Naples, Archdiocese of

NAPLES, Archdiocese of. - City and archdiocese of Campania.

It has an area of 128,641 sq km with a population of 1,250,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,220,000 are Catholics distributed in 152 urban and 85 extra-urban parishes. It has 804 diocesan priests and 710 regulars; it has 2 seminaries, 102 male religious communities and 170 female ones.

Recent finds make it possible to go further back regarding the age and the motherland to which the origin of the city should be attributed, which were respectively the 8th century and the Chalcidians of Cumae. The existence of a settlement is by now attested for the Eneolithic age. A Greek city, moreover, in language and institutions, and independent, it could not long remain extraneous to the Roman invasion, and in 327 it was brought into alliance with Rome. Having become first a Roman municipium, it received from Caracalla (211-17) the confirmation at least of the title of colony, assuming that it was Marcus Aurelius (161-80) who raised it to the status of colony. Having passed from the dominion of Odoacer to that of the Goths, stormed by Belisarius in 536, reconquered by Totila in 542, N. in 553 again became part of the Byzantine Empire. In the years 581, 592 and 599 it withstood, victoriously, three Lombard sieges, and in the second half of the 7th century it governed itself as a duchy, at first strictly dependent on Constantinople, then autonomous in the second half of the 8th century. The Neapolitan Duchy ended in 1137. In 1139 it passed to the Normans; in 1194 to the Swabians; in 1266 to the Angevins; in 1442 to the Aragonese; in 1503 it fell under the dominion of Spain, which degraded N. from capital of an independent kingdom to chief town of a viceroyalty. After two centuries, in 1734 it again became the capital of an autonomous monarchy, with King Charles III of Bourbon. Except for the two brief intervals of 1799-1806 and 1806-15, in which N. was first the Parthenopean Republic and then a French Kingdom, N. remained under the Bourbons until Oct. 1860, when it became part of the Kingdom of Italy.

I. THE CHURCH OF NAPLES

The most important sources for the history of the Neapolitan Church, from its origins to the 10th century, are the Liber Pontificalis and the catacombs. The Liber Pontificalis, already known as the Chronicon or Gesta episcoporum Neapolitanorum, or of John the Deacon, is preserved in the mutilated cod. Vat. lat. 5007. The first 100 folios are in uncial characters of the mid-9th century; fols. 101-30 in Lombard-Beneventan script of the early 10th century. From the point of view of content it can be divided into 4 parts: 1) a catalogue of the popes that extended as far as Miltiades (d. 314), but now stops at Pope Clement; 2) the catalogue of the Neapolitan bishops, from the 1st, Asprenus, to the 39th, Calvo (d. 762), mutilated in several folios; 3) the catalogue of the bishops from the 40th, Paul II, to the 45th, Athanasius I (d. 872); 4) the beginning of the biography of the 46th, Athanasius II (d. 898); the last folios are lost. Of these four parts, the first two (fols. 1-100) are by an anonymous author; of the other two, the first (Paul II-Athanasius I) belongs to John the Deacon, the second (Athanasius II) to Peter the Subdeacon, two contemporary writers, of the early 10th century. Of cod. Vat. lat. 5007 there is a brief compendium in cod. Laurenziano 604, of the first half of the 10th century, known as the Catalogo Bianchiniano, from Francesco Bianchini, its editor; it ends with the indication of the duration of the episcopate of Stephen III, successor of Athanasius II.

II. ORIGINS OF CHRISTIANITY

Hagiographic sources no earlier than the 9th century attribute the founding of the Church of N. to St. Peter who, coming from Antioch to Rome, would have stopped at N., where he would have baptized and consecrated the bishop Asprenus or Asprenates. The late and legendary character of the Vita s. Aspreni does not allow any account to be made of the supposed founding of the Church of N. by St. Peter; nor does greater light come from the Liber Pontificalis, which gives Asprenus as the first bishop, but does not say when he lived, and records the bishop Maximus, who died between 355 and 362, as the 10th bishop of the series; if this were true, Asprenus would be no earlier than the beginnings of the 3rd century or at most the end of the 2nd, because the duration of ten consecutive episcopates cannot reach 300 years. But there is absolutely nothing, on the other hand, that obliges one to hold the list of the Liber Pontificalis to be complete. That it is on the contrary lacunose is shown by a twofold order of considerations: the first, that the origins of the Neapolitan Church cannot be assigned to an age later than the end of the 1st century; the second, that from the 1st century to the middle of the 4th, Rome had 35 bishops, Antioch 27, Alexandria 20. The most ancient Christian paintings of the catacomb of S. Gennaro dei Poveri, with the scenes of Adam and Eve and of the building of a tower inspired by the Shepherd of Hermas, are no later than the beginnings of the 3rd century; but these paintings postulate a Christian community in a phase of development and are found in a part of the catacomb that no longer has the characteristics of a family hypogeum, but of a cemetery of a community that must already have had at least several decades of life. Moreover the name of the first bishop, Asprenas, of plainly Roman stamp, frequent in the 1st century, begins to become rare at the end of the 1st and the beginnings of the 2nd century. Nor is it admissible that Christianity, already firmly established at Pozzuoli in 61, should have delayed more than a century in establishing itself in nearby N., which had frequent relations not only with Pozzuoli, but with the East. That the Church of N. in the 4th century was already flourishing is suggested by the Roman Liber Pontificalis, in which one reads that Constantine, under Pope Sylvester (314-35), had a basilica built in N. to which he offered precious gifts. The greater part of the basilicas built by Constantine arose in Rome and in the suburbicarian Churches, while of all southern Italy only N. and Capua were endowed by Constantine with a basilica. Capua was then the capital of Campania; the Church of N., therefore, must have had an importance no less than Capua, already illustrious also for its martyrs.

