Santa Maria della Matina

Santa Maria della Matina was a monastery near San Marco Argentano in Calabria. It was originally Benedictine, but later became Cistercian.

In 1065, at the urging of Pope Nicholas II, a monastery was founded at Matina by Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia and Calabria, and his wife, Sichelgaita. On 31 March, by order of Nicholas' successor, Alexander II, the monastery was dedicated in a ceremony officiated by Archbishop Arnulf of Cosenza, with the bishops Odo of Rapolla and Lawrence of Malvito in attendance, before Robert and Sichelgaita and the first abbot, Abelard. The monastery received rich gifts from its Norman patrons, but also a large piece land from the diocese of Malvito, for which the bishop was compensated in gold. In 1660, Gregorio de Laude, abbot of Santa Maria del Sagittario, who had seen the now lost parchments of the foundation himself, described it thus:

Monasterium Matinae a Robert Nortmando Apuliae et Calabriae Duce, uxoreque sua Sirlegatta anno 1066 [sic] fundatum, tunc Nigrorum, modo Cisterciensium Monachorum Casamaris filiationis situm in Calabria, duobus dissitum milliariis a ... Sancti Marci Urbe.
Robert the Norman, duke of Apulia and Calabria, and his wife Sichelgaita, founded the monastery of Matina in 1066, then Benedictine, now Cistercian, a daughter of the monks of Casamari in Calabria, two miles removed from ... San Marco.

The monstery was under the direct ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Papacy. As such, it appears in the earliest redaction of the Liber censuum of the early twelfth century. On 18 November 1092, Pope Urban II visited the monastery. In 1167, the Frenchman William of Blois became abbot, but resigned his position by 1169. By this time, the monastery was in decline. Joachim of Fiore refused the request of King Tancred of Sicily to move his new religious foundation at Fiore to Matina.

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