BENEVENTO, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - One of the most extensive archbishoprics of southern Italy, with its seat in a city rich in history, which was the capital first of a duchy, then of a principality, and was subsequently subject to the direct authority of the Holy See. Its suffragan dioceses are those of S. Agata dei Goti, Alife, Ariano, Ascoli Satriano and Cerignola, Avellino, Boiano, Bovino, Larino, Lucera, S. Severo, Telese, Cerreto and Termoli in Campania, Apulia and Molise. The Beneventan archdiocese, in the province of the same name (area 2,500 sq km) and for the lesser part in that of Avellino, borders on the dioceses of Avellino, Ariano and Cerreto and on the territory of the archdiocese of Conza. It has 160 parishes with 268 diocesan priests and 105 regulars, ca. 335,000 inhabitants (1948). Patron: St. Bartholomew the Apostle.
I. HISTORY
On the slope of a hill called della Guardia (135 m), at the confluence of the Calore with the Sabato, arose Malventum, the Samnite city that long warred with Rome. Before becoming a Roman colony, it witnessed the victory of Curius Dentatus over Pyrrhus; the bonus eventus was handed down in the very name of the city, which was from then on B.
The first historically attested bishop is St. Januarius (v.), a victim of the persecution of Diocletian. The second, Theophilus, was present at the Roman Council of 313. A second Januarius was legate of the Pope at the Council of Sardica in 341. In 404 another bishop of B. carried to Constantinople a letter from Pope Innocent I in favor of St. John Chrysostom, to the emperor Arcadius. To the second half of the 5th century belongs the bishop St. Tammarus; Epiphanius to the years 494-99 (cf. Jaffé-Wattenbach, 657, 736-37). In 545 the city was taken by Totila, who razed its walls to the ground. The Byzantine general Narses raised it again from its ruins, reduced to a small village.
Better times were reserved by the Lombard invasion: a column of the new occupiers pushed as far as Samnium, and there gave life, under the guidance of a first duke, Zotto, around the year 571, to a Lombard duchy, soon extended to a great part of southern Italy, later divided into twenty-four counties. Like Alboin, Zotto was a barbarian; and before the influence of Roman civilization and of the Church spread over him and his people, the violence of barbarism was exercised upon sacred places and upon priests. Around 589 the abbey of Montecassino was destroyed and, in the same years, Zotto is said to have had as many as eighty Christians killed for not having bowed to pagan practices.
The Lombards of Benevento abandoned Arianism under duke Arechis, who was the great reorganizer of the duchy. Shortly before the year 600, with his Baptism he opened the way to the mass conversion of his people, and on 15 December 600 he had the restored and enlarged Cathedral, dedicated to the Virgin, consecrated; both he himself and the bishop of B. were in contact with the pontiff Gregory I. In 662 the emperor Constans II besieged B.: the legend, inserted into the Beneventan liturgy, relates that a Lombard priest named Barbatus would have made himself guarantor of the lifting of the siege if the duke Romuald had put an end to the surviving forms of paganism. Constans II was forced shortly thereafter to raise the siege; and only then could Barbatus mark the end of the cult of the sacred walnut tree and of the golden viper that the duke himself, by then a Christian, venerated in secret in his palace. From 663 Barbatus was bishop, and to the see of B. was joined that of Siponto (the union would last four centuries), with guardianship of the famous sanctuary of St. Michael of the Gargano. Arechis had set the duchy on the path to an almost complete independence from the Lombard crown; during the 7th and 8th centuries the prestige of the dukes and the power of the State increased even more; animated by the zeal of neophytes, Romuald and his wife, Theodrada, erected churches and convents. Only for a short time did king Liutprand succeed in asserting his authority, because B. soon resumed its autonomy; consecrated with the erection of the cloister of S. Sofia, begun around the middle of the 8th century by duke Gisulf and completed, together with the adjoining church, by Arechis II in 760.
The second architect of the fortune of B. was Arechis II, spouse of Adelperga, daughter of Desiderius, who took the fall of the Lombard kingdom as an occasion to assume the title of prince and to gather around the southern principality all his surviving people, continuing the Lombard tradition. The importance of B. did not escape Charlemagne: but his attempts did not achieve their aim, and the emperor died before his lordship over the duchy could be anything other than nominal. B. then tried to maneuver skillfully among Byzantines, Saracens, Franks and Roman Church. The most flourishing period of B. lasted until the 12th century, when the establishment of the Norman monarchy marked the end of the southern autonomies. In the second half of the 9th century, at the time of Adelchis I, the territories of Salerno and Capua broke away from the Beneventan principality, becoming the seat of two other principalities. Between 891 and 894 the Byzantine domination made itself felt again only briefly, for, when the Capuan count Atenulf was called to the throne of B. in 900, the expulsion of the Byzantines and the destruction of the Saracens became a national program, pursued, with varying fortune, down to Landulf VI, the last Beneventan prince of the dynasty founded by Atenulf.