III. THE MARTYRS

N. has no native martyrs. St. Januarius (v.), the principal patron of the city, the eponym of the greatest of its catacombs, brought there and venerated there, is from Benevento. Of the other martyrs venerated in the ancient Neapolitan Church, Sossus is from Misenum; Eutyches, Proculus and Acutius from Pozzuoli; Festus from Benevento, Fortunata from Liternum; leaving aside martyrs whose cult appears late at N., such as Restituta, probably African, localized at Lacco Ameno (Ischia), Castrensis of Volturno, Juliana of Cumae, Maximus of Cumae or of Compas, Potitus of Apulia; and the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, of Ambrosian influence. The Campanian martyrs Festus, Desiderius, Proculus, Eutyches and Acutius, who died in different places and on different dates, became between the 6th and 7th centuries co-martyrs of Januarius (v.).

Until 1936, a clear distinction was made between the martyr Januarius, bishop of Benevento, who died in the persecution of Diocletian in 305, and a second Januarius, also bishop of Benevento, who took part in the Council of Sardica in 343. In 1936 the hypothesis was advanced, not free from difficulties and not yet entirely accepted, that the Januarius of the Passio, that is, of the Diocletianic persecution, is a legendary figure; the historical one would be the man present in 343 at the Council of Sardica, of whom, however, nothing else is known. To explain, moreover, how he was proclaimed a martyr from the beginning of the 5th century, it has been supposed that, after the death of the emperor Constans in 350, Januarius was exiled by the emperor Constantius, a supporter of the theological line opposed to that of Constans, and that he therefore either died in exile from ill-treatment or met a violent death. This is plausible, but not certain. It is certain, on the other hand, that by the second or third decade of the 5th century, N. was venerating a martyr Januarius recently brought there. This translation, on 13 April, is attested by the Liber Pontificalis, by the marble Calendar, and by the Jeronymian Martyrology. St. Januarius is a martyr inventus, like many others, discovered in the East and the West at the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th. As elsewhere, a bishop, John I (414-32), discovered St. Januarius, brought him to N. and laid him in the catacomb which afterwards took its name from him.

In 1137, in a liturgical constitution of the archbishop of N., John Orsini, the rite of the solemnity of St. Januarius in the month of May is described in minute detail; but, while the procession of the head beatissimi Ianuarii is mentioned there, no reference at all is made to the blood of the martyr or to the procession, whether in the morning or in the evening. The first notice of the blood of St. Januarius and of its liquefaction is from 1389.

In close relation with N. is a very little-known martyr, but one worthy of the greatest consideration, Rufinus. He is spoken of in the Libellus precum addressed in 383-84 by the priests Faustinus and Marcellinus to the emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius and Arcadius. Between 355 and 350 Epictetus, bishop of "Centumcellae", vented his Arian fury against Rufinus, forcing him to run before his chariot, thereby causing the rupture of his pulmonary arteries and discharges of blood. The blood of Rufinus was preserved at N., and the faithful there experienced its miraculous power. The testimony is important for the cult of blood relics.

The fact that in the Libellus precum Rufinus is spoken of immediately after Maximus, bishop of N., where the blood of Rufinus was preserved, authorizes the thought that N. or its surroundings were the scene of the ferocity of Epictetus and that at N. Rufinus shed his blood.

IV. EPISCOPAL SERIES

The series of the bishops of N. is divided into 4 periods: I: from the origins to the elevation of the Church of N. to a metropolitan see; II: from its elevation to an archbishopric to the Avignon Schism; III: the period of the Schism; IV: from the end of that Schism to modern times. For the period from the origins to the middle of the 4th century, the Liber Pont. hands down 10 names of bishops: Aspren(as), Epitimitus, Maro, Probus, Paulus, Agrippinus, Eustathius, Ephebus, Fortunatus, Maximus. The name of a Fortunatus occurs in the address of the letter of the Eastern bishops assembled at Sardica in 343; and, if the reconstruction made of the corrupted text preserved by the manuscript tradition of the Fragments of St. Hilary were certain, Fortunatus would have been bishop of N. However, the original address of that letter contained only the names of the bishops; those of the sees are an addition, the work of a forger, who identifies the Sympheron named there with Sympherius, bishop of Salona at the end of the 4th century. One cannot therefore with certainty identify, as has been done hitherto, the Fortunatus of the encyclical of Sardica with the homonymous bishop of N., and consequently one cannot be altogether certain that he sat at N. in 343. More certain, on the other hand, is another chronological reference, concerning Maximus, the successor of Fortunatus, 10th in the series of the Liber Pontificalis, supplied by the aforementioned Libellus precum, in which one reads that Maximus, for his firmness in the faith, was tormented and exiled by Constantius, and in exile martyr in Domini pace requiesit. Maximus was exiled at the same time as Dionysius of Milan, Eusebius of Vercelli, Lucifer of Cagliari, Hilary of Poitiers, Rhodanius of Toulouse, therefore between 355 and 356. From exile the bishops were then recalled by Julian the Apostate in Feb. 362. Hence for the episcopate of Maximus there are two certain dates, 355 and Feb. 362, the terminus ante quem of his death. The 14th of the series, John I, died on Holy Saturday, 2 Apr. 432. The 15th, Nostrianus, energetically seconded Pope

