GROUARD
41
GRUEBER
wards (26 Dec, 1005). The building was carried out
by his successors, especially the fourth abbot, St.
Bartholomew, who is usually accounted the second
founder. The abbey has had a troubled history. The
high repute of the monks attracted many gifts; its
possessions were numerous and widespread, and in
1131 King Roger of Sicily made the abbot Baron of
Rossano with an extensive fief. Between the twelfth
century and the fifteenth the monastery suffered much
from the continual strife of warring factions: Romans
and Tusculans, Guelphs and Ghibellines, pope and
antipope, Colonna and Orsini. From 1163 till the
destruction of Tusculum, in 1191, the greater part of
the commimity sought refuge in a dependency of the
Benedictine protocoenobium of Subiaco. In the middle
of the thirteenth century the Emperor Frederick II
made the abbey his headquarters during the siege of
Rome; in 1378 Breton and Gascon mercenaries held it
for the antipope Clement VII; and the fifteenth cen-
tury saw the bloody feuds of the Colonnas and the
Orsini raging round the walls. Hence in 1432 the
humanist Ambrogio Traversari tells us that it bore the
appearance of a barrack rather than of a monastery.
In 1462 began a line of commendatory abbots, fifteen
in number, of whom all but one were cardinals.
The most distinguished were the Greek Bessarion, Giulio della Rovere (afterwards Julius II), and the last of the line. Cardinal Consalvi, secretary of state to Pius VII. Bessarion, himself a Basilian monk, in- creased the scanty anil impoverished commvmity and restored the church ; Cardinal Giulio della Rovere, from more selfish motives, erected the Castello and surrounded the whole monastery with the imposing fortifications that still exist. Till 1008 the commu- nity was ruled by priors dependent on the commenda- tories, but in that year Cirottaferrata became a mem- ber of the Basilian congregation founded by Gregory XIII, the revenues of the community were separated from those of the commendatories, and the first of a series of triennial regular abbots was appointed. The triennial system survived the suppression of the Com- mendam and lasted till the end of last century, with one break from 1834 to 1870, when priors were appointed by the Holy See. In 1901 new constitutions came into force and Arsenio Pellegrini was installed as the first perpetual regular abbot since 1462.
The Greek Rite which was brought to Grottaferrata by St. Nilus had lost its native character by the end of the twelfth century, and gradual!)' became more and more latinized, but was restored by order of Leo XIII in 1881 (see Rocchi, "Badia", cap. iv). The Basilian abbey has always been a home of Greek learning, and Greek hymnography flourished there long after the art had died out within the Byzantine Empire. Monastic studies were revived under Cardinal Bessarion and again in 1608. The Ijest known of modern Basilian writers is the late Ab)iot Cozza Luzi id. 1905), the con- tinuator of Cardinal Mai's "NovaBibliothecaPatrum. Of the church consecrated by John XIX, in 1024, little can be seen except the mosaics in the narthex and over the triumphal arch, the medieval structures having been covered or destroyed during the " restorations" of various commendatory abbots. Domenichino's fa- mous frescoes, due to Cardinal Odoardo Farne.se, are still to be seen in the chapel of St. Nilus. In 1904 the ninth centenary of the foundation of the abbey was marked by a judicious but partial restoration, the dis- covery of some fragmentary thirteenth century frescoes and an exhibition of Byzantine art. The monastery has been exempt from episcopal jurisdiction since the days of Calixtus II, but its claims to the dignity of an abbey nullius were disallowed by Benedict XIV. In 1874 the building was declared a national monument and in 1903 the church received the rank of a Roman basilica.
