“Clear, fresh and sweet waters”

Since antiquity the Colle Calvario, just outside the walls of the city of Perugia, was rich in water springs whose presence encouraged the settlement of the first Christian communities. Here rose the first basilica and cathedral of Perugia, dedicated to the prince of the Apostles, Saint Peter, together with the buildings that housed the Bishop and those charged with worship. This presence lasted at least five centuries until, in 966, Bishop Onesto gave the crumbling basilica to the monk Peter, who restored it and, on its southern side, built the Benedictine monastery. The presence in the basilica of the body of the holy bishop Ercolano and the nearness of the sanctuary dedicated to the holy martyr Costanzo made San Pietro the most precious place of worship in the whole city[1].
Still today, within the monastery of San Pietro and its immediate surroundings, no fewer than four springs of clear water survive which, throughout the second millennium, supplied drinking water to the kitchen and the refectory and served the domestic and personal needs of the monks, the pilgrims and the many guests. The water was drawn from the wells, and their upkeep was a constant concern of the abbots, priors and cellarers of San Pietro. In one of the account books preserved in the Historical Archive of the abbey we find the following note[2]:

On the 15th day of May 1534. For the building works, to Orelio the cooper, two florins and 62 soldi, being for two pairs of small tubs for earth and four buckets for the well and for the stable, and on account of two washtubs.

To supply the water needed for the gardens and for domestic use, from their very origins monasteries distinguished themselves in the building of large cisterns meant to collect the rainwater from the roofs. Purified through suitable filters of sand and charcoal, the result was a distilled water that could even be drunk, as in my home monastery of Santa Maria del Monte in Cesena. There, two adjoining cloisters stand on two levels, both fitted with a cistern; the older one lies before the basilica and was built in the fifteenth century, in the time of the Malatesta lordship. The second cloister, with its ample cistern, was built to a design by Leonardo da Vinci while he was at Cesena to construct the Porto Canale of Cesenatico in 1502.
Similar Renaissance cloisters furnished with a cistern are found in all the great monasteries; it is enough to recall here the abbey of Montecassino, which in the Bramante Cloister and the Prior's Cloister has two magnificent cisterns for rainwater. The same may be said of the monastery of San Giacomo di Pontida (Bergamo), where I was abbot and parish priest from 1990 to 2003, and of the cloisters of the abbey of Praglia, in the Euganean Hills near Padua.
Here too at San Pietro of Perugia, in the Trecento Cloister and in the Alessi Cloister, two cisterns were built to gather rainwater. We are often in the habit of using expressions such as the Well in the Trecento Cloister, the Cloister of the Well, the Well in the Alessi Cloister: these are improper labels, for they are not true wells but cisterns of rainwater. Common in desert regions, cisterns are mentioned as early as the Bible, as in the Book of Genesis concerning Joseph, son of Jacob, thrown by his brothers into an empty cistern before being sold to the merchants of Egypt[3].

Building the cistern

Building a cistern was a long, laborious and costly undertaking, one that made it possible to store a great quantity of water even during the hot summer months.
In constructing the cistern, the most demanding task was the removal of the earth at the centre of the cloister and the laying of solid brickwork all around the cavity, so as to support, according to the cistern's design, the single vaulted wall or the polygonal walls and, above all, to prevent the collected water from draining away and dispersing into the ground.