Leo, in 444, in the struggle against the Manichaeans and Pelagians. Even earlier, in 439, ecclesiastics expelled from Africa by Genseric had arrived in Campania, led by Quodvultdeus, bishop of Carthage. The 18th, Soterus, took part in the Roman Council of 465. The 19th, Victor, was bishop when the body of St. Severinus (d. 482), apostle of Noricum, arrived at N. and was deposited in the "Castellum Lucullanum," the present height of Pizzofalcone, a cenobium famous for its abbot Eugippius, its scriptorium and its library. The 20th, Stephen, took part in the Roman Synods of 499 and 501, under Pope Symmachus. The 22nd, John the Mediocre (ca. 537-557), is very probably the author of a series of homilies on the Psalms, one of which is on Psalm 22, intimately connected with baptismal symbolism and liturgy. N., so far as is known, is the only ancient Church which, in addition to the traditio of the Pater and that of the Creed, in the preparation of catechumens for Baptism, added, on the third Sunday of Lent, the traditio psalmorum. The 24th bishop, Reduce, was alive on 13 Dec. 581, when the Lombards besieged N. He donated to the library of the Episcopium a codex of the Excerpta, the works of St. Augustine, and writings of the abbot Eugippius. The 32nd, Leontius, took part in the Lateran Synod of 649. The 34th, Agnello, appears among the subscribers of the document of Pope Agatho in 680, for the 6th Ecumenical Council. To the episcopate of Agnello (ca. 674-95) belongs the first notice of a Neapolitan diaconia (v.), instituted under the title of St. Januarius. The 37th, Sergius (718-47), before being bishop, in 717, favored the policy and interests of Pope Gregory II, giving his full support to the Duke of N. when he set out to retake Cumae from the Lombards. But, having become bishop, he had the weakness to accept the archiepiscopal dignity from the patriarch of Constantinople. The Pope recalled him and Sergius submitted. The 40th, Paul II (762-67), experienced in N. the effects of the repercussions of the iconoclast struggle. Elected and consecrated by Pope Paul I, for about 2 years he could not reside in N. and settled near the catacomb of St. Januarius. The 41st, Stephen II (767-800), was held in particular consideration by the Byzantine emperors Irene and Constantine, who in 785 expressed the desire to have him at Constantinople, for the Ecumenical Council that was being prepared against iconoclasm. The 45th, Athanasius I (v.), was summoned by Pope Nicholas I to the Roman Council of 860 against the archbishop of Ravenna, John VIII. The bishop of N. sat in the third place after the Pope. During his two successors, Athanasius II (876-98) and Stephen III (898-907), there flourished at N. Ausilius and Vulgarius, defenders of Pope Formosus (891-896), noted for their writings and the literary influence they exercised in the city.

N. was not yet an archbishopric in 966, but in 990 Sergius was already called archbishop. It is very probable that this did not happen long after the identical elevation of Capua (966) and Benevento (969). But the Church of N., until it became the capital of a vast kingdom, suffered, in territorial straits, the same fortunes as the Duchy, stifled and often humiliated by the Principalities of Capua and Benevento. Moreover, throughout southern Italy the ecclesiastical province was modeled on the civil province. The Liber censuum of the Roman Church indicates as suffragans of N.: Aversa, Nola, Pozzuoli, Cumae, Ischia. In 1121 Pozzuoli is a suffragan of Capua; Nola, in 1143 of Salerno, and only in 1179 is it clearly designated as a suffragan of N.; Aversa was at first contested between N. and Capua, then by Callixtus II, in 1120, it was declared subject to Rome; Albino and Cencius, Innocent III in 1198 and Honorius III in 1225 recognized it as a suffragan of N. In 1179 Acerra too was a suffragan of N. In 1207 the Church of Cumae was united to that of N., the territory passed for the greater part to Pozzuoli, and for the lesser part to Aversa. Of the archbishops of the 11th and 12th centuries, mention should be made of John II (1071) and Marinus, who had a great part in the establishment of the Norman monarchy. Special mention deserves the Bl. James of Viterbo (d. ca. 1308).

