San Vincenzo al Volturno

The manuscript, written in a Beneventan hand and including numerous images, is housed at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, BAV Barb.

In the 1970s Dom Angelo Pantoni, a monk from Monte Cassino excavated the area to the east of the river, where the later medieval monastery was built.

The San Vincenzo Project began in 1980, led by Richard Hodges, then of the University of Sheffield, and the Soprintendenza archaeologica del Molise.

These scientific excavations continued through the 1980s and 1990s under the direction of Hodges and with the support of the British School at Rome, the abbey of Monte Cassino, and the Soprintendenza archaeologica del Molise.

The monastery was founded on a site which had been occupied in the pre-Roman period by Samnite peoples, and which had a villa or estate in the early to mid-fifth century.

The story goes that they were advised to found the monastery on the banks of the Volturno by the abbot of the powerful Abbey of Farfa, north of Rome.

The abbots Iosue, Talaricus and Epiphanius in the early ninth century increased the numbers of monks to over 300 and expanded the territories and possessions all over central and southern Italy.

In 1989 San Vincenzo al Volturno became home to a new monastic community, the Benedictine nuns of the Connecticut Abbey of Regina Laudis who had to leave the monastery in 2015.