restored the buildings, gave gifts of valuable books and church plate.[1]
But the system of commendatory abbots is wrong radically. In this case, too, it led to all kinds of abuses; the revenues of the monastery were used by Cardinals who did nothing for it. In 1473 one of these Commendatary Archimandrites, Cardinal Julian della Rovere,[2] gave orders to Bramante to transform the monastic buildings into a fortress. It is chiefly from this transformation that Grottaferrata has still so much the appearance of an ancient castle, with ramparts, bastions, moat, and portcullis. In 1608 the Commenda was happily abolished, and the community returned to the old principle, under a real acting Archimandrite.
The church has been restored and rebuilt many times. The outside West front is fourteenth-century, with a superb Lombard tower of the twelfth century. But the inside was completely re-formed in the year 1754, with deplorable results. Already in 1665 there had been a far-reaching restoration. In 1754 an altar, quite on the Latin model of that time, had been erected, with an elaborate reredos of marbles. But in 1881, with a better appreciation of the rite, several successful changes were made. The reredos of the altar was turned into an Ikonostasion, with the royal doors where the altar had been, and a good Byzantine altar, with a ciborium, was erected behind it. In spite of later changes much remains to be seen in the church. One of the best-known sights is the series of frescoes illustrating the life of the saint by Domenichino (1610) in the chapel of St Neilos. The West door of the church in carved wood is of the eleventh century, with a mosaic over it. In the middle of the Ikonostasion is a picture of our Lady, originally Latin, said to have been given by Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241). There are many paintings of Byzantine and Basilian saints, dating from the last restoration in 1881. Outside the West front is a fountain, used liturgically, with a good canopy of pointed arches over it, and around this is the "Paradise" of trees, that ought to be at every monastery of the rite.
The monks of Grottaferrata have always had a reputation for their studies. They produced the Typikon which is still the official book for all Italo-Greeks (p. 179). In the twelfth
