BOBBIO, Diocese of. – In Lombardy, in the province of Piacenza, a suffragane of Genoa. It comprises communes belonging to the provinces of Genoa, Piacenza, Pavia, and Parma. The area of the diocese is 613 sq. km.; it has 35,000 inhabitants, divided into 60 parishes, grouped into 13 deaneries; 79 diocesan priests (1948) and its own seminary. The principal town (in the province of Pavia) has 6,000 souls. It venerates as its diocesan patron Saint Columban, whose feast is celebrated on 24 November; the cathedral is dedicated to the Assumption of Mary and to Saint Peter the Apostle.
The diocese was erected only in 1014; suppressed at the time of the French invasion (1803), it was annexed to the diocese of Casale Monferrato; Pius VII restored it within its original boundaries in 1817, at the request of King Victor Emmanuel I.
B., in the Trebbia valley, owes its origin to the Irish monk Saint Columban. Having taken refuge in 612 with King Agilulf of the Lombards, recently converted to Catholicism, he obtained permission to settle as a hermit in a mountainous place where there was an ancient ruined oratory dedicated to Saint Peter. Columban restored it and made it the center of the monastic life he intended to establish there. He placed the monastery under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and monks flocked to it, drawn by the abbot’s reputation for holiness. Around the new monastery and along the Bobbio stream, from which the inhabited center takes its name, dwellings grew ever more numerous.
After Columban’s death (615), his companion Saint Attala of Burgundy was made abbot; he enriched the monastery with learning and virtue and died there about 622. The third abbot, Saint Bertulf, obtained confirmation of the previous Lombard donations from King Adaloald and in 638 obtained a bull from Honorius I that placed the monastery directly under the Holy See, removing it from all episcopal jurisdiction. Saint Bobolen succeeded as abbot, and Pope Theodore I confirmed in a new bull the monastery’s exemption rights.
Cumianus, a Scot who had left the episcopal see he held in Scotland, retired to monastic life at B. at the age of 75 and died there twenty years later, during the reign of King Liutprand. The monastery’s most flourishing period was during the Lombard kings. Abbot Ilduin not only had his previous donations and land acquisitions confirmed by Emperor Lothair but also received the county of B. added to them. The abbots therefore assumed the title of count. In the 10th century, however, there were conflicts with the bishops of Piacenza and a decline in the monastery’s property. Among the abbots, Gerbert of Aurillac became particularly famous; he was elevated to the papal see in 999 under the name Sylvester II (q.v.).
Benedict VIII, at the urging of Emperor Henry II, erected the episcopal see here in 1014. The bishopric, originally dependent directly on the Holy See, became a suffragan of Genoa when that city was raised to metropolitan status by Innocent II (1133). Around and dependent on the principal monastery of Saint Columban, others arose in the Bobbio area, though none now remain.
The first bishop was Attone (1014–27), succeeded by Sigefredo. Bishop Luizo bore the title of Count of the city (1046), while the abbots retained the title of Count of the territory. Among the bishops, Alberto Avogadro (1184–85), transferred from Vercelli and later gone to Jerusalem (1205), stood out for holiness; he suffered martyrdom at Acre on 8 April 1214. During the episcopate of Mariano Buccarini, the abbey of B., by then in decline, was entrusted by Nicholas V to the Cassinese Benedictines of the Congregation of Saint Justina in Padua (1449). Many of the bishops belonged to religious orders. Giovanni Mondani (1477–82) solemnly translated the body of Saint Columban from the monastery church (cf. Ughelli, IV, p. 943). He died in a reputation for holiness on 15 December in Piacenza and was buried in the cathedral there. Cardinal Agostino Trivulzio administered the diocese from 1522 to 1524. Francesco Abbondio Castiglioni governed the diocese from 1562 to 1568 and was elevated to the purple in 1565. The bishops also had lively disputes with the civic government, which sought to escape the bishop’s temporal jurisdiction. Later, the Dal Verme family came into conflict with the episcopal jurisdiction when the Duke of Milan, Filippo Visconti, granted B. to them as a fief.
In 1748 the Bobbio area was detached from the Duchy of Milan and annexed to the Sardinian States. The monastery declined until its suppression and the final dispersal of its library (1795). The monastery buildings, modernized in the 17th–18th centuries, were adapted for use as clergy housing and schools.
B. was one of the most important and wealthy abbeys in Italy. Characteristic and of the greatest importance was its scriptorium, which, together with that of Monte Cassino, has the honor of having been at the forefront in preserving and transmitting the cultural heritage of antiquity. Its library was among the richest, though recent studies, especially by Cardinal Mercati, have shown that the common opinion that it was the heir and repository of Cassiodorus’s Vivarium library can no longer be sustained. As there was a custos chartarum who oversaw all the monastery’s documents, so too a librarian presided over the scriptorium and the collections of books.
Among the works that originated at B. are Cicero’s De re publica, Rutilius Namatianus’s De reditu suo, Lucan’s Pharsalia, and the Medicean Virgil, etc. In the 15th–16th centuries, unfortunately, the emigration of codices and documents began: in the time of Charles Emmanuel I, a first group went to Turin; through the efforts of Federico Borromeo, many codices passed to the Ambrosian Library (1606) and others to the Vatican Library through the agency of Paul V (1618). Mabillon and Muratori found the library already depleted; in 1720 only about a hundred codices remained. The final dispersal occurred when Dr. Butler purchased the remainder at auction (1801–1803).
At the request of the Piedmontese government, A. Peyron catalogued about a hundred Bobbio codices for the Turin library; this collection was, however, half destroyed in the fire of 1904. A. Mai, studying the Ambrosiana collection, made important discoveries of palimpsests. Important documents are still preserved in the archive of the cathedral of B.
Among the sacred artistic monuments, besides the remains of the monastery, is the church of Saint Columban, rebuilt by the Benedictines in the second half of the 15th century and completed in the 17th. Its façade, divided into three sections corresponding to the three internal naves, has a single portico in front. The main nave was frescoed in 1576 by Bernardino da S. Colombano. Notable are the carvings and inlays of the choir, the work of Domenico da Piacenza (1488). In the crypt (restored in 1910 along the lines of the 15th century, at the initiative of Cardinal Logue and the Irish) is the sarcophagus of Saint Columban, with the recumbent figure of the saint carved by Giovanni Papini of Milan (1480). On the side walls are Romanesque-style tombstones of the abbots Attala and Bertulf. In a section closed by wrought-iron railings are relics and fragments from the primitive church and a tombstone of Saint Cumianus (8th century). The bell tower dates from the 11th century. Among the sacred furnishings are a 15th-century silver bust reliquary of Saint Columban and a choir book of the same century. The former monastery church is now a simple parish church.
The cathedral, rebuilt in 1436, also has three naves; an elevated presbytery; an octagonal crypt on brick pillars (13th century); the transept and presbytery were redone and frescoed by Pozzi in 1725. The building, in the shape of a Latin cross, is 63 m long and 22 m wide.
In the underground part of the church of S. Maria dell'Aiuto (built in 1621) on a pillar there is a notable fresco depicting the Madonna and Child (16th century). The churches of S. Maria delle Grazie, S. Lorenzo and S. Francesco (the latter now desacralized) date back to the 17th century. The episcopal palace and the seminary were built in stages during the 16th–18th centuries; among the relics are: a series of metal ampullae (v.) adorned with scenes, brought from the Holy Places, medals in terracotta likewise recalling the same, medieval seals; an Agnus Dei of Alexander VI, a pastoral staff from 1479.
Carlo Castiglioni–Tommaso Leccisotti