Disposizioni e ordinamenti simbolici degli spazi monastici

The article examines some symbolic readings of monastic spaces, for a period that goes from the IX century through the beginning of the XIII century. In these various materials – pictures, texts, and, among these, sermons and treatises, but also writings that wanted to be normative – the common line is the attempt to read the space of the monastery as bearer of meanings that refer to a reality of faith, and particularly, according to the anagogic key of lecture, to the celestial Jerusalem. On the other hand, we can notice in these materials also a significant reference to the origins, sometimes mediated by the fidelity to the traditional forms. This double reference, rather than being an attempt to pass on and guarantee an ideological standardization, seems to tend to anchor the reality of the monastery to a firm reference, that may overtake contingencies, and so guarantee the stability of the institution.