Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nonantola.

Site of the former Benedictine monastery of S Silvestro in the Lombard kingdom outside Modena. With Monte Cassino, it was one of the most important monastic centres of medieval Italy.

Nonantola was founded about 752 by St Anselm of Nonantola, formerly Duke of Friuli, and endowed by Aistulf, King of the Lombards (reigned 749–56). In 753 the oratory and altar were consecrated to SS Peter and Paul by Sergius, Archbishop of Ravenna, and shortly afterwards Anselm was appointed the first abbot by Pope Stephen II. In 756 the relics of Pope Sylvester I (reigned 314–35) were transferred from Rome to Nonantola, and the abbey received its present dedication.

Anselm spent the period from 760/61 to 773, during the reign of Desiderius, Aistulf’s successor, in exile at Monte Cassino. In 774 he returned with a number of manuscripts which formed the nucleus of the important medieval library at Nonantola. Anselm died in 803 and was buried in the church; he was succeeded by a number of Lombard abbots with Germanic names. In 885 the body of Pope Adrian III (reigned 884–5) was buried at the abbey. After a major fire, a reconstruction of the church of S Silvestro was begun in 1015. Until 1083 the abbey was controlled by the emperors; resident abbots replaced absentee appointees in 1044. Documents in the Zürich Central Library (CH-Zz) and the St Gallen monastery library (SGs), edited by Schmid, contain the names of 1144 monks who had lived at Nonantola up to the 11th century; during this tranquil period, the monastery prospered as a monastic and cultural centre, and its possessions extended as far as Constantinople.

Decline set in during the 14th century. In 1411 the abbey came under the protection of the Este family, and in 1449 regular monastic life there ended with the death of the last regular abbot, Gian Galeazzo Pepoli. With the appointment of his successor, Abbot Gurone d’Este, by Pope Nicholas V in a bull dated 11 June 1449, Nonantola became an abbey ‘in commendam’, and it was thereafter directed by a long line of commendatory abbots. A reform was instituted by the Cistercians with the appointment of Abbot Giulo Sertorio in 1514, and a seminary was constructed by St Charles Borromeo, an abbot, in 1567. In 1768–9, Pope Clement XIII and Duke Francesco III of Modena suppressed the Cistercian rule. Tiraboschi’s important history of the foundation appeared in 1784–5. In 1812 Pope Pius VII united the abbey of Nonantola with Modena; secularized in 1866, it was again restored as an abbey nullius with the archdiocese of Modena in 1926. Since 1928 it has had its own minor seminary and has served 31 local parishes.

The extensive collection of manuscripts which made up the medieval library of S Silvestro has been largely dispersed, although five inventories of manuscripts have survived from before the Cistercian reform. These inventories contain important information about the early musical sources. The oldest such ‘catalogue’ (I-Bu 2248, ff.1v–2) is in fact a list of 40 volumes acquired by the monastery during the abbacy of Rodolfo I (1002–35). A catalogue dated 1166 (Rn 1568, ff.62v–63) lists 61 items. In the catalogue of 1331, 185 manuscripts are described in detail; the catalogue of 1464 contains 255 entries, and the catalogue of 1464–90 lists 237 manuscripts. These last three catalogues are now in the abbey library. Among important liturgical books from the abbey are the so-called ‘Sacramentary of Nonantola’ (now F-Pn lat.2292), copied at St Denis near Paris about 875 for use at Nonantola, and ‘The Psalter of Nonantola’ (now I-Rvat lat.84), dating from the 11th century. Although the 1464 catalogue contains an important table of musical manuscripts, including ten described as ‘sequentiale’, nine as ‘graduale’ and four as ‘antiphonarium’, only four major plainchant sources, fully noted, survive from the abbey; all of them seem to date from the late 11th or early 12th century. They are as follows: I-Bu 2824 (106ff), a troper with proses; NON 1 (116ff), a cantatorium; Rc 1741 (192ff), a troper and proser (published in facsimile by G. Vecchi, 1955); Rn 1343 (Sess.62) (81ff), a kyriale, troper-proser and processional. Another manuscript described in the 1331, 1464 and 1464–90 catalogues is Ra 123 (268ff), an early 11th-century gradual, processional and troper-proser which originated at Bologna rather than Nonantola. Moderini has identified 18 further manuscripts containing Nonantolan musical notation, but of these only a Gospel book (now in the abbey) with a notated Holy Saturday ‘Exultet’ is indisputably from S Silvestro. The remaining manuscripts cited by Moderini either come from Venice or Verona, or are fragments of unknown origin, some of which may have been used in Modena and Milan. Among this latter group is a tonary in Nonantolan notation (Rc 54, ff.107–108v) which is based on a Reichenau model, according to Huglo (Les tonaires, Paris, 1970, p.41).