Above the cavity of the cistern, the cloister pavements were built with their four sides gently sloping and converging towards the mouths through which the water entered, so as to let it flow off properly. Usually, over these inlet points set at the convergence of the four sides, a grate was placed that kept out of the cistern the larger debris carried by the rain, branches or leaves, and also birds' nests, doves, swifts or dead sparrows that fell from the roofs.
Naturally, in order to supply water for the community's use, the cisterns had to have an overhead structure for drawing it, called a wellhead; in monasteries as in noble residences and public palaces, this was enriched with decorative elements that made it a true work of art. For this reason the monks made use not only of building crews and stonecutters to construct the load-bearing structure, but also of artists to see to its ornamentation.
To draw the water from the cistern it was first of all necessary to set a pulley above it, through which to run a suitably stout hemp rope on which to hoist the bucket for drawing the water. Hence a twofold manner of building the well-curb[4] of the cistern. We have, indeed, examples of magnificent well-curbs in wrought and worked iron, richly ornamented and with a sturdy arch at whose centre the pulley is fixed: of this kind are the well-curbs of the cisterns in the first cloister of Santa Maria del Monte in Cesena, in the monastery of San Giacomo at Pontida and at Santa Maria di Praglia. From the sixteenth century onwards, at the full flowering of Renaissance art, stone well-curbs prevailed, entrusted to artists who designed them and to stonecutters who executed them in various marble materials and in very rich and refined ornamental forms, embellished with meaningful symbols and inscriptions.
Thus at Montecassino, at the centre of the famous Bramante Cloister before the Loggetta del Paradiso, stands the octagonal cistern with its well-curb of limestone, flanked by two columns in the Corinthian style that support the entablature above, with the cap-moulding bearing the arms of the abbey. The same may be said of the Prior's Cloister in the same abbey, with the cistern at its centre surmounted by the well-curb and two handsome pillars supporting the entablature.
I should like to describe here in detail the magnificent great cloister of the abbey of Santa Maria del Monte in Cesena. Leonardo da Vinci's design provided for four rainwater inlets to be opened in the paving, set along the diagonals of the rectangular cloister; these inlets are normally closed by four spheres, or balls, of stone 30 centimetres in diameter. The balls let the water in and at the same time keep debris of every kind from falling into the cistern: how many times, in my childhood and youth, did I gather up and throw into the rubbish the poor dead swifts, fallen from the roofs and carried by the water as far as the balls! Through the openings half-obstructed by the four balls, the water passes gently into four settling chambers, from which it filters into the central vaulted cistern; here, through a metre of sand, it filters once more into the central part of the cistern, entering from below by a system of communicating vessels. In this way we had a most pure water which, in the age of electrification, was carried up to the monastery tower into a tank from which, by force of gravity, it was distributed to all the rooms: to the kitchen, the refectory, the cells and the bathrooms.
The cloister designed by Leonardo da Vinci is a true masterpiece of hydraulic engineering, its cistern still in working order; at the same time it is a work of art of refined beauty, with the noble marble well-curb of the wellhead, its inscriptions, its four columns of Greek marble, the entablature crowned by four pyramids at the corners and, at the centre, the arms of the monastery: three mountains and the six-pointed star. On the four sides of the well-curb stand out these inscriptions in Latin and in Greek: INOPIA ME GENUIT, Need begot me; IMBER MIHI VITA, Rain is my life; ΟΣ ΕΚ ΤΟΥ ΙΔΑΤΟΥ ΤΟΥΤΟΥ ΠΙΕ ΜΕΧΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΘΑΝΑΤΟΥ ΖΗΣΕΤΑΙ, Whoever drinks of this water shall live until death.

