BAZZANO

BAZZANO. — Two miles from L'Aquila in Abruzzo, on the Aterno River. It is the ancient Vicus Ofidius. Its parish church is dedicated to St. Giusta, whom the *passio* attributes to the time of Maximian (BHL 4586).

The martyr was buried in a place around which an underground cemetery developed, carved into the rock with loculi closed by small walls and arcosolia also in masonry. There is found a Christian inscription from the year 396 (CIL, IX, 3601). Over the primitive oratory erected there in the 9th century, a church was built, reconstructed in 1218, with three naves and a portal dated 1238; the central nave was shortened in 1461 after an earthquake; the right nave was later adapted for use as the parish residence. Many architectural and epigraphic fragments document the subsequent transformations.

Bibl.: M. Armellini, *Gli antichi cimiteri cristiani di Roma e d'Italia*, Rome 1893, pp. 692–93; A. Bevignani, *Osservazioni sulle catacombe di S. Vittorio e di B. e sopra una casella per reliquie*, in *N. Bull. di arch. crist.*, 9 (1903), pp. 187–93; I. Gavini, *Storia dell'architettura in Abruzzo*, I, Milan–Rome n.d., pp. 9, 209, 321, 330, 464–65; figs. 351–58; II, pp. 150, 228, 330, 339; figs. 379–87. Enrico Josi