Bari, Archdiocese of

BARI, Archdiocese of. - In Apulia, in the province of Bari of the same name, it has about 464,000 inhabitants, 53 parishes, 245 secular priests and 120 regular clergy, 2 seminaries (a minor one and a regional one). To the see of Bari, whose suffragan dioceses are Ruvo-Bitonto and Conversano, is united the title of the ancient bishopric of Canosa (v.). The archbishop has the title of primate of Apulia. The cathedral chapter is of particular importance, whose canons have the privilege of pontifical insignia. The clergy proper, governed by a grand prior, who is the first religious authority of the diocese after the archbishop, has the palatine basilica of St. Nicholas, exempt from archiepiscopal jurisdiction. Patrons: St. Nicholas bishop of Myra and St. Sabinus bishop of Canosa; feast (of the translation of the bones of St. Nicholas), on 9 May.

Bari arose in the vicinity of the necropolis of Caeliae (today Ceglie del Campo), which reached its greatest flourishing in the 5th century B.C., and was supplanted by Bari, which became one of the richest places of Magna Graecia, in which the Italiote element, of the Iapygians (whence the name Iapygia for the region between Cape Salento and Daunia, that is, roughly the territory of the present-day provinces of Bari, Brindisi, Lecce and Taranto), and the Greek element merged. An autonomous city, on the model of the other Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, it became, after the Roman conquest of Apulia (317 B.C.), a municipality of some importance: perhaps in the Augustan age, when Horace, on his journey to Brindisi, speaks of it as a fortified city.

After the ruin of the Western Empire, the Goths settled there. Later, toward the end of the 6th century, the predominance of the Lombards, under Authari, extended over all Apulia. Sacked by Constans II around the middle of the 7th century, Bari entered the orbit of the Eastern Empire but only for a short time, because, at the death of Constans II, the city passed under the Lombard duchy of Benevento. Under Leo the Isaurian, the Eastern Empire again asserted itself on the Apulian coasts, but that subjection was poorly tolerated and Bari shook it off by giving itself an independent leader, in the person of Duke Theodore. The later history of the city oscillates between Byzantine overlordship and obedience to the Beneventan princes, who were all the closer. From 841 to 870 there is a Saracen interlude until Emperor Louis II succeeded in liberating the city, after a long siege. But the return of Bari to Christendom again turned to the advantage, once more, of Byzantium. From then on, although contested among Saracens, Lombards and Germans, Bari was subject to Byzantine government and for about two centuries was the stronghold of the south and the seat of the catepan of Italy. After several unsuccessful attempts at autonomy, the Normans intervened, knowing how to exploit local dissensions and in particular the hostility against the Byzantines. In 1071 Bari fell into the possession of Robert Guiscard, who made the duchy of Apulia hereditary in his house. In the Norman age, Bari witnessed the translation of the relics of St. Nicholas, which a group of Barese merchants solemnly transferred from the tomb of the Saint at Myra in Lycia. On 9 May 1087, according to tradition, the relics were deposited in the palace of the catepan, ceded by its new possessor, Archbishop Urso II. Another version postpones this translation to 1098 and gives the credit for it to the Venetians. On the place where the relics were deposited the famous basilica, dedicated to St. Nicholas, quickly arose. The event consecrated what the Norman dominion made possible: the return of the Church of Bari to direct dependence on Rome, from which it had been detached during the Byzantine government.

Although local tradition attributes to St. Peter the evangelization of Bari and the appointment of its first bishop, Maurus, history knows of no other bishop of the place before Concordinus, present at the Roman Council of 465. From the Lombard era until the middle of the 10th century nothing more is known of the see of Bari. The Byzantines, having later taken possession of the Apulian coasts, granted for political purposes the title of archbishop to that of Bari in the 10th century, a title confirmed in 1025 by Pope John XIX, but not recognized by Leo IX. Only Alexander II in 1069 confirmed the privileges of B. as a metropolis, granting it jurisdiction over Canosa, Giovinazzo, Molfetta, Trani, Ruvo, Canne, Minervino, Montemilone, Lavello, Cisterna, Vitalba, Conversano, Polignano and Cattaro, on the opposite shore of the Adriatic.

