L'abbazia normanna di San Giorgio a Gratteri : la prima fondazione cistercense nel Regno di Sicilia?

Abstract

The correspondence between King Roger II and Bernard of Clairvaux reveals that, around 1140, Cistercians moved to the Norman kingdom with Elisabeth of Champagne when she married the Duke Roger. There they established their first settlement, the location of which is still not widely agreed on by scholars. At about the same time, Duke Roger had built St George's Abbey (now a ruin) in Sicily; the abbey has been traditionally considered a Norbertine building. New research, conducted through both stylistic analysis of the building and critical reading of the documents, reveals the edifice's Cistercian features and suggests the hypothesis that St George's Abbey was, in fact, the first Cistercian settlement in the Kingdom of Sicily. This sheds new light on the Cistercians in Sicily and merits further analysis in the context of the entire kingdom.