Pope John XIII, in 969, raised B. and Siponto to metropolitan sees, and thus Landulf I assumed the dignity of archbishop. During the 11th century the circumscription grew until it had twenty-five suffragan churches, as the reliefs of the famous thirteenth-century bronze doors of the Cathedral illustrate, with the representation of the twenty-five bishops. The archbishop of B. had singular privileges, slowly erased by time: tiara and pallium, in the form of an omophorion, like the archbishop of Ravenna; a leaden seal on diplomas, like papal acts, and being preceded in public ceremonies of worship by the Most Holy Eucharist.
A new period in Beneventan history opened in the middle of the 11th century under Leo IX. In 1050 the Pope excommunicated the Beneventans, whom a fierce spirit of autonomy had made turbulent and rebellious against the imperial authority of Henry III. The following year, however, having come among them and been welcomed with enthusiasm, Leo conceived the design of uniting the principality to the Church by bonds no longer merely spiritual but temporal. He reached an agreement with Henry III, by which the rights of the Holy See over Bamberg were exchanged for the retrocession of the imperial rights over B. In 1053, at the head of an army, the Pope made his entry into the city, and having driven out the prince Landulf III, he left a governor there in his name. The taking of B. was a prelude to the new policy of direct intervention by the Curia in the south; having clashed with the new Norman power, Leo IX was defeated and taken prisoner, at the battle of Civitate, by Robert Guiscard, allied with the Lombard princes. The imprisonment of the Pontiff in Benevento produced a reversal of relations; the Church recognized the Normans' dominion over the conquered countries as its own vassals, making them its closest defenders. In 1077, however, in place of the last Lombard prince, Landulf VI, the Church consolidated its dominion over B. In the time of Gregory VII, in fact, the city and the territory were governed by rectors, and in 1059 Nicholas II had held a notable Council in B.; from that year the visits of the Pontiffs and the councils were frequent. Gregory VII went there in 1073, a first time, and then a second time in 1080, when he received Robert Guiscard there in penance and confirmed to him the investiture of the South; Victor III and Urban II toward the end of the 11th century; Paschal II at the beginning of the 12th.
Between 1130 and 1139, B. was the stronghold of Anacletus II against Innocent II; but anti-Norman hatred threw part of the citizenry into the arms of Innocent. Shortly afterward the archbishop, Peter II, was killed by the Beneventans in revolt on suspicion of relations he had maintained with William of Sicily, who had recently besieged Adrian IV, devastating the territory. In a short time B. again gave asylum to the Pontiffs to remove them from the violence of Barbarossa. Alexander III stayed there for three years (1167-70). In the following century, Frederick II, at war with the Holy See, destroyed a great part of the city, initiating its decline. Nevertheless, considered the apple of the Church's eye, which restored its wounds, B. was preserved to the Holy See in the treaty for the cession of the kingdom to Charles of Anjou; and beneath its walls, in 1266, the decisive battle for the fortunes of the South was fought between Charles and the son of Frederick II, Manfred. In 1378, during the Western Schism, which saw two archbishops acting in opposition in the city, Joanna I seized B. From 1429 to 1436 its archbishop was Gaspare Colonna, a zealous and munificent pastor, who, although not compromised in the revolt of the Colonna against Eugene IV, was summoned to Rome, imprisoned in Castel Sant'Angelo and, restored to his see, died there prematurely of grief. Alfonso V of Aragon also, in 1440, encroached upon the pontifical sovereignty over the city; and so did King Ferdinand in 1482. In his turn, Alexander VI alienated the principality for a moment in favor of his own son, Giovanni duke of Gandia. Again, in 1528, the imperial troops occupied B., by order of Charles V, but it was restored the following year.
