Anselm, Duke of Friuli

Anselm, remembered in later centuries as Saint Anselm of Nonantola, was a Lombard aristocrat of the eighth century who held the duchy of Friuli and afterward became a Benedictine abbot. He is not to be confused with the more famous Anselm of Canterbury or with Anselm of Lucca. Contemporary and near-contemporary notices of his life are relatively few; the principal narrative source is a medieval Vita associated with his abbey, supplemented by charters and by the later traditions of Nonantola. No reliable record of his year or place of birth survives. He belonged to the Lombard high nobility and was the brother of Giseltrude, who married King Aistulf. Through that connection he stood close to the royal court after Aistulf’s accession in 749, and tradition identifies him as Duke of Friuli in the years that followed, when that duchy was among the most important territorial commands in the Lombard kingdom of northern Italy.

With royal backing Anselm undertook monastic foundations in the region of Modena. He is credited with establishing a house at Fanano in the Apennines around the middle of the eighth century, commonly placed about 750, and with founding the Abbey of Nonantola on the plain a short time later, traditionally in 752. He then laid aside ducal power, took the Benedictine habit, and governed Nonantola as its first abbot. Pope Stephen II granted the new community notable relics, above all those of Pope Saint Sylvester I, whose cult became central to the abbey’s identity; papal privileges further confirmed its rights. These acts placed Nonantola among the significant Benedictine houses of the Po valley almost from its beginning.

Political change after Aistulf’s death in 756 interrupted Anselm’s abbacy. King Desiderius, who succeeded Aistulf and pursued his own men and policies, drove Anselm from Nonantola and consigned him to exile at Monte Cassino, the mother house of the Benedictine tradition in southern Italy. Anselm remained there for several years. The Frankish conquest of the Lombard kingdom by Charlemagne in 774 reversed his fortunes: he was restored to Nonantola and resumed the government of the abbey. In the last decades of the eighth century he worked to secure its estates, discipline, and intellectual life. Nonantola acquired extensive lands and developed a library and scriptorium that made it an important centre of learning in Carolingian Italy.

Anselm died at Nonantola in 805 and was buried in his abbey. Veneration of him as a saint took root locally at an early date and was received into wider liturgical tradition; his feast is observed on 3 March. Many personal particulars remain unknown: the sources do not record a wife or children, nor do they give a birthplace or a birth year, and modern historians treat some details of the ducal appointment and of the Vita with caution. What can be said with reasonable confidence is that a Lombard noble of royal kinship founded Nonantola, ruled it as a Benedictine abbot, suffered exile under Desiderius, returned after the Frankish conquest, and died at his monastery at the beginning of the ninth century, leaving a house that long remained one of the chief abbeys of northern Italy.