The cistern of the Trecento Cloister at San Pietro

The historical archive of the Benedictine abbey of San Pietro of Perugia preserves a rich body of documentation on the many expenses met at the beginning of the sixteenth century for the construction of the masonry cistern in the Trecento Cloister, for its paving and for the making of the wellhead at its centre.
The earliest development of the Trecento Cloister goes back to the buildings originally attached first to the early cathedral and then to the monastery of San Pietro. It is not possible to identify with precision the elements built in the second half of the tenth century by Abbot Peter, founder of the monastery, for his monks. From the documents that have come down to us we know that he restored the basilica, reconsecrated in 969; harder to trace are the monastic quarters that Abbot Peter built or refurbished.
According to the detailed prescriptions of the Rule of Saint Benedict, the life of a monastic community requires many buildings and rooms, for the carrying-out of the life of prayer, for the spiritual gatherings of the monks, and for their common life and working activities. Besides the church, with the choir for the monks' communal prayer and the sacristy for the various services needed to conduct the liturgy, the monastery must include numerous other rooms: the Chapter House for community meetings; the Refectory hall for shared meals, with the adjoining kitchen and its related services, such as the cellar, the pantry, the storerooms and the nearby spaces of the gallinaro, the hen-run, as the documents of the San Pietro archive call it, and of the vegetable garden. For winter a warming room was provided; here students or monks would gather for the writing and copying of texts, and in that case the room became the monastery's scriptorium, where the monks worked to enrich the library and produce new liturgical books for the church. According to the Rule of Saint Benedict, the monastery also provided for workshops such as the tailor's, the carpenter's and the smith's, so that within the community all the services necessary to the monk's life were available.
It is for this reason that, from the very first development of the monastery of San Pietro in the second half of the tenth century, on the southern side of the basilica the monastery's own rooms arose: the Chapter House, the Refectory, the workshops and, on the upper floor, the dormitory. Following the classical model of the monastery, which harks back to the structure of the Roman domus, all these buildings were arranged around a common open space and linked to one another by a four-sided portico running all around it: this is the Cloister, the heart of the monastery and of the community's active life.
Of the buildings commissioned in the tenth century by the founder, Abbot Peter, few elements remain. Around the middle of the fourteenth century, in fact, the great abbot Ugolino II Vibi (1330–1362) had all the buildings facing onto the Trecento Cloister renewed, the cloister also called the Chapter Cloister: onto it face the magnificent Chapter House looking east, the monumental Refectory, now turned into the Great Hall of the Faculty of Agriculture, holding sway to the south, and, to the west, the Palazzo Nuovo, replacing the older buildings that had served first as the bishop's dwelling and then as the abbot's residence. Abbot Ugolino II Vibi did not neglect to embellish artistically the upper part of the cloister “with cornices, small columns, and ornaments still surviving today”, as Abbot Mauro Bini recalls in his Memorie storiche del monastero di S. Pietro di Perugia dell'Ordine di S. Benedetto, written around 1845[5].
From what Abbot Mauro Bini writes it may be inferred that already in the fourteenth century the cloister had two superimposed orders of arches, made of pietra serena, likely quarried at Cibottola, often mentioned in the account books of the historical archive.
More than a century later, at the end of the fifteenth century, the abbots of San Pietro promoted the great reflowering of artistic production both in the basilica and in the monastery. After the setting-up of the altarpiece with Perugino's Ascension, the high altar was solemnly reconsecrated on 13 January 1500. The works continued in the following years too and extended to the Trecento Cloister. The buildings were renewed and, in particular, the outer garb of the cloister's four-sided portico was given the form we can still admire today. According to what Mauro Bini writes, the project for the renewal of the Trecento Cloister[6] is owed to Abbot Bartolomeo da Bergamo (1504–1507). The works were entrusted to Francesco di Guido di Virio[7], a sculptor and stonecutter from Settignano already at San Pietro from 1484 for the sculptural works carried out in the basilica choir, and where, in 1514, he would make the two ambos of pietra serena set on the pillars of the presbytery, commissioned from him by Abbot Prospero da Faenza[8].
The master stonecutter Francesco di Guido also devised the project for the arrangement of the fourteenth-century cloister, with the building in 1506 of the New Staircase, which from the church's side door (which opened where the Chapel of Saint Joseph now stands) led to the dormitory along the Trecento Corridor, and the making of the Chapter House portal with the two magnificent mullioned windows that open at its sides.

