Faenza, Diocese of

FAENZA, Diocese of. - In the province of Ravenna; it is a suffragan of Bologna; the Cathedral is dedicated to St. Peter the Apostle. The diocese has an area of 700 sq km and counts 125,000 inhabitants, of whom 23,250 are in the city, 47,660 in the municipality and about 80,000 in 10 other municipalities. There belong to it 14 parishes in the city and 103 in the countryside, divided into 25 vicariates. It counts 247 priests, 536 religious men and women, divided among 7 monasteries, 9 convents, or assigned to the care of 14 colleges or educational institutes.

A center of communication between Tuscany and the Ravenna area, it owes its development chiefly to this from antiquity onward (it is mentioned for the first time in historical sources as an ally of Rome in the Second Punic War, 216 B.C.). Of a pre-Constantinian Christianity at F. we have no direct evidence (the Faentine martyrs Emiliana and Savinus are legendary): however, at the Roman Synod of 313 a bishop of theirs, Constantinus a Faventia, is already present (Optatus of Milevis, CSEL, 26, 26), and this suggests that Christianity there had already been numerous and organized for some time. No other diocese of Emilia has yielded certain evidence so ancient. To a bishop, also named Constantius, St. Ambrose addresses himself about 60 years later (PL 16, 879) as to a bishop very close to Imola, to entrust him with the temporary care of that church. It is likely that this was a bishop of F., the city closest to Imola; the objections raised in this regard by Lanzoni (p. 770) are based on a singular geographical misunderstanding into which the illustrious scholar fell. The ancient Cathedral corresponded to the present S. Maria vecchia (important wall remains of the 6th century can still be seen there) and was a cemetery basilica with three naves, situated outside and to the west of the city. With the Lombard wars (A.D. 740) this church passed to the monks, taking the name of S. Maria foris portam, and the Plebs S. Petri became the cathedral, in the center of the city, also a basilica with three naves, with its facade facing east: after various fires and destructions, it was rebuilt by Bishop Federico Manfredi (1474).

The 6th-11th centuries mark the development of the pievi and monasteries in this diocese. A bull of Pope Celestine II (Kehr, Italia Pontificia, V, Berlin 1911, p. 148) says that in 1243 the diocese of F. comprised as many as 22 pievi and 6 monasteries, and extended from the crest of the Apennines to the gates of Ravenna, with wide extension also below Imola and above Forlì. Of these pievi, particularly ancient are those of S. Pietro in Silvia and of S. Giovanni in Ottavo; among the famous monasteries, that of S. Maria foris portam (where in 1072 St. Peter Damian died, buried today in the Cathedral) and that of S. Benedetto in Alpe (for which in 1021 St. Romuald obtained a diploma from Henry III). From the 11th century the chaplaincies or parishes arose around the pievi; in the city alone in 1200 there were already 27, and the Rotta Decimarum of 1301 (Studi e Testi, 60 [Vatican City 1949], pp. 199-221) lists 237 for the whole diocese with 12 monasteries. Even during the period of the struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines (until the establishment of the lordship of the Manfredi, 1313)

the reflowering of religious life at F. is notable, due chiefly to the development of the Mendicant Orders. In 1223 there is the first convent of Dominicans and in 1224 that of the Poor Clares (St. Francis was still alive). From this time are the Faentines Bl. Novellone (d. 1280), St. Humility (d. 1310; in 1266 she had founded her monastery of Vallombrosan nuns) and Bl. Filippo Giacomo Bertoni (d. 1483). However, in the 16th century the city is infested by the doctrines of the innovators, and throughout Italy it acquires fame as a Lutheran city: sadly famous are the trials of 1547 (in which the young baker Fanino Fanini is condemned, executed later in 1552) and of 1567-69. Nevertheless, there is no lack of figures distinguished for culture, piety and charity, and to them F. owes its salvation. Among the most famous, Fra' Saba da Castiglione, knight of the Holy Sepulchre and commendator of the Magione (d. 1554), Bishop Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, soul of the pre-Tridentine reform (1528-44) and his successor G. B. Sighicelli, who took part in the last sessions of the Council of Trent, issued the edict founding the seminary (1569) and directed the entire Tridentine Counter-Reformation in the diocese. Other great names of the Faentine episcopate: Cardinal Carlo Rossetti (1643-81), Cardinal Antonio Pignatelli (1682-86, later Pope Innocent XII), Marcello Durazzo (1679-1710) and Antonio Cantoni (1742-67). Great development was given in this period to institutes of culture, of assistance to the poor, to orphanages, schools, hospitals, religious confraternities, and above all to the seminary, inaugurated in 1576, which in the last two centuries became one of the principal centers of Romagnol neoclassicism (in the years 1766-1771 Vincenzo Monti was a student there), and whose new monumental seat, after a design by the architect Dante Fornoni, is now rising. Other distinguished figures of the Catholic life of F. in the last period are Bishop Gioacchino Cancagli (1884-1912), the historian Francesco Lanzoni (d. 1929), the jurist Cardinal Michele Lega (d. 1936), the moralist Emilio Berardi (d. 1916), the spiritual director of the seminary Paolo Taroni (d. 1912) and the curate Carlo Zucchini, president of the Opera dei Congressi (d. 1928).

The sacred monuments of F. suffered very grave damage from the war of 1940-45: 50% of the churches were totally destroyed and 20% seriously damaged, while almost all the bell towers have disappeared. Fortunately there remain standing, with lighter damage, some of the most precious monuments: the Cathedral, by Giuliano da Maiano (1474: in the interior it was completed by Lapo Portigiani the younger in the first decades of the sixteenth century, and it was consecrated in 1381), in which one admires the tomb of St. Savinus, by Benedetto da Maiano (1442-97), the altar of St. Terentius, by Agostino di Duccio (1418-98), paintings by Ferraù Fenzoni (d. 1613), etc.; the church of the Commenda, of the 11th century, with an apse fresco by Girolamo Tarvisano (d. 1544) and another fresco on the tomb of Fra' Saba da Castiglione by Minzocchi (d. 1564); S. Ippolito, a work by Gioacchino Tomba (1771); S. Maria dell'Angelo (1621), after a design by the Roman Girolamo Rainaldi; S. Domenico (1759) with the precious wooden choir by Paganelli; S. Bartolomeo (9th century); sixteenth-century ceramics and canvases later transferred to the municipal Picture Gallery and the Museum of Ceramics, etc.

107-221; F. Lanzoni, Cronotassi dei vescovi di F. dai primordi a tutto il sec. XIII, Faenza 1913; id., La Controriforma nella città e diocesi di F., ibid. 1925; id., La fondazione e l'apertura del Seminario di F., ibid. (1926); Cottineau, I, 1908-1100.

Giovanni Lucchesi