In 1089 Urban II, in handing the pallium to Archbishop Elias, proclaimed him primate of Puglia. Abbot of the ancient monastery of S. Benedetto, the first cradle of religious feeling in the city, Elias was charged with the custody of the relics of St. Nicholas and with the construction of the temple dedicated to the Saint, of which he was also the first rector. He governed the Church of Bari for three lustra, until 1104. A council had been held in B. in 1064, and a second was held in 1098 by the will and in the presence of Urban II, who already years earlier, on the occasion of the Council of Melfi and of the consecration of Elias, had come to venerate the relics of the Saint and to recognize his cult. But the attempt made then to renew religious unity between East and West had no sequel. A port already long frequented by pilgrims of the Holy Land, B. became, toward the end of the 11th century, an important staging point of the crusading enterprises. Peter the Venerable was a guest of Elias in the preparation of the Crusade; the bishop of Valencia died there while awaiting embarkation. During the period of the Crusades B. was, together with Brindisi, the last outpost of the West before the voyage into the Levantine sea for Norman, French and Provençal princes. The principality erected by Bohemond at Antioch and the ever more frequent settling of Puglian and Barese merchants in the Mediterranean Levant, thickening maritime relations, mark, for several centuries, an ever broader participation of the city in the renewed Latin unity of the sea that had been Rome's; from the most distant centuries of the Middle Ages, B. has maintained its essential function as a gateway to the East.

The Norman dominion, consolidated through the work of Roger II throughout the southern peninsula, made B. one of its major centers. In the years around 1130 the archbishop Angelo became, in harmony with Norman policy, a supporter of Anacletus II against Innocent II. Subsequently the city, having become the center of an autonomist attempt through the work of Prince Grimoald Alferanite, and contested between Roger II, Lothair III and the elected duke of Puglia Rainulf of Alife, was in 1156 barbarously destroyed by King William I. It passed through the series of dominations of the south: from the Normans to the Swabians, who favored it, especially under Frederick II, also because of the proximity of the Saracen military colony of Lucera and of the fortress of Castel del Monte; from the Swabians to the Angevins, between whose two branches the city was disputed; from the Angevins to the Aragonese, who gave it in fief, first, to the Del Balzo-Orsini, then to the Sforza of Milan; from the Aragonese to the Spaniards, to the Habsburgs and to the Bourbons. Centuries of decadence, those following the Aragonese age: at the beginning of the 19th century the city was reduced to little more than the ancient borgo, and from the 50,000 inhabitants of the happy time to 18,860. Held in check also during the years of the French Revolution and of the Napoleonic epic, during the occupation of the troops of the Directory in 1798, the first brief restoration and the reign of Joseph Bonaparte, Joachim Murat laid in 1813 the first stone of the new city, on the edge of the old Borgo, marking for Bari the advent of new times.

Having entered the new Italian State, on the morrow of the expedition of the Thousand, it received in these last years a decisive impulse that made it the major commercial and maritime center, after Naples, of the southern peninsula.

In the more recent centuries, the ecclesiastical history of the diocese presents only a few moments of particular interest: one of its archbishops, who however had never entered his see, Bartolomeo Prignano, was elected pope (Urban VI); the great Western Schism having arisen under him, the Church of Bari too was split between Urbanist and Clementine clergy. Other distinguished figures of archbishops succeeded one another through the 15th-17th centuries: in the time of Leo X, Gian Giacomo Castiglioni; before and after, the cardinals Latino Orsini, Stefano Gabriele Marini, who was later patriarch of the Indies, Girolamo Grimaldi; the former nuncio at the court of Turin Giulio Cesare Riccardi; the card. Bonvisi; Ascanio Gesualdi, formerly nuncio in Belgium and Germany and later patriarch of Constantinople; Nunzio Gaeta, who then passed to the patriarchal see of Jerusalem. Having already been enlarged in ancient times by the territory of Canosa, into the diocese of B. were later incorporated those of Acquaviva and, in the revision of the ecclesiastical constitution of the kingdom carried out in 1818, of Bitetto. From B. come some names illustrious for holiness, such as the bl. Giacomo da B., friar minor; for dignity, such as the cardinals Giacomo da Turri and Francesco de Caris, of the 14th century, and the archbishops Paolo il Teutonico of Manfredonia (16th century) and Francesco Nicolai (18th century); for political initiatives, such as the leaders of Barese autonomism Argiro the Lombard, Agirizzo the Greek, Melo the Apulian; chroniclers and historians, such as the archdeacon John, author of the Translatio s. Nicolai and of other writings (11th century); Lupo Protospata and the anonymous author of the Annales Barenses and perhaps also Guglielmo Pugliese, the singer of Robert Guiscard; the 17th-century historian of the city, Fr. Antonio Bestillo, Jesuit, and the 18th-century describer of the cult of St. Nicholas, Nicola Putignani, canon of the cathedral; and among the modern scholars who attended to the publication of the Codice diplomatico barese, one must recall at least Francesco Carabellese and mons. Francesco Nitti.

