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The Exarchic Monastery of Santa Maria in Grottaferrata, also known as the Greek Abbey of Saint Nilus, was founded in 1004 by a group of monks from Calabria led by St. Nilus of Rossano, a charismatic leader and a very important figure of his time. When St. Nilus, the monks' spiritual father, died shortly after founding the Abbey, St. Bartholomew the Younger, his favourite disciple and cofounder of the monastery, assumed their leadership.
Today, Grottaferrata is the last of the many Byzantine-Greek monasteries that dotted Sicily, southern Italy and Rome itself in the Middle Ages. It is also unique in that, having been founded fifty years before the Great Schism that divided Catholics and Orthodox, it remained in communion with the Church of Rome while preserving the Byzantine rite and monastic tradition of its founders.