FOSSOMBRONE, Diocese of. - A city and diocese in the province of Pesaro, it has a population of 25,000 inhabitants, all Catholic; it comprises 40 parishes, 51 secular priests and 5 regular priests; a minor seminary (1048).
F., the ancient Forum Sempronii, which however lay along the Via Flaminia, a few kilometers from the present city, takes its name from the triumvir C. Sempronius Graecus. It was an important Roman municipality, devastated first by the Goths and then destroyed by Liutprand; it was later rebuilt in the place of the present city, on the left bank of the Metauro. Included in the donation of Pepin and Emperor Otto IV granted as a fief to Azzo VII d'Este (1210-28), it passed under the lordship of the Pofi family and then of the Church (1292). Subsequently, as a fief of the Holy See, it was governed by the Malatesta of Rimini (1340-45), who sold it to Federico da Montefeltro of Urbino. From 1500 to 1503 it experienced the brief interval of Cesare Borgia's rule, until in 1631 it was reunited to the Papal States.
From a triple notice in the Hieronymian Martyrology under Feb. 2 relating to F., Delehaye has been able to restore the original reading: «Faro Semproni Via Flaminia miliario ab Urbe CLXIII dedicato basilicae Sanctorum Sixti, Laurenti et Ippoliti». This refers to the day of dedication of the basilica erected there in their honor. F. had no native martyrs. In the Cathedral "there is the epigraphic inscription of a Vergilius presbyter of the 5th century" (CIL, XI, 2, 6118). The first certain bishop of F. is Innocentius at the end of the 5th century.
Little is known of his successors, the list being very fragmentary. Among the bishops mentioned are: Peter, who in 876 or 877 was legate of John VIII in France; Fulciuno, legate of Gregory VII at the Council of Salona, who crowned Demetrius, duke of the Illyrians and of the Damietta; St. Hildebrand Faber (1119), who died at the age of 118; Girolamo Santucci (1170), who built the episcopal palace, restored in 1824 by Bishop Luigi Ugolini; Paolo di Middelburg (1494), distinguished mathematician and author of a work on the computation of Easter; Giulio Alvisini (1808), internuncio in Russia.
The ancient bishopric was immediately subject to the Holy See; only in 1563 was it added as a suffragan to the archbishop of Urbino.
Among the illustrious ecclesiastical citizens, besides various bishops, are noted the brothers Ludovico and Raffaele Tenglia, co-founders of the Order of Capuchins (1528); Domenico Passionei (1682-1761), who in 1738 was created cardinal by Clement XII, and the generals of religious orders: Domenico Muzi of the Camaldolese in 1695, Andrea Borghese in 1713; Domenico Andrea Rossi in 1765, both of the Conventuals.
Besides the small seminary, erected in 1630 by Bishop Benedetto Landi near the church of S. Anna, and, after the vicissitudes of the late 18th century, transferred in 1824 to the grand Palazzo Passionei, which contains many collected Greek and Latin inscriptions and in its main hall a magnificent lectern of the 3rd and 4th centuries. There is also the Passionei Library with over 20,000 volumes, many incunabula and parchment manuscripts, as well as the civic Museo Vernarecci, with Roman gold objects, Renaissance sculptures, paintings including those by the local painter G. F. Guerrini (b. 1538, d. between 1555 and 1650), a follower of Guercino, majolica, drawings and prints.
The city and its surroundings abound in antiquities, such as the Furlo Pass, a tunnel dug through the mountain by the Emperor Vespasian (70-76); the Trajan bridge (115) near Colmezzo, and that of Diocletian (202) on Monte Tauru. Among the important remains of the Malatesta fortress (14th century) stands the church of S. Aldebrando with a chapel whose frescoes had been attributed to O. Nelli. In the three-aisled cathedral, formerly the abbey of S. Maurengo, rebuilt at the end of the 18th century, is preserved a marble polyptych by Domenico Rosselli (1480), who perhaps also modeled the lunette over the portal of the church of S. Francesco (1483). In the chapel of the episcopal palace is the fresco of the Crucifixion attributed to Timoteo della Vite (1493).
In F. are remembered: the monastery of S. Faustina; S. Maurengo on the Metauro, a Benedictine abbey confirmed by Honorius III in 1224; S. Antonio dei Celestini (16th century). — See pl. C.