ALATRI, Diocese of. - In southern Lazio, in the province of Frosinone. The see, A., rises on a hill of the Ernici group, near the banks of the Cosa, a tributary of the Sacco. The diocese has 30,000 inhabitants, 16 parishes, 34 diocesan priests and 15 regulars, 5 male religious communities and 9 female. Patron: St. Sixtus I. The bishopric is immediately subject to the Holy See and its territory borders on those of Ferentino and Veroli.
An ancient city of the Ernici, A. preserves an imposing circuit of walls which, in its oldest part, is traced back to the 6th century B.C. With Ferentino it remained faithful to Rome during the rebellion of the Ernici in 306 B.C. At the time of the Social War it was made a municipium. Christianity was preached there from the earliest times, but the first bishop of whom there is record is Pascasius, who in 551 accompanied Pope Vigilius to Constantinople. In 680, in the acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, another bishop, Saturnius, is named. The episcopal list is intermittent down to the age of Gregory VII, and even later shows uncertainties and gaps. Devastated in the 6th century by Totila, its citizens withdrew further north, founding Collepardo. Shortly afterwards A. rose again under the name of Civitanova.
Under Bishop Peter, on 11 January 1132, the miraculous translation is said to have taken place of the body of its holy patron, Sixtus I, the pontiff martyred under Hadrian, buried with great honor in the cathedral of S. Paolo, where in 1584 Bishop Ignazio Dandi carried out its rediscovery and solemn recognition. In 1159 Bishop Adenolfo (or Rodolfo) embraced the cause of Barbarossa and adhered to the imperial antipope, Victor IV, against Alexander III; this did not prevent A. from being taken some years later, in 1165, by Christian of Mainz. Subsequently it withstood the sieges of Henry VI (1185) and of Frederick II (1234).
A small town of still medieval appearance, rising on the sides of the Acropolis, on which the Cathedral stands, it has in the collegiate church of S. Maria Maggiore, with a 14th-century tower, in the tower-house of Cardinal Gottifredo, in the Palazzo Conti Gentili its finest medieval and Renaissance buildings, with numerous works of art and the municipal and capitular archives, the latter especially rich in parchments of the 11th-14th centuries. - See Plates XLIV-XLV.
Bibliography8 works
Pier Fausto Palumbo