Certain particular saints were venerated at Nonantola, and the names of these patrons are frequently found in collects, tropes, proses, litanies, calendars and the sections of the liturgical books containing the Proper of the Saints: St Sylvester (feast day, 31 December), Pope Adrian III (8 July), St Anselm of Nonantola (3 March) and SS Senesius and Theopontius (21 May), whose relics were transferred from Treviso to Nonantola in the 10th century. Another characteristic of the Nonantolan liturgical use is the special commemoration of other northern Italian saints: St Alexander of Bergamo (26 August), SS Nazarius and Celsus, martyrs of Milan (28 July), St Possidonius of Mirandola, north of Modena (16 May), St Proculus, venerated at Bologna (1 June), St Prosperus of Reggio (24 November), St Syrus of Pavia (17 May and 9 December) and St Zeno, Bishop of Verona (12 April).

The three tropers are of special significance for chant studies. Their contents are rich, including not only tropes for both Ordinary and Proper chants of the Mass (including prosulae), sequences and processional chants, but also four confractoria (antiphons sung during the breaking of the bread in the Eucharist, a genre otherwise known from Ambrosian, not Gregorian chant) and 18 antiphonae ante evangelium (for the procession carrying the Gospel book to the pulpit, likewise a non-Roman practice). Among the tropes and sequences are a number of pieces from beyond the Alps (e.g. sequences with texts by Notker of St Gallen), and because Nonantola adopted diastematic notation at a relatively early date, the Nonantolan manuscripts in many cases provide the earliest transcribable versions of these pieces. (For discussion of the multifaceted repertory see Borders and Brunner; their editions also include complete inventories of the tropers: see pt 1, xiv–xxxi.)

No Renaissance polyphonic choirbooks from the Abbey of S Silvestro have been identified.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Tiraboschi: Storia dell’augusta badia di S. Silvestro di Nonantola (Modena, 1784–5)

G. Montagnani: Storia dell’augusta badia di S. Silvestro di Nonantola (Modena, 1838)

G. Waitz, ed.: ‘Vita Anselmi abbatis nonantulani’, ‘De fundatione monasterii nonantulani’, ‘Catalogi abbatum nonantulanorum’, Monumenta germaniae historica: scriptores rerum langobardicarum et italicarum saec. VI–IX (Hanover, 1878/R), 566ff

A. Gaudenzi: ‘Il monastero di Nonantola, il ducato di Persiceta, e la chiesa di Bologna’, Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano, xxii (1901), 77–214; xxxvi (1916), 7–312; xxxvii (1916), 313–572

A. Wilmart: ‘Le psautier de Nonantola’, Revue bénédictine, xli (1929), 370–71

L.H. Cottineau: ‘Nonantola’, Répertoire topo-bibliographique des abbayes et prieurés, ii (Macon, 1937), 2087–8

G. Fasoli: ‘L’abbazia di Nonantola fra l’VIII e l’XI secolo nelle ricerche storiche’, Studi e documenti della Deputazione di storia patria per l’Emilia e la Romagna: sezione di Modena, new ser., ii (1943), 90–142

G. Vecchi: ‘La notazione neumatica di Nonantola: problemi di genesi’, Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per le antiche provincie modenesi, 8th ser., v (1953), 326–31 [one of 29 articles on Nonantola collected under the title ‘Relazione del convegno di studi storici per la celebrazione del 1200° anniversario della fondazione dell’abbazia de Nonantola’]

C. Mor: ‘L’esilio di S. Anselmo’, ibid., 191–9

G. Vecchi: ‘Metri e ritmi nonantolani: una scuola poetica monastica medioevale (sec. XI–XII)’, ibid., 8th ser., vi (1954), 220–58

G. Gullotta: Gli antichi cataloghi e i codici della abbazia di Nonantola (Vatican City, 1955)

J. Ruysschaert: Les manuscrits de l’abbaye de Nonantola: table de concordance annotée et index des manuscrits (Vatican City, 1955)

G. Vecchi, ed.: Troparium sequentiarium nonantulanum: cod. Casanat. 1741, MLMI 1st ser., Latina, i (1955) [facs., of I-Rc 1741]

K. Schmid: ‘Anselm von Nonantola olim dux militum – nunc dux monachorum’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, xlvii (1967), 1–122

A. Moderini: La notazione neumatica di Nonantola, IMa, 2nd ser., iii/1–2 (1970)

J. Borders and L. Brunner, eds.: Early Medieval Chants from Nonantola, RRMMA, xxx–xxxiii (1996–) [pt 1: Ordinary chants and tropes; pt 2: Proper chants and tropes; pt 3: Processional chants; pt 4: Sequences]

JOHN A. EMERSON/DAVID HILEY