Amalfi, Archdiocese of

AMALFI, Archdiocese of. - In the Campanian region, in the province of Salerno, it borders on the dioceses of Sorrento and of Nocera dei Pagani and Sarno and has 37,108 inhabitants, all Catholics, 55 parishes, with 76 diocesan priests and 23 regulars. Its patron is the apostle St. Andrew, whose relics, brought from Constantinople by Cardinal Pietro di Capua in 1208, are preserved and venerated in the Cathedral.

Already a bishopric from the 6th century, A. was erected into an archbishopric in 987; then in 1818, after Pius VII suppressed the episcopal sees of Scala, Ravello and Minori, their territory was incorporated with that of A., of which they had been suffragans from ancient times, together with the dioceses of Capri and Lettere. Two councils would have been held there, in 1048 or in 1059, by Nicholas II; but the second, in which the Pontiff deposed the archbishop of Trani and granted to Robert Guiscard the investiture of Calabria and of Apulia, was, more probably, even according to the Cassinese chronicler, held in Melfi.

The 9th century, which saw the establishment of A.'s fortunes, flourishing with maritime activity, was rich in turbulent events, which range from the transfer into the city, through the work of Bishop Pietro, of the body of St. Trophimena, afterwards taken away by the Beneventan prince Siccardo (833-38), to the participation of the Amalfitan ships in the battle against the Saracens in the sea of Ostia (849). Given the closeness of relations between the two powers in A., a characteristic this of the maritime cities of Campania, in 987 the doge Mansone III obtained from Pope John XV promotion to an archiepiscopal see.

Once Amalfitan autonomy was established in the first decades of the 9th century, its rivalry with the other maritime republics began; the vessels of the Campanian city plied the Mediterranean, its merchants dominated the centers and currents of traffic. Around 1020 some Amalfitan negotiatores founded in Jerusalem the famous hospital, from which the Order of the Knights of St. John took its origins. A century later, the glorious autonomy of A. came to an end: in 1131, amid the Campanian and Apulian struggles in which the drama of the Church divided by schism was reflected (in which A. also participated: one of its archbishops, Giovanni «de Porta», is consecrated, probably in the same year 1131, by Anacletus II, who had come to Salerno to settle there the dispute between the archbishop Romualdo and the prince Roberto), Roger II forced the ancient republic to capitulate, annexing it to the constituted Norman kingdom. Nevertheless the slow but no less fatal decline of the city did not prevent the Normans and Swabians from enriching it with artistic monuments, while the area of the city diminished, placed in danger by the violence of the waters and by landslides.

ABBEYS AND MONASTERIES

The territory of the diocese of A. and that of the suppressed dioceses incorporated into it was extraordinarily rich in Benedictine cloisters.

At A., S. Lorenzo (later called della S.ma Trinità), founded by that same doge or duke Mansone III, to whom the archiepiscopal erection and the enlargement of the cathedral were due; S. Basilio, founded in the 11th century; S. Elena and S. Nicola in Campo, all for women; at Pogerola, that of S. Sebastiano; at Atrani, those of S. Maria de Fontanella, S. Michele Arcangelo and S. Tommaso apostolo; at Scala, those dedicated to Sts. Benedict and Scholastica and to St. Cataldo; at Ravello, the S.ma Trinità; at Minori, S. Lucia. Almost all of them dating back to the 9th-11th centuries and suppressed, for the most part, between the 13th and 18th centuries, because of their depletion of nuns, a consequence of the decline of the city and the area. The same happened for the male Benedictine monasteries: at Atrani, SS. Ciriaco and Giuditta (970); at Scala, S. Maria de Aqua bona and SS. Giuliano and Marciano (both from the 9th century); at Positano, S. Maria and S. Vito (10th century); at Ravello, S. Trifone and S. Maria di Castiglione (10th century). But the largest monastery, and one of the most valuable buildings of A., is the cloister of S. Pietro de Tozcolo or in Canonica, Cistercian in its origins (1212), later passed to the Capuchins (1583), and which today has followed the common fate, becoming a hotel. Also near Maiori the Cistercians had another cloister of theirs: S. Maria de Vittela and, near Scala, S. Elena. In A. S. Maria degli Angeli belonged to the Conventuals, founded by St. Francis in 1220. Finally, at Ravello, a convent of Poor Clares, besides other minor cloisters, especially Benedictine, in the region.

MONUMENTS

The Arab-Sicilian architecture, imported from Sicily during the Norman dominion and svi-

developed in the subsequent Swabian period, assures A. a singular physiognomy of its own through the bold use of interlaced arches; a genre that has its masterpieces in two 13th-century monuments: the cloister of the Capuchins and the cloister of Paradise. The Cathedral, in which the original core underwent, in the Middle Ages and even recently, rebuildings, enlargements and modifications, still preserves, with its superb staircase and the bell tower, erected from 1180 to 1276, its beauty. Of the glorious age of the republic there remain only a part of the shipyard, the celebrated bronze doors (and the contemporary jambs) of the ancient cathedral, which a merchant, Pantaleone di Mauro, sent as a gift to his homeland from Constantinople. Rich in historical and artistic monuments, but above all in those singular natural beauties that have made the Amalfi coast celebrated throughout the world, are the other places of the diocese: Capri, Ravello, Atrani, Positano, Pegerola, Maiori, Minori, Scala. - See PLATES LXXV-LXXVI.

For the history of the duchy: F. G. Pansa, Istoria dell'antica Repubblica d'A., 2 vols., Naples 1724; M. Camera, Istoria della città e costiera d'A., Naples 1836; id., Memorie storico-diplomatiche dell'antica città e ducato d'A., 2 vols., Salerno 1876-81; F. Schupfer, Trani ed A., in Riv. Ital. Sc. Giur., 17 (1893); A. Hofmeister, Zur Gesch. Amalfis in d. byzantin. Zeit, in Byzantin.-neugriech. Jahrbuch, 1 (1920); M. Berza, A. preducale, in Riv. Dacromana, 1 (1938).

For ecclesiastical history: Ughelli, VII, pp. 183-256; Capelletti, XX, pp. 601-12; A. Gröner, Die Diözesen Italiens, Freiburg im Br. 1904, Italian trans., Melfi 1908, pp. 47-48 and passim; Lanzoni, pp. 248-50.

For art history: K. Schulz, Denkmäler d. Kunst d. Mittelalters in Unteritalien, II, Dresden 1860; D. Salazaro, Studi sui monumenti dell'Italia meridionale dal sec. IV al XIII, Naples 1870; S. Volpicella, Delle antichità d'A. e dintorni, in Studi di lett. st. ed arte, Naples 1876; L. M. Mansi, Illustrazione dei principali monumenti d'arte e storia del versante amalfitano, Rome 1898; E. Bertaux, L'art dans l'Italie méridionale, Paris 1903; P. Pirri, Il duomo di A. e il chiostro del Paradiso, Rome 1941.

Pier Fausto Palumbo