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 544 MONASTERIUM NIRIDANUM October means a building on the island called the Castello dell' Ovo and no other building. 1 3. In the Liber Pontificalis 2 the Emperor Constantine is recorded to have conferred insula cum castro upon the church of Naples. That the insula was Nisida was maintained with confidence by Mazzochi, 3 who on this point is followed by Mon- signor Duchesne. 4 But the castrum is undoubtedly the castrum Lucullanum, and this was formerly identified with the Castello dell' Ovo. 5 It was a natural inference that the insula was the island on which the castle stood. Mazzochi successfully contested this opinion and placed the castrum on the mainland, only by a wild conjecture he transplanted it to the neighbourhood of Pozzuoli. 6 This conjecture has long been abandoned. 7 The castrum of Lucullus was a short distance to the north of the island, on the hill called Pizzofalcone between the coast and the Strada di Chiaja. It was to this castle or oppidum that the body of St. Severinus was taken in the fifth century, 8 and a monastery certainly existed there, as well as several churches, in the time of Gregory the Great. 9 4. The attempt to prove that Nisida was the Insula Salva- toris has in fact been given up, and its failure has left the place from which Abbot Hadrian came unidentified. 10 But although the discussion has been confused by a great deal of irrelevant topography, I incline to believe that Bede's words do in fact refer to the island of Nisida. It is true that no monastery can be proved to have existed there/ 1 but the documentary materials relative to the district in the earlier middle ages are extremely scanty. There are, however, grounds for believing that Nisida 1 Under the Norman kings the monastery was removed to St. Peter's ad Castellum : see Capasso, n. ii. (1892) 172. 2 xxxiv. 32, vol. i. 186, ed. L. Duchesne, Paris, 1886. 3 Dissert, hist., pp. 199-227. In his later work, De sanctorum Neapolitanae Ecclesiae Episcoporum Cvltu, pp. 445-51 (Naples, 1753), Mazzochi discusses the passage in Bede, but does not add materially to what he had published in his Dissertatio. 4 Lib. pontif. i. 200, note 118. 5 Capaccio, p. 405; Chioccarelli, p. 87. 8 Dissert, hist., pp. 207-15. 7 It was demolished by Chiarito in a work which I have been unable to consult. See Napoli e i Luoghi celebri delle sue Vicinanze, i. 483 ; and Capasso, n. ii. 171 f. 8 In castello Lucullano : see Eugippius, Vita S. Severini, xlvi. 2, p. 65, ed. P. Knoll, Vienna, 1886. Eugippius is described by Isidore, de Viris illustr. xxxiv, as abbas Lucullanensis oppidi. The mistake that the monastery was on the island was repeated by Leimbach in Herzog and Hauck's Realencyklopadie, v. (1898) 591, and by the Rev. John Chapman, Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate Gospels, pp. 41, 44, Oxford, 1908. 9 Reg. i. 23 [24], iii. 1, x. 7 [19]. Cf. Capasso, ii. ii. 172. 10 Cf. Luigi Parascandolo, Memorie storiche-critiche-diplomatiche delta Chiesa di Napoli, ii. 23 (Naples, 1848). 11 Dom G. Morin is perhaps alone in following Mazzochi in the assertion that 'il y a eu effectivement dans cette ile un monastere qui a laisse ca et la quelques traces dans l'histoire, du septieme au treizieme siecle ' : Revue Benedictine, viii. (1892) 482.