GALLIPOLI, DIOCESE OF
In the province of Lecce, it covers 84 sq. km. and has a population of 36,000 all Catholic, divided into 8 parishes with 31 diocesan priests and 6 regular clergy, 2 male religious communities and 9 female (1949). It is a suffragan of Otranto.
### HISTORY
The earliest sources for the church of Gallipoli do not go back beyond the 6th century. DOMENICO (551) subscribed to the condemnation of the Three Chapters at the ecumenical Council of Constantinople (553); JOHN is mentioned in a letter (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 1250) of St. Gregory (June 593) with the task of correcting ANDREW, bishop of Taranto. In 595, again from a letter of Gregory I (ibid., 1400), it is known that the see was vacant by order of the bishop of Otranto, PETER, to visit II. A few years later (599), again from two letters of the same Pontiff (ibid., 1732-33), the name of the third prelate, SABINIAN, is known; while of the fourth, JOHN, it is known that he took part in the Lateran Council under Martin I (649). Finally, mention should be made of the last Latin-rite bishop, MELCHISEDECH, who took part under Adrian I in the Council of Nicaea (787), after which the ever-increasing influence of the Eastern Empire succeeded in subjecting the Church to the patriarch of Constantinople. Up to the 11th century, the bishops were all of the Greek rite; only with the Normans did the diocese return to Roman jurisdiction. But the Basilian communities, whose stronghold was in nearby Nardò, resisted for centuries the tenacious work of Latinization of the Church of Rome, so that G., although it had bishops of one and the other rite, preserved the Greek liturgy until 1513.
Meanwhile, the diocese, which from the 4th century had been a suffragan of Santa Severina, passed with Lecce, Alessano, Castro and Ugento to the metropolitan see of Otranto. In 1284, Charles of Anjou, during the War of the Sicilian Vespers, took revenge for the loyalty of G. to Peter of Aragon and razed it to the ground. The citizens dispersed, the diocese remained under the care of the Benedictine abbot of Nardò, who soon after was able to detach himself from G. and declare himself independent. Among the bishops after the reconstruction of the city are remembered: Alessio Celadoni, who took part in the Lateran Council of Julius II (1312); Cardinal ANDREA DELLA VALLE (1320); and Pellegrino Cybo, a Genoese (1536), who ended up confined in Castel Sant'Angelo.
### MONUMENTS
The new Cathedral, dedicated like the ancient one to St. Agatha, a work of the architect G. B. Genuino, was begun in 1629 through the generosity of Bishop D. Consalvo De Ruenda (1622-70) and restored at the beginning of this century. The façade is from 1696, the choir and pulpit (work of the German Giorgio A. Ver) from the first half of the 18th century under Bishop Oronzo Filomarini, who decorated the whole church. Of notable artistic value are the large frescoes on the side walls, the ceiling of the nave, the dome and the interior of the façade, by two local artists, G. A. Coppola and G. D. Catalano, at the Palazzo Vincenzo, A. Luca Giordano. Other paintings are found in the churches of the Purità, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clare and St. Dominic.
There were also numerous monasteries, among which are remembered: that of the Dominicans, built on the ruins of the great Basilian monastery of S. Maria delle Servine, and that of the Reformed (1217-20), destroyed and rebuilt a century later.