Lucca, Archdiocese of

LUCCA, Archdiocese of. - Archdiocese and capital city of the province of the same name in Tuscany. It has an area of 950 sq km with a population of 259,270 inhabitants, of whom 259,227 are Catholics. It has 253 parishes, served by 415 diocesan priests and 123 regulars, a seminary, 19 male religious communities and 42 female (Annuario Pontificio, 1951, p. 255).

A settlement of the Ligurians, later occupied by the Etruscans, L. became a Latin colony in 180 B.C., then a municipium (90-89 B.C.); under Augustus it formed part of Etruria and later of Tuscia Annonaria. It then became a Lombard duchy around 570; afterwards it formed part of the March of Tuscany and was included in the domains of the House of Canossa. The Commune, already governed by consuls from as early as 1107, soon managed to free itself definitively from imperial and feudal entanglements (1197) and reached the height of its political and economic power in the 13th century. The premature end of the lordship that Castruccio had built (1314-28) opened the way to foreign dominations (1328-69), to which Charles IV put an end by restoring the ancient liberty (15 April 1369). But the Republic, after the brief interlude of the lordship of P. Guinigi (1400-30), slowly transformed itself, from its democratic origins, into a closed aristocratic and then oligarchic constitution (1556). Made a principality in favor of Elisa Bonaparte, wife of Felice Baciocchi (1805-14), it became a duchy (1817) under Maria Luisa and Carlo Lodovico of Bourbon until in 1847 it passed under the dominion of Leopold II of Tuscany, and then became part of the Kingdom of Italy.

For L. too, a very late tradition links its Christian origins to a Paulinus sent by St. Peter with three companions to evangelize the city and establish the episcopal see there. According to an approximate calculation, the diocese, like those of Pisa, Florence, Siena and Arezzo, would appear in the first decades of the 4th century; the first certain bishop, Maximus, was present at the Council of Sardica in 343. The first 15 bishops in the authentic episcopal catalogue go down, though not in their original order, to around the end of the 6th century, and the most venerated among them, St. Frediano, earlier than the Lombard invasion, is mentioned by St. Gregory the Great (Dialog., III, 9). The bishops Leto and Eleutherius appear respectively in the Roman Councils of 649 and 680; and the documents of the very rich capitular archive attest to the activity of their successors. They also attest to the division of the very extensive diocesan territory into pievi as early as the 6th century, if not earlier, as well as the existence already in the 8th century, within the districts of these pievi, of lesser churches subordinate to them, which would become true parishes in the communal era (12th-13th century), of charitable works, and of pious foundations. Toward the end of the 11th century and during the 12th the pievi were transformed into canonries, so that some of them subsequently became true monasteries, such as S. Frediano and S. Michele in Foro in the city, S. Pietro di Pozzeveri and S. Pantaleone on Mons Heremitae in the countryside; others again toward the end of the 14th century were transformed into secular collegiate churches such as S. Donato (transferred to S. Paolino in 1513), S. Alessandro Maggiore, S. Maria di Camaiore: of these some still survive, while others were suppressed under the domination of the Baciocchi.

In antiquity the diocese evidently extended over the entire territory belonging to the city, occupying the Val di Nievole as far as beyond S. Miniato al Tedesco. It then continued into the lower Valdarno and the Val d'Era, and in the extreme southern part it held the Tuscan Maremmas, bordering on the dioceses of Volterra, Populonia and Roselle. It also possessed in Pisan territory the monastery of Sesto, Bientina, S. Michele di Verruca, S. Frediano di Vecchiano and S. Maurizio di Filettole. To the north it touched the Modenese territory on the Giogo dell'Alpe, where the sanctuary and hospital of Sts. Pellegrino and Bianco arose as early as 1110, then penetrating into the Garfagnana to embrace the lands of Piazza and Sala, an ancient fief of the bishops of Lucca, finally touching the Versilia with S. Martino di Pietrasanta and the ancient pieve of S. Felicita. But the necessity of withdrawing from the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops of L. lands that politically belonged to other States considerably reduced this extent, and it is calculated that from 1519 to 1853 the diocese came to lose about 200 parishes together with the monasteries and pious places that existed in those territories.

