Villa Magna

: "See also Villamagna for the Italian commune in Abruzzo": "Villamagna" is the medieval name for the site

Villa Magna is the ancient name of a large imperial Roman villa near the modern town of Anagni, in Lazio. The site lies in the Valle del Sacco some 40 miles south of Rome, at the foot of the Monti Lepini, directly under the peak known as Monte Giuliano. The toponym 'Villamagna' remains attached to the site, attesting to the local memory of the imperial villa and its successive occupation as a monastery and lay community.

In Antiquity

The villa was probably originally constructed in the second century. In AD 144-5, at the age of 23, Marcus Aurelius visited the villa where his adoptive father Antoninus Pius was staying. In letters to his tutor, Fronto, he describes two days spent there:

We set out to hunt, did great deeds; we did hear that boars had been captured but saw nothing ourselves. We did climb a steep enough hill; then in the afternoon we came home, I to my books. So taking off my boots and my clothes I read on my bed for two hours Cato’s oration On the property of Pulchra and another in which he impeached a tribune. It is no good sending me books, for these have followed me here….

We are well. I overslept a little, because of my slight cold, which seems to have calmed down. From five until nine I read Cato’s "Agricultura" and wrote, less badly, thank god, than yesterday. Then I paid my respects to my father….Having cleaned my throat I went to my father and assisted him at sacrifice. Then I went to lunch. What do you think I ate? Just a little piece of bread, but I saw others devouring beans, onions and herrings filled with roe. Then we gave ourselves to the vintage, and sweated together and were joyous and so on, and as the author says ‘ we left some high bunches on the vines’. At the sixth hour we came home.

I studied a little and badly. Then with my little mother sitting on the bed I chattered a lot… The gong rang, that is, it was announced that my father was going to the bath. Then we, bathed, ate in the oil pressing room – we didn’t bath in it, but had dinner having bathed, and happily heard the peasants jesting.

(Latin text: (Fronto iv. 5)2. "Ad venationem profecti sumus, fortia facinora fecimus, apros captos esse fando audimus, nam videndi quidem nulla facultas fuit. Clivom tamen satis arduom successimus; inde postmeridie domum recepimus. Ego me ad libellos. Igitur calceis detractis, vestimentis positis, in lectulo ad duas horas commoratus sum Legi Catonis orationem De bonis Pulchrae et aliam qua tribuno diem dixit. …. Frustra mittis, nam et isti libri me secuti sunt. …"(iv. 6)1. "Nos valemus. Ego aliquantulum prodormivi, propter perfrictiunculam, quae vedetur sedata esse. Ego ab undecima noctis in tertiam diei parti legi ex Agricultura Catonis partim scripsi, minus misere mehercule quam heri. Inde salutato patre meo…. Sed faucibus curatis abii ad patrem meum et immolanti adstiti. Deinde ad merendam itum. Quid me ceses prandisse? Panis tantulum, quom conchim caepas et maenas bene praegnatas alios vorantes viderem. Deinde uvis metendis operam dedimus et consudavimus et iubilavimus et aliquot, ut ait auctor,, reliquimus altipendulos vindemiae supersittes. Ab hora sexta domum rediimus. …"2. "Paululum studui atque id ineptum. Deinde cum matercula mea supra torum sedente multum garrivi…Discus crepuit, id est, pater meus in balneum transisse nuntiatus est. Loti igitur in torculari cenavimus : non loti in torculari, sed loti cenavimus : et rusticos cavillantes audivimus libenter".) [text translation, E. Fentress, http://www.villa-magna.org/about/introduction-to-the-site]

After the death of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius the property remained in imperial hands. An inscription, now preserved at the Cathedral of Anagni, attests to Septimius Severus's paving of a road leading from Anagni to the villa in 207. [CIL X, 5905] It remains to be determined how late the property remained in imperial hands after this moment in the early third century.

The site of the villa today shows little of its former splendour, though excavations are bringing to light the vast quantities of marble, mosaic and fresco which once decorated it. The remains visible above ground, covering at least a dozen hectares, consist of three ranges of cisterns fed by an aqueduct which probably leads from a spring at the base of the wooded hill, a range of substructures (underlying a nineteenth-century casale) which were the "basis villae" for some part of the ancient villa, and various traces of substructures on the long ridge running down from the casale towards the road.

