DIOCESE OF ASTI. - City of Piedmont, on the hills south of the Tanaro, near the confluence of the Borbore with the Versa. An important agricultural and wine-producing center, it is the capital of a recently created province (1510 sq km). The diocese, a suffragan of Turin since 1817, has 162,000 inhabitants, almost all Catholic, and comprises 120 parishes, 235 diocesan priests and 35 regulars (1948).
It was a Roman colony and municipium (Asta or Hasta) mentioned by Pliny. Occupied at the fall of the Empire by the Goths and the Burgundians, devastated by Alaric and by Alboin, it rose again under the Lombards, who made it an important duchy, later transformed by Charlemagne into a county. Around 1100 it constituted itself as a commune. Internal factions and struggles with the neighboring cities of Pollenza, Alba, Alessandria and with the marquises of Monferrato and of Saluzzo forced it to undergo alternating fortunes of freedom and subjection to the Savoys, the Angevins, the Palaeologi and the Visconti. In 1378 A. was given as a dowry by Gian Galeazzo Visconti to his daughter Valentina, wife of the duke of Orléans; it remained in the domains of this house until the Peace of Cambrai (1529), when Charles V ceded it to Beatrice of Portugal, wife of Charles III of Savoy, who took definitive possession of it in 1538. In the following centuries it suffered sieges by the Spaniards and the French, always returning under the dominion of the house of Savoy.
The diocese of A. arose at the end of the 4th century, like others of northern Italy, from the fragmentation of the diocese of Milan, of which it was a suffragan until 1817. The oldest episcopal catalogue, compiled in 1605 by order of Bishop Aiazzo, begins with Pastor, who took part in the Milanese Synod of 451. It is not probable that St. Evasius, as the legend asserts, was bishop of A. in 789. Even St. Secundus, protector of the city, mentioned in a long cyclic passion, called that of Sts. Faustinus and Jovita (BHL 2836 and 5263), as having lived under Hadrian, has been erroneously transfigured into a local bishop. The diocese, at first very vast, underwent dismemberments with the erection of the neighboring dioceses of Alessandria, Mondovì, Casale, Saluzzo and Fossano. The diocese of Alba was united to it for a short time (985-92; 1803-17). The present circumscription was established by Pius VII in 1817. Victor Amadeus conferred on the bishops of A. the title of prince.
The seminary, founded in 1577 by Msgr. Domenico Della Rovere, had among its pupils St. Benedict Joseph Cottolengo.
The cathedral, built on the foundations of a temple dedicated to Juno, consecrated in 1090, collapsed in 1323, changed its appearance several times in the first centuries; it took its present Gothic form in the 14th century and was completed only in the 18th. Of the primitive church there remains the Romanesque bell tower of the 13th century. The interior is notable for its imposing Gothic structure; four holy water stoups are preserved there, formed from two Roman and two Romanesque capitals. The first cathedral would have been built near the crypt of St. Secundus, where the collegiate church dedicated to the same saint arose.
Other important monuments are: S. Secondo, in Romanesque-Gothic forms of the 13th century; S. Pietro in Conzavia, with terracotta decorations and, in the interior, a small temple, now a baptistery, said to be the remnant of a shrine dedicated to Diana; S. Maria (in the hamlet of Viatosto); the abbey of Vezzolano, near Albugnano, built in the 10th century and recently restored; at Cavagnolo, the Benedictine abbey of S. Fede, a pure example of Romanesque-Lombard architecture. - See Pl. XXI.
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