Writing about Centumcellae (Latin for “one hundred cells”) in the context of Augustinian medieval history (i.e., and not thereby referring to the civic history of Civitavecchia) is more writing about a tradition than about a specific geographical site. It is included in this section of Augnet about Early Hermitages so that undeniable doubts about its very existence can be explained.

According to a twelfth-century tradition (i.e., a century before the Grand Union formally began the present Augustinian Order in 1256), St Augustine stayed with the hermits on a mountain in Tuscany called Mons Pisanus in Latin and Monte Pisano in the Italian language. For many centuries a mountain in Tuscany has borne that name. The tradition of Augustine’s having visited and/or stayed there was stated at the end of the Expositio in regulam S. Augustini (“An Exposition on the Rule of St Augustine”) by Hugh of St Victor (1096 – 1141), a canon of the Abbey of St Victor in Paris where the Rule of Augustine was followed. It is onvious therefore that this dfisproved legend began over a century before the Order of St Augustine did.

Hugh was sometimes called “alter Augustinus” (“another Augustine”) because of his familiarity with the works of Augustine of Hippo. He was also described as "the most influential theologian of the twelfth century." In his writings, Hugh of St Victor did not name any specific location on or near Mount Pisano, and there has never been the claim that a site called Centumcellae existed there. Even so, the earliest extant document concerning any hermitage with a close approximation of this particular name was written not earlier than 1243.

That happened in 1243 when Pope Innocent IV charged the apostolic legate, Cardinal Rainer of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, with consigning the church of S Severa, which had fallen into utter neglect, to the Prior and brethren of the hermitage of the Holy Trinity of Centumcellae. The pope confirmed the grant in the following year, and since then the place went under the name of S Severa de Centumcellis. In that the location of S Severa de Centumcellis cannot be determined, and nobody claims it was on or near Mount Pisano, are these two separate traditions that do not merge? Or are these actually two distinct traditions which apparently offer no mutual support to one another?

In the fourteenth century, members of the Order of St Augustine believed in the earlier existence of a place named Centumcellae that had housed Augustine, but the fact that they believed it does not prove that it existed a millennium previously – if ever. Such a place may have existed, yet that particular factor is irrelevant to the way that Centumcellae was used in the myth that four members of the Order of St Augustine consciously developed from about 1330 onwards. The Augustinian friars writing in the fourteenth century set out to bolster the Order’s identity as containing the spiritual sons of Augustine of Hippo. They did so not just as being their own intention but also as brazenly suggest that it was Augustine’s intention as well.

Within a period of twenty-seven years, these four Augustinian writers developed and successively advanced this premise. From internal evidence in their manuscripts and from other historical sources, it is demonstrated that they knew each other, or at least saw copies of the manuscripts of those in the quartet who had written prior to them. They were the so-called Anonymous Florentine (an Augustinian Prior at Santo Spirito, Florence in 1317, and writing in 1330), Nicholas of Alessandria O.S.A. (a Master of Theology, writing in 1332), Henry of Friemar O.S.A. (1245 – c. 1334, and writing in 1334), and Jordan of Saxony O.S.A. (alias Jordan of Quedlinburg O.S.A.), who lived c. 1299 – c.1380, and published his Liber Vitasfratrum ("A Book about the life of the Brothers") in 1357.

The first of these four to write, the so-called Anonymous Florentine, produced his Initium sive processus Ordinis Hermitarum santi Augustini (“The Beginning and Development of the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine”) in 1330. In it he mentioned that Augustine’s eremitical (“hermit”) experience was “first in Italy, and then in Africa.” He said that the site of Augustine’s eremitical experience in Italy was uncertain, but he nominated the three possibilities that it happened in Milan, Mount Pisanus (where was located the hermitage of S. Giorgio della Spelonca, at least from the late twelfth century onwards) or Centumcellae.

The reason given by the Anonymous Florentine for the uncertainty about the location was that more than nine centuries had passed between Augustine’s time in Italy and the author’s own time of writing his Initium in about 1330. The Anonymous Florentine had the intention of establishing the antiquity of the Order of St Augustine. He was suggesting that, even if its canonical foundation happened at the Augustinian Grand Union of 1256, it nevertheless was founded by Augustine himself in Italy during his lifetime.

He suggested that the Order's alleged foundation by Augustine himself was demonstrated by its continuity with Augustine’s original hermit community in Italy, regardless whether that community had lived at Milan, Mount Pisano or Centumcellae.

The second of these four Augustinian authors, Nicholas of Alessandra O.S.A., wrote about only two years after the Anonymous Florentine. He advanced the myth further. In the fourteenth century, members of the Order of St Augustine believed in the earlier existence of a place named Centumcellae that had housed Augustine, but the fact that they believed it does not prove that it existed a millennium previously – if ever. Such a place may have existed, yet that particular factor is irrelevant to the way that Centumcellae was used in the myth that four members of the Order of St Augustine consciously developed from about 1330 onwards.

