CASTELLANETA, DIOCESI di. — In the province of Taranto, on the Talvo, a tributary of the Lieto. It extends over 717 sq. km., with 10 parishes, 36 diocesan priests and 9 religious priests; a minor seminary; it has 49,700 Catholics out of 50,000 inhabitants (1948).
In the Middle Ages it was known by the name of Castanetum or Castanea; conquered by the Normans ca. 1080, it changed lords frequently. The diocese was founded at the end of the 11th century; it is suffragan to Taranto; in 1818 Pius VII, with the bull De meliori, united the Diocese of Mottola to II.
The Cathedral dates from the 12th century and was rebuilt in the 15th, with a fifteenth-century bell tower; the interior, with three naves and paired columns, was remodeled in the Baroque period; it contains many canvases by D. Carella (1797) and a polyptych by G. da S. Croce (1531). Other notable churches are S. Chiara, with pointed arches, and the seventeenth-century S. Michele.
As regards the Diocese of Mottola, its first bishop died in 1040; in 1551 it had a bishop, Scipione Rebiba, later a cardinal; the last bishop died in 1798. The Cathedral, dating from the 12th century, was rebuilt in the fifteenth century but disfigured by Baroque alterations; the interior has three naves; it is dedicated to S. Thomas of Canterbury. In the surrounding area are the characteristic Basilian crypts or laurae, such as that of S. Gregorio, with three naves and three apses, and the other of S. Nicola, likewise with three naves and numerous frescoes. Another center in the same diocese is Massafra, where mention should be made of the ancient Benedictine priory of S. Lucia, founded in 1081 by Riccardo, son of Count Drogone, which remained in existence until 1609; the abbey of S. Benedetto of Benedictine nuns, founded in 1767; the Basilian crypt of S. Marco; and the sanctuary of the Madonna della Scala, in its present form dating from 1735 but built upon an earlier structure, of which remnants of frescoes survive.