saint Mary Abbey in Grottaferrata), at variance with the countless traces left by the disciples of Saint Benedict and Saint Francis. Saint Nilus is known for his sober and ascetic lifestyle: he used to dedicate the whole day to prayers, to the reading of religious books and to copying manuscripts. He also had contacts with the powerful of the Earth and, according to some sources (Pepe, 1966), also a precise political role, saving the papacy from becoming feudal barons of Romans or Bishopric of the Saxons.