FOSSOMBRONE, diocese of. — A 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 religious priests; and a minor seminary (1948).
F., the ancient Forum Semproni, which, however, stood along the Via Flaminia, a few kilometres from the present city, derives its name from the triumvir C. Sempronius Gracchus. It was an important Roman municipality which, devastated first by the Goths and then destroyed by Liutprand, was later rebuilt on the site of the present city, to the left of the Metauro. Included in the Donation of Pepin and granted in fief by the 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 da Montefeltro of Urbino. From 1500 to 1503 it underwent the brief interlude of Cesare Borgia’s rule, until in 1631 it was reunited with the Papal States.
From a threefold notice in the Hieronymian Martyrology under 2 February, 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 the dedication of the basilica erected there in their honour. F. had no martyrs of its own. In the Cathedral there is the opisthographic 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, since the list is very fragmentary. Pietro is mentioned, who in 876 or 877 was the legate of John VIII in France. Among the other bishops mentioned are Fulcuino, legate of Gregory VII at the Council of Salona, who crowned Duke Demetrius, «of the Illyrians and Dalmatians»; s. 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), an eminent mathematician and author of a work on the computation of Easter; and 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 see to the Archbishop of Urbino.
Among the distinguished ecclesiastical citizens, besides various bishops, mention should be made of the brothers Ludovico and Raffaele Tenaglia, co-founders of the Capuchin order (1528); Domenico Passionei (1682–1761), who in 1738 was made a cardinal by Clement XII; and the heads of religious orders: Domenico Muzi of the Camaldolese in 1695, Andrea Borghese in 1713, and Domenico Andrea Rossi in 1765, the latter two being Conventuals.
Besides the Minor 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 contain many Greek and Latin inscriptions and whose great hall has a magnificent lithostratum of the 3rd–4th century—F. possesses the Passionei Library, with more than 20,000 volumes, many incunabula and several manuscripts, as well as the municipal Vernarecci Museum, with objects excavated from the Roman period, Renaissance sculptures, paintings, including those of the local painter G. F. Guerrieri (born in 1588, died between 1655 and 1659), a follower of Guercino, and maiolica, drawings and prints.
The city and its surroundings abound in antiquities, such as the Furlo Pass, a tunnel excavated 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) stands 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 and rebuilt at the end of the 18th century, there is preserved a marble polyptych by Domenico Rosselli (1480), who perhaps also modelled the lunette over the portal of the church of S. Francesco (1483). In the chapel of the episcopal palace there is a fresco of the Crucifixion attributed to Timoteo della Vite (1493).
In F. the following are noteworthy: the monastery of S. Faustina; S. Maurenzio on the Metauro, a Benedictine abbey confirmed by Honorius III in 1224; and S. Antonio dei Celestini (16th century). — Vedi tav. C.