Narni Underground, secrets from the past

The solitary remains of ancient walls appeared to be enveloped by a grassy frame of brambles and wild shrubs, along the sheer cliff overlooking the River Nera. What lay hidden beyond those ruined stones? What secrets did the monastery of San Domenico in Narni hold, now partly abandoned after the bombings? One ordinary day in 1979, six young people, driven by this irrepressible curiosity, set out as explorers. A rope was thrown and haphazardly anchored to the wall of the gardens of San Bernardo. With hard hats on their heads, off they went, down into the unknown. And so began the extraordinary story of Narni Underground: as we all know, adventures are far better than boredom.

The discovery of Narni Underground

Can you imagine Mr Ernani Proietti’s astonishment at seeing those young people suddenly get into his garden? In fact, this is what they saw after climbing over the cliff: Mr Ernani and the land he owned! We could almost picture him, the old farmer, taking his stick and, threateningly, pointing it towards the unfortunates who had trampled on his vegetables. The young people, including Roberto Nini¹, began stammering in fear sentences full of apologies, insisting it was just a noble exploration for speleological purposes. Speleology! They had to struggle to explain what it was all about, what that pastime was that led young people to go into dark and damp recesses.

Then everything began, as events unfolded at just the right time. Mr Ernani revealed to the six young people that, in the steep slope plunging into the valley, there was an opening, a window through which the rock breathed. Who knows what it could contain, perhaps a treasure… The fissure was narrow but with a little effort it could be widened, with ingenuity it could be crossed. Without a moment’s thought they plunged into the darkness, as when a candle’s wick finally gives out.

Narni Underground and the mysterious crypt

The six young people entered a surprisingly large room. Water dripped over their heads, echoing in the silence, and beyond the stratified limestone on the walls were traces of mysterious frescoes, eyes peering into the unfathomable. No one in Narni knew what that strange crypt was, or even imagined. The explorers immediately felt they had made a sensational discovery. Hence, they decided to found the Gruppo Speleologico Narnense (“Narni Speleological Group”) to investigate and clean up that underground space, struggling to obtain permits from the municipality. What they could not imagine was that this was only the beginning of a long adventure.

Many years have passed since then, and today Roberto Nini is president of the “Narni Sotterranea” Association, whose important research has established that the site rediscovered in 1979 was a 12th–13th-century church. Indeed, before the Dominicans arrived, an older place of worship, known as Santa Maria Maggiore, already stood on this site².

The frescoes of Narni Underground

Unknown artists of the Umbrian school had frescoed the church. In order to appreciate the work, it was necessary to remove the dirt, strip back and restore the walls, and rediscover the colours and the ancient splendour. Much of the necessary funding came from the visitors, who were enthusiastic about feeling part of such an important undertaking. The Narni Sotterranea association opened the visitor route in 1994.

With the first restorations in the year 2000, we can admire 13th–14th century paintings of the presbytery: a Coronation of the Virgin, and on the apsidal arch, a series of clipei depicting Christ with the four Evangelists. Just below, two majestic figures of St. Michael the Archangel emerged from the limestone. On the left as commander of the Celestial Militia and dragon-slayer. On the right as a psychagogue, weigher of souls in the psychostasy. The vault of the church was instead decorated with a marvellous starry sky, a figurative reference to the crown that adorns the Virgin’s head in Holy Scripture³.

Dedication to Saint Michael the Archangel

The church in Narni was built ad instar Gargani, following the example of the cave of Saint Michael in Monte Sant’Angelo, from where the cult had spread throughout Europe. Legend says that there is a sacred line connecting the main places dedicated to Saint Michael: from Mont Saint-Michel in France, passing through the Abbey in Susa Valley and the Sanctuary on Mount Gargano, to the Monastery of Mount Carmel. The church of Narni is also located on this route.

The ancient dedication to Saint Michael the Archangel was not yet known in the 20th century. Thus, due to its inaccessible location, archaeologists reconsecrated the church under the name of Santa Maria della Rupe. To reconstruct the origins of this mysterious place, archaeologists have carried out some stratigraphic investigations on the floor surface. The excavations, now visible through a plexiglass panel, have revealed the presence of much older structures. For example, there was a cistern from ancient Roman Narnia, possibly belonging to a domus, and, a little further on, the remains of the Formina aqueduct, built by Tiberius in 27 AD.

The secret rooms of Narni Underground

The six young explorers of Narni had not found any treasure, but it was of little importance. At least they had satisfied their thirst for adventure! Nonetheless, the discovery of the underground church had plunged them into an unknown and exciting world of tunnels and hidden, mysterious rooms. What’s more, down there you could walk along a fair stretch of an ancient corridor. Here they were again, moving forward with the flickering light of torches, back in 1979. One step after another, and a shiver down their spine.

