IRSINA (formerly MONTEPELOSO). — In the province of Matera. The antiquity of the Church is supported by no document. Throughout the succession of dominations, it always remained faithful to the Roman See, nor does the hypothesis appear acceptable that the bishopric was founded by the Byzantines toward the end of the 10th century or at the beginning of the 11th. In 1123, from a bull of Callistus II (1119–24), the Benedictine abbot Leone of S. Maria of Montepeloso (d. in 1130) is recorded as having been elected bishop; the name of his successor is unknown: he probably perished in the massacre carried out by Ruggero II (1133).
With him and with the city, the brief episcopate also came to an end, and the long succession of French priors who governed the church until 1451 began; in that year the bishopric of Andria and Montepeloso was established. 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
«aque principaliter». Of the bishops of Andria and Montepeloso, the first two are noteworthy: fra' Antonello of the Friars Minor Conventual (1451) and fra' Antonio Giannotti, a Dominican, hitherto confused by all historians as one and the same person; and M. A. Lupoli, the last and most learned prelate of Montepeloso (1797).
MONUMENTS. — The present Cathedral, dating from the end of the eighteenth century, was built on the site of the former Gothic cathedral, of which the bell tower remains. Of the monasteries, the best known were the Benedictine monasteries of Juso and Irsi and the Swabian monastery of S. Francesco d’Assisi, of which a frescoed underground chamber remains.