CONVERSANO, Diocese of. - Suffragan of Bari, perhaps arisen on the site of ancient Norba; it was a Roman colony, then a municipium, then occupied first by the Byzantines and later by the Goths. It measures 650 sq km.; it has 18 parishes served by 95 diocesan priests and 15 regulars; it has a population of 100,000 inhabitants, all Catholics (1948).
The origin of the diocese of C. is not earlier than the 7th century. The oldest documents, which moreover concern the abbey of St. Benedict, go back to the 9th century, but it is likely that the erection of the episcopal see took place during the Lombard dominion, when the small town became a castrum included in the duchy of Benevento. Therefore the first two bishops in Ughelli's series must be excluded: Simplicius of 487 and Hilarius of 501; the one being the product of legends and the other to be assigned to Tempsa of the Bruttii and not to C. Of the other prelates, worthy of mention are: Sasso, under whose episcopate the famous monastery of St. Benedict, to which in 1087 Goffredo, nephew of Guiscard, had donated the vico Castellano (or of Castellana), enjoyed numerous privileges from Paschal II (1110); and Casio or Cafisio, who took part in the Council of 1179. Under Bishop Stephen, a Cistercian (1266), a certain Dameta Paleologo, a relative of the emperor of Constantinople, driven out of Romania with other companions, obtained the aforementioned monastery and shortly afterwards from Gregory X all the privileges previously granted, including episcopal jurisdiction over the people and the clergy of Castellana.
Thus two dioceses were created in one, determining a situation that, a few centuries later, generated continuous tension between the bishop of C. and the clergy of Castellana on the one hand and the abbatial right on the other. However, only in 1810, by decree of the Napoleonic Murat, confirmed by the bull De ulteriori of Pius VII, was this privilege abolished. Finally, another prelate, Romolo de Valenti (1561-79), is remembered as one of the fathers of the Council of Trent; Casimiro Gennari, later a cardinal, who in C. began his periodical (1882-97) the Monitore ecclesiastico (v.).
The most interesting monument is the Romanesque Cathedral (mid-13th century), renovated in the last decades of the 14th century and then almost destroyed by the fire of 1913. The perimeter walls remain, along with the facade with the Lombard portal, whose lunette has a Madonna between two angels. Besides the ancient abbey of St. Benedict with the church of the same name and the small cloister with Muslim motifs, noteworthy are the fragments of 14th-century frescoes of the Gothic church of St. Maria dell'Isola and the singular 13th-century little church of St. Catherine outside the walls, with a polygonal plan with four radial apses, a motif typical of Syrian architecture.