GALLIPOLI, Diocese of. - In the province of Lecce, it extends over 84 sq km and has a population of 36,000 inhabitants, all Catholics, divided into 8 parishes with 31 diocesan priests and 6 regulars, 2 male religious communities and 9 female (1949). It is a suffragan of Otranto.
HISTORY
The oldest sources of the church of Gallipoli do not go beyond the 6th century. Dominic (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 diocese was vacant and that the bishop Peter of Otranto was ordered to visit it. 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 must be made of the last bishop of the Latin rite, Melchizedek, who took part under Adrian I in the Council of Nicaea (787), after which the ever more preponderant influence of the Eastern Empire succeeded in subjecting the Church to the patriarch of Constantinople. Until 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 community, 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 the one and the other rite, preserved the Greek liturgy until 1513.
Meanwhile the diocese, from the 4th century a suffragan of S. Severina, passed with Lecce, Alessano, Castro and Ugento to the metropolis of Otranto. In 1284 Charles of Anjou, during the war of the Vespers, took revenge for G.'s loyalty to Peter of Aragon and razed it to the ground. With the citizens dispersed, the diocese remained under the care of the Benedictine abbot of Nardò, who shortly afterwards was able to detach himself from G. and declare himself independent. Of the bishops after the reconstruction of the city, the following are remembered: Alessio Celadoni, who took part in the Lateran Council of Julius II (1512); Card. Andrea Della Valle (1500); and Pelagro Cibo, a Genoese (1536), who was relegated to Castel S. Angelo.
MONUMENTS
The new Cathedral, dedicated like the old one to St. Agatha, the work of the architect G. B. Genuino, was begun in 1629 through the liberality of Bishop D. Consalvo De Ruenda (1622-50) and restored at the beginning of this century. The facade is from 1696; the choir and the pulpit (the work of the German Giorgio Aver) are from the first half of the 18th century, under Bishop Oronzo Filomarini, who decorated the whole church. Of notable artistic value are the great frescoes of the side walls, of the ceiling of the main nave, of the dome and of the inner part of the facade, due to two local artists, G. A. Coppola and G. D. Catalano, to Malinconico and to Luca Giordano. Other paintings are found in the churches of the Purità, of S. Francesco d'Assisi, of S. Chiara and B. Domenico.
The monasteries were also numerous, among which are remembered: the former Dominican one, on the ruins of the great Basilian cenobium of S. Maria delle Servine, and the former one of the Riformari (1217-20), destroyed and rebuilt a century later.
Bibliography9 works
Pasquale Testini