The Story of Saint Nilus
Why Walk the Pilgrimage with the Credential?
What makes Cammino di San Nilo unique is the encounter of history, spirituality, nature, and traditions. The Pilgrimage retraces the path that led young Nicholas, a native of Rossano Calabro, to don the monastic habit and receive the name “Nilus” in San Nazario – currently a frazione of the municipality of San Mauro la Bruca – where he realized his monastic vocation. The rediscovery of this pilgrimage aims to recover ancient paths through which the Italo-Greek monks left their presence and actions on a vast and rich territory. However, due to the scarcity of sources, such a reconstruction is not always easy, also affected by the transformations these places have undergone over more than a thousand years of history. The Middle Ages are marked by the Christian’s aspiration to rediscover in pilgrimages, especially the most famous ones to Rome, Jerusalem, and Santiago de Compostela, the authentic spirit of their faith. Southern Italy, due to its geographical position, thus becomes a place of passage of great significance for all the faithful. Strategically positioned at the center of the most important trade and communication routes of the Mediterranean Sea, these regions were at that time places of interaction between East and West. It is in this context, where the “influence of Eastern spirituality was strong and constant, that between the tenth and e” leventh centuries a significant number of Italo-Greek monks were recognized as Saints. This climate of exchange and respect between Western and Eastern monastic traditions is evidenced by Saint Nilus’s presence at the Benedictine monastery of Montecassino, where he composed a Greek hymn in honor of Saint Benedict. In 1004 AD, at the end of his earthly journey, near Tusculum (Frascati), he began the construction of what would become the most important Italo-Greek institution in the Christian West, still a powerful beacon of Eastern spirituality and culture at the gates of Rome, Santa Maria di Grottaferrata.
Saint Nilus of Rossano is one of the most representative Italo-Greek Saints, embodying the significant characteristics of Byzantine monasticism, which unfolds between spirituality and activities of daily practice. An emblematic figure of a world where cultural and ethnic distinctions were not cause for mistrust and contrast, but were perceived as mutual enrichment and a source of reassurance in a reality dominated by uncertainties and instability, he had relationships with the powerful of his time, with authorities from Constantinople and those residing in Arab Palermo, as well as with prominent figures of Western Europe, among whom stand out the names of Otto III, Emperor of Germany, son of the Byzantine princess Theophanu, and Saint Adalbert, Archbishop of Prague. Finally, in 1131, the Norman King Roger II, in the Palace of Palermo, donated to Grottaferrata the monastery of Santa Maria di Rofrano, along with various other Italo-Greek foundations of the Kingdom of Naples, concentrated largely in western Lucania. The Cammino di San Nilo we present currently covers the stretch that the Calabrian Saint traveled in southern Cilento, with the prospect that it may in the future connect Rossano and Grottaferrata, the two most representative cities in the Saint’s journey of life and faith. But other places relevant to medieval monastic culture, both Eastern and Western, which contributed significantly to European identity – promoting reading and writing, the arts, meditation, work, and the mastery of time – could also be stages of this and other future Pilgrimages in Byzantine Cilento.