V. PERIOD OF THE WESTERN SCHISM

The events of civil history had more serious repercussions on the Church of Naples during the Western Schism. Subject to Joanna I of Anjou when the schism broke out in 1378, then passing under the Durazzeschi in 1381, returning at the death of Charles of Durazzo (1386) under the Angevins, with Louis II until 1399, and then under Charles's son, Ladislaus of Durazzo (d. 1414), N. underwent the vicissitudes of this alternation of dynasties. Nor did these maintain a constant attitude in religious policy. Joanna I was against Urban and, against the sentiments of the people, supported Clement VII; then she was driven out by Charles of Durazzo, whom previous agreements made devoted to Urban; there followed Charles's break with Urban, and therefore, once again, the alignment of the court of N. in favor of Clement; nor did the situation change with the arrival in N. of Louis II of Anjou, Clement's trustee. In N., accordingly, there were at first two "obediences," from 1378 to 1411, the Roman, with five archbishops, and the Avignon, with four archbishops, and then, from 1411 to 1415, the Pisan obedience with two archbishops.

Of the archbishops from the end of the schism down to our own times, mention should be made of Alessandro Carafa, who in 1497 transferred the body of St. Januarius from Montevergine to N.; Gian-Pietro Carafa (1549-55), later Pope Paul IV; Alfonso Carafa, who held the first diocesan Synod immediately after the Council of Trent, in 1565, and gave proof of breadth of vision and firmness of purpose in establishing the discipline of the Reform; the blessed Paolo Burali d'Arezzo (1577); Ascanio Filomarino, who had a great part in settling the disturbances of the so-called "revolution of Masaniello" (1647); Antonio Pignatelli (1686-91), later Pope Innocent XII; Giuseppe Spinelli (1734-54), patron of Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi; Sisto Riario Sforza (1848-1877), contemporary with the period of Pius IX's residence in N., exiled from Rome, and with the great political upheavals in the Kingdom of N. and in Italy. He was an example of unshakable firmness in his relations with the civil authorities no less than in the government of the archdiocese.

VI. CULTURE

The Church of N. had three golden periods in the history of culture: the Carolingian period; the second half of the 18th century; the second half of the 19th. This last period saw, along with the splendors of humanistic culture and mastery of Greek and Latin letters, the rise and flourishing of the study of Christian archaeology, through the work of Gennaro Aspreno Galante, who founded the Neapolitan archaeological school. The second period was distinguished, in classical archaeology, for the monumental output of Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi and, to say nothing of others, of his worthy pupil Nicola Ignarra. The first, far less known, begins when Bishop Stephen II (767-800) sent some of his clergy to Montecassino, to the school of Paul the Deacon. A century later the two men of letters Ausilio and Vulgario settled in N., refugees from Rome, and at the school of Ausilio John the Deacon, the greatest medieval historian of N., perfected his learning. Literary culture extended into the field of hagiography, and between the second half of the 9th century and the 10th there flourished Paul the Deacon, Bishop Athanasius II, Guarimpotus, Peter the Subdeacon, the priest Ursus, and the archpriest Leo.

Around the middle of the 9th century, an anonymous ecclesiastic compiled the first part of the Liber Pontificalis from its origins to 767, using for universal history Jerome, Marcellinus, Gregory of Tours, Isidore, Bede, the Roman Liber Pontificalis, and Paul the Deacon, in addition to the Epistola Uranii de obitu Paulini and the Vita Sancti Severini of Eugippius. He was therefore a scholar who had a library at his disposal.

VII. ANCIENT MONASTERIES

Monastic life begins in the 4th-5th century. Bishop Severus (563-409) erected a monastery dedicated to a martyr of Apulia, St. Potitus, and another to St. Martin. Gregory the Great also speaks of this one; another monastery was erected by the African bishop of Abitine, Gaudiosus, a refugee from the Vandal persecution. Monasteries of men and of women are mentioned by Gregory the Great. The Greek monasteries were numerous, the most important being those of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, Sts. Samona, Guria and Abibus, of St. Gregory Armenus, of St. Theodore. Of ducal foundation were the monasteries of Sts. Cyriacus and Julitta, founded by Duke Anthimus around 811, with an attached diaconia, and of St. Marcellinus founded by Theodonanda, widow of Anthimus, in the early years of the episcopate of Tiberius (821-42). More than all of them together, the Lucullan cenobium, which arose around 492 with the arrival in N. of the body of St. Severinus. The Lucullan cenobium was replaced by the monastery of St. Severinus, which arose in the heart of the city under the episcopate of Athanasius II (877-98), and into it, in 902, the body of the holy abbot of Noricum was transferred.

A disciple of St. Severinus was Eugippius (v.), abbot of the Lucullan monastery, where he founded an important library, in possession of St. Jerome's biblical translations in the originals, as the subscription of the well-known Epternacensis codex of the Gospels suggests. From N. the Lindisfarne codex (v.) reached England. The oldest known Neapolitan Capitulary, more probably of the 6th than of the 7th century, placed at the beginning of that codex, contains no Marian feast, except the dedication of a basilica to sanctae Mariae. Extremely simple is the Sanctoral: apart from St. Januarius, celebrated also with a vigil, no saint either Neapolitan or Campanian. Not even the Misenate martyr St. Sossus appears in it; Pope Symmachus honored him with an oratory and a poem in Rome between 501 and 506. Of the 6 basilicas that had already arisen in N. before the end of the 6th century, there is only the feast of the dedication of one, the Stefania: In dedicatione basilicae Stephani. If the Dedicatio sanctae Mariae is to be referred to the Pomponiana of N. (ca. 509-37) and not to a Roman basilica, as some have thought, one would have a second; yet other important ones would be missing. Most singular, among the texts that remain of the pre-baptismal liturgy, is the traditio of the psalms, on the third Sunday of Lent: quando psalmos accipiunt. The traditio of the Pater took place on the fourth, and the traditio of the Symbol on the fifth Sunday. Lent is preceded by the Sundays of Sexagesima and Quinquagesima. In 581 the Episcopium also had its library; Bishop Reduce enriched it with a codex of the florilegium of the writings of St. Augustine, compiled by Eugippius.

