Editing Monte Cassino (section)

=== 580–884 ===
[[File:Monte Cassino abbey from cemetery.JPG|thumb|Promontory and post-WWII rebuilt abbey|300px]]Monte Cassino became a model for future developments. Its prominent site has always made it an object of strategic importance. It was sacked or destroyed a number of times. "The first to demolish it were Lombards on foot in 580; the last were Allied bombers in 1944."<ref>{{cite book | first = Anne | last = Fremantle | author-link = Anne Fremantle | title = The Age of Faith | publisher = Time-Life Books | year = 1965 | page = 34 | isbn = 978-0652686104}}</ref> In 581, during the abbacy of [[Bonitus (abbot)|Bonitus]], the [[Lombards]] sacked the abbey, and the surviving monks fled to Rome, where they remained for more than a century. During this time the body of St Benedict was transferred to Fleury, the modern [[Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire|Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire]] near Orleans, France.

A flourishing period of Monte Cassino followed its re-establishment in 718 by [[Petronax of Monte Cassino|Abbot Petronax]], when among the monks were [[Carloman, Mayor of the Palace|Carloman]], son of [[Charles Martel]]; [[Ratchis]], predecessor of the Lombard King [[Aistulf]]; and [[Paul the Deacon]], the historian of the Lombards.

In 744, a donation of [[Gisulf II of Benevento]] created the ''[[Terra Sancti Benedicti]]'', the secular lands of the abbacy, which were subject to the abbot and nobody else save the pope. Thus, the monastery became the capital of a state comprising a compact and strategic region between the Lombard [[Duchy of Benevento|principality of Benevento]] and the [[Byzantine]] city-states of the coast ([[Duchy of Naples|Naples]], [[Duchy of Gaeta|Gaeta]], and [[Duchy of Amalfi|Amalfi]]).

In 884 [[Saracen]]s sacked and then burned it down,<ref>{{cite book | first = Will | last = Durant | title = The Age of Faith: A History of Medieval Civilization – Christian, Islamic, and Judaic – from Constantine to Dante: A.D. 325–1300 | url = https://archive.org/details/ageoffaithahisto012288mbp | url-access = limited | publisher = Simon and Schuster | year = 1950 | page = [https://archive.org/details/ageoffaithahisto012288mbp/page/n317 290]}}</ref> and Abbot [[Bertharius of Monte Cassino|Bertharius]] was killed during the attack. Among the great historians who worked at the monastery, in this period there is [[Erchempert]], whose ''Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum'' is a fundamental chronicle of the ninth-century [[Southern Italy|Mezzogiorno]].