Bieda [Blera]

BIEDA [BLERA]. - Ancient episcopal city of Latium, in the province of Viterbo, rising on a tuff plateau at the confluence of the Biedano stream and the Rio Canale; it is crossed by the via Clodia and is not far from the Cassia. The Romans called it Blera or Bleva, and under them it maintained the prosperity acquired during the period of its Etruscan civilization, as the discovery of the necropolis, of inscriptions and of other monumental remains has come to attest. Its decline must have occurred in the early Middle Ages, caused, without doubt, by the neighboring cities more accessible because of their topographical position. In the first half of the 8th century B. was the property of the Holy See; it was occupied in 739 by the Lombards, but was soon restored by King Liutprand to Pope Zachary; in 772 Desiderius conquered it anew, until, two years later, with the Lombard kingdom in Italy destroyed, it definitively became part of the Patrimony of St. Peter.

The origin of Christianity in B. is linked to the name of St. Sensius, whose Vita (BHL 7581-82b), written between the 7th and 8th centuries by monks, probably from the Tuscan archipelago, points to him as a monk and evangelizer of B., who died toward the end of the 5th century, after overcoming the pagan resistance of those citizens. His name is read in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum under 25 May, and De Rossi suspects that St. Sensius is earlier than the middle of the 5th century. Lanzoni, in turn, considers him a martyr of the persecutions, who only during the golden period of monasticism in Tuscany was celebrated by the anonymous author of the Vita as a monk of the 5th century.

The origin of Christianity in B. thus depends chronologically on the time in which St. Sensius would have lived, who can be regarded as the evangelizer of the territory of Bieda. The first bishop of B. known to us is Maximinus, who appears among the subscribers of the Roman synods from 487 to 502. B. was the birthplace of Pope Sabinian (Lib. Pontif., ed. L. Duchesne, I, p. 315); St. Gregory the Great recalls (Reg., IX; Ep. 96 in MGH, Epist., II, p. 106) an abbey in its territory, of which, however, no trace remains; while a church in honor of St. Sensius must soon have arisen in B., which Leo IV in the 9th century had decorated (Lib. Pontif., ed. cit. II, p. 125). In 1093 the bishop Richard still bears the title of B. but has already united that of Tuscania (v.). In 1192 Celestine III, erecting the bishopric of Viterbo, annexed to it also the ancient dioceses of Tuscania, Civitavecchia and B., ordaining that the titular of the new diocese should bear the appellation of bishop of Viterbo and Tuscania.

Benedetto Pesci