Pietra serena and travertine

The abbey complex of San Pietro counts three monumental cloisters: the Entrance Cloister, built in the seventeenth century to a design by the architect Valentino Martelli; the central one, called the Trecento or Chapter Cloister, raised over the atrium onto which the old cathedral and its annexed buildings once looked; and the third, called the Alessi Cloister after the architect who designed it in 1572. To these is added the small cloister built at the foot of the bell tower, through which the monastery is entered today. The construction of all of them called for imposing quantities of building material and pietra serena, of travertine and granite.
The ancient basilica of San Pietro, with its atrium, was adorned and supported by columns of granite and bardiglio marble, which can still be admired. The granite columns are nine; of these, five are in the basilica, while another four were in the atrium and, in the seventeenth century, were set at the four corners of the Entrance Cloister by Valentino Martelli.
For the great building works desired by the abbots of San Pietro in the fourteenth century, and later between the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth, vast quantities of marble materials were used. To supply them, two quarries of most beautiful stone and marble came to the rescue: the pietra serena quarry at Cibottola, owned by the monastery, and the travertine quarries on Monte Malbe.
With the pietra serena quarried at Cibottola, now exhausted, more than thirty stonecutters who had come from Settignano near Florence produced all the magnificent portals of the monks' cells, the window jambs, the thresholds and whatever else adorned the monastery corridors; with the same material several sculptural works were also made that still delight the eyes of visitors, such as the central door of the Chapter House, with the two mullioned windows flanking it, and the magnificent flight of the New Staircase, of six ramps and concentric arches, rising from the basilica to the second floor of the monastery. In the account books of the historical archive we find the entries for the many payments made by the monks to the master stonecutters who worked for them in the Cibottola quarry; on 12 March 1531, for instance, they paid a mina of grain for a stonecutter working in that quarry for Francesco di Guido[9]: On the 12th day of March 1531. To master Guido the stonecutter, at the monastery granary, one florin, 44 soldi, being for 1 mina of grain which he had from Dom Helyseo to give to one of his stonecutters from Cibottola. With the travertine coming from the quarry on Monte Malbe were made all the columns of the ground floor of the Trecento Cloister, as well as the columns of the Alessi Cloister begun in 1570, of Valentino Martelli's seventeenth-century Entrance Cloister, and also those of the small inner cloister of the bell tower. Following the numerous earthquakes, the arches of the first floor of the Trecento Cloister, borne on columns of pietra serena, were repaired and walled in to strengthen their masonry structure. This allowed Francesco di Guido to raise a third storey, where new cells were made for the monks, opening onto an architraved loggia, later closed off in its turn and pierced with small square windows. To the celebrated Professor Ugo Tarchi, for many years director of the Academy of Fine Arts of Perugia, we owe the ideal reconstruction of our cloister, with its two superimposed orders of arches and the third floor as a loggia borne on slender columns supporting the architraves[10].

The cistern of the Trecento Cloister and its wellhead

The works of arrangement and modernization of the Trecento Cloister also included the construction of the cistern at the centre of the four-sided portico, culminating in the stone well-curb and in the whole wellhead above it. By consulting the financial records kept in the Historical Archive of San Pietro it is possible to follow the works of building the cistern, which went on for some years, from 1527 to 1533, and which called for heavy outlay on materials: lime, bricks, floor-tiles, sand, various kinds of roof-tiles, and the pulley. Once the cistern was built, it was necessary to refine the work with an elegant wellhead. The genius of our artists working at San Pietro contrived a superb piece of craftsmanship; the wellhead stands on a triple flight of steps that, raising the work above the level of the cloister, lends it a harmonious upward thrust. The well-curb of the cistern was made in 1530 by Galeotto di Paolo of Assisi[11]; as can still be admired today, it is octagonal, with fluted corner-pieces and six rectangular panels on which symbols and inscriptions are carved. At the sides of the well-curb rise four mighty columns, two on the right and two on the left; these are tapered and cabled in their lower half, smooth in the upper. Above, the Doric capitals bear an imposing entablature of pink marble, crowned by a projecting stone roof covered with curved tiles. At an uncertain date the entablature broke and, at the end of the nineteenth century, it was replaced by a copy; the original is still kept in the same cloister, leaning against the church side. Again by consulting the archive's account books, we know that in October 1531 Francesco di Guido was paid for the columns and the entablature that adorn the cistern's well-curb[12]: On the first day of October 1531. For the building works, to the said master Guido, sixty-seven florins, twenty soldi, which are made over to him for the stones of the cistern, that is, the ornament of the columns and the ornament that stands above; and note that the Reverend Father Abbot has him receive nine and a half ducats, so that, with the agreement made as alms, the whole comes to forty ducats, which are 67 florins, 20 soldi. At the centre of the architrave there still projects the iron ring that held the girella, that is, the pulley, made by master Alessandro Meneco, as appears from the payments in the account books[13]. Over the girella the master rope-maker had hoisted the rope to hold the bucket for drawing the water; on the inner face of the architrave, to either side of the ring, the arms of the monastery were carved: the two crossed keys of Saint Peter surmounted by the papal tiara. At last, on 3 December 1532, the building of the cistern was completed when, in the presence of the Father Abbot, master Guglielmo de li Horjolgi hoisted the girella onto the wellhead[14]:

On the 3rd day of December 1532. For the building works, to master Golielmo, 95 florins, which are allowed to him for the ornament of the cistern's pulley, which weighed 145 pounds at 11 soldi the pound, so much having been appraised by master[15] … from La Fratta; present the Father Abbot, Father Dom Besarione, Dom Pietro, and the said master Gulielmo: and he was content.

The payment to master Guglielmo is also recorded in the account book of receipts and expenditures for the same year, thanks to which we also learn his surname[16]:

Jesus, [Year] 1532.

[Receipts]. Golielmo de li Horjolgi is to give, on the 3rd of December, at the granary, herein at folio 368, five florins, 60 soldi, being for 5 mine of grain, had from Dom Pietro, as in the Journal at folio 183.

[Expenditures]. Golielmo, opposite, is to have, on the 7th of December, for the building works, herein at folio 342, fifteen florins, 95 soldi, so much being allowed him for the ornament of the cistern's pulley, which weighed 145 pounds at 11 florins the pound, as herein at folio 183.

Inscriptions on the panels of the well-curb

The monks who directed the works of restructuring the monastic buildings of San Pietro were among the most learned of the Cassinese Congregation; in the very Trecento Cloister they taught the young in the three halls of Logic, Philosophy and Theology, which still today open onto the flank of the basilica. Among them were many devotees and connoisseurs of Latin, Greek and classical literature. In the ornamentation of the octagonal well-curb of the cistern it must have been these monks who suggested the content of the inscriptions and the symbols carved with rare mastery by the stonecutters. On the central panel of the well-curb, facing the old monastic Refectory, we read: MONACHI CONGREGATIONIS CASINATIS F. C. (FECERUNT CONSTRUERE), The monks of the Cassinese Congregation had it built, reaffirming the abbey of San Pietro's belonging to the Cassinese Congregation, which it had entered as early as 1436. On the right-hand and left-hand panels of the same side is carved the coat of arms of San Pietro, with the two crossed keys.
On the panels of the well-curb set on the side facing the basilica, at the centre one reads the following inscription: SALUBRITATIS COMMODI ORNATUSQUE CAUSSA; in this phrase is stated the twofold reason for building the cistern and its well-curb: For the convenience of wholesome water and for adornment. On the left-hand panel one reads the plain word: AQUA.
Playful and at the same time erudite is the inscription with the Greek quotation set on the right-hand panel: ΑΡΙΣΤΟΝ ΥΔΟΡ, Water is best. We may imagine that it was the monk who taught Greek who dictated this phrase; it is nothing less than the first line of Pindar's first Olympian, which thus begins the poem dedicated to Hieron of Syracuse, victor at Olympia with his horse Pherenikos[17]:

Best is water; and, more than all high-hearted wealth,

gold gleams like a flame in the night;

but, my heart, if you long

to sing of the contests,

why search the deserted heavens

for a star more ardent than the sun?

Why seek a contest more renowned than Olympia's?

From Olympia, to the minds of the bards,

winds the hymn that flies upon every lip,

so that they may exalt the son of Cronus,

having come to the blessed

royal house, the hospitable hall of Hieron.

It is astonishing how, from so simple an object as a cistern for rainwater, there should have come a monument of rare beauty which, after more than five centuries, still holds pride of place at the centre of our cloister. Ordinarily the Trecento Cloister stirs the admiration of tourists laden with cameras, but it is above all the place where, during the academic year, newly graduated students take their trial: on graduation day they show off their laurel crowns, the thesis clutched to their chest, surrounded by the tears of relatives and the festive shouts of their fellow students. For them too, as at Olympia for Hieron of Syracuse and his horse Pherenikos, the longed-for goal has been reached, imagine, good people! in a Benedictine cloister that has given so much to classical and monastic culture, and to the culture of agriculture as well.