Leo X, in fact, raised the ancient pieve of Pescia to a prepositura (15 April 1519), and made it immediately subject to the Holy See, subjecting to it the churches of the Val di Nievole and of the Valleriana that had remained outside the political dominion of L., which, following the bull of Benedict XIII (17 March 1726), constituted the diocese of Pescia. Gregory XV on 9 Dec. 1622, at the request of the Grand Duchess of Tuscany Maria Maddalena of Austria, erected the new diocese of S. Miniato. By this measure 118 churches, convents, pious places, etc. were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the bishop of L., and among these the collegiate churches of Fucecchio, S. Croce, Castelfranco and S. Maria a Monte. At the request of the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, the two vicariates of Barga and Pietrasanta (17 parishes) with the pieve of Ripafratta were united to the primatial see of Pisa by Pius VI (18 July 1789). In the same document, however, the Pope ordered that certain parishes of the marina and of the adjoining Lucchese hills pass from the diocese of Pisa to that of L. With the erection of the diocese of Massa (3 July 1822), Leo XII assigned to the new bishopric the 48 churches included in the vicariate of Garfagnana and in the priory of Castiglione (41 parishes, 7 curacies). Pius IX (17 Dec. 1853) ordered the fifth and last dismemberment, by which all the churches situated in the territory of Gallicano (9 parishes) passed to the diocese of Massa.

The bishops of L. were at all times immediately subject to the Holy See; the pallium was granted to Benedict I (1118-28) by Callixtus II (1121) and the metropolitan cross by Lucius III (1181) to Bishop Guglielmo I (1170-94); they obtained the use in pontificals of the pileolus or red skullcap in the manner of cardinals and above all the title and jurisdiction of count of Diecimo, Piazza and Sala. This last distinction, which some historians trace back to Otto I, and which in the course of the centuries gave rise to long and bitter controversies with the Republic, forcing not a few bishops to renounce their dignity or at least to live far from their see, lasted until 1726, when the Anziani obtained from Bishop Bernardino Guinigi (1723-29) the renunciation of the civil powers then exercised over the territories of Diecimo and Moriano, in exchange for a sum of money, and it ceased entirely in 1787 through the cession made by Archbishop Martino Bianchi (1770-88) to the Este of the county of Piazza and Sala in Garfagnana. The Holy See, acceding to the request of the Lucchese government, granted the title of archbishop to the head of the diocese (1742) and a few years later granted the government the presentation of four names, then of three, for the appointment of the bishop.

Sanctuaries. — There are no sanctuaries of wide renown in the diocese, except the one that arose in 1940 in the city, at the monastery of the Passionist nuns in honor of St. Gemma Galgani (d. 1903), and the other that is located at the borders of the three villages of Capannori, Antraccoli and Lunata, where since 1665 an fresco depicting the Madonna del Carmine between St. Roch and St. Sebastian has been venerated, entrusted (1940) to the Discalced Carmelites of the Tuscan province. But since the Middle Ages the image of the Volto Santo was famous at L., that is, the wooden Crucifix which, during the iconoclast period, is said to have landed on the shore of Luni and from there been transported to L. (742), and then placed in its Cathedral. According to the legend of Leobino, the cult dates from the 8th century and there is no reason to doubt it, but in that case the present Volto Santo is not the ancient one, and all the documents are silent about a replacement in the 12th century.

Mention is also made of St. Zita (d. 1278), whose incorrupt body rests near the basilica of S. Frediano, in the chapel erected in 1321 by the Fatinelli, the fortunate lords of the poor and holy handmaid.

Domenico Corsi

ART

1. Architecture

The forms of Lucchese architecture at first reveal an adaptation of those of Pisa — not only in the city, but also in its territory (the parish churches of Segromigno, of S. Andrea in Gattaiola, of S. Maria del Giudici, in S. Giovanni near Pietrasanta of the 13th century); and Pisan architects worked at Lucca, even though a particular taste for the profusion of ornament reveals a direct influence of Lombard master builders (S. Frediano, consecrated in 1147; S. Maria Forisportam, S. Michele and S. Giovanni, all three of the end of the 12th century, and the façade of the cathedral of S. Martino, dated 1204 and signed by master Guidetto, animated in its shadowed voids and in the richness of its inlaid and carved ornaments). These tendencies toward lightening the Romanesque mass are also found in the façade of S. Michele in Foro and of S. Pietro Somaldi (13th century), and they become more pronounced with the arrival of the Gothic influence, which was decisive especially, toward the end of the 14th century, in the work of internal reconstruction of the Cathedral.

In the territory of the diocese, Pisan characteristics, still mingled with Lombard forms, are found in the façade of the cathedral of Barga, in the parish churches of S. Cassiano di Controne, of Castelvecchio at Vellano, of S. Gennaro at Capannori, of Villabasilica, of Brancoli; while Gothic art is present in the upper part of the façade of S. Agostino at Pietrasanta and in S. Michele of Castiglione Garfagnana. In the Renaissance, Florentine influences predominate, accentuated by the activity of artists who came from Florence, such as Baccio da Montelupo, to whom the architecture of S. Paolino (1522) is owed, and Bartolomeo Ammannati, who began the Palazzo della Signoria (1578) and built the Palazzi Bernardino and Orsetti. But local glories are Matteo Civitali (1435-1501), who built the Palazzo Pretorio, and then his son Nicolao (b. in 1482) and the latter's son, Vincenzo (1523-97). For the Baroque period one recalls the Villa Garzoni at Collodi and the enlargement of the Palazzo della Signoria by Juvara and by the Lucchese Francesco Pini; and Lucchese too are Fr. Buonamici (who later moved to Malta) and D. Martinelli (who went to Austria). For the 19th century one remembers L. Nottolini (1787-1851).

