Badia di Morrona

The Abbey of Morrona, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and to St. Benedict, is one of the four monastic complexes founded by the Gherardesca Counts near the Pisan hills.

The abbey, which was built by the Count Ugone in 1089, was given to the Benedictine monks and it immediately began to gather goods, properties and wealth. This was also due to the prestige given to the abbey by its founder who belonged to one of the most renowned families of the Tuscan country nobles.
The first reliable information on the monastery's presence in the Terricciola's territory dates to some decades after the year 1000.
The first abbot, whose testimony is available, was called Martino. It is known that he was designated to run the monastery in 1092 by an "emphyteutic act", where it is also confirmed that the monastery was set in Morrona and that the existing monastery, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was called "Monasterium Radari". At that time, the territorial extension of the monastery's estates was already so vast, that, in all probability, also the farmers of the area worked there with the monks.
In 1109, the Count Ugo della Gherardesca gave the church and the monastery to the Camaldolite order and he kept the right of patronage over the complex for himself and his heirs. The properties amplified more and more and were continuously legitimated by papal bulls issued by Celestine II in 1121, Innocent II in 1141 and Eugene III 1148.
In the last bulls, the Abbey of Morrona was indicated as one of the places within the jurisdiction of the Volterra's Bishop, who succeeded into withdrawing it from Pisa's aims at least until the XIV century.
The rich and flourishing Monastery of the Camaldolites was the goal of all the neighbouring Tuscan cities. In the XIV century, it was long contended by the inhabitants of Volterra, Florence, Pisa and the Camaldolites, who claimed their possession of the monastery based on the donation made to them by Ugo della Gherardesca.
At the end of this period, in 1284, the Abbey was definitively put under the Volterra's control after a military action. Two-hundred soldiers led by Bartolomeo Soderini occupied the Monastery on behalf of the Volterra's Episcopal curia. Only in 1870, after the Unification of Italy, the State seized the monastery to the Church.
Then, the monastery was sold and became a famous wine-producing business.