BARI, ARCHDIOCESE OF. — In Apulia, in the province of Bari, it has approximately 464,000 inhabitants, 53 parishes, 245 secular priests and 120 regular priests, 2 seminaries (minor and regional). The see of Bari, which has as suffragan dioceses Ruvo-Bitonto and Conversano, is united with the title Canosa (v.). The archbishop holds the title of Primate of Apulia. Of particular importance is the chapter of the cathedral, 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 the jurisdiction of the archbishop. Patrons: St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, and St. Sabinus, Bishop of Canosa; feast (of the translation of the relics of St. Nicholas), May 9.
Bari arose near the necropolis of Cae-liae (now Ceglie del Campo), which reached its peak in the 5th century B.C. and was supplanted by Bari, which became one of the richest places in Magna Graecia, where the Italic element of the Iapygi (from which the name Iapygia for the region between Cape Salento and Daunia, roughly the territory of the present-day provinces of Bari, Brindisi, Lecce and Taranto) and the Greek element fused. An autonomous city, modeled on the other Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, it became, after the Roman conquest of Apulia (317 B.C.), a municipium of some importance: perhaps in the Augustan age, when Horace, on his journey to Brindisi, speaks of it as a fortified city.
After the fall of the Western Empire, the Goths settled there. Later, at the end of the 5th century, Lombard rule under Authari extended over all Apulia. Plundered by Constans II around the middle of the 7th century, Bari came under the orbit of the Eastern Empire but 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 reasserted itself on the Apulian coasts, but that subjection was poorly tolerated, and Bari broke away by giving itself an independent leader, in the person of Duke Theodore. The later history of the city oscillated between high Byzantine rule and obedience to benevolent princes who were all the closer. From 841 to 870 there was a Saracen interlude until Emperor Louis II managed to free the city after a long siege. But Bari’s return to Christianity again benefited, once more, Byzantium. From then on, although contested by Saracens, Lombards and Germans, Bari was subject to Byzantine rule and for about two centuries was the stronghold of the south and the seat of the catapan of Italy.
After some failed attempts at autonomy, the Normans arrived, who knew how to exploit local dissensions and in particular the hostility toward 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 saw the translation of the relics of St. Nicholas, which a group of Bari merchants solemnly transferred from the saint’s tomb in Myra of Lycia. On May 9, 1087, according to tradition, the relics were deposited in the palace of the catapan, ceded by its new owner, Archbishop Ursus II. Another version delays the translation to 1098 and attributes the merit to the Venetians. On the spot where the relics were deposited, the famous basilica dedicated to St. Nicholas quickly arose. The event consecrated what Norman rule made possible: the return of the Church of Bari to direct dependence on Rome, from which it had been separated during Byzantine rule.
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 period until the middle of the 10th century, nothing more is known of the see of Bari. The Byzantines, who later took 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 Bari as a metropolitan see, giving it jurisdiction over Canosa, Giovinazzo, Molfetta, Trani, Ruvo, Canne, Minervino, Montemilone, Lavello, Cisterna, Vitalba, Conversano, Polignano and Kotor, on the opposite shore of the Adriatic.
In 1089 Urban II, by handing over the pallium to Archbishop Elias, proclaimed him Primate of Apulia. Abbot of the ancient monastery of St. Benedict, the first cradle of religious sentiment in the city, Elias was entrusted with the custody of the relics of St. Nicholas and 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 lustrums, until 1104. A council was held in Bari in 1064; a second was held in 1098 at the will and in the presence of Urban II, who years earlier, on the occasion of the Council of Melfi and the consecration of Elias, had come to venerate the relics of the Saint and to recognize the cult. But the attempt then made to renew religious unity between East and West came to nothing. Already a port frequented by pilgrims from the Holy Land, Bari, in the wake of the First Crusade, became an important stopover for crusading enterprises. Peter the Venerable was a guest of Elias in the preparation of the Crusade; the Bishop of Valence died there while awaiting embarkation. During the period of the Crusades, Bari, together with Brindisi, was the last stop in the West before the voyage into the Levant for Norman, French and Provençal princes. The principality founded by Bohemond at Antioch and the ever more frequent establishment of Apulian and Bari merchants in the eastern Mediterranean, intensifying maritime relations, marked, for several centuries, an ever greater participation of the city in the renewed Latin unity of the sea that had once been Rome’s; from the most distant centuries of the Middle Ages, Bari has maintained its essential function as the gateway to the East.
