BOBBIO, Diocese of. - In Lombardy, province of Piacenza, suffragan of Genoa. It comprises communes belonging to the provinces of Genoa, Piacenza, Pavia and Parma. Area of the diocese, 613 sq. km.; with 35,000 inhabitants, distributed among 60 parishes, gathered into 13 rural vicariates; 79 diocesan priests (1948) and its own seminary. The town center (in the province of Pavia) has 6,000 souls. It venerates as diocesan patron St. Columbanus, celebrated on 24 Nov.; the Cathedral is dedicated to Mary Assumed and to St. 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 re-established it within its original boundaries in 1817, at the request of King Victor Emmanuel I.
B., in the valley of the Trebbia, owes its origin to the Irish monk St. Columbanus. Having taken refuge in 612 with the Lombard king Agilulf, recently converted to Catholicism, he received permission to settle, as a hermit, in a mountainous place where there stood an ancient oratory in ruins dedicated to St. Peter. Columbanus restored it and made it the center of the monastic life that he intended to establish there. He placed the monastery under the protection of the Virgin Mary; and monks flocked there, attracted by the fame of the abbot's holiness. Around the new monastery and along the torrent Bobi, from which the inhabited center takes its name, dwellings arose in ever greater numbers. After the death of Columbanus (615), his companion St. Attala of Burgundy was made abbot; he distinguished the monastery by his learning and virtue, and died there around 622. The third abbot, St. Bertulf, had the previous Lombard donations confirmed by King Adaloald, and obtained in 638 a bull of Honorius I, which placed the monastery under the immediate dependence of the Holy See, emancipating it from all episcopal jurisdiction. St. Bobolenus succeeded as abbot, and Pope Theodore I, by a new bull, confirmed for him the rights of exemption of the monastery. The Scot Cumian, having left the episcopal see that he held in Scotland, withdrew to the monastic life at B. at the age of 75, and died there twenty years later in the time of King Liutprand. The most flourishing period of the monastery was that of the Lombard kings. To the abbot Hilduin the emperor Lothair not only confirmed the previous donations and purchases of lands, but added to them the county of B. The abbots therefore assumed the title of count. But in the 10th century there were struggles with the bishops of Piacenza and a decline of the monastery's possessions. Among the abbots, Gerbert of Aurillac became particularly famous, raised to the papal see in 999 under the name Sylvester II (v.).
Benedict VIII, urged by the emperor Henry II, erected there in 1014 the episcopal see. The bishopric, at first dependent directly on the Holy See, became a suffragan of Genoa when that city was elevated to a metropolis by Innocent II (1133). Around and in dependence on the principal monastery of St. Columbanus, others arose in the Bobbiese region, of which, however, no trace remains.
The first bishop was Attone (1014-27), succeeded by Sigefred. The bishop Luizo held the title of count of the city (1046), while the abbots retained that of count of the territory. For holiness Alberto Avogadro was distinguished (1184-85), transferred there from Vercelli, and later passed to Jerusalem (1205); he suffered martyrdom in Acre on 8 Apr. 1214. In the time of the bishop Marliano Buccarini the abbey of B., by then decayed, was entrusted by Nicholas V to the Cassinese Benedictines of the Congregation of St. Justina of Padua (1449). A good number of the bishops belonged to religious Orders. Giovanni Mondani (1477-82) carried out the solemn translation of the body of St. Columbanus from the church of the monastery (cf. Ughelli, IV, p. 943). He died in the fame of holiness on 15 Dec. at Piacenza and was buried there in the Cathedral. Cardinal Augusto Trivulzio administered the diocese from 1522 to 1524. Francesco Abbondio Castiglioni governed the diocese from 1562 to 1568, and in 1565 was elevated to the cardinalate. The bishops also had sharp conflicts with the city government, which sought to escape the temporal jurisdiction of the bishop. To challenge the episcopal jurisdiction there then came the Dal Verme family, to which the duke of Milan Filippo Visconti granted B. as a fief.
(phot. Gab. fot. naz.)
BOBBIO. - Vaso eburneo in rilievo con la scena di Orfeo (sec. vi), riadoperato per pisside. - Treasury of the church of St. Columbanus.
In 1748 the Bobbiese territory 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 used as housing for the clergy and for schools.
Bobbio was one of the most important and wealthy abbeys in Italy. Characteristic and of the utmost importance was its "scriptorium," which, together with that of Monte Cassino, has the honor of having been in the forefront in the preservation and transmission of the cultural heritage of the ancients. Its library was among the richest, although after recent studies, especially by Cardinal Mercati, the opinion hitherto current that made it the heir and depository of Cassiodorus's Vivarium can no longer be maintained. Just as there was a "custos chartarum qui omnia praevideat monasterii monumenta," so a librarian presided over the "scriptorium" and the book collections.
From Bobbio come Cicero's De republica; Rutilius Namatianus's De reditu suo; Lucan's Pharsalia; the Medicean Virgil, etc. In the 15th-16th centuries, unfortunately, the migrations of codices and documents began; in the time of Charles Emmanuel I a first group passed to Turin; through the efforts of Federico Borromeo many codices passed to the Ambrosiana (1606) and others to the Vatican Library through the efforts of Paul V (1618). Mabillon and Muratori found the library already plundered; in 1720 only about a hundred codices remained there. The final dispersal occurred when Dr. Buthler bought the remainder at auction (1801-1803).
On behalf of the Piedmontese government A. Peyron tracked down about a hundred Bobbiese codices for the library of Turin; this collection, however, was half destroyed in the fire of 1904. A. Mai, studying the Ambrosiana collection, made very important discoveries concerning palimpsests. In the archive of the cathedral of Bobbio important papers are still preserved.
Of the sacred artistic monuments, besides the remains of the monastery, there is the church of St. Columbanus, which was rebuilt by the Benedictines in the second half of the 15th century and completed in the 17th century. The facade with 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. The carvings and inlays of the choir, the work of Domenico da Piacenza (1488), are valuable. In the crypt (restored in 1910 according to 15th-century lines, through the initiative of Cardinal Logue and the Irish) is the sarcophagus of St. Columbanus, with the figure of the saint recumbent, sculpted by Giovanni Patriarco of Milan (1480). On the side walls are tomb slabs, in Romanesque style, of the abbots Attalus and Bertulf. In a compartment closed by a wrought-iron grille are relics and fragments of the primitive church and the tomb slab of St. Cumian (8th century). The bell tower is from the 11th century: among the sacred furnishings, a silver reliquary bust of St. Columbanus from the 15th century and an illuminated choir book of the same century. The monastery church is now simply a parish church.
The Cathedral, rebuilt in 1436, also has three naves; a raised 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 form of a Latin cross, is 63 m long and 22 m wide.
In the underground part of the church of St. Mary of the Aid (erected in 1621), on a pillar, there is a notable fresco representing the Madonna and Child (16th century). The churches of St. Mary of the Graces, St. Lawrence and St. Francis (the latter now deconsecrated) date back to the 17th century. The episcopal palace and the seminary were built in several stages during the 16th-18th centuries; among the relics: a series of metal ampullae (v.) with historical scenes, brought from the Holy Places, terracotta medals also commemorating the same, medieval seals; an Agnus Dei of Alexander VI, a pastoral staff of 1479.