Kriston R. Rennie is Dean, Faculty of Indigenous Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Northern British Columbia.

A thoughtful and deeply appreciative study of an important center of religion and learning that has been in meaningful dialogue with the secular world for almost 1, 500 years.,- Charles Hilken, American Benedictine Review, Vol. 73, No. 4, ''Rennie's book provides a compelling history of a unique place on earth, which has been and still is invested with a variety of meanings.'',- Sven Meeder, Radboud University Nijmegen, Early Medieval Europe, 2023, Vol. 31, No. 2, ''Kriston R. Rennie has written a fascinating and important book... The author [...] takes the reader through a riveting intellectual history of an iconic place. Rennie examines a place of cenobitic monasticism and uses it to tell a story of how an architecture of enclosure induced expansive and eventually international ideas''.,- Charles R. Gallagher, Church History, March, 2024, Vol. 92, No. 4

• Acknowledgements, Abbreviations, List of Illustrations, Prologue: The Oak Tree, Part I: Animus and Anchor, Chapter 1 - An Enigma: The Legend of Saint Benedict, Chapter 2 - The 'Citadel of Campania': Growth and Prosperity, Part II: Rise and Fall, Chapter 3 - A Destiny Repeated: Episodes of Destruction, Chapter 4 - Floreat Semper: Rebuilding, Stone by Stone, Part III: Preservation and Valorization, Chapter 5 - The People's Patrimony: Defining Historical Value, Chapter 6 - A New Europe: Erasing the Destruction,Epilogue: Lighthouse, Index.

Kriston R. Rennie is Dean, Faculty of Indigenous Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Northern British Columbia.

A thoughtful and deeply appreciative study of an important center of religion and learning that has been in meaningful dialogue with the secular world for almost 1, 500 years.,- Charles Hilken, American Benedictine Review, Vol. 73, No. 4, ''Rennie's book provides a compelling history of a unique place on earth, which has been and still is invested with a variety of meanings.'',- Sven Meeder, Radboud University Nijmegen, Early Medieval Europe, 2023, Vol. 31, No. 2, ''Kriston R. Rennie has written a fascinating and important book... The author [...] takes the reader through a riveting intellectual history of an iconic place. Rennie examines a place of cenobitic monasticism and uses it to tell a story of how an architecture of enclosure induced expansive and eventually international ideas''.,- Charles R. Gallagher, Church History, March, 2024, Vol. 92, No. 4

• Acknowledgements, Abbreviations, List of Illustrations, Prologue: The Oak Tree, Part I: Animus and Anchor, Chapter 1 - An Enigma: The Legend of Saint Benedict, Chapter 2 - The 'Citadel of Campania': Growth and Prosperity, Part II: Rise and Fall, Chapter 3 - A Destiny Repeated: Episodes of Destruction, Chapter 4 - Floreat Semper: Rebuilding, Stone by Stone, Part III: Preservation and Valorization, Chapter 5 - The People's Patrimony: Defining Historical Value, Chapter 6 - A New Europe: Erasing the Destruction,Epilogue: Lighthouse, Index.