VIII. DIACONIA: v. the relevant entry (vol. IV, col. 1527).

IX. MONUMENTS

For the ancient period one must recall the catacombs, the basilicas, the Baptistery, the consignatorium, the marble calendar.

1. Catacombs

Three remain: St. Januarius, St. Gaudiosus, St. Eusebius (more correctly, Ephebus). The first is the most developed and the best known. It arose in a patrician area, of which not every trace has disappeared. The first bishop known to have had burial there is Agrippinus, of the second half of the 3rd century. Between 414 and 432 the martyr St. Januarius was buried there. The buildings adjacent to it received in the two years 762-64 Bishop Paul II, removed from the city by the iconoclast faction. With the translation of St. Januarius to Benevento in 831, through the work of Duke Sicone, the decline of the catacomb begins. Nevertheless, bishops continued to be buried there: Tiberius (d. 842), John (849), Athanasius, on August 1, 877, as well as Duke Stephen (d. 832). Iconoclasm did not pass without leaving traces there, but the decoration continued at least until the 10th century. The oldest frescoes, of the 2nd century, are decorative in character; from the early 3rd century are biblical scenes such as Adam and Eve, and a scene which is a unicum in ancient Christian painting, the building of a tower, taken from the Shepherd of Hermas. Then the art draws inspiration from Roman symbolism and the cult of the saints. There are found, in the 5th and 6th centuries, besides the Lord between two Apostles (this fresco, however, was in the adjoining basilica), the apostles Peter and Paul and the martyrs Lawrence and Januarius (v. ill. rel.). Other paintings of later centuries present portraits of the deceased, images of St. Januarius and companions, Christ, the Crucifixion. One can follow there the history of painting from the 2nd to the 10th century. In the second half of the 9th century Bishop Athanasius I wished a cenobium with an abbot at its head to arise there; in the middle of the 15th century the Benedictines left it. The rites of the liturgical Constitution of 1337 do not refer strictly to the catacomb, but to the basilica; of visitors to the catacombs, there is evidence at least from the early 15th century.

No less important, in some respects, even if not as ancient, is the catacomb of St. Gaudiosus. The arcosolium tomb is still preserved, with remains of mosaic decoration, and the inscription of St. Gaudiosus, bishop of Abitine in Africa Proconsularis, a refugee from the Vandal persecution. Noteworthy are other arcosolia with mosaic decoration, one of which has the cross crowned and adored by two lambs, and a fresco of the 6th century, with a gemmed cross between the first deacon Stephen and the local martyr deacon Sossus.

Very little remains of the catacomb of St. Ephebus and of another cemetery complex; only an important burial chamber with three arcosolia has come down to us, known by the name of catacomb of St. Severus. In one of the arcosolia is the figure of a high magistrate, the deceased, in the center, between four saints, the first two, on the right and left, Peter and Paul. In another arcosolium opposite, Sts. Protasius and Gervasius. The Milanese influence is evident; with the Neapolitan bishop Severus, St. Ambrose had occasion to exchange a letter, and relics of Gervasius and Protasius were in the altar of the basilica erected by St. Paulinus at Fondi. The frescoes of this cubiculum belong to the 5th century.

2. Baptistery

The baptistery of St. John "in fonte" belongs to the last years of the 4th century rather than to the early 5th; it stands near the Cathedral, specifically to the right of one facing the apse of the basilica of St. Restituta. It has a square plan and is surmounted by a dome that connects to the perimeter walls by transforming the upper part of the corners into small vaults or hooded niches, so that the square ends in an octagon. Of the mosaic decoration of the dome only a few parts remain. At the center of the dome, within a circle bordered by a band decorated with baskets and cups filled with flowers and fruit, flanked by confronted birds, and in the field of a blue starry sky, is the monogrammatic cross with the apocalyptic letters, crowned by the divine hand. In the band surrounding the starry sky, at the level of the head of the cross, is the phoenix between two palms. From this central circle radiate eight trapezoids, divided by bands adorned with swelling garlands of flowers, fruit, and birds. Of these eight trapezoidal zones, five are preserved, wholly or in small part; one of them is divided in two vertically, another in two, but horizontally. The axis of the Baptistery ran from east to west, and the original entrance was to the east or west; now one enters from the south. In the northeast zone, two scenes: the Samaritan Woman at the well and the Miracle of Cana; immediately after, on the east wall, the lower part of an Apostle in the Multiplication of the Loaves; in the east-south corner, the scene of the Dominus legem dat, Christ on the globe with Peter the cross-bearer at his left; Paul is destroyed. On the present door, the zone is divided in two, horizontally: Peter saved from the waves, above, and the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, below. In the last surviving zone, to the southwest, the head of one of the myrrh-bearers at the tomb of Jesus and the angel seated on the stone. In the four small vaults, of the symbols of the evangelists two remain: to the southeast the winged man; to the southwest the winged lion. In the four compartments, which are placed between the vaults with the evangelists, eight apostles, two per side, offering crowns. On the frontal arch of the vaults are alternating scenes of the Good Shepherd between two sheep and the Good Shepherd between two deer quenching their thirst.

3. Basilicas

The Roman Liber Pontificalis gives notice of the first. It was built and endowed by the emperor Constantine. Neither the Liber Pontificalis nor Bede indicates to whom it was dedicated, just as the attributions given by Ado and by the monk John, author of the Chronicle of St. Vincent at Volturno (12th century), who say it was dedicated to the Savior, do not deserve credence. By the middle, however, of the 9th century, this basilica was called that of St. Restituta, from the martyr, very probably African, much venerated on the island of Ischia (at Lacco Ameno), and from there, perhaps, brought to Naples. The Constantinian basilica had five naves and no transept. Its lower end, toward the south, was cut off when in 1294 work began on the present Angevin cathedral; subsequently it underwent the transformation of the entire part above the capitals, the raising of the floor, and the blocking of the two outermost naves. Of the ancient building only the plan, part of the apse, and the colonnade remain. In the left nave is the chapel of St. Mary of the Principio, with a mosaic of the Madonna, St. Januarius, and St. Restituta, from 1313.

The second cathedral of Naples was the basilica built by bishop Stephen I (499-501). It stood near the Episcopium and was dedicated to the Savior; but from the name of its founder it was habitually called the Stefania. It was completely destroyed in 1294 with the rise of the Angevin Cathedral. Bishop John II the Mediocre (c. 557) rebuilt its apse, destroyed by a fire, and had the Transfiguration represented there in mosaic, which was renewed after another fire, in the second half of the 8th century, when it received the bodies of the martyrs Eutyches and Acutius brought from Pozzuoli; and, shortly before the middle of the 9th century, the bodies of the bishops of Naples brought from the suburban cemeteries.

Of the other basilicas that arose before the year 1000, there should be remembered, in chronological order: the Severiana, erected by bishop Severus (c. 363-409), of which the arcaded apse is preserved, with pulvini superimposed on the capitals, decorated with a Greek-Latin monogram; the Soteriana, erected by bishop Soter (alive in 465), in honor of the Apostles; the Pomponiana, erected by bishop Pomponius, in the third and fourth decades of the 5th century, in honor of the Virgin and called St. Mary Major; the basilica in honor of St. Lawrence, the work of bishop John II the Mediocre; the Vincenziana, built by bishop Vincent (c. 557-80) in honor of St. John the Baptist (St. John Major); of it there remain two of the four columns that supported the drum of the dome, which have capitals decorated with the monogram of bishop Vincent; the primitive apse, of importance at least equal to that of the Severiana, still remains walled up by later walls and arches.

The basilica of St. Januarius, annexed to the diaconia of the same name, is the work of bishop Agnello (c. 674-95), and the basilica of St. Paul was erected by the duke of the city, Anthimus (801-818). The Severiana, the Soteriana, the Pomponiana, the Vincenziana, and St. Paul had throughout the Middle Ages the appellation of catholica; the Severiana, the Pomponiana, and the Vincenziana are among the oldest parishes and are still the seat of collegiate churches.

4. Marble calendar

It was rediscovered in 1742 in the basilica of St. John Major. It consists of two large marble slabs, about 6 m long and 6.88 m high, on each of which, in twelve columns, two per month, are inscribed the names of the saints and the feasts of the various days of the year (v. above, col. 247). It was executed shortly after the middle of the 9th century to serve as plutei, or altar screen. It is not a liturgical monument in the sense of a calendar for the ordo divini officii, but intended for private devotion. Still less is it a historical monument, as has been claimed, or an act of ecclesiastical politics, as if to signify attachment to Rome. The attempt of the patriarch of Constantinople, between 718 and 747, to secure the subjection of the bishop of Naples, Sergius, by naming him archbishop, remained without effect. The Greek character of the church of Naples, grafted onto an ethnic, cultural, political, and social substrate, unfolds in the literary, monastic, hagiographic, and liturgical fields.

Of Early Christian relief sculpture, almost nothing remains: the seven or eight fragments in the National Museum, parts of sarcophagi, are of either Roman or uncertain origin. Much more remains of medieval sculpture, plutei and altar frontals. Among the plutei are those of St. John Major and of the so-called chapel of St. Asprenus at the Borsa, and, of later date, those in St. Restituta, one with the Stories of Joseph, and the other with the Stories of St. Januarius, of Samson, and of four Greek martyrs. For the later churches, v. below, the section Art.

5. Epigraphy

The epigraphic harvest earlier than the 7th century is not very abundant. Apart from a few bare Greek and Latin names from the catacomb of St. Januarius, no inscription earlier than the 4th century has come down to us; of these very few have a certain date, the oldest being from 377. Mention should be made of those of bishop Maximus (d. around 361), of bishop Gaudiosus of Abitinae, of the abbot Habetdeus (d. in 468), of the matron Candida clarissima femina (d. in 585), of the abbot St. Agnello (d. between 593 and 600). A dedicatory inscription is the painted one that declares the name of the Saint represented in the lunette of an arcosolium of the catacomb of St. Januarius, between two deceased women, Sancto martiri Ianuario, from the 5th century. Also from the 5th-6th century is the Greek sepulchral inscription of Paula, daughter of the subdeacon Paul. For the 7th century, the metrical inscription of the deacon Theophylact; for the 8th, the Greek one of the duke Theodore (d. in 729-30), restorer of the diaconia of Sts. John and Paul in 721-22, and that of the duke Bonus (d. in 783).

6. Ancient clergy and Chapter

Characteristic offices in the ancient clergy are those of the Notarius, of the Primicerius scholae cantorum, of the cimiliarch, of the canonarch, of the paramonarius, of the vestiarius. There are the presbyteri cardinales or simply cardinales, the diaconi cardinales, the primicerius, the archdeacon, the archpriest of the cathedral clergy, attested, even before the cathedral Chapter is explicitly mentioned, for the years 1000, 1065, 1065 respectively. The Chapter is, in explicit form, named for the first time in 1167; there is no doubt that it already existed before; in the 12th and 13th centuries, and up to 1308, it often elected the archbishop. Of the 30 members who compose it today, 7 presbyters and 7 deacons hold a cardinal title, mentioned in the bulls of appointment. These are the titles of the ancient churches over which they presided; the oldest of which testimony has come down to us, from the year 1337, refers to the canon cimiliarch and is that of the martyrs Eutychius and Acutius.

X. ART

Not many works survive from the Romanesque period: in architecture the bell tower of the church of S. Maria Maggiore, from the 11th century, is a unicum; in painting, a few 13th-century icons, among them those of S. Domenico in S. Domenico and in S. Pietro Martire; in sculpture, however, which was fervent with an extremely high output throughout the Campanian region, splendid wooden works also flourished: Crucifixes, Depositions, Madonnas, of which magnificent examples are those preserved in the Duomo, S. Maria a Piazza, S. Aniello a Caponapoli, S. Giorgio Maggiore, and at the Gerolamini.

The Angevin period was the harbinger of an intensely active artistic life. Gothic architecture from beyond the Alps became firmly established with the architects of the Angevin court: very beautiful churches of pure French forms arose: S. Eligio, S. Lorenzo Maggiore, the Duomo, S. Chiara, and the city was also embellished with sumptuous civil buildings such as the Castel Nuovo and S. Elmo. The transalpine canons, however, gradually changed, and to the first group of religious and civil buildings, faithfully reflecting the forms of their country of origin, there were soon added more serene interpretations of local taste. Such were the Incoronata, S. Pietro a Maiella, S. Domenico, S. Maria Donnaregina.

In sculpture too the first contribution was made at the beginning of the Kingdom by French artists; but even richer in fruits was the arrival in N. of the Sienese Tino di Camaino, summoned by King Robert to carve the tomb of Mary of Hungary in Donnaregina and remaining in the city until 1337. Works of his were the tombs of Charles of Calabria, of Mary of Valois in S. Chiara, of Philip of Taranto and of John of Durazzo in S. Domenico, besides a whole vast and much-debated series of fragmentary sculptures. To graft further Tuscan elements onto the complex of the cultural events of those years, there arrived shortly afterwards the Florentines Paolo and Giovanni Bertini, authors of the great cenotaph of King Robert in S. Chiara, itself disfigured in the great disaster that struck the church during the Second World War. The painting of the 14th century in N. is an important chapter in the history of art: there came down, first of all, the Roman Pietro Cavallini, who left frescoes in Donnaregina, then Simone Martini, and finally Giotto, who worked, as the sources attest, in S. Chiara, in S. Barbara and in Castelnuovo on frescoes that are all now lost; local currents finally continued in the wake of these masters the vitality of a period particularly fortunate for the figurative arts. The forms established in the Gothic age persisted throughout the first half of the 15th century, gradually adhering to other cultural elements - Catalan, Burgundian, Flemish. Nor were Renaissance voices lacking, such as that of Donatello, who together with Michelozzo carved the tomb of Cardinal Brancaccio for S. Angelo a Nilo. It was necessary to wait for the Aragonese Kingdom to see the humanistic conception of the Renaissance consolidated. One may recall, in celebration of this period, the triumphal arch built in Castelnuovo for Alfonso of Aragon and the presence in N. of artists such as Francesco Laurana, certainly one of the sculptors of the arch, Giuliano da Maiano, author of the Porta Capuana, Rossellino and Benedetto da Majano, to whom the Cappella Piccolomini in Monteoliveto is owed, etc. In the field of painting, where the consequences of foreign culture were especially lively, Colantonio emerged, interesting for his mediating role between Flemish art and the southern formation of Antonello da Messina.

In the 16th century, for the most part, 15th-century forms were repeated by local artists. Among the architects are to be remembered the Calabrian Mormando, the Maglione, the d'Angelo together with the Lombard Domenico Fontana, author of the facade of the Palazzo Reale, the Florentine Dosio, the Aquilan Father Valeriani, who built in Gesù Nuovo, and the Spaniard Pirro Luigi Scrivà, who erected for Don Pedro de Toledo the new parts of the fortress of Castel S. Elmo. In sculpture there was a veritable school that produced throughout the century, until the advent of the Tuscans Michelangelo Naccarino and Pietro Bernini, a series of very remarkable artists. The head of the school was Giovanni da Nola; together with Gerolamo Santacroce, he drew inspiration from the Tuscan works of the church of Monteoliveto and adorned, like the d'Auria and Annibale Caccavello, Neapolitan churches and palaces with beautiful sculptures. The painting of the 16th century partook of many influences; at the beginning of the century foreign artists, such as lo Zingaro, il Rosso, Cesare da Sesto and Giorgio Vasari, came to paint in the city. An easy Mannerism then became acclimatized in the local milieu, and from the early and original Andrea da Salerno it descended to the frozen interpretations of Curia, Imparato and Santafede.

Caravaggio's brief stay in N., between 1606 and 1607, suddenly raised these mediocre fortunes.

The 17th century was the golden age of Neapolitan painting. The Caravaggesque novelty, absorbed by three great painters, Battistello, Ribera and Mattia Preti, gave rise to a school that for three centuries enjoyed uninterrupted great prestige throughout the peninsula. From the immediate Caravaggism of Battistello, who in that same year 1607 adopted attitudes proper to the master, in the Liberation of St. Peter from Prison of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, to the Riberesque following more laden with Mannerist residues, and finally to the personal Pretian vision, a new sap entered Neapolitan painting and continued through all the artists of the century, Luca Giordano, Massimo Stanzione, Francesco Fracanzano, Andrea Vaccaro, Bernardo Cavallino, Salvatore Rosa, Micco Spadaro, Aniello Falcone, down to the 18th-century Solimena, who carried the stylistic memory of Caravaggio into the new century. A notable figure of the 17th century was also Cosimo Fanzago, architect and sculptor and elegant decorator of church interiors with a flowering of polychrome marble incrustations.

In the 18th century the influence of Solimena, who had followers in painting in Sebastiano Conca, De Mura and Bonito, was alive also in the field of architecture and sculpture. Ferdinando Sanfelice, Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, the Palermitan Medrano and the Florentine Ferdinando Fuga embellished the city with sumptuous buildings commissioned by the Bourbon kings, down to Luigi Vanvitelli, the greatest exponent of 18th-century architecture, who linked his name to the grandiose Royal Palace of Caserta. In sculpture are remembered Queirolo, Celebrano and Sammartino, the latter the renowned initiator of the minor art of the presepe, a characteristic and original affirmation of Neapolitan art.

The 19th century began in architecture with the refined Neoclassicism of Nicolini, author of the beautiful facade of the Teatro di S. Carlo and of the Villa Floridiana. In the second half of the century Vincenzo Gemito gave sculpture a strong personality of its own, while painting, first with the school of Posillipo, to which Giacinto Gigante belongs, followed by Carelli and Smargiassi, then with Domenico Morelli, the Palizzi and Gioacchino Toma and Saverio Altamura, continued the great tradition of the preceding centuries. - See plates CVII-CIX.

BIBLI: see first of all G. Ceci, Saggio di una bibliogr. per la storia delle arti figurative nelle province napoletane, Bari 1911; and among the various guides: C. D'Eugenio Caracciolo, N. sacra, Naples 1624; C. de Lellis, Suppl. alla N. sacra del d'Eugenio, ibid. 1654; G. Sigismondo, Descriz. della città di N., ibid. 1788-89; R. Liberatore, Viaggio pittorico nel Regno delle Due Sicilie, ibid. 1829; L. Catalani, Le chiese di N., ibid. 1845-53; C. Celano, Notiz. del bello, dell'antico della città di N., with additions by G. B. Chiarini, ibid. 1856-60; G. A. Galante, Guida sacra della città di N., ibid. 1872. For the sources, see A. P. Orlandi, Abecedario pittorico, ibid. 1733; B. de Dominici, Vite dei pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani, ibid. 1742-43; see furthermore: C. T. Dalbono, Storia della pittura in N. e in Sicilia, ibid. 1859; H. W. Schulz, Denbinder der Kunst des Mittelalters, in Untertialien, Dresden 1860; J. Burckhardt, Der Cicerone, Leipzig 1869; V. Schultze, Die Katacombem von S. Gennaro dei Poveri, Jena 1873; G. Filangieri, Documenti per la storia, le arti e le industrie nelle province napoletane, Naples 1883-91; B. Croce, Sommario critico della storia dell'arte napoletana, in N. nobilissima, 1-3 (1892-94); E. Bertaux, L'art dans l'Italie méridionale, Paris 1904; W. Rolfs, Gesch. der Malerei Neapels, Leipzig 1910; F. Nicolini, L'arte napoletana del Rinascimento e la lettera di Pietro Sumnonte a Marcantonio Mignel, Naples 1925; A. de Rinaldis, La pittura del Seicento nell'Italia merid., Florence 1929; O. Morisani, Pittura del Trecento a N., Naples 1948; F. Bologna-R. Causa, La scultura lignea nella Campania, ibid. 1950 (with bibliography).