APUANIA, DIOCESE of. - In Tuscany, in the province of A., with a population of 200,000 inhabitants scattered over an area of 1,155 sq. km. It has 215 parishes with 234 priests.
A. is an urban centre established in 1939 through the merger of the two neighbouring cities of Massa and Carrara, both situated in the pleasant basin at the foot of the Apuan Alps: Massa at the outlet of the Frigido valley, Carrara on the two banks of the Carrione. Before the 9th century Massa was a small village in the territory of Luni, which the inhabitants of that city chose as their refuge when they were compelled to flee from the raids of corsairs. Carrara, which originated in the earliest workings of the marble quarries of Luni, was the central point of the quarries and became the residence of the workers; a guild of marble-workers must already have existed there in Roman times. It was at times the residence of the bishops of Luni, to whose jurisdiction it belonged. From the 11th to the 18th century it was regarded as an abbatia nullius under the government of the prior of the Lateran Canons Regular of S. Frediano of Lucca, with all abbatial rights. On 18 February 1821, through the intervention of Beatrice d'Este, lady of Massa and Carrara, Pius VII decreed the canonical erection of the diocese of Massa Carrara by the bull Singularis. This erection was confirmed by his successor Leo XII, who determined its territorial boundaries and subjected it to the metropolitan jurisdiction of Pisa. On 20 July 1939 the diocese of Massa Carrara took the name of the recently established urban centre, calling itself A.