LABICUM. - The city of L., also called "Labicum Quintanense", was situated at the fifteenth milestone on the Via Labicana, and as early as the 3rd century it had a Christian community, attested by a cemetery with inscriptions and paintings, discovered at the tenth milestone on the Via Latina (Bull. d'arch. crist., 2nd series, 1 [1870], p. 23 ff.; 3 [1872], p. 105).

It soon became the center of a small suburbicarian diocese which, beneath the hill of Montecompatri, extended along the said road, where the statio ad Quintanas was, including Tusculum and the ager Tusculanus (Liber Pont., II, pp. 136 note 26). Indeed the bishop Zoticus Labicanensis was present at the Roman Synod of 2 Oct. 313. The episcopal series ends with Bovus (or Bonus) in 1111, under Paschal II (ibid., II, pp. 299, 307 note 20), after whom the bishops call themselves Tusculan, the Labican diocese having been absorbed by that of Tusculum (v. FRASCATI).

Bibliography5 works

BIBL.: L. Duchesne, Le sedi episcopali nell'antico ducato di Roma, in Archivio della R. Società romana di storia patria, 15 (1892), pp. 497-99; T. Ashby, The Via Labicana, in Papers of the British School at Rome, 1 (1902), p. 256 ff.; P. Kehr, Ital. Pont., II, Berlino 1907, pp. 37-38; G. Tomasetti, La campagna romana, III, Roma 1913, pp. 413-14; Lanzoni, I, pp. 126-28.

Alberto Galietti

@incollection{ec7_labicum, author = {Galieti, Alberto}, title = {Labicum}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VII}, pages = {777}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/labicum} }

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