BIELLA, Diocese of. - City of Piedmont, province of Vercelli, called Buiella or Bugella in documents. It was erected into a diocese by Clement XIV, at the request of Charles Emmanuel III, with the brief Praecipua demandati nobis, of 1 June 1772, detaching its territory from the diocese of Vercelli. Suppressed by Pius VII, at the will of Napoleon, on 1 June 1803, it was re-established by the same Pontiff with the brief Beati
Petri Apostolorum, of 17 July 1817, and declared a suffragan of Vercelli, which was then created a Metropolis.
The diocese of B. has 150,000 inhabitants, 123 parishes, 219 secular priests, 46 regular priests, 12 male religious houses and 122 female ones (1948). Patron: St. Stephen Protomartyr. Christianity must have spread in the Biellese through the direct work of St. Eusebius of Vercelli (c. 340-370). From the region of the gold mines, already known to Strabo (V, 1, 12) and to Pliny (Nat. Hist., XXXIII, 21), called Bessa, that priest Marcellinus mentioned in a Vercelli poem of the Sylloge Palatina would have originated. Certainly the priest "nomine Albinus," whose sepulchral inscription came to light in 1872, exercised his apostolate in B. (c. mid-6th cent.). B. passed to the episcopal mensa of Vercelli in the course of the 10th century, through the donation of Berengar II and Adalbert, as appears from the diploma of Otto III of 7 May 999, assuming that the passage is not interpolated. From the donation of Charles the Fat of 16 March 882 no certain conclusions can be drawn, since the diploma was manipulated (cf. MGH, Diplomata, II, Berlin 1937, p. 92, ed. by P. Kehr). The Chapter of the collegiate church of S. Stefano, of which there is record as early as 1027, and the commune, dating back to the beginnings of the 13th century, were not a few times in conflict with the bishop of Vercelli, to the point of the sensational imprisonment of Bishop Giovanni Fieschi (1377). Two years later B. withdrew from the bishop of Vercelli to give itself to Amadeus VI of Savoy.
Among the principal monuments one must recall: in B. Piano, the oldest part of the city, the centrally planned baptistery with 4 small apses (10th-11th cent.) with remains of paintings from the end of the 13th century; the bell tower (13th cent.) of the ancient collegiate church of S. Stefano, demolished in 1872; the church of S. Sebastiano (1504); the Cathedral, called after 1772 S. Maria Maggiore and S. Stefano Nuovo (15th cent., with remodellings of the late 18th - early 19th cent.); in B. Piazzo (placium or plazium), created in 1160 by the bishop of Vercelli Uguccione, the Church of S. Giacomo of the 13th century, partly rebuilt in the 16th century. The archives are rich: capitular (documents from the 11th cent. onward), municipal (partly catalogued, documents from 882 onward) and notarial, besides private ones. The library of the Major Seminary, founded by Bishop Canaveri (1797-1803), is also open to the public. The Abbey of the SS. Salvatore and Giacomo della Bessa, endowed by the bishop of Vercelli, Rainerio, in 1089, had its importance. Among the Sanctuaries are to be remembered: Oropa (v.), Graglia (Madonna di Loreto), built in the 17th century, and St. John the Baptist of Andorno. Particularly interesting is the "ricetto" of Candelo, a fortress-refuge (13th-14th cent.). At Cavagli, toward the end of the 12th century, Abbot Giovanni Gersen would have been born, to whom some attribute the De imitatione Christi (v. IMITAZIONE DI CRISTO).
Bibliography18 works
A. Pietro Fruszz