1921 MONASTERIUM NIRIDANUM 543 written in a Beneventan hand of the first half of the tenth century. 1 It is the antiquity of the manuscript which gives interest to the reference in it to the monks of the island of the Saviour. 2 The other Life, which is anonymous and perhaps not much later in date, 3 and is preserved in a thirteenth-century manuscript in the Corsini Library at Rome (cod. 777), adds the statement that the island was hardly twelve stadia distant from Naples. 4 The importance of this latter notice is that it shows that in the language of a writer of the ninth or tenth century, whose work at any rate is preserved in a manuscript of the twelfth, the island of the Saviour was described as situate rather less than a mile and a half from Naples. This can only be the Castello dell' Ovo. 5 Now Mazzochi, whose opinion was repeated by Waitz, 6 endeavoured to prove that the island of the Saviour was Nisida and was so named because it was the property of the cathedral church of the Saviour at Naples. It was necessary therefore to suppose either that the stadium as a measure of length had changed its meaning, or else that xii was a corruption for xxii? He had, however, to admit that in later times j from the twelfth century onwards, the island of the Saviour was unquestionably the Castello dell' Ovo. 8 Consequently he produced a theory that the original monastery at Nisida had sent an offshoot to the Castello some time earlier, and that this had appropriated the name of the parent house. When he found an abbot of the monastery of the Saviour insulae maioris de Neapoli mentioned in a charter of 1202 cited by Capaccio, 9 he maintained that he belonged to Nisida. Mazzochi's course of argument, it is clear, involves a series of unproved assertions. Not merely from the twelfth century but as early as 937 the monasterium insule Salvatoris 10 or monasterium sancti Salvatoris in insula maris 1 See G. Waitz's preface to the work, Scriptores Rerum Langobard. (Monum. Germ, hist.), p. 399 (1878), and E. A. Loew, The Beneventan Script, pp. 53, 74, 364 (Oxford, 1914). 2 Quasi convivium monachis insulae Salvatoris erhibiturus. . . In eandem ascendit insulam : lxv. 435, ed. Waitz ; Acta Sanctorum Iulii, iy. 76 c, $ 8. 3 Mazzochi erroneously held that this Life was not. written until the eleventh century or later : see p. 36, n. 29, and p. 218, n. 27. 4 p. 444, ed. Waitz ; Acta Sanctorum, hdii, iv. 81 c, § 14 (from another manuscript at Monte Cassino). 5 Cf. Napoli e i Luoghi celebri delle sue Vicinanze, i. 482 f. (Naples, 1845). 6 p. 444, n. 1. 7 Dissert, hist., p. 221. 8 Ibid. pp. 221 ff. Mazzochi quotes Peter of Eboli, who died probably between 1212 and 1220: see G. B. Siragusa's preface to his Liber ad honorem Augusti, p. xviii. (Rome, 1906). Peter's verses, i. 945-56, state clearly that the Castello dell' Ovo nomen Salvator habet : p. 69. 9 J. C. Capacius, Neapolitana historia, p. 408 (Naples, 1607). ^ 10 Regii Neapolitani Archivi Monumenta, i. (Naples, 1845) 101 ; B. Capasso, Monum, ad Neapolit. Duealus Historiam pertinentia, n. i. no. 38 (Naples, 1885).