Suddenly, the group noticed an irregularity in the wall, as if the stone were blocking access to a passageway. When they knocked, the wall made a deep, hollow sound. They realised there was an empty space on the other side. Was it a bricked-up door? In fact, the wall seemed to be hiding a jamb. Once upon a time, a room opened from that door, but the young people found it blocked off and inaccessible. Could it be that another mystery was kept within those walls, a secret that someone had wanted to hide?

The “gang of the hole“

The young people thought, without hesitation, of removing the section of wall that obstructed the passage. But there was a big problem: the room was located next to the house of Alberto and Rosita, who did not agree at all, fearing a structural collapse. Should it be given up then? Never. After all, it was only a matter of patient waiting. When the parade of the city (“Corsa all’Anello”) took place on Saturday evening, the neighbours left their dwellings and all the citizens went to the event. All except Roberto Nini and the guys of Narni Underground: it was time to act! The famous “gang of the hole” could wait no longer! The explorers crept up to the mysterious door. Thus, confident that no one could hear them, began knocking on it with a hammer.

One blow, then another and yet another, until from a large hole they could catch a glimpse of what lay beyond. Beyond the door was another corridor and, finally, a series of very strange rooms, with graffiti carved into the walls, which brought to mind prison cells. An idea flashed through the young people’s minds, bizarre, certainly, but not impossible. All they had to do was piece together the jigsaw: a Dominican convent, a hidden prison and graffiti. Was it possible that there was a branch of the Holy Office, the dreaded Roman Inquisition, in Narni?

The bigamist

And yet, once again, it all seemed forgotten, lost, even absurd. How could there have been a Holy Inquisition in Narni if there was no mention of it in any document? The question remained unresolved for a long time, at least until providence intervened, as it has so often done in this story. Between visits to Narni Sotterranea, unexpected help arrived. Thus, an official from the Vatican Secret Archives, then an ambassador of the Holy See and finally a monsignor, allowed, one by one, a glimpse into the archives of the Inquisition. And there, amongst those papers yellowed by time, lay the history of the Tribunal of the Holy Office in Narni.

The Inquisition had indeed operated within the Dominican monastery. However, everything had subsequently been erased, the doors had been bricked up and almost all the documents had been destroyed. Almost, because something survived. Fortunately, some reports from the Vatican Archives had survived, stating that a certain Domenico Ciabocchi had been imprisoned by the Inquisition in Narni⁴. It was just a few lines, but they revealed a lead to follow: a name to search in historical sources. And indeed, the same prisoner was mentioned in some documents of the Trinity College in Dublin⁵. Surprisingly, in those papers was the whole story of the process against Domenico Ciabocchi.

The “chamber of torment”

The Holy Office had imprisoned the man because he had married two different women. At the time, bigamy was a serious offence, a genuine sacramental violation. As if that were not enough, in 1726 Ciabocchi had committed a gruesome murder. He had, in fact, strangled the guard who brought him his lunch with a rope, managing to escape from his prison cell. All this had taken place right inside the room that Roberto Nini and the other lads had discovered. A shiver ran down their spines as they read the name of that room in the Dublin papers: the “chamber of torment”.

This was the place of torture, where a rope was used to subject prisoners to the terrible strappado. The room was directly connected to two cells on the ground floor. The inquisitors used one of them for a harsh prison regime, as evidenced by the numerous graffiti carved by prisoners on the walls. Another room was located upstairs, near the Inquisitor’s flat⁶. The documents of the process reveal that the bigamist Domenico Ciabocchi was finally captured because of a letter sent to his second wife. Once again locked up, chained in the prison of the Holy Office in Narni, and condemned to lifelong galley service.

Lombardini and the symbols of Freemasonry

The graffiti carved into the walls of Narni’s cells reveal the identity of another prisoner. But Giuseppe Andrea Lombardini was no ordinary convict. Sources affirm that he was a corporal in the Inquisition. He served at the headquarters in Spoleto, to which the vicariate of Narni also reported⁷. For reasons that have never been clarified, however, he was accused of treason for having helped a prisoner to escape⁸.

Lombardini, however, never pleaded guilty. From his imprisonment on 4 December 1759, he consistently maintained he was the victim of a conspiracy. On the plaster of a cell wall, next to his name, he wrote the word “innocent” in clear letters. Today it is only legible in raking light because someone immediately scoured it away, most likely the Dominican prison guards.

The prisoner then realised that it was not convenient to write his messages so explicitly. Instead, he chose to conceal them through symbols… From that moment on, Lombardini used the complex language of Freemasonry to engrave almost all the plastered wall portions of his prison cell. Mysterious graffiti of all kinds, numerologies, christograms and figures of saints, seemed to the Dominicans as simple Christian testimonies. Yet, behind the appearances, they concealed darker meanings, double readings and esoteric interpretations.

The manifest meaning

Lombardini was a corporal in the guards of the Holy Office, but he was also secretly a Freemason. Is it possible that someone had discovered this? Was he imprisoned for this reason under some pretext? The prisoner’s bitterness was particularly against the Dominicans. For example, he carefully avoided writing the letter “D” in his messages, as a sign of contempt towards the Order. Thus, we read “Il Paratiso Santo“, “Tio mio” and even his name as “Giuseppe Antrea Lobartini”. Lombardini wanted to leave a message for those who would come after him, recounting the injustice he had suffered.

