MOLFETTA, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the province of Bari. It has united the dioceses of Giovinazzo and Terlizzi. It has a population of 90,000 inhabitants, almost all Catholics. It has 15 parishes served by 83 diocesan priests and 22 regulars, a seminary, 4 male religious communities and 17 female ones (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 273).
HISTORY
The year of the institution of the episcopal see is disputed. Gama and others establish the first bishop Giovanni around 1136; others, following Ughelli, place the same bishop in 1179, since a name of this kind appears in the list of participants in the Lateran Council of that same year, convened by Alexander III. It seems certain in any case that the origin of the episcopate must go back to the middle of the 12th century, as a suffragan of Bari. Among the prelates of the diocese the figure of G. B. Cibo, a Genoese (1473), stands out; he was transferred here by Sixtus IV, elected cardinal the following year and, in 1484, pope Innocent VIII. Despite his brief stay, the future pontiff preserved a grateful memory of M., because, as soon as he was elected, he made the diocese independent of the metropolitan see of Bari and declared it immediately subject to the Holy See. Of the others, mention is made of: Alessio Celadoni (1508), who took part in the Fifth Lateran Council; Ferdinando Ponzetti (1517), a Florentine, later cardinal, assisted by his nephew Giacomo, under whose episcopate the terrible sack of 1529 by Lautrec took place; and Carlo Loffredi (1670), a Theatine, who pacified the clergy and the magistracy, and promoted various works of charity in favor of religious institutions. In 1818 Pius VII united to M. the suppressed dioceses of Terlizzi and Giovinazzo, but later (1833), at the request of the Bourbon Ferdinand II, he granted the two sees the restoration of episcopal dignity, while nevertheless leaving them united to M. and directly dependent on the Holy See.
MONUMENTS
In the period of its greatest prosperity, M., like the other sister cities, adorned itself with notable monuments, among which the massive bulk of the Old Church, or S. Corrado, still stands out: the ancient cathedral of the medieval town, begun in the second half of the 12th century and completed at the end of the 13th. Its structures bear the mark of the various interruptions that the building had to undergo, asymmetrical in plan, with 2 truncated towers beside a facade that was never built and 2 three-story bell towers crowned with small arches. The interior, almost entirely intact, expresses a rude vigor through the static quality of its elements. Four cruciform pillars with engaged half-columns support the polygonal drums of 3 domes: the middle one ellipsoidal, the others hemispherical. The drums are set on pendentives slenderized by spherical-cap niches or, in the third, by cornices of small arches. The intrados of the vaults is made of regular courses of ashlar blocks, covered externally by pyramids of stone slabs (chiancarelle), connected, by means of low walls, to the outer walls, so as to form a single complex that contributes uniformly to the equilibrium and stability of the building. These structural elements (domes, wall connections, capitals, ogival curves, ornaments, etc.) give the church an exceptional importance in the history of Apulian art. In it, in any case, Muslim and Byzantine, Lombard and indigenous influences are perceptible, according to the finest school that raised the characteristic cathedrals of this region. Another notable church is the New Cathedral, with a heavy Baroque facade (17th century). In the interior: a Visitation by C. Rosa and an Assumption by C. Giaquinto, of Molfetta (1699-1765); in the sacristy: a silver statue of St. Conrad (17th century), a magnificent ostensorium by the Abruzzese A. Pascale (16th century), an illuminated missal from the early 16th century and the remains of the rich carved choir formerly of the Old Cathedral (1470). Finally, mention should be made of the church of S. Bernardino (1451), with two fine paintings: the Madonna del Cucito and the Flight into Egypt, attributed to Cozza (the latter also to the Venetian school of the 16th century), and a Christ by Ribera; and the small church of the Madonna dei Martiri (erected in 1162 by the Norman William II), which still preserves intact the transept, the apse and the dome, the Byzantine icon of the Virgin, which is said to have come here from Constantinople in 1188, and a few structures of the adjoining Hospital of the Crusaders (1095).
Bibliography12 works
Pasquale Testini