FOSSOMBRONE, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the province of Pesaro, it has a population of 25,000 inhabitants, all Catholics; it has 40 parishes, 51 secular priests and 5 regulars; a minor seminary (1948).
F., the ancient Forum Semproni, which however lay along the Via Flaminia, a few kilometers from the present city, takes its name from the triumvir C. Sempronius Gracchus. It was an important Roman municipium which, after being devastated first by the Goths and then destroyed by Liutprand, was later rebuilt on the site of the present city, on the left bank of the Metauro. Included in the donation of Pepin and granted as a fief by Emperor Otto IV to Azzo VII d'Este (1210-28), it passed under the lordship of the Pofi family and then to 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 di Montefeltro of Urbino. From 1500 to 1503 it underwent the brief interlude of the rule of Cesare Borgia, until in 1631 it was reunited with the Papal States.
From a threefold notice in the Hieronymian Martyrology for February 2, relating to F., Delehaye was able to restore the original reading: «Foro Semproni Via Flaminia miliario ab Urbe CLXIII dedicatio basilicae Sanctorum Sixti, Laurenti et Ippoliti». It refers to the day of dedication of the Basilica erected there in their honor. F. had no martyrs of its own. In the Cathedral is found the opisthographic epigraph of a Vergilius, presbyter of the 5th-6th 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. Mention is made of Peter, who in 876 or 877 was legate of John VIII in France. Among the other bishops mentioned: Fulcuino, legate of Gregory VII at the Council of Salona, who crowned Duke Demetrius, «of the Illyrians and the Dalmatians»; St. Aldebrando Faberi (1119), who died at the age of 118; Girolamo Santucci (1470), 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 episcopate was immediately subject to the Holy See; only in 1563 was it added as a suffragan to the archbishop of Urbino.
Among the distinguished ecclesiastical citizens, besides various bishops, are noted the brothers Ludovico and Raffaele Tenaglia, co-founders of the order of the Capuchins (1528); Domenico Passionei (1682-1761), who in 1738 was created cardinal by Clement XII, and the generals of Orders: Domenico Muzi of the Camaldolese in 1695, Andrea Borghese in 1713 and 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 end of the 18th century, transferred in 1824 to the grandiose Palazzo Passionei, whose atrium and grand staircase gather many Greek and Latin inscriptions and whose great hall contains a magnificent lithostratum of the 3rd-4th century, F. also numbers the Passionei Library with over 20,000 volumes, many incunabula and several manuscripts, as well as the civic Museo Vernarecci, with objects from excavations of the Roman era, sculptures of the Renaissance, paintings including those of the local painter G. F. Guerrieri (b. in 1588, d. between 1655 and 1659), a follower of Guercino, majolicas, drawings and prints.
The city and its surroundings abound in antiquities, such as the Furlo pass, a gallery cut through the mountain by the emperor Vespasian (70-76); the bridge of Trajan (115) near Colmezzo, and that of Diocletian (202) over the Metauro. Among the important remains of the Rocca Malatestiana (14th century) rises the church of S. Aldebrando with a chapel whose frescoes had been attributed to O. Nelli. In the cathedral with three naves, formerly the abbey of S. Maurenzio, 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 found the fresco of the Crucifixion attributed to Timoteo della Vite (1493).
In F. are remembered: the monastery of S. Faustina; S. Maurenzio sul Metauro, a Benedictine abbey confirmed by Honorius III in 1224; S. Antonio of the Celestines (16th century). - See plate C.
Bibliography12 works
Alberto Galleti