On each wall, Lombardini engraved the monogram of Saint Bernardino, IHS, surmounted by a cross and flanked by the three nails of the Passion. This was the symbol of the Jesuits, an order which, in those years, was undergoing fierce persecution, destined to culminate in its suppression in 1773. It is clear that the condemned man identified with this painful ordeal. In Lombardini’s view, a corrupt section of the Church was oppressing the righteous. Indeed, several doves, symbols of peace, are depicted chained to the tree of life, and just below, a falconer threatens to release his bird of prey. The IHS monogram affixed to the entrance wall is mirrored, in accordance with Masonic tradition, by its inverted counterpart on the ceiling vault. Even the digits of the year of imprisonment, 1759, are written backwards and, when read this way, form the word “ESCI” (“exit”).

Time of imprisonment and passion

Inside the cell, Lombardini also left numerous references to his time in captivity: depictions of the sun and the moon, the inscriptions “720 HOUR, 1759” and “1440 HOUR, 1760”, and a sundial, carved near a window. Considering his sentence unjust, it is possible that he compared himself to Christ. Thus, the image of a rooster alludes to betrayal, whilst fourteen crosses represent the Stations of the Cross. In a graffito on the side, Saint Nicholas is freeing three officers unjustly imprisoned by Constantine, as tradition holds.

The esoteric meaning and the Masonic Temple

However, when reading the inscriptions left by Andrea Lombardini, we should not just focus on first considerations, but try to look further. Indeed, the prisoner of Narni had transformed his prison cell into a Masonic temple, given the symbolism. In the Marian sign he hid the square and compass, while in the monogram of St. Bernardino we glimpse the Delta, the scrutinising eye of the Great Architect of the Universe. The palindromic sequence 7244270 that Lombardini engraved several times on the plaster probably also refers to it⁹. The sun and the moon, in Masonic symbolism, recall the columns of the Temple of Solomon, Joachim and Boaz, as figuration of opposing principles: day and night, hot and cold, dry and wet, life and death, good and evil.

Instead of a “D”, the prisoner used a “T” similar to a tau: a sign that refers to the cross and a seal belonging to the Worshipful Master of the Lodge. Again, Masonic esotericism is present in the recurrence of the number seven. It is realised through the union of three, the divine dimension, with the four elements of matter. Thus it appears in the prison that houses the officers freed by St. Nicholas and in the steps of Jacob’s Ladder.

Sentence and pardon

The archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith enable us to reconstruct the events following Andrea Lombardini’s imprisonment¹⁰. Thanks to these documents, we know that the Inquisition tribunal sentenced him to public humiliation and exile, despite his having declared his innocence. The decrees of the Holy Office reveal that the verdict was handed down on 30 January 1760. The prisoner was then transferred to Spoleto, after spending around sixty days in Narni. Finally, he was granted a pardon by decree of 28 December 1763¹¹. However, Lombardini had been severely tested by imprisonment, torture, inner torment and exile. He was now a different man from the one who, three years earlier, had transformed a bare prison cell into a mysterious and esoteric temple.

Samuele Corrente Naso

Notes

1. The other boys were Marco Bartolini, Massimo Frezza, Mauro Mazzoli, Mauro Montini and Giovanni Nini. ↩︎
2. C. Longo, Agli inizi dell’insediamento domenicano a Narni, in Atti del Convegno “La chiesa di S. Maria Maggiore e i Domenicani a Narni”, Narni 29/30 Settembre 2006. The author reports the existence of a document from 1304 attesting to the donation of the Santa Maria Maggiore complex to the Dominicans by Benedict XI at the end of the 13th century. ↩︎
3. Book of Revelation 12. ↩︎
4. Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, former Holy Office. ↩︎
5. R. Nini, Alla ricerca della verità – Sulle tracce dell’Inquisizione per scoprire il mistero dei sotterranei di Narni, Arrone (Tr), 2009. ↩︎
6. R. Nini, Il Sant’Uffizio di Narni, dagli Atti dei convegni dell’Accademia dei Lincei “A dieci anni dall’apertura dell’archivio della congregazione per la dottrina della fede: storia e archivi dell’Inquisizione”, Roma, 21-23 febbraio 2008. ↩︎
7. R. Nini, Una missione da compiere – I sotterranei dell’Inquisizione a Narni, Arrone (Tr), 2002. ↩︎
8. This was the cop Pietro Milli, imprisoned in Spoleto for insulting the vicar of Piediluco. ↩︎
9. A.G.D.G.A.D.U. stands for “To the Glory of the Great Architect of the Universe”. The letters correspond in frequency to the digits of the number sequence, made palindromic. ↩︎
10. Decreta S.Offici, 1548-1769. ↩︎
11. Ibidem note 6. ↩︎