Casamari Abbey

Seventh stage 2025:
Casamari Abbey
July 13, 2025

Declined word: Wisdom

On Sunday, July 13, the In cammino team reached the Abbey of Casamari, where the selected word was “Wisdom.”

Built beginning in 1203 in the territory of the municipality of Veroli, in the province of Frosinone, it has been, from its foundation, an important center of spiritual and cultural attraction. The Abbey was declared a national monument in 1874, and the Congregation of Casamari, belonging to the Cistercian Order, currently counts about twelve dependent monasteries under the motherhouse and the Abbot. Its astonishing library preserves over 90,000 volumes: a heritage managed by the Cistercians and, after the unification of Italy, placed under the protection of the State.

After the visit to the monastic complex guided by Father Riccardo, who among other things led us into the magnificent, austere abbey church (as prescribed by the Order’s precepts) yet imposing, in which the stone is flooded with light, we had the opportunity in the morning — thanks to its Director, Father Alberto Coratti — to enter the Library: “A place where history and culture make us understand not only the past of the Cistercian Order, but our past,” commented President Pomodoro, who put several questions to Dom Alberto about the library holdings at Casamari.

In the afternoon, starting at 3:00 p.m., the conference “The Wisdom of Working Together: The Experience of Biodistricts” began, chaired by Livia Pomodoro and coordinated by Tonino Bettanini.

The floor was immediately given to the Very Rev. Fr. Loreto Camilli OCist, Abbot of Casamari: “A special greeting goes to Livia Pomodoro and, thanks to her, we are happy to host this twenty-fifth stage in our Abbey. As is well known, every monastery follows the duty of hospitality that Saint Benedict strongly emphasizes in his Rule. We are therefore more than pleased to welcome you in our home.”

After the video greeting from Francesco Ferrari, President of the European Association Vie Francigene, Claudio Serafini, Director of Organic Cities Network Europe, opened the conference on the day’s theme: “The first biodistrict in Italy was established in 2009 in Cilento, in the province of Salerno… The UN 2030 Agenda, adopted ten years ago, sets very ambitious goals to improve the planet’s economic, social, and environmental well-being. Yet, alas, the closer we get to 2030 the more difficulties we encounter in achieving these goals, which range from energy to food. Some have been achieved at 17%, others are even harder to realize. And yet they were supposed to provide answers for humanity and the planet, such as how to feed a constantly growing population… Over the last twenty years a significant phenomenon has occurred in both the United States and Europe: cities could, in various ways, take an interest in food. Increasingly often municipalities have departments delegated to agriculture, and in these two decades awareness and the idea of having access to healthy, fresh, organic food have grown… Unfortunately on these topics the door is still very narrow; the numbers in play prefigure great potential, while in reality we face a tiny opening… In 2011 there were no organic cities in Germany; in ten years 32 German cities have gone organic, including some of the largest: Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen. Several officials in those cities are engaged in dialogue with the surrounding countryside to solve the problem of daily food supply. Many questions remain open, since the international context has profoundly changed… President Livia Pomodoro began pursuing these issues already in the early 2000s, with the idea of Europe contributing through culture to a dialogue of peace… To act, we must also understand the value of words, of language, and handle terms with care, distrusting ‘antilingua’ as taught by Italo Calvino: ‘He who speaks antilingua is always afraid of showing familiarity and interest in the things he speaks of; he believes he must imply: I speak of these things by chance, but my function is much higher than the things I say and do; my function is higher than everything, even than myself.’”

Recalling that by 2050 seventy percent of the world’s population will live in cities, Tonino Bettanini gave the floor to Carlo Triarico, President of the Biodynamic Agriculture Association: “The theme of organic agriculture was not born to create privileges but to recover that wisdom around a healthy and sustainable agricultural model. The biodistrict formula is particularly intuitive precisely when accompanied by wisdom. Just as the communal-Italy model once was, with continuous dialogue between the city’s mercantile class and the rural knightly class in the countryside. Then, with the French Revolution, the citizen prevailed over the peasant. The biodistrict philosophy recovers a healthy model despite the countryside being in crisis today, also given the fourfold increase in the cost of agricultural machinery… Cities increasingly seem emptied of meaning, with unhappy inhabitants… We need to give a new meaning to being a community, as monasteries once did, which governed the most critical moments of past history and have been — and still are — models to look to.”