The Augustinian friars writing in the fourteenth century set out to bolster the Order’s identity as containing the spiritual sons of Augustine of Hippo. They did so not just as being their own intention but also as brazenly suggest that it was Augustine’s intention as well. Within a period of twenty-seven years, these four Augustinian writers developed and successively advanced this premise. From internal evidence in their manuscripts and from other historical sources, it is demonstrated that they knew each other, or at least saw copies of the manuscripts of those in the quartet who had written prior to them.

They were the so-called Anonymous Florentine (an Augustinian Prior at Santo Spirito, Florence in 1317, and writing in 1330), Nicholas of Alessandria O.S.A. (a Master of Theology, writing in 1332), Henry of Friemar O.S.A. (1245 – c. 1334, and writing in 1334), and Jordan of Saxony O.S.A. (alias Jordan of Quedlinburg O.S.A.), who lived c. 1299 – c.1380, and published his Liber Vitasfratrum ("A Book about the life of the Brothers") in 1357. The first of the four to write, the so-called Anonymous Florentine, produced his Initium sive processus Ordinis Hermitarum santi Augustini (“The Beginning and Development of the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine”) in 1330. In it he mentioned that Augustine’s eremitical (“hermit”) experience was “first in Italy, and then in Africa.”

He said that the site of Augustine’s eremitical experience in Italy was uncertain, but he nominated the three possibilities that it happened in Milan, Mount Pisanus (where was located the hermitage of S. Giorgio della Spelonca, at least from the late twelfth century onwards) or Centumcellae. The reason given by the Anonymous Florentine for the uncertainty about the location was that more than nine centuries had passed between Augustine’s time in Italy and the author’s own time of writing his Initium in about 1330.

The Anonymous Florentine had the intention of establishing the antiquity of the Order of St Augustine. He was suggesting that, even if its canonical foundation was conceded to be the Augustinian Grand Union of 1256, its foundation by Augustine himself was demonstrated by the Order’s continuity with Augustine’s original hermit community in Italy, regardless whether the community had lived at Milan, Mount Pisano or Centumcellae.

The second of these four Augustinian authors, Nicholas of Alessandra O.S.A., wrote about only two years after the Anonymous Florentine. He advanced the myth further. From the three Italian areas mentioned by the Anonymous Florentine, Nicholas nominated Centumcellae as the place which Augustine not only had visited, but had accepted an invitation to stay there for two years. Was his assertion was based on some information that had come to light in the two years since the Anonymous Florentine had written?

That would seem to be highly unlikely. Nicholas added that the holy men at Centumcellae then asked Augustine to write them a Rule, and that Augustine obliged. Nicholas thus stated that the Rule was written by Augustine at Centumcellae in 392 AD for its inhabitants. He proposed that Centumcellae lay on the rugged and isolated coast of Tuscany. The Sermo de beato Augustino (“Sermon about blessed Augustine”) of Nicholas of Alessandra O.S.A. is the first extant text that explicitly names Centumcellae as the first location of the Augustinian Order. By what he had stated, Nicholas could assert that he himself and his fourteenth-century confreres were “truly Augustinian,” because they had descended from these men whose community Augustine had founded, and to whom he had given his Rule.

Writing two years after Nicholas, Henry of Friemar O.S.A. stated even more confidently that Centumcellae was the first location of the Order, the very same Order of which Henry himself was then a member nine centuries later. The fourth of these Augustinian authors, Jordan of Saxony O.S.A., developed the Augustinian myth further but, in ways that are not germane to this page about Centumcellae, maintained the myth of the Augustinian Order's origin and identity while obviating any need of a role for Centumcellae therein.

With a more accurate reading of Augustine’s own chronology of his life as deduced from his Confessions, Jordan could not agree with Henry of Friemar, his former teacher, that it was not chronologically possible for Augustine to have spent two years at Centumcellae. He admitted that there simply was no two-year period in Augustine’s chronology in which such a sojourn could have taken place. Henry did not support the possibility of Augustine’s making more than a brief visit to Centumcellae but, as already started above, whether Augustine did or did not visit there did not affect the different way that Henry supported the Augustinian myth.

That the alleged role of Centumcellae in the life of Augustine could appear in a manuscript in 1322 and then be scotched in another publication in 1337 is an indication that the matter in question was either not universally known and/or not particularly well accepted. This relatively brief fifteen-year heightened burst of interest in Centumcellae never disposed anybody in subsequent centuries to identify – whether accurately, inaccurately or even spuriously – a specific geographical location for Centumcellae.

This would seem to be another indication that interest was low for the task of locating it – and maybe conviction was also lacking for even the possibility that it ever actually existed, or if so that it was any more historically significant than any other one of the hundreds of hermitages that had dotted the Tuscan countryside over the centuries. Surely there would be some lingering historical memory of an ancient site in Tuscany (i.e., nothing to do with the foundation of Civitavecchia near to Rome) with one hundred cells. if in fact it existed, especially in the four brief years that Augustine lived in Italy late in the fourth century!

Link

Fifty Hikes in and around Tuscany. This web site beautifully shows the ruggedness of the coast and archipelago of Tuscany – but not Centumcellae...
http://www.50hikesoftuscany.com  

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