MANTUA, Diocese of. - Diocese and provincial capital city in Lombardy.
It has an area of 2,024 sq km, with 375,000 inhabitants, of whom 374,586 are Catholics; it has 153 parishes served by 312 diocesan priests and 16 regulars; it has 1 seminary, 2 male religious communities and 86 female ones (Annuario Pont., 1951, p. 263).
I. HISTORY
It is surrounded on three sides by the Mincio. Its name derives from the Etruscan infernal deity Mantus, which reveals its origin; while a legend made Manto, daughter of Tiresias, its foundress (Dante, Inferno, XX, 52-99). It was conquered by the Gauls and then by the Romans; the veterans of Julius Caesar received a portion of its lands. It was devastated by Alaric in 401; occupied and fortified by the exarchs of Constantinople; taken by the Lombards; it then passed to the Canossa. In 1601 it surrendered to Henry IV; in 1126 five consuls were appointed; it was favorable to the Empire, especially at the time of Bishop Garsedonio; but it took part in the alliance of the League and fought in 1167 at Alessandria and at Legnano. Then various families contended for the city, such as the Casaloldi, the Riva, the Poltroni, the Arlotti and the Bonacolsi, whose lordship ended in Aug. 1328, when in Piazza Sordello, in a violent brawl, they were driven out; there then arose the lordship of the Gonzaga family (marquises and later dukes of M.), around which the history of M. was centered for more than three centuries. Then it declined, and M., after various vicissitudes, passed to the Austrian Empire in 1707. It was besieged by the French in 1796; in 1799 the Austrians entered it; but with the Peace of Lunéville of 1801 it was retaken by the French, becoming the capital of the department of the Mincio until 1814; it was then annexed to the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia in 1815; Ciro Menotti rose up in vain, and later came the Belfiore massacre (1851), until with the Peace of Vienna, of 11 Oct. 1866, it was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.
The origins of the Church of Mantua are obscure. A letter from the deacon Crispus of Milan to Mauro, bishop of M., dates from the end of the 7th century or the beginning of the 8th (MGH, Epistolae, III, p. 698, n. 7). The first bishop of certain date is Laiofo, present at the Synod of M. of 827 (P. Paschini, Le vicende politiche e religiose del Friuli nei secoli nono e decimo, in Nuovo archivio veneto, new series, 20 [1911], p. 240 ff.).
Then Egilulfo is known from a letter of Pope John VIII of the year 881; Pietro, mentioned in a privilege of Lothair of the year 945; then Guglielmo in 962; Gombaldo in 981; Giovanni in the time of Otto III; Ilulfo, who received privileges from Henry II and from Conrad II; Marciano in the time of Henry III; under Eliseo two councils were held at M., the first in 1053 by Leo IX, the second by Alexander II in 1064. Under Gregory VII there was the schism caused by the supporters of Henry IV against the bishops Ubaldo and Ugo. The bishops were for a long time also podestà of M. at the same time. In 1235 Uguccione degli Avvocati killed Bishop Guidotto, and from then on the civil authority of the bishops of M. declined. In 1466 Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga was its bishop; Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga was its administrator in 1511; in 1521 his nephew Ercole was created bishop of M.; in 1563 Cardinal Federico Gonzaga is its administrator, in 1565 Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga; then bishops of M. are found again in 1574 Marco Fedele Gonzaga and in 1593 Francesco Gonzaga. The bishops of M. were suffragans of the patriarchate of Aquileia until 1453, when Nicholas V made M. immediately subject. In 1803 it became a suffragan of Ferrara, in 1819 of Milan. From 1884 to 1893 Msgr. G. Sarto (the future Pius X) was bishop of M.
In 1472, through the work of A. De Micheli, the Divine Comedy and the Decameron were printed there.
Among illustrious Mantovans, besides Virgil, born at Andes (today Pietole), are remembered the troubadour Sordello of Goito, Baldassare Castiglione, St. Aloysius Gonzaga (v.), the blesseds Alberto da M., Alberto Gonzaga bishop of Ivrea, Antonio Gonzaga, Bartolomeo de' Fanti, the blessed Elisabetta Picenardi; the fathers Teofilo Folengo, Antonio Possevino, etc.
In 1624 it had a university Studium entrusted to the Jesuits, established at M. since 1584. The Accademia Virgiliana arose by decree of Maria Theresa in 1767 with its own theater (Teatro scientifico).
