Tre Fontane Abbey

History of the abbey

Belonging to the monastery are three separate churches. The first, the Church of St. Paul of Three Fountains, was raised on the spot where Paul of Tarsus was beheaded by order of Nero. Legend accounts for the three springs (fontane) with the assertion that, when severed from Paul's body, his head bounced and struck the earth in three different places, from which fountains sprang up. These still flow and are located in the sanctuary.

The second church, Santa Maria Scala Coeli, dedicated to Mary under the title "Our Lady of Martyrs", is built over the relics of Zeno the Tribune and his 10,203 legionaries, who were martyred at the order of Diocletian in 299. In this church is the altar of the scala coeli ("ladder to heaven"), from which the church receives its present name. The half-dome of the tribune has mosaics, executed after cartoons by Giovanni de' Vecchi, and presented to the church by Pope Clement VII and by Cardinal Aldobrandini.

Third are the church and monastery dedicated to Vincent of Saragossa and Anastasius of Persia, built by Pope Honorius I in 626 and given to the Benedictines. They were to care for the two older sanctuaries, as well as their own church.

Toward the middle of the seventh century, the persecutions inflicted on the Eastern monks by the Monothelites obliged many of them to seek shelter in Rome. The pope committed this abbey to them as a refuge. The abbey was richly endowed, particularly by Charlemagne, who bestowed on it the Isola del Giglio off the Tuscan coast, as well as Orbetello and eleven other towns with a considerable territory. Its abbot exercised ordinary jurisdiction (abbatia nullius) over this area.

In the tenth century, it was given to the Cluniacs. In 1140 Pope Innocent II withdrew the abbey from them, and entrusted it to Bernard of Clairvaux. He assigned a Cistercian colony from Clairvaux to the abbey, with Peter Bernard of Paganelli as their abbot, who five years later became Pope Eugene III. …

Our Lady of Revelation

Across the road from the abbey is the Grotto of the Three Fountains in Rome. It is said that this is where St. Paul was beheaded and his head bounced three times on the ground.

In 1947, it became a shrine to the Virgin Mary who appeared to Bruno Cornacchiola (back then, an Italian Neoprotestant Anarchist, who planned on assassinating the Roman Pontiff) and his three children. Bruno changed his ways and rejoined the Catholic Church, spending the rest of his life as a Catholic. From that moment forward, the dirt in the grotto is said to have miraculous powers.