FORMIA. – Town in the Gulf of Gaeta, on the Via Appia. Having remained neutral during the Latin War, it first obtained citizenship without the right to vote and then full citizenship in the 2nd century B.C. It was a resort for wealthy Romans from the Republican period onward; Cicero was killed in his villa there in 43 B.C. There is no precise information concerning the city’s Christian evangelization.
But its various Passions have no historical value (BHL, 2578–85). Some also considered him a bishop of F. A life of him was written by the Cassinese monk Giovanni Caetani, later Pope Gelasius II. The following bishops of F. are known: Martinianus in 287; Adcedatus at the end of the 5th century; Andrea from 501 to 529, as is learned from his epitaph (CIL, X, 8218). In 590 S. Gregorio Magno entrusted the administration of the church of Minturno to Bacauda, bishop of F. (Gregorii Reg., I, 8, p. 10). In 597 the same Pope commissioned Agnello, bishop of Terracina, to visit the Church of F. after the death of Bacauda; in 598 Alvino was elected bishop. In 856 F. was destroyed by the Saracens and the Gaeta (v.). After the Saracens were expelled in 915, F. took the name of Mola. Carlo d’Angiò erected a castle there in the 14th century, called Torre di Mola, which subsequently passed as a fief to the Caetani family; a village with another castle was established higher up, called Castelnuovo and later Castellone, sacked by Renato di Vandemont in 1527. S. Gregorio Magno recalls the Church «in qua corpus beati Herasmi martyris requiescit». Destroyed by the Saracens, it was rebuilt by the patrician Giovanni in the 9th century and converted into a Benedictine monastery; at first under the Caetani princes and then, in 1058, subject to the monastery of Montecassino. Paschal II took it under his protection in 1122. Later it was granted in commendam to the Caetani family, and in 1290 to the Congregation of Monte Oliveto. It was destroyed by the Turks in the 16th century.