II. ARCHAEOLOGY
In the Cathedral, since 1776, and coming from the demolished church of St. Agnes, a Christian sarcophagus from the end of the 4th century is preserved, once gilded, with the representation of Jesus Christ among the 12 Apostles. On the lid, in the center, the Nativity; on one side Christ on the mountain between two disciples; on the other a marriage scene, with a notary in the act of transcribing the act on the diptychs (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, I, pl. 30 and p. 39; pl. 74, 5 and 6, p. 91; II, pp. 283, 338-39). A Christian inscription, found in 1785 in the church of St. Benedict, commemorates a «Thomas vir honestus negotiator», who died in 540 (CIL, V, 4084).
Bibliography10 works
Enrico Josi
III. ART
The archaeological evidence for ancient M., an Etruscan and then a Roman city, is fairly abundant, while the evidence recalling the troubled civic life of the city in the early Middle Ages is less significant, before M. flourished with new splendor during the Romanesque age. From that time there survive as notable monuments the Rotonda of S. Lorenzo, built around the year 1000 on the ruins of Roman buildings, the bell tower of the church of S. Gervasio and the other one of the Cathedral, as well as various civil buildings wholly or partly of that age, such as the oldest parts of the Palazzo della Ragione, of the Arenario and of the Palazzo del Broletto, on whose corner tower — where there is an inscription recalling its construction in 1227 — there is also a crude monument to Virgil... «mantuanus poetarum clarissimus», a testimony to the great honor in which the singer of Aeneas was held in his own land even during the Middle Ages.
The church of Gradaro, with its grandiose pointed-arch portal, signed Jacobus et Gratunola Ognabennus, a work of the late 13th century, that of S. Francesco, the oldest parts of the Cathedral, the bell tower of S. Andrea of 1414, the old Palazzo dei Bonacolsi, that of the Capitano del Popolo and the castle of S. Giorgio, erected by the architect Bartolino da Novara, are instead buildings of Gothic taste. But it is during the 15th century and then in the 16th under the rule of the Gonzagas that M. is transformed and becomes, through the great artists summoned to that court, one of the most splendid cities of Lombardy. It was in fact during the principate of Marquis Ludovico (1444-78) that Leon Battista Alberti, Luca Fancelli and Andrea Mantegna arrived in M., while at the time of the marchioness Isabella d'Este (1454-1539), consort of Francesco II, there were gathered in the Gonzaga palace, formed by a complex of buildings of various periods and become one of the most splendid in Italy, most precious works of ancient and modern art, while with Federico II Giulio Romano was invited to M. (1524), on the suggestion of Baldassar Castiglione. The most notable monuments of that age are, together with the famous frescoes of Andrea Mantegna (v.) in the Ducal Palace, S. Andrea, the chapel of the Incoronata near the Cathedral, S. Sebastiano and the Palazzo del Te. S. Andrea, where the tomb of Mantegna also is, was designed by Alberti, but realized in its general layout by Fancelli and, toward the end of the 16th century, in the construction of the two arms of the transept, by A. M. Viviani, and then brought to completion with a unified character, according to the original designs, between 1732 and 1782 by Paolo Pozzo and by Filippo Iuvara, who turned its dome. S. Sebastiano too, like the chapel of the Incoronazione near the Cathedral, are works by Alberti. The Palazzo del Te, on the other hand, is an architecture by Giulio Romano who, with his activity also in the field of environmental decoration, impressed a strong character on local taste, which persisted throughout the whole 16th century, as is manifest in the Palazzo di Giustizia designed by Bertani, toward the end of the century.
Among the works of the Baroque age, particular mention is made of the church of S. Maurizio, with its tall, distinctive facade, that of S. Barnaba, which preserves in the s. Romualdo the major work of Giuseppe Bazzani, the ingenious 18th-century Mantuan painter, and the other one of S. Filippo, while in the field of civil architecture there stand out the Palazzo of the marquises Sardi, by the architect Francesco Gefflis, that of the archbishopric, the other one of the marquises Cavriani from the second half of the 18th century and finally the Casa Mantovani in Via Giovanni Chiassi. During the 18th century, besides Bazzani, the Veronese Giorgio Anselmi left notable paintings to M., while neoclassical taste soon established itself in the city with the work of Paolo Pozzo, who in 1779 transformed some rooms of the Ducal Palace, and then with that of Luigi Canonica, to whom the Teatro Sociale (1822) is due. Of the 20th century the most notable work is, within the ensemble of the Piazza Virgiliana laid out as early as 1797, the monument to the great poet designed by Luca Beltrami, but the sculptures are by E. Quadrelli and G. Menozzi.