Norman rule, consolidated throughout southern Italy by Roger II, made Bari one of its major centers. Around the years 1130, Archbishop Angelo, in harmony with Norman policy, became a supporter of Anacletus II against Innocent II. Subsequently, the city, which had become a center of an autonomist attempt by Prince Grimoald Alferanite and was contested between Roger II, Lothair III and the elector Duke of Apulia Rainulf of Alife, was barbarously destroyed in 1156 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 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 first enfeoffed it to the Del Balzo-Orsini, then to the Sforza of Milan; from the Aragonese to the Spanish, the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. Centuries of decline followed the Aragonese age: at the beginning of the 19th century the city was reduced to little more than the ancient borough, and from the 50,000 inhabitants of its prosperous time to 18,860. Contained even during the years of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic epic, during the occupation of the Directory troops in 1798, the first brief restoration and the reign of Joseph Bonaparte, Joachim Murat, in 1813 laid the first stone of the new city, on the edge of the old borough, marking for Bari the advent of new times.
Upon entering the new Italian State in the wake of the Expedition of the Thousand, it received in recent years a decisive impetus that made it the principal commercial and maritime center, after Naples, of the southern peninsula. In 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 taken possession of his see, Bartolomeo Prignano, was elected pope (Urban VI); under him the Great Western Schism arose, and even the Church of Bari was divided between the Urbanist and Clementine clergy. Other notable groups of archbishops succeeded one another during the 15th–17th centuries: in the time of Leo X, Gian Giacomo Castiglioni; before and after, Cardinals Latino Orsini, Stefano Gabriele Marini (who later became Patriarch of the Indies), Girolamo Grimaldi; the former nuncio to the court of Turin, Giulio Cesare Riccardi; Cardinal Bonvisi; Ascanio Gesualdo, who had been nuncio in Belgium and Germany and later Patriarch of Constantinople; Nunzio Gaeta, who then moved to the patriarchal see of Jerusalem. Bari’s territory had already in antiquity been enlarged by the addition of that of Canosa; later, the dioceses of Acquaviva and, following the reorganization of ecclesiastical structures in the kingdom in 1818, Bitetto were incorporated into II. Bari has produced several illustrious names: for sanctity, such as the Blessed Giacomo da Bari, a Franciscan friar; for dignity, such as Cardinals Giacomo da Turri and Francesco de Caris of the 14th century, and the archbishops Paolo il Teutonico of Manfredonia (16th c.) and Francesco Nicali (18th c.); for political initiatives, such as the leaders of the Bari autonomist movement Argiro the Lombard, Agrizzo the Greek, and Melo the Apulian; chroniclers and historians, such as the archdeacon Giovanni, author of the *Translatio s. Nicolai* and other writings (11th c.); 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, Father Antonio Beattilo, a Jesuit, and the 18th-century describer of the cult of St Nicholas, Nicola Putignani, a canon of the cathedral; and among modern scholars who worked on the publication of the *Codice diplomatico barese*, one must recall at least Francesco Carabellese and Monsignor Francesco Nitti.
Not far from the city, the goal of a pilgrimage on the last Sunday in August, stands the sanctuary of the Pozzo di Capurso, dedicated to the Virgin. In the city are the Dominican houses, formerly the convent of St Francis of Paola, which they reoccupied after their return in 1820; the Capuchins, the Jesuits in the building attached to the church of the Gesù, the Salesians, the Benedictine nuns of St Scholastica, who have moved several times from building to building. At Palo del Colle is the only Olivetan monastery still extant in Italy.