LODI, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the province of Milan. Over an area of about 700 sq km.
it has 205,491 inhabitants, of whom 205,400 are Catholics; 115 parishes and 23 vicariates served by 320 diocesan priests and 31 regulars, one seminary, 3 male religious communities and 89 female ones (Annuario Pontificio, 1951, p. 251).
The ancient name was Lauda, Latinized as Laus Pompeia. The city is believed to have been founded by the Boii Gauls, who came down in the 3rd century B.C. and settled in the last stretch of Insubria, bounded by the Adda to the east, the Lambro to the west, and the Po to the south. In 89 B.C. L. was made a Latin colony by Pompeius Strabo, and in 49 it obtained Roman citizenship from Julius Caesar. At Laus Pompeia the Sts. Nabor, Victor and Felix were martyred.
The first bishop who embodies the entire religious and civil history of the people of Lodi is St. Bassianus, who governed the diocese from 378 to 413. He died on 19 January and was buried in the basilica he had built in honor of the twelve Apostles, and after him called by his name. The archives of ancient L. were for the most part lost in the barbarian invasions and in the two destructions carried out by Milan in 1111 and 1158, in which year ancient L. moved further south to the Adda, where it had its commercial port. There the body of St. Bassianus was transferred on 4 November 1163. The Commune of L. arose in the 11th century; it took part in the First Crusade, in which it earned the coat of arms of a red cross on a field of gold. Its wealth came from the city and territory lying amid three great river routes and the Muzza, an irrigation canal crossing the whole Lodigiano, dug in 1220.
Of the bishops of L., after St. Bassianus, special mention is due to St. Cyriacus (d. 451); St. Titian (d. 476); Andrew, who in 996 restored the basilica of St. Bassianus. In the new L. there flourished the bishops St. Alberto Quadrelli (1168-73), secondary patron and founder of the Consorzio del clero; Paolo Cadamosto, legate of Urban VI in Hungary, who in 1323 rebuilt the basilica of St. Bassianus; Card. Gerardo di Landriana (1419) and Card. Ludovico Simonetta (1537-61); Carlo Pallavicino, who in 1457 concentrated into one large hospital the inactive hospitals
(very beautiful is the cloister) and in 1495 he endowed the Cathedral with the so-called "Treasure of St. Bassianus," largely confiscated by Napoleon I: Antonio Scarampi, who in 1575 erected the Seminary and the orphanages. The diocese is a suffragan of Milan. L. ceased to be a free Commune in 1335, when it gave itself to the dukes of Milan.
Religious monuments: the Cathedral erected in 1158 and much remodeled in 1761; St. Lawrence (12th cent.); St. Francis (1252), rich in frescoes from every century; the Incoronata, begun following a miracle in 1487, a true jewel of art rightly admired; St. Philip (17th cent.) with the adjoining monastery, now the civic library; St. Mary Magdalene (1720), a grandiose temple and school of Juvara; St. Christopher (1565) by Pellegrini. Outside L. one admires the basilica of St. Bassianus, in ancient L., and the abbey church of Abbadia Cereto (ca. 1136).
Personages: Ottone Morena and his son Acerbo, who wrote the Lodi chronicle of their time (1111-64); Oldrado da Ponte, papal jurisconsult (d. 1335); Maffeo Vegio, canon of St. Peter and Christian humanist (d. 1458); Franchino Gaffurio, music theorist (d. 1522); Defendente Lodi, called the Muratori of Lodi for his historical expertise (d. 1656); Father Francesco Quaresimi, Minorite, author of writings on the Holy Land (d. 1656); Father Pietro Codazzo (d. 1549), who was the first Italian Jesuit, and with his goods made it possible for St. Ignatius to settle in Rome; Francesco De Lemene, poet (d. 1704); Father Cesario Tondini, Barnabite, who devoted himself to the return of Orthodox Russia to the Catholic Church (d. 1897); St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (v.), foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Sanctuaries: famous is the sanctuary of the Madonna dei Cappuccini in Casalpusterlengo, erected following documented apparitions in 1574.
Bibliography4 works
Luigi Salamina