ACERRA, Diocese of. - In the Campanian region, in the province of Naples, suffragan of the same. It occupies the territory situated between Naples and Caserta, with an area of 140 sq km and a population of about 50,000 Catholics, of whom 22,000 are in the city and municipality of A. In the diocese there are 46 churches, 20 parishes, 48 diocesan priests and 25 regulars.
A., one of the most ancient cities of Campania, already mentioned in 322 B.C. as a civitas sine suffragio, was destroyed by Hannibal during the 2nd Punic War in 216. The Romans rebuilt it, and later, in the new administrative division made by Augustus, it was assigned to the I Region (Latium and Campania). In the Middle Ages it was part of the duchy of Naples, suffering the devastations of the Lombards. Erected into a county after the Norman conquest, it was often involved in the rebellions of its counts against the kings of Sicily. Before falling at the end of the 13th century into the power of the Angevins, it had been, from the first decades of that century, a fief of the counts of Aquino. It endured the siege of the Aragonese in 1420 and in 1480 surrendered definitively to King Ferdinand I, who in the early 1500s ceded it as a fief to Ferdinand de Cardenas. A. remained in the possession of this family until 1806.
The origins of the diocese cannot be traced back, as Gams did, to the end of the 5th century or the beginning of the 6th, because the Concordius claimed to be bishop of A. and present at the Roman Synod of 501 and 502 was in fact bishop of Misenum. Moreover, there is no further record of bishops of A. until the 2nd half of the 11th century. It is therefore more probable that A. had its first bishops with the beginning of the Norman domination. Among the most distinguished are Cardinal Vincenzo Carafa (1535), the Neapolitan nobleman Vincenzo Pagano (1606) and Ciro degli Altieri (1761), also of Naples. Monuments worthy of note are the Cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption, rebuilt in the 19th century, and the church of the Annunziata, with a panel of the Annunciation from the 14th century.