Toward the end of the 17th century, just when a terrible earthquake was about to intervene to desolate it, as later in 1702, B. had as its pastor one of the most distinguished figures of the time, Cardinal Vincenzo Maria Orsini, a Dominican, who renewed the religious life of the diocese and knew how to raise the city again from the damage of two earthquakes, before being elected pope under the name of Benedict XIII (v.). Even afterward, he did not wish to abandon the direct care of the diocese so dear to him, so that only at his death did B. have an archbishop of its own, Sinibaldo Doria.
Natives of B. were the popes Felix IV, Victor III, Gregory VIII; among the cardinals mention should be made of Stefano Borgia (v.) and Bartolomeo Pacca (v.).
Numerous since ancient times were the male and female religious Orders established in the Beneventan diocese. The archives of B. are rich in documents: the capitular one and that of S. Sofia, near which the museum and the provincial library have been arranged. The local educational institutions have a good tradition of studies.
Bibliography25 works
Pier Fausto Palumbo
II. EVENTS FROM THE END OF THE 1700S TO 1860
After having been part of the pontifical domains since the 12th century, and after having been, by the Neapolitans, also out of Bourbon family solidarity, the object of arbitrary occupation in 1750 and in 1768, B. was forcibly taken from ecclesiastical lordship in Jan. 1799 by a corps of 3,000 Frenchmen under the orders of General Brusier, who, among other things, seized the famous treasure of the Cathedral and the funds of the Monte di Pietà. The republicans, attacked by the local people and fled to Capua with the rich booty, soon returned to the attack, and the commissioner Carlo Pop raised there the tree of liberty. Once the Parthenopean Republic was extinguished, B. returned first under the Bourbons, then on Oct. 5, 1800 under pontifical government. Then ceded, by Napoleonic decree dated at St. Cloud on June 5, 1806, as a ducal fief to Talleyrand and his descendants, on the following July 21 Alessandro Dufresne de St-Léon took possession of it in the name of the feudatory, soon replaced as governor by the Alsatian Louis de Beer. The civil administration was in part beneficial, and it was followed by brief Murattian and Austrian interludes (1814), until, by decision of the Congress of Vienna (1815), B. was restored to its former sovereign.
There immediately followed a period of agitation because of the secret societies, in particular that of the Carbonari; so that at the outbreak of the revolts of 1820, after repressive measures and a serious clash near the Cathedral, the apostolic delegate Msgr. Olivieri had to withdraw, and on July 16 a provisional government was constituted, which, among other things, sought, though in vain, to bring about the annexation of B. and the surrounding territories to the neighboring kingdom of Naples. Nine months later, however, because of the defeat of the constitutionalists and the Austrian intervention, pontifical government returned. The attachment of most of the inhabitants and the shrewd governing work of the delegate Msgr. Gioacchino Pecci, later Leo XIII, meant that further fusionist attempts with the Neapolitan territory fell completely flat. In Dec. 1848 a deputation of Beneventans went to pay homage to Pius IX, an exile at Gaeta, and, given the total tranquility, on Oct. 12, 1849 Pius IX was able to visit that farthest strip of his territories.
Some disturbances that occurred in 1855 because of poor municipal administration found the government ready to mete out exemplary justice with the dissolution of the relevant council and with appropriate remedial measures. But plots set in motion as early as May 1860, and, more than these, the overwhelming Garibaldian advance and the twilight of the Bourbon regime, provoked on Sept. 3 the sudden departure of the delegate Msgr. Agnelli, and, consequently, Garibaldi's decree of Oct. 25 that put an end to pontifical dominion.
Bibliography5 works
Paolo Dalla Torre
III. ART
The oldest ruins, the inscriptions found in the excavations and the coins with Greek lettering show the imprint of Hellenic art and the relations with the Greek colonies of Campania and Magna Graecia. The most grandiose monument of the Roman era is the Arch of Trajan, also called the Porta Aurea for the value of its sculptures, which represent the most salient events in the life of the emperor. Other remains of the Roman period are: the theater with three orders of arcades and with the stage almost intact, the ruins of a vast Roman emporium, stretches of the Via Appia still well paved, the Egyptian obelisk and the statue of the god Apis. To the Lombard period belong the walls and fortifications near Ponte Arsa, a necropolis with tombs of the 7th and 8th centuries and the church of St. Sophia.