Bringing direct experience to the discussion, Ivano De Marco, Vice President of the Valle di Comino Biodistrict in Lazio, spoke: “The biodistrict was born in 2017 and currently groups 223 organic farms in the Valle di Comino. We do not deal only with crops typical of our area, like the cannellino bean, but with preserving the Valley from potential environmental disasters; today it is little industrialized but bordered by important road arteries. The biodistrict is made up of family-run realities devoted to organic farming and we have several contacts with sister associations, such as the nearby Cilento Biodistrict. We promote training courses for our farmers and at the end of July the first Community Market of the Valle di Comino will be launched in Gallinaro, which will take care of the direct sale of zero-kilometer products from our small-scale farms. In the area we have activated a Local Action Group (GAL) and we look to experiential tourism that, in addition to the beauties of an unspoiled territory, can offer quality, healthy, organic food. We also have relations with the Lazio side of the Abruzzo National Park: since we guarantee quality products, our goal is to bring quality tourism here. There are more than two hundred agritourism businesses that offer guests refreshment and hospitality. Our territory is small, the farms are small, and from this — given the impossibility of facing the market alone — arises the need to stay together, to network. This translates into selective productions and the promotion of products and the territory.”

Presenting the conference’s second cultural part and the speech by Father Alberto Coratti OCist, Director of the State Library of the National Monument of Casamari, Tonino Bettanini recalled those “beautiful kingdoms of silence we visited in previous stages: the libraries of St. Gallen, Fulda, Tilburg in the Netherlands, and Viboldone”…

“The Library was born with the Abbey,” Dom Alberto affirmed, “due to the monks’ need to have books for reading and prayer. Saint Benedict’s Rule prescribes: ora et labora et lege — pray, work, and read. Casamari’s scriptorium copied and bound books, ‘exporting’ them to other abbeys. Parchments made from kid or calf skins were used, and on these the scribe transcribed the pages that the illuminator then decorated, although the latter technique did not suit Cistercian sobriety very well. Over time and through historical vicissitudes the books of Casamari’s Library were dispersed. From the medieval period we preserve only some fragments of manuscripts and parchments. At the end of the 1400s various works were produced for Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, the future Julius II. In the first half of the 1700s Casamari was revived by the Trappist presence: it was Cardinal Albani, under Pope Clement XI, who entrusted it to the reformed Cistercian monks, namely the Trappists, who in turn rewrote volumes, especially chorals. At the beginning of the 1800s, following the upheaval caused by the French Revolution, the ‘Martyrs of Casamari’ were slaughtered under Napoleon. With the unification of the Kingdom of Italy the Abbey — including the Library — was expropriated and nationalized. Our ancient holdings currently boast 24,000 volumes, for a total of 90,000 ISBN-catalogued volumes and therefore consultable. The farm attached to the monastery comprises 200 hectares of land, both cultivated and uncultivated. For our garden we have long used a biodynamic technique for 100% organic production.”

The talks closed with the Director of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Prof. Franco Marrocco, who, aided by projected images, analyzed the symbolic declension of the term “wisdom” in the works of major exponents of modern and contemporary art, including the video installations of Bill Viola.

Gallery tappa Casamari

At 5:00 p.m. it was time for the meeting “Wisdom Saved,” in which the Abbot, the Very Rev. Fr. Loreto Camilli, dialogued with Tonino Bettanini. Livia Pomodoro also took part in the conversation.

