Abbazia benedettina del Maffei

In 1424, by a Bull from Pope Martin V, the Veronese Maffeo Maffei, a young nobleman and wealthy individual, was appointed Abbot, who managed to restore splendor to the Abbey. It is thanks to him that the decision was made to abandon the ancient and decaying monastery of San Pietro to build the new Benedictine Abbey, near the parish church located on the natural terrace at the foot of the hill, now the Piazza Mercato, expanding it and equipping it with a remarkable cloister, still today an emblem of the village.

In 1525, after various documented disputes over the payment of tithes, the inhabitants of Calavena obtained to be freed from monastic feudal rights. From those years, however, a slow but constant decline began for the Monastery, which would lead to its loss of autonomy in 1529, when it was granted to the congregation of Santa Giustina from Padua, which also owned the Monastery of San Nazaro and Celso in Verona. The Monastery had signed a vassalage contract with the “Cimbri,” a German community of Bavarian-Tyrolean origin that had settled in the area, and controlled the lands of “Sprea cum Progno” and “Pernigo.”

It would be definitively suppressed in 1810 by a Napoleonic decree and subsequently converted into a parish.

The building, with a square plan, rises around a cloister of which only the southern side, the façade of the current rectory, was completed. Inside the rectory, traces of frescoes dating from the 15th to the 16th century and a wooden coffered ceiling of considerable value are still visible.

The cloister, with elegant stone columns and openings in very light chestnut beams, was not, as it is now, only on the south side, but ran along three sides, as evidenced by the foundations and remnants of capitals found.

The upper colonnade had, over time, been used as a storage space and was therefore closed off and equipped with a chimney to avoid frost on the grain and corn stored there. In the area of the cloister, the signs of the ancient cemetery area can be identified and on the southwestern side, a sundial engraved in stone.

On the northern side of the abbey complex rises the Romanesque bell tower retaining a single bifora of the bell chamber (damaged by the earthquake of 1891), which overlooks the ancient oratory, home to the first parish church, recently completely restored (2004). The entire complex has been progressively dismantled, especially during the Napoleonic era, when the cemetery area was also moved.

After their departure, the friars retained rights over the convent of Badia. A probable testimony to this is a photo taken likely between 1920 and 1938 in which a friar can be seen in prayer in the cloister courtyard, perhaps because the monks of San Nazaro and Celso retained the right to stay in the monastery of Badia.