ACQUAPENDENTE, diocese. — In Lazio, in the province of Viterbo, situated in the northeastern part of the region. It borders Umbria and Tuscany and has an area of 464 sq km, with a population of 22,514 inhabitants, distributed among 14 parishes, with 29 secular priests, 11 religious priests, 12 women’s religious congregations, and 4 male religious communities. It has the minor seminary in A., and the major seminary, shared also by the other dioceses of upper Lazio, at La Quercia near Viterbo.
A. most probably corresponds to ancient Acula, also called Aquesium, Aquae Taurinae, and in the Middle Ages Aquapendens, from the hill on which it is situated and from which the Quintaluna stream descends, eventually flowing into the Paglia, a tributary of the Tiber. The city is mentioned in Countess Matilde’s donation to the Holy See at the beginning of the twelfth century; it subsequently became a commune, until in the fifteenth century it definitively became part of the Papal States.
P. P. Biondi, writing in 1588, tells us that from 1102 A. belonged to the diocese of Orvieto; but when Cristoforo Ciarda, bishop of Castro, was assassinated in 1649, Innocent X had this episcopal see razed to the ground and made A. the capital of a new diocese whose boundaries he established by the bull In supremo, on 13 September of the same year. As the cathedral church, that of the ancient Benedictine monastery of the Holy Sepulchre was chosen; apart from its beautiful Romanesque crypt, it was completely remodeled in the eighteenth century in Baroque forms. Damaged by military operations in 1944, it is currently undergoing restoration that will return it to its original forms.
A. is a diocese immediately subject to the Holy See.
FATTO D'ARMI DI A. - A. must also be remembered for the clash of which it was the scene, in the autumn of 1867, between approximately 200 Garibaldists, who there began on 30 September the guerrilla campaign of invasion of the Patrimony of St Peter, which ended on the following 3 November at Mentana, and 30 Papal gendarmes from the local station. The latter, barricaded in the barracks, were forced to surrender after two hours of fierce fighting when the roof of the building caught fire. The following day, 1 October, a reinforcement of 230 Zouaves and line soldiers under the command of Colonel Achille Azzanesi in turn attacked the Garibaldists on the road to S. Lorenzo and, taking approximately forty prisoners, drove them back across the border.