A short distance from the city, the goal of a pilgrimage on the last Sunday of August, is the sanctuary of the Pozzo di Capurso, dedicated to the Virgin. In the city are the houses of the Dominicans, formerly the convent of S. Francesco di Paola, which they occupied after their return in 1820; of the Minor Capuchins, of the Jesuits, in the house annexed to the church of the Gesù, of the Salesians, of the Benedictines of St. Scholastica, several times migrated from building to building. At Palo del Colle is the only monastery of the Olivetans remaining in Italy.

Pier Fausto Palumbo
ART. - Within the perimeter of its ancient walls, the "old city," raised on the promontory that juts out into the sea between the two harbors, preserves the most significant monuments of Bari: the Cathedral, St. Nicholas, the church of St. Gregory, and the Castle. The Cathedral was founded by Archbishop Bisanzio; construction began in 1034 and was completed in about thirty years, but the destruction suffered by the city in the time of William I the Norman (1156) made a general rebuilding advisable, which took place between 1170 and 1178. The new cathedral arose with its clear Egyptian-cross plan and the two apse bell towers, of which the right one collapsed in an earthquake during the 17th century. Many restorations have compromised the beautiful building; nevertheless, the works begun in 1920 have restored to the church some of its ancient qualities, both outside and inside.

On the exterior, besides the tall facade, notable are the apse window, rich in sculpture, and the end walls of the transept, especially the right one with a highly ornate rose window. The dome that rises at the crossing of the transept with the central nave has a low cupola that barely emerges from the octagonal drum decorated with reliefs of distinctly Arab character. Inside, the three naves are divided by sixteen monolithic columns. Here the distribution of spaces is characteristic; indeed, the naves narrow toward the apse so as to give a sense of greater depth to the building. The floor of the transverse nave and the presbytery are raised by seven steps, and for this reason too this part of the building takes on a character of greater grandeur. The central apse preserves remains of 13th-century frescoes, while in the transept there are paintings by Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, and Paris Bordone. Adjacent to the cathedral is the "trulla," a 17th-century building cylindrical on the outside and twelve-sided on the inside; originally it was a baptistery, today it is the sacristy; from here one descends into the 12th-century crypt of the cathedral. In the archives of the cathedral of Bari, ancient parchments are preserved; particularly famous is an Exultet, the work of 11th-century Beneventan calligraphers, adorned with miniatures of Byzantine taste, but certainly by Italian artists.

The basilica of St. Nicholas, begun in 1087 under the direction of the Benedictine Elia, is without doubt the most important of the Romanesque monuments of Apulia. Its crypt was consecrated by Pope Urban II on October 1, 1089. The building was completed in 1108, but was consecrated much later, in 1197, by the bishop of Hildesheim by mandate of Celestine III, it is said in the presence of Emperor Henry VI. The beautiful facade preserves its original character and reflects in its compartments the forms of the interior, especially in those two pilasters that run along its entire length, marking the limits of the major nave and accentuating the ascending sense of its lines. Two great towers, only partly built, flank, projecting slightly, the front of the church. This interior is divided into three naves and, like the churches of Lombardy, has high matronea, while the first three bays of the arcades were reinforced in the 15th century with large arches which help to give strange effects of architectural picturesqueness to the interior of this building, covered by a rich wooden ceiling of the Baroque age. The ciborium of the high altar is a work of the 12th century, also adorned with a Limoges enamel in which St. Nicholas is represented crowning King Roger. Also very famous are the episcopal throne and the very vast crypt. Near the sacristy, in the treasury, some reliquaries of great value are collected, while in the archive ancient diplomas are preserved, some from the 12th century, bulls and parchments.

The church of S. Gregorio has a Romanesque facade dating back to the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th century, adorned with three fine portals. The castle is one of the most beautiful in Apulia. It has a central core erected by Frederick II between 1233 and 1240 on some remains of a previous Norman construction, probably founded where the ancient acropolis of the Greek city stood, and therefore a 16th-century part. In the new city, the church of S. Ferdinando is notable, with its Neoclassical facade by Fausto Niccolini. In the provincial museum there is an interesting archaeological collection, and in recent years a picture gallery has been developing which houses works of notable importance. - See Pl. LVI.

Emilio Lavagnino