LUCERA, DIOCESE of. — City and diocese in the province of Foggia. It has an area of 65 sq. km., 105,000 inhabitants, all Catholics; it comprises 21 parishes with 84 diocesan priests and 19 religious priests, one seminary, 6 male and 23 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 256).
The first two names in the list of the bishops of L., St. Basso and St. Pardo, are not supported by any solid evidence. Likewise, a Giovanni and a Marco, attested by an anonymous medieval author, have no precise connection with L. (cf. Lanzoni, pp. 275–77).
In any event, the diocese of Lucera is historically attested at the end of the 5th century, when, for the first time, two letters of Pope Gelasius I (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 631,58) mention a Lucerinus episcopus (493–95), followed chronologically by Anastasio (558–60), ordained by Pelagius I and commended by the Pontiff to various persons. The Luceran catalogue then begins to become less obscure with Marco, who took part in the Synod of 743, held by Pope Zaccarias; then came an Adelchio or Adelchiso (957), followed by Alberto, present at the Lateran Council of Leo VIII (964), Azzo, who took part in the Benevento Synod of 1075, etc. Among the subsequent bishops, the following are remembered: Rainaldo, present at the Lateran Council of Alexander III (1179); Nicola, apostolic nuncio in the East (1261); Agostino, a Dominican, later a saint (d. 1323); Luca de' Gentili (1388), later a cardinal; Andrea Matteo Palmieri (1534), a cardinal; Scipione Borruto, killed by bandits (1591); and Domenico de' Liguori, a Neapolitan patrician (1717–29), founder of the bishop’s residence and the seminary.
MONUMENTS. — The most important Christian monument of L. is the Gothic cathedral, a superb testimony to French art in Apulia. With good reason, Benedict XI congratulated Charles II of Anjou, who had built it in honor of the Virgin Assumed into Heaven, on the ruins of the Saracen mosque commissioned by the Swabian Frederick II. The church, begun in October 1300 and completed in 1317, has three naves, with a terminal radiating apse, like the churches of Provence, resting on sturdy buttresses. The façade, interior, and transept all express a rugged harmony of lines and masses, which the Gothic style softens with its ogives and refinements. Inside, the following deserve mention: the high altar, a monolith that had previously served as a table in the Swabian palace at Castel Fiorentino; a statue of the Virgin (12th century); some fourteenth-century frescoes with the statue of Charles II; a St. Francis by Solimena; and, in the treasury, the ciborium by G. da Nola and the gold-and-silver cross by the Frenchman G. Verdelay (1305). Other noteworthy churches are the fourteenth-century little church of S. Francesco, with a beautiful façade and magnificent ceiling; S. Domenico; and the Convent of S. Salvatore, both contemporary but poorly preserved.