THE ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE OF THE BENEDICTINE CASSINESE CONGREGATION (15th-18th CENTURY): DIGITAL AND SPATIAL ANALYSIS STRATEGIES THROUGH BIM MODELS. The Monastery of San Paolo d’Argon (BG)

This research in the field of the history of architecture investigates the historical religious architectural heritage of the Cassinese Congregation, which emerged from one of the most significant reforms of the Benedictine Order in the early modern period. Initiated by Ludovico Barbo at Santa Giustina in Padua, the Congregation was recognised by Pope Martin V in 1419. While its foundational core was rooted in the Lombardo-Veneto axis, the network counted more than 100 monasteries already recorded at the end of the XVI century, spread across the Italian territory. The study addresses a central question: how the principles of the reform were expressed in monastic architecture. Indeed, the reform, grounded in a return to the Rule of Saint Benedict, also established an introspective and solitary mode of prayer. This principle had a profound architectural impact, requiring the introduction of individual cells in dormitories, which necessitated a comprehensive rethinking of the spatial organisation of monasteries. This process was ruled by the Annual General Chapters, the centralised body of government, which oversaw every aspect of monasteries’ management, promoted a standardisation of building processes, and appointed figures to supervise them. The reconstruction undertaken by the principal monasteries in the XV century provided an opportunity to elaborate typological and spatial solutions that were subsequently disseminated and reinterpreted across the congregational network. Scholarship has increasingly investigated the architectural outcomes of Barbo’s reform, questioning the existence of a shared cultural and architectural programme within the network. While recent studies have significantly advanced this enquiry, formulating an affirmative response, they have also highlighted the need for further site-specific analysis, alongside a more systematic comparative approach. This research aims to advance the study of Cassinese architectural culture, seeking to develop strategies for supporting these comparative lines of investigation. To this end, it embraces Digital Humanities and the specific branch encapsulated in the Computational Humanities. Within this trajectory, a digital ecosystem founded on a relational database for cross-referencing historical data, XML/TEI standards for the computational treatment of documentary sources, and BIM methodology have been developed. This infrastructure also serves to discuss the potential and challenges of integrating traditional, human-driven research methods in architectural history with data-driven approaches. The development of these digital strategies facilitated a systematic decomposition of the research problem, refining the key elements constitutive of the Congregation's architectural program. This methodological and operational approach was subsequently tested through a focused case study: the monastery of San Paolo d’Argon near Bergamo, which offered the opportunity both to contribute to historiographical monographic inquiries and to serve as a benchmark for the developed strategies. The investigation of the case-study was driven by further research questions, asking to what extent the principles of the shared cultural programme had resonated in the long term in a peripheral area of the congregational core, and how they were critically negotiated according to the features of the local koinè. Selected for its pertinence to the research questions, San Paolo d’Argon –which joined the Congregation in 1496 and was rebuilt between the XVI and early XVII centuries–, located at the far end of the Lombardo-Veneto axis and the mainland domain of the Serenissima, provided a privileged lens to explore these issues. The study focused specifically on the residential spaces for regular life, analysing their design and construction history in relation to the local cultural and architectural context, and situating them within the broader architectural programme of the Congregation.