The Cathedral, with the adjoining archiepiscopal palace, was built in the 7th century by Bishop David, and then rebuilt with three naves, in the 9th century, by Prince Sicone, and with five naves by Roger, archbishop of B. (1179-1221); who also had its facade completed, similar to those of the Apulian cathedrals, built with remains of Roman buildings and of tombs of Lombard princes (it is still incomplete). Noteworthy in it are the central rose window with six small columns interspersed with mosaics and the bronze doors (late 12th century, early 13th century) held by some critics to be the work of a local master, by others of Byzantine origin, with scenes from the life of Christ. In the interior the columns of the central nave come from a Roman building, the others were placed there by Pope Benedict XIII in place of those of Roger which collapsed following seismic shocks. The paintings above the arches with Prophets and Apostles date back to the mid-18th century: those with Elijah and Daniel are by the Beneventan Albano. Worthy of note are the finely worked ambos of the high altar, the work of Nicola da Monteforte (1311), the high altar itself by Meomartini (1st half of the 19th century) and the metropolitan treasury, among which the wrought-iron chair (11th century) called that of St. Barbatus, thinned during the French occupation. The bell tower, in which a curious bas-relief of the Roman era is embedded, from which the coat of arms of B. is derived, dates back to 1273 through the efforts of Archbishop Romano Capo di Ferro. Following the latest events of war the Cathedral has suffered considerable damage; only the facade, the bell tower and some columns have remained intact. The work of rebuilding and restoration is still in progress.
Also noteworthy are the castle, restored several times, reduced in 1321 to its present state, formerly a convent of the Benedictines and now the seat of the provincial museum, now much damaged: the Arch of the Sacrament, now stripped of its sculptures, the Baroque monument to Pope Benedict XIII, the libraries, among them that rich in codices of the metropolitan chapter, and the bridge over the Calore rebuilt by Vanvitelli.
Bibliography7 works
Fabia Borroni
IV. ABBEY OF S. SOFIA
Unlike the other abbey dedicated to the martyr Sophia in the locality "ad ponticellum," this one, which was the most important among the many in the ancient capital of the Lombard duchy, took its name from the Divine Wisdom, just as the famous basilica of Byzantium did. Its origins are linked to the name of Prince Arechis II (758-88), who, near the church already existing around 706 and rebuilt by him, established a monastery of nuns, whose first abbess was his sister Gorimberga. It later became a dependency of Montecassino, and monks took the place of the nuns. The Cassinese abbot St. Bertarius (d. 883) completed and consecrated there an oratory of St. Benedict, whose construction his predecessor Bassacius had begun. He who was later the famous abbot Desiderius and Pope Victor III made his profession there and lived there for some time at the beginning of his monastic life.
Arechis had already endowed it with very abundant revenues, but its possessions continued to increase even more thereafter. The commenda marked its end. With the consent of the commendatory cardinal Ascanio Colonna, it passed in 1590 to the Canons Regular of the Savior of Bologna; since 1834 the Brothers of the Christian Schools have been there. The archive is scattered in various places in B. The manuscript of the famous Chronicle of the monastery is now in the Vatican Library.
Of the basilica that Arechis had rebuilt in imitation of the St. Sophia of Constantinople, nothing remains; only a small, mutilated portal, with a lunette containing a bas-relief bearing the effigy of Arechis, kneeling beside St. Mercury, who commends him to the Redeemer and the Virgin. A commendatory has added his coat of arms to it.
Even the cloister adjacent to the modest present-day church is not the original one: it dates in part to the 12th century and has in its center an ancient capital, adapted to serve as a wellhead. - See Pl. LXXXI.
Bibliography8 works
Tommaso Leccinotti
V. BENEVENTAN CONCILIAR REGION
It is one of the regions into which Italy was divided, for the purpose of celebrating regional councils in place of provincial councils (v. COUNCIL, IV), by measures of the Sacred Congregation of the Consistory of 15 Feb. and 22 March 1919 and 29 Sept. 1933 (AAS, 11 [1919], pp. 72-74, 176; ibid., 25 [1933], p. 466). It comprises the territories of the ecclesiastical provinces of B. and of Manfredonia, and furthermore the dioceses of Foggia and of Troja, and the nullius abbey of Montevergine.
In B., the chief town of the region, the regional ecclesiastical tribunal for cases of nullity of marriage has its seat; it judges, besides in first instance, also on appeal for cases that in first instance were judged by the Abruzzese (Chieti) or Apulian (Bari) regional tribunals. The appeal against the sentences of the Beneventan regional tribunal must be brought either to the Campanian regional tribunal (Naples) or to the Sacred Rota (cfr. Pius XI, motu proprio Qua cura, 8 Dec. 1938, in AAS, 30 [1938], pp. 410-13).