BELCASTRO. - Former episcopal city of Calabria, on the south-eastern slopes of the Sila, between Catanzaro and S. Severina.

The old Calabrian chroniclers made it the birthplace of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose father, Landolfo, held the title of count of B.; but their arguments are anything but solid. Barrio assigns its foundation to Philoctetes; it appears only during the Byzantine domination, under the name of Καλλέπολις, in Latin Bellicastrum or also Genococastrum. It was elevated by the Byzantines to a diocese in the second half of the 9th century, as appears from Notitia III of the Diatiposis of Leo VI the Philosopher, who made it a suffragan of S. Severina, since it cannot in any way be maintained that the Καλλέπολις mentioned there corresponds to Callipoli of Apulia. It was a diocese of little importance, because besides the small town of B., which never exceeded 3,000 inhabitants, it had only the village of Villa Aragona, also called Andali, later inhabited by Albanians. In 1818 it was suppressed with the bull De utiliori and its territory incorporated into S. Severina.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: Ughelli, IX, pp. 494-98; G. Fiore, Calabria illustrata, II, Naples 1743, pp. 334-36; G. Minasi, Le chiese di Calabria, ibid. 1896, p. 255; F. Gramer, Le diocesi d'Italia dalla metà del sec. X a tutto il sec. XII, Melfi 1908, p. 79; F. Russo, La metropolia di S. Severina, in Arch. st. Calabria e Lucania, 16 (1945), pp. 10-13; F. Bonnard, s. v. in DHG, VII, coll. 505-506.

Francesco Russo

@incollection{ec2_belcastro, author = {Russo, Francesco}, title = {Belcastro}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {II}, pages = {1155}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/belcastro} }

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