In the Middle Ages

The earliest document attesting to the monastery dates from the tenth century and describes the foundation of the monastery by three nobles from Anagni. [The document is currently held at the Archivio capitolare di Anagni, no. 552B; C. Flascassovitti, "Le Pergamene del Monastero di S. Pietro di Villamagna (976-1237)". (Lecce, 1994).] A series of very interesting charters and trials from the eleventh through thirteenth century speak to a small rural monastery with properties in the area of the original "fundus", which despite its meagre size and income managed to become embroiled in regional and papal politics of the central middle ages, culminating in the suppression of the monastery in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII. After the death of the monastery, the village remained at least for a little while, however, as it is referred to as a "castrum" in 1301 and 1333, and a "castrum dirutum" in 1478. [R. Motta, “Decadenza del monastero di Villamagna dalla fine del XIII secolo,” in "Bollettino dell’Istituto di storia e di arte del Lazio meridionale" 11 ( 1979-1982), pp. 93-103.]

Current research

Since 2006, the site and its occupation in the Roman and medieval period are the focus of an international interdisciplinary project, sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Mediterranean Section), the British School at Rome, and the Soprintendenza ai Beni Archeologici del Lazio, with core funding from the 1984 Foundation, the Comune of Anagni and the BancAnagni Credito Cooperativo. The international project is directed by Elizabeth Fentress; with co-directors Andrew Wallace Hadrill (BSR) and Sandra Gatti (SBAL). Two years of research, conducted using remote sensing survey, open area excavation, field survey, and topographic survey conducted in collaboration with the Consiglio Nazionale della Ricerca Scientifica (CNRS) have revealed the majority of the plan of the Roman buildings, a spectacular wine-making/dining room complex (perhaps the same room described by Marcus Aurelius in his letter), what appears to be a service or staff quarter of the villa, and a complex, long-lived church and cemetery around the monastic church of S. Pietro in Villamagna.

Notes

External Links

[http://www.villa-magna.org The website of the excavation project]
[http://www.fastionline.org/record_view.php?fst_cd=AIAC_185 the preliminary report of the site at FastiOnline]

Bibliography

M. Mazzolani, Anagnia (Forma Italiae, Regio I, vol. 6) (Rome, 1969).
E. De Minicis, “Il monastero di Villamagna e il suo territorio nell’alto medioevo,” in Bollettino dell’Istituto di storia e di arte del Lazio meridionale 11 (1979-1982), pp. 59-75.
A. Scarpignato, “Villamagna dalla metà del secolo XII e i suoi rapporti con gli abitanti di Sgurgola e Gorga,” in Bollettino dell’Istituto di storia e di arte del Lazio meridionale 11 (1979-1982), pp. 77-91.
R. Motta, “Decadenza del monastero di Villamagna dalla fine del XIII secolo,” in Bollettino dell’Istituto di storia e di arte del Lazio meridionale 11 (1979-1982), pp. 93-103.
Monasticon Italiae. I. Roma e Lazio, ed. F. Caraffa (Cesena, 1981), pp. 122-3, n. 28.
S. Carocci, Ricerche e fonti sui poteri signorili nel Lazio meridionale nella prima metà del XIII secolo: Villamagna e Civitella, in "Il sud del Patrimonium Sancti Petri al confine del Regnum nei primi trent’anni del Duecento. Due realtà a confronto, Atti delle giornate di studi, Ferentino 28-29-30 ottobre 1994" (Rome, 1997), pp. 112-44.
C. D. Flascassovitti, "Le Pergamene del Monastero di S. Pietro di Villamagna (976-1237)" (Lecce, 1994).
M. De Meo, S. Pietro di Villamagna presso Anagni: una villa romana si trasforma in abbazia, Quaderni di architettura e restauro, 2 (Rome, 1998).
G. Giammaria, ed. Villamagna, Monumenti di Anagni 3 (Anagni, 1999).
E. Fentress, C. Fenwick, C. Goodson, S. Hay, M. Maiuro, “Excavations at Villa Magna,” Fasti Online Documents & Research: 97 [http://www.fastionline.org/docs/FOLDER-it-2007-96.pdf]
E. Fentress, S. Gatti, C. Goodson, S. Hay, A. Kuttner, M. Maiuro, “Excavations at Villa Magna,” Fasti Online Documents & Research: 68 [http://www.fastionline.org/docs/FOLDER-it-2006-68.pdf]