2. Sculpture

The Lombard influence is predominant also in the sculpture of the 12th-13th centuries: in the stories of Moses in the basin of the baptismal font of S. Frediano (end of the 12th century), the work of a Master Roberto; in the decorations of the church façades, for the most part linked to the manner of Guidetto; in the work of Biduino, who set his name on the side portal of the church of S. Salvatore (end of the 12th century); and in that of the anonymous sculptor, probably Pisan, who has left the beautiful group with the Charity of St. Martin in the façade of the Cathedral. The latter truly seems to prelude the art of Giovanni Pisano, while from that of Nicola derive the sculptures of the left portal of the same church. The forms of Pisan sculpture dominate in the 14th century, and among the local sculptors who worked together with Giovanni's master builders one recalls Coluccio di Collo, who also designed the oratory of S. Giulia. At the dawn of the following century, the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto in S. Martino, by J. della Quercia (1406) begins a period of Sienese-Florentine influence, accentuated by the already mentioned arrival of Baccio da Montelupo who, as a sculptor, carved the tomb of Silvestro de' Gigli (d. in 1521) in S. Michele. From the post-Donatellesque Florentines, on the other hand, derives the work of Matteo Civitali, to be remembered for the sepulchre of Pietro Noceto, for the little temple of the Volto Santo (1484) in the Cathedral and for the Madonna della Tosse in the church of the Trinità; his collaborator was Lorenzo Stagi da Versilia (1455-1506). In the Baroque age one recalls the Carrarans Giovanni Lazzoni (1617/18-1688), for the statue of Mary in Piazza S. Francesco and the works in the churches of S. Caterina and of S. Angelo in Campo, and Giovanni Isidoro Baratta (1670-1747) for the altar of the Sacrament in S. Ponziano. Some renown was enjoyed in the 19th century by the sculptors V. Consani and A. Passaglia.

3. Painting

Painting, which also at Lucca found its first manifestations in the decoration of church façades (see, for example, the Byzantine-style mosaics in the upper part of the façade of S. Frediano), saw at work in the 13th century the Berlinghieri and Deodato Orlandi. The former are recorded at Lucca from as early as 1228, and by Berlinghiero the father is the (signed) Cross in the Pinacoteca, while Bonaventura signed in 1235 the panel with St. Francis and stories of his life in the church of S. Francesco at Pescia; Deodato Orlandi has left his name on the Cross of 1288 (Pinacoteca) and to him can also be attributed the fresco on the tomb of Bonaiuta (1274) in the cloister of S. Francesco. In the 14th century, the local school has left works of some merit by Angelo Puccinelli, active until the first decade of the following century, influenced by Siena (Triptych of 1350 in the Museum) and then by Traini and by A. Gaddi (Dormition of the Virgin of 1386 in S. Maria Forisportam); and by Francesco Anguilla (1386-1440), himself also a follower of the Orcagna and of Traini. But in the 15th and 16th centuries the influx of Florentine works is decisive for the evolution of local painting. And among the Florentine-style painters one recalls Paolo Zacchia (Ascension, dated 1561, in the choir of S. Salvatore; Assumption, in the Pinacoteca) and his son Lorenzo Zacchia (works in the churches, dated from 1550 to 1587), as well as Agostino Marti (lunette of 1516 in S. Paolino; Betrothal of the Virgin of 1520 in S. Michele). In the 17th century the Lucchese school of painting is subject to the influences of that of Bologna: and from G. Reni derive Paolo Biancucci (Purgatory in the church of the Suffragio; panel with various saints in S. Francesco) and Pietro Ricchi (two paintings in S. Francesco). From Domenichino and the Venetians, on the other hand, draws inspiration Pietro Paolini (Martyrdom of St. Andrew, in S. Michele; St. Gregory Feeding the Pilgrims, in the Library of S. Frediano). And perhaps from Paolini the most celebrated Pietro Testa, called il Lucchesino, learned the first rudiments of art (his paintings are in S. Romano and in S. Paolino, and a fresco with Liberty is in the Palazzo pubblico). In the 18th century great renown was acquired by Pompeo Batoni, among the most gifted Italian artists of early Neoclassicism. - See plates CXIII-CXIV.

Gilberto Ronci