Memoria religiosa, amnesia storica : Arminio, Arcelli, Tornamira nella congregazione cassinese

The article recalls the human and spiritual story of three Benedictine monks of the Congregazione Cassinese who lived in different places and times between the second half of the sixteenth century and the end of the seventeenth century. They are: the Neapolitan Girolamo Arminio (1559-1626), a notable figure of ascetic and exorcist surrounded, but only briefly, by a strong reputation for sanctity; the Emilian Clemente Arcelli, friend and contemporary of Arminio, of whom he was confessor for many years and who was the first to take care to pass on his memory; finally the Sicilian scholar Pietro Antonio Tornamira (1618-1681), author half a century later of a hagiographic narrative printed in Palermo in 1674, but soon withdrawn from the market due to subsequent censorship measures.

The set of sensitivities that shines through not only from the biographical data relating to these characters, but even more from its representation on a literary level, highlights some characteristics of Cassinese monastic religiosity which - beyond the more usual historiographical insistence on a certain ‘modern' attitude and rational in approaching the themes of faith which is said to have been peculiar to black monks - reveals the co-presence of elements of a warmer and more emotional spirituality, which is intertwined with a devotion that is sometimes even material and exhibited. [Publisher's text]