MESSINA, ARCHDIOCESE OF. – A city in north-eastern Sicily, on the strait of the same name which links the Mediterranean to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the seat of an archbishopric with three suffragan dioceses (Nicosia, Lipari and Patti). Despite the dismemberment of the archdiocese (19th century), the jurisdiction of its ordinary still extends over a vast territory.
Out of a population of 400,000, it has 399,000 Catholics, distributed in 250 parishes, served by 294 diocesan priests and 160 regular clergy, one seminary, 25 male and 98 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 269).
I. History
The origins of M. date back to about 755 B.C., when a group of pirates from the Chalcidian colony of Cumae laid the foundations of ancient Zancle, later populated by other groups of colonists coming directly from Chalcis and Euboea.The change of name from Zancle to Messene (c. 494 B.C.), confirmed by numismatic evidence, was brought about by the tyrant of Rhegium, Anaxilas. After freeing itself from its subjection after thirty years, M. governed itself (461-405) though it suffered the repercussions of a broader political upheaval rather than the factional conflicts that were developing. Thus, when Athens took Mylae (Milazzo; 426 B.C.), the city submitted to the Athenians, only to later (406) side with Syracuse when it waged war on Carthage; it then suffered the terrible Punic vengeance which razed it to the ground in 396 B.C. After the death of Dionysius of Syracuse (354 B.C.), the anti-Syracusan reaction led by Hