LUCERA, DIOCESE OF. — A city and diocese in the province of Foggia. It has an area of 65 km², 105,000 inhabitants all Catholic; it comprises 21 parishes with 84 diocesan priests and 19 regular clergy, one seminary, 6 male religious communities and 23 female ones (Ann. Pont., 1957, p. 256).
The first two names in the list of bishops of L., St. Basso and St. Pardo, rest on no solid evidence. Likewise, a Giovanni and a Marco, supported by a medieval anonymous source, have no precise connection with L. (cf. Lanzoni, pp. 275-77).
In any case, the Luceran diocese is historically attested at the end of the 5th century, when for the first time in two letters of Pope Gelasius I (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 631,58) mention is made of a Lucerinus episcopus (493-95), followed in chronological order by Anastasius (558-60), ordained by Pelagius I and commended by the Pope to various persons. The Luceran catalogue then becomes less obscure with Marco, who took part in the Synod of 743, held by Pope Zachary, then an Adelchio or Adelchisio (957), and then Albert, present at the Lateran Council of Leo VIII (964), Azzo, who took part in the Beneventan Synod of 1075, etc. Among the subsequent bishops are remembered: Rainaldo, present at the Lateran Council of Alexander III (1179); Nicholas, apostolic nuncio in the East (1261); Augustine, Dominican, later a saint (d. 1323); Luca de Gentili (1388), later a cardinal; Andrea Matteo Palmieri (1534), cardinal; Scipione Borruto, killed by bandits (1591); and Domenico de Lugiari, Neapolitan patrician (1717-29), founder of the episcopal palace and the seminary.
MONUMENTS. — The most important Christian monument of L. is the Gothic cathedral, a superb testimony to French art in Apulia. Rightly did Benedict XI congratulate Charles II of Anjou for having built it in honor of the Virgin Mary assumed into Heaven, on the ruins of the Saracen mosque, desired 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, the interior and the transept all express a rugged harmony of lines and masses, which Gothic architecture refined with its ogives and delicate details. Inside are to be noted: the high altar, a monolith already used as a table in the Swabian palace of Castel Fiorentino, a statue of the Virgin (12th cent.?), some 14th-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 notable churches are: the 14th-century little church of St. Francis, with a fine façade and magnificent ceiling; St. Dominic and the Convent of St. Salvatore, both coeval, but poorly preserved.
LUCERA, DIOCESE OF. — Façade of the Cathedral begun in 1300 and completed in 1317.
V. FACIO, BARTOLOMEO.