Albano, Diocese of

ALBANO, Diocese of. - In Latium, in the province of Rome, it is one of the six suburbicarian sees held by a cardinal of the order of bishops. From the Roman Castles it extends as far as the sea, measuring an area of 66 sq km: with a population of 85,000 inhabitants, divided into 19 parishes, with 32 secular priests, and 107 regular clergy. The minor seminary is in A., the major one in Anagni, shared with the other dioceses of lower Latium. A., situated on the eastern slopes of the Alban Hills, along the Appian Way, 25 km. from Rome, derives its name from the famous villa built by the emperor Domitian in the territory of ancient Alba Longa. As a populated center, however, there is mention of it only in the 5th century A.D., and it owes its origin to the Appian Way, a stretch of which forms the main street of A. The inscriptions found in A. and its surroundings, and the devastated catacombs of the ancient diocesan territory, with the cemetery of St. Senatorius itself, have not provided any certain evidence of a Christian community earlier than the 4th century; there is no doubt, however, that such a community existed and that the diocese of A. goes back to the pre-Constantinian era.

The Liber Pontificalis, in the Life of Sylvester, records that the emperor Constantine "fecit basilicum in civitate Albanensi sancti Iohannis" (ed. L. Duchesne, I, p. 184). Recent excavations have uncovered the original columns of this basilica, which was remodeled many times and, at least from the 8th century, dedicated to the Roman martyr St. Pancras, patron of A. Relying on the error of Socrates and Sozomen (PG 67, 301. 1129), who had called Dionysius, bishop of Milan (ca. 355), bishop of Alba, Ughelli and others placed a Dionysius on the see of A. in the year 355. The series of bishops of A. known to us begins in the 5th century and starts with Romanus, whom we find among the subscribers of the synod of 465 in Rome. Of these bishops, Nicholas Breakspear and Alessandro de' Medici ascended the papal throne under the names, respectively, of Adrian IV and Leo XI, and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio is numbered among the doctors of the Church.

The town of Anzio also forms part of the diocese of A.; it must have had a Christian community quite early, although its first bishop appears only in 465 together with Romanus of A. After Vindemius, who was also present at the Roman Synod of 502, there is no further trace of the bishops of Anzio (v.).

There exists the episcopal archive, as well as that of the individual collegiate churches of the diocese of A., but the documents preserved there are not earlier than 1500. The monumental churches of A., among which are to be numbered the Cathedral, of Constantinian age, renovated in the 18th century, the church of the Rotonda, formerly a nymphaeum of Domitian's villa, the Madonna della Stella, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the collegiate and parish churches of the diocese, abound in works of art.

Benedetto Pesci

ARCHAEOLOGY

In the amphitheater of this small town Domitian forced the consul Acilius Glabrio to fight with wild beasts; he later died, perhaps for the Christian faith (Suetonius, Domit., 4, 19; Cassius Dio, Hist., LXVI, 3 and LXVII, 13, 14; Juvenal, Sat., IV, 99). Later, Constantine donated to the Church the barracks of the Parthian legion and the barracks that remained empty in the city after the disbanding of that unit. He also had a basilica built for that community in honor of St. John the Baptist, which was later destroyed and rebuilt in the 9th century by Leo III, who dedicated it to St. Pancras. The same Pope also rebuilt and enriched the basilica of St. Peter, now damaged by the war. Another basilica had already been erected by Pope Hormisdas. Near Castel Savello, Adrian I restored the basilica of St. Theodore; Pope Donus had also erected a basilica there to St. Euphemia.

But the most important early Christian monument is the catacomb which, first discovered by Boldetti, was explored on various occasions up to 1902: the only one now known of the several that were found in the surroundings of the city. It is an ancient tufa quarry converted into a cemetery and lies a little outside the city, to the right of the Appian Way toward Ariccia, beneath the hill with the modern little church of S. Maria della Stella, where in ancient times there was a burial ground of the II Parthian legion. Its state of preservation is not good, and the collapses that have occurred in it are extensive. It still presents some arcosolia and rows of loculi and three groups of pictorial decorations that range from the 5th to the 9th century, when the catacomb must have been abandoned, the bodies of its saints having been transferred to Rome. Visible traces of the cult of these saints remain in a central crypt adorned with paintings and graffiti, which immediately appears as an ancient liturgical crypt. The saints honored there must have been the four who appear in a painting next to Jesus with Sts. Peter and Paul and who can be identified with those of the notice in the Philocalian calendar VI idus Augusti, Secundi Carpophori Victorini et Severiani Albano. If in another painting of the 9th century, on a wall curved into an apse, there is next to Jesus St. Smaragdus, this must be attributed to the confusion that arose in the passionaries between these saints and those referred to on the same day by the same Philocalian ferial to the Via Ostiense and with the group of the Four Crowned Saints. In the De locis sanctis Martyrum we are told of in this place outside A. ecclesia sancti Senatoris ubi et Perpetua iacet corpore et innumeri sancti et magna mirabilia ibidem geruntur. With the exception of St. Senator, also mentioned by the Hieronymian Martyrology on October 26, we have no information about any of the others. - See Pl. XLVIII.

Enrico Josi