BRESCELLO. - An ancient city of Transpadane Gaul, mentioned by Suetonius, Tacitus, Ptolemy, Plutarch and Pliny, now a small agricultural village in the province of Reggio Emilia, on the right bank of the Po. It belongs to the diocese of Guastalla, but in the 4th-5th centuries it was the seat of a bishopric, which in 451 (Bishop Cyprian) was subject to the metropolitan of Milan and around 480 passed under the jurisdiction of Ravenna. Already devastated by the barbarians, in September 603 it was burned by the Byzantines to counter the advance of the Lombards. After this massacre the bishopric disappears. Affò and other Parma scholars thought that the bishop then moved his residence from B. to Parma, where the first historically certain bishop is Urban in 680; but Lanzoni does not believe this (Le diocesi d'Italia, pp. 806-807) and holds instead that the territory of the devastated diocese was divided between Parma and Reggio.
A plebs with its baptistery remained there, subject to Parma; still in the 15th century the bishop of Parma held lands there, and in 1516 the bishop Cardinal Farnese carried out the pastoral visitation there (cf. L'Eco della Curia di Parma, 1932). In the 10th century the bishopric was succeeded by a Benedictine abbey, under the title of a mysterious St. Genesius martyr, built by Atto of Canossa and his wife Hildegard, great-grandparents of Countess Matilda. The abbey had privileges and exemptions from the lords of Canossa and from the popes Paschal II (1106), Innocent II (1132) and Anastasius IV (1153), but it declined in the 15th century because of the commendam, which dispersed its goods and paralyzed monastic life.