Page 11 - SAINT HADRIAN’S CHURCH

La Chiesa di Sant’Adriano

of the Basilian order thrived in Calabria between the 8th
and 9th centuries.

In this place, along with a few monks, Nilus found a cenoby
and built "a small church made of bricks and mud." During
the years spent in the monastery, Nilus opened a
“Scriptorium” where he taught his brothers the calligraphic
art and the Italian-Greek tachograph system, so that the
cenoby was not just an austere religious life center but also
an active workingplace.

In fact, among the monks, there was who dedicated himself
to the work in the fields, to the transcription of the codes,
to teaching the less educated brothers and to charity works.

The life in the monastery then proceeded through the lines
of the Basilian monasticism Italian-Greek time: prayer,
work in the fields and intellectual work.
In this period date back the frequent ascetic retreats in the
neighbouring Saint Elias deep valley, known as “Saint
Nilu's cave”, a quiet and picturesque place where the monk
often went to pray and meditate "to feel himself closer to God."

Driven by the Basilian monks’ migratory spirit, Nilus, after
25 years, almost seventy years of age, left Saint Hadrian’s
monastery to get closer to Rome and, after many
vicissitudes, he stopped in Grottaferrata (Rome) where, on
September 26th 1004, he yielded his soul to God. They were
his brothers who continued the construction of the
monastery of “Santa Maria di Grottaferrata”, initiated by

Nilus, where the monk of Rossano is buried.
In 1088, in the Norman period, the abbey came under the
jurisdiction of the Latin monastery of Cava dei Tirreni, in

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