Saint Hugh of Noara

Hugh of Noara or of Novara, also known as Ugo of Novara and Hugo of Novara, was a Cistercian monk and a disciple of Bernard of Clairvaux. French by birth, he served as the first abbot of Novara Abbey, Sicily, where he remained until his death in 1170. In the last years of the decade 1130–1140, Roger II of Sicily, driven by political interests, asked the Abbot of Clairvaux to send his monks to the Kingdom of Sicily. After an initial refusal Bernard of Clairvaux sent the monks from Moterola in Spain, who initially settled in Calabria in the monastery of Santa Maria Requisita Nucis, founded in 550, and which became the Abbey of Santa Maria della Sambucina near Cosenza, the first Cistercian abbey in southern Italy. Hugh, of French nationality, had been one of the twenty monks in the retinue of Bernard of Clairvaux when he left the Abbey of Cîteaux to found the Abbey of Clairvaux, was among the monks who came from Moterola. King Roger then wanted the Cistercians to complete in Sicily the construction of a monastery begun near Novara di Sicilia in 1137. From Sambucina the monks settled in the monastery built in a valley in the territory of Novara, in the area called San Basilio, replacing the Basilian monks with the monks of the Cistercian Order. They called the valley Bona because of the mildness of the place and the fertility of the land according to the Cistercian custom. The monastery was structurally completed in 1167, canonically erected in 1171. Hugh was the first abbot of the monastery named after Maria Santissima Annunziata, later called Abbey of Santa Maria di Novara Vallebona, the first Cistercian monastery in Sicily. He was entrusted with the management of the monastery having as his companions the monks Paul, Eligius and Mark, the latter becoming his successor as abbot. Hugh brought many relics of saints to Novara. Most of them are now kept in the reliquary altar in the church of Sant'Ugo abbot or "Abbazia di Sant'Ugo" in Novara di Sicilia.