“Wisdom, more than knowledge, satisfies people,” Bettanini began. “It is Plato in the Phaedrus who draws the distinction between the two. According to the Greek philosopher, wisdom implies a deeper understanding and an ability for critical judgment, whereas knowledge is more superficial and can be acquired through study and memory. From this, the author derives a rather negative judgment on writing, as Socrates describes it in the myth of Theuth, the legendary inventor of writing… And it is also Socrates who states that the true wise person is the one who knows that he does not know. Wisdom is therefore an idea of challenge, of intellectual curiosity, and of the continual surpassing of mere knowledge…”

“Knowledge pursued by younger generations is certainly more superficial compared with the methods used by our generation,” the Abbot stressed. “Wisdom, moreover, needs something more, a soul, the salt mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures. There is, not by chance, an affinity between wisdom and ‘flavor.’ Today we should be concerned with ‘saving’ wisdom… Here, among other things, we have two high schools, so we live and directly perceive the problems expressed by young people. They certainly have a broader cultural baggage than we did, but nonetheless they are not able to enter into a style of life, a way of comporting and communicating that takes into account that ‘salt’ which gives taste to knowledge itself.”

“One could say in some way that it is not enough to know ‘what’ but also ‘how’ and ‘why’,” Bettanini added. “Do you by any chance have a recipe for achieving these goals?”

Fr. Loreto: “I think everyone can find the right path through the experience of their own life. I, as a monk, found the solution in the monastery, where every thing has an ‘other’ purpose. For example, we work not only to support ourselves but also to think of the poor. Work thus becomes more a form of asceticism and, if carried out according to the typical criteria of the monk, it is similar to a prayer. It is the salt that seasons daily toil…”

“Today we live in an apparent community,” President Pomodoro intervened, “which makes people lonelier. Individual loneliness is caused by a kind of discouragement and by an inability that, at least at the start, has been created in the everyday reality of which we are all a part — ordinary people and citizens living in this society…

There is no doubt that our loneliness is a terrifying one, a loneliness that stands in contrast to an increasingly difficult world to interpret and that pits one person against another. Father, you used the right term: to save wisdom through deeper knowledge — let’s call it that — and this, in my view, is a duty that must involve everyone, because doing so would at the same time be an exercise in recognizing the other. And this recognition contains a series of qualities: knowledge, networks, individual and collective responsibility, and — if you allow me — the courage to face the difficulties of a world in which it is not enough to say ‘let’s help this or that,’ since, alas, we all need help… Today, in fact, the ephemeral invades our loneliness.”

The twenty-fifth stage at Casamari concluded at 6:00 p.m. with the concert Rimedamorcantando. Stories, Songs and Music from the Luminous Dark Ages by the duo “La bela ironda,” which performed medieval songs and music from the troubadour tradition. The program ranged from compositions by Bernart de Ventadorn, one of the most celebrated composers of songs in the Occitan language and of troubadour poetry at the end of the twelfth century, to Giraut de Bornelh. Each song was preceded by a razo explaining the content and motivations behind its composition, all delivered in Occitan and accompanied by period instruments. A true immersion in the luminous centuries of the troubadours!

Sesta tappa 2025:
Abbazia di Casamari
13 Luglio 2025

Parola declinata: Sapienza

Programma

– Ore 10.00 – Visita guidata all’Abbazia di Casamari
Via Maria 25, Veroli (FR)

– Ore 15.00 – Convegno
“La sapienza dell’operare insieme.
L’esperienza dei biodistretti”

Presiede Livia Pomodoro, titolare della Cattedra Unesco “Food Systems for Sustainable Development and Social Inclusion” presso l’Università Statale di Milano
Coordina Tonino Bettanini, Direttore di In cammino – Abbazie d’Europa
Saluto del Rev.mo Padre Loreto Camilli OCist, Abate di Casamari
Saluto istituzionale di Germano Caperna, Sindaco di Veroli
Saluto video di Francesco Ferrari, Presidente dell’Associazione Europea Vie Francigene
(AEVF)

Partecipano:

– Claudio Serafini, Direttore di Organic Cities Network Europe
– Ivano De Marco, Vice Presidente del Bio-Distretto Valle di Comino
– Carlo Triarico, Presidente Associazione Agricoltura Biodinamica
– Padre Alberto Coratti OCist, Direttore della Biblioteca Statale del Monumento
Nazionale di Casamari
– Prof. Franco Marrocco, Direttore dell’Accademia delle Belle Arti di Brera, Milano