RoDOTA, DeW oriffine, prooresso estalo presente del riio greco in Italia (Rome, 1760), II, 183; Mencacci, Cenni storici della
badia di S. Maria di Grottaferrata (1875); Rocchi. Badia di
Grottaferrata (Rome, 1904); Idem, Codices Cryptenses (Grotta-
ferrata, 1883); Idem, De ca^nohio Cryptoferrensi efusqiie hiblio-
tkeca €t codicibus prcesertim grcecis commentarii (Frascati, 1893);
Rossi, Cenobio basiliano di Grottaferrata in Rivista d' Italia
(Rome, 1904), VII. 802; Badia di Grottaferrata ed it sua nono
centenario in Civilth Catlolica (Rome, 1904), LV, 2, 560, 689;
DE Waal, Zur neunten Sdkutarfeier der Abtei von Grottaferrata
in Romische Quartalschrift (Rome, 1904), VII, 225; G. Assist,
Innografi Italo-Greci, and BuccoLA, FesteCmtenarie di Grottafer-
rata, both in Oriens Christianus (Rome. 1905), V; Palmieri,
Centenaire de Grottaferrata in Vizantifskij Vremennik (St. Peters-
burg, 1906), XII; MuNoz. L'Art byzantin a V exposition de
Grottaferrata (Rome, 1906); Esposizione italo-bizantina nella
Badia Greca di Grottaferrata, Catalogo (Rome, 1905); Villeggia-
tura Tusculana di M. T. Cicerone in Civilta Cattolica, LV, 3, 420;
Batiffol, Abbaye de Rossano (Paris, 1891); Kehr, Regesta
Pontificum Romanorum. Italia Pontificia (Berlin, 1907). II, 41;
Moroni, Dizionario, XXXIII, 44.
Raymund Webster.
Grouard, Emile.
Apostolic of.
See Athabasca, Vicariate
Grove, John. See Irel.^nd, William.
Grueber, Johann, German Jesuit missionary in China and noted explorer of the seventeenth century; b. at Linz, 28 October, 1623 ; d. in 1665. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1641, and went to China in 1656, where he was active at the court of Peking as professor of mathematics and assistant to Father Adam Schall von BeO. In 1661 his superiors sent him, together with the Belgian Father Albert de Dorville (D'Or- ville), to Rome on business concerning the order. As it was impossible to journe}- by sea on account of the blockade of Macao by the Dutch, they conceived the daring idea of going overland to India by way of China and Thibet. This led to Grueber's memorable journey (Dorville died on the way), which won him fame as one of the most successful explorers of the seventeenth century (Tonnier). They first travelled to Sinning-fu, on the borders of Kan-su; thence, through the Kukunor territor)' and Kalmuck Tartary (Desertum Kalnac), to the Holy City" of Lhasa in Thibet; crossed, amid countless difficulties and hardships, the mountain passes of the Himalayas; arrived at Nepal, and thence passed over the Ganges plateau to Patna and Agra. This journey lasted two hundred and four- teen daj-s. Dorville died at Agra, a victim of the hardships he had undergone. Grueber, accompanied by a Sanskrit scholar, Father Henry Roth, followed the overland route through Asia and succeeded in reaching Europe. His journey produced a sensation similar to that aroused in our times by the explorations of Sven Hedin. It showed the possibility of a direct overland connexion between China and India, and the value and significance of the Himalayan passes. Tonnier says: "It is due to CJrueber's energy that Europe re- ceived the first correct information concerning Thibet and its inhabitants. Although Oderico of Porde- none had traversed Thibet, in 1327, and \'isited Lhasa, he had not written any account of this journey. Anto- nio de Andrada and Manuel Marquez had pushed their explorations as far as Tsparang on the northern Setledj. In 1664 Grueber set out to return to China, attempted to push his way through Russia, was obliged to return, and then undertook the !and route to Asia. He was taken sick in Constantinople and died in Florence, or, according to others, in Patak, Hungary.
An account of this first journey through Thibet in modern times was published by Father Athanasius Kircher to whom Grueber had left his journals and charts, which he had supplemented by numerous verbal and written additions ("China illustrata", Amsterdam, 1667, 64-67). In the French edition of "China" (Amsterdam, 1670) is also incorporated a letter of Grueber written to the Duke of Tuscany. For letters of Cirueber see "Neue Weit-Bott" (Augs- burg and Gratz, 1726), no. 34; Thevenot (whose acquaintance Grueber had made in Constantinople), "Divers voyages curieux" (Paris, 1666, 1672, 1692),