Notes

[1] On the history of San Pietro of Perugia, see: Convegno storico per il Millennio dell'Abbazia di S. Pietro in Perugia (29 September–3 October 1966), in «Bollettino della Deputazione di storia patria per l'Umbria», 64(1967), fasc. 1; Farnedi, Giustino, L'Abbazia di San Pietro in Perugia e gli studi storici, Cesena, Centro Storico Benedettino Italiano, 2011 (Italia Benedettina, 35).

[2] Perugia, Historical Archive of San Pietro, Account Book (Journal) 121, p. 45 recto.

[3] Bible, Genesis, ch. 37, vv. 12–23.

[4] The well-curb (Italian vera) of a well or cistern, also called ghiera, is the protective parapet placed around the opening in the ground. As architectural taste evolved, the well-curb became a decorative element that enriches the architectural fabric of courtyards, squares and cloisters.

[5] This is the manuscript Perugia, Historical Archive of San Pietro, C.M. 439, vol. IV, edited by Elli, Pietro o.s.b. Cronotassi degli Abbati del Monastero di S. Pietro in Perugia conforme alla Cronaca ms. dell'Abate D. Mauro Bini († 1849), Perugia, Abbazia di San Pietro, 1994, p. 70. The small columns of which Abbot Bini speaks are still visible today in the Trecento Corridor, on the first floor, overlooking the cloister.

[6] Elli, Cronotassi degli Abbati del Monastero di S. Pietro in Perugia, cit. p. 161.

[7] On Francesco di Guido di Virio, see Manari, Luigi, Documenti e note ai cenni storico artistici della basilica di S. Pietro in Perugia, in «L'Apologetico. Periodico religioso di Perugia», 2(1865), pp. 461–466; Gurrieri, Ottorino, Le opere dei maestri settignanesi nella chiesa e nel monastero di S. Pietro, in Convegno storico per il Millennio dell'Abbazia di S. Pietro in Perugia, cit. pp. 174–185; Schepers, Jörg, Francesco di Guido di Virio (Francesco di Guido), in Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon. Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, München-Leipzig, K. G. Saur, 2004, vol. 43, pp. 327–328.

[8] Elli, Cronotassi degli Abbati del Monastero di S. Pietro in Perugia, cit. p. 169.

[9] Perugia, Historical Archive of San Pietro, Account Book (Journal) 120, p. 123 recto.

[10] Tarchi, Ugo, L'arte in Umbria e nella Sabina, VI. L'arte del Rinascimento, Milan, Garzanti, 1954, plates lviii, lix; Id. I disegni dei monumenti di Perugia e dell'Umbria, text and captions by Ottorino Gurrieri, Perugia, Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia, 1997, pp. 210–211, plate xcvi.

[11] Schepers, Jörg, Galeotto di Paolo, in Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon. Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, München-Leipzig, K. G. Saur, 2005, vol. 47, p. 441.

[12] Perugia, Historical Archive of San Pietro, Account Book (Journal) 120, p. 140 recto.

[13] Ibidem, p. 164 verso.

[14] Ibidem, p. 183 verso.

[15] The name is omitted.

[16] Perugia, Historical Archive of San Pietro, Account Book of receipts and expenditures, 16, p. 370.

[17] Pindar (518 BC–438 BC) was one of the greatest Greek lyric poets, one who exalted human excellence as expressed in intellectual qualities and athletic prowess. Of his vast poetic output there have come down to us four collections of odes written for the Panhellenic games held in ancient Greece: fourteen Olympians, written to celebrate the victors in the contests held in honour of Zeus at Olympia; twelve Pythians, dedicated to the victors in the games for Apollo held at Delphi; eleven Nemeans, for the games dedicated to Zeus near the city of Nemea; and eight Isthmians, for the victors in the contests in honour of Poseidon at Corinth.

Giustino Farnedi is abbot of the Order of Saint Benedict at the Abbey of San Pietro of Perugia