IRSINA (formerly MONTEPELOSO) — In the province of Matera. The antiquity of the Church is not supported by any document. Amid the succession of dominations it remained always faithful to the Apostolic See, nor does the hypothesis seem acceptable that the bishopric was founded by the Byzantines toward the close of the 10th or at the beginning of the 11th century. In 1123, from a bull of Callistus II (1119–24), the Benedictine abbot Leo of S. Maria of Montepeloso is recorded as having been elected bishop (d. 1130); the name of his successor is unknown: he probably perished in the massacre carried out by Roger II (1133).
With him and with the city the brief episcopate also came to an end, and the long series of French priors began, who governed the church until 1451, in which year the bishopric of Andria and Montepeloso was erected. In 1479, after five bishops, Montepeloso regained its independence with the privilege of being directly subject to the Holy See; but in 1818 it was definitively united to the diocese of Gravina.
"aeque principaliter". Among the bishops of Andria and Montepeloso the first two are remembered, Fra Antonello of the Conventual Friars Minor (1451) and Fra Antonio Giannotti, a Dominican, hitherto confused by all historians as one and the same person; and M. A. Lupoli, the last most learned prelate of Montepeloso (1797).
MONUMENTS. — The present Cathedral, dating from the late 18th century, stands on the site of the ancient Gothic one, of which the bell tower remains. Of the monasteries, the best known were the Benedictine ones of Juso and Iris and the Swabian one of S. Francis of Assisi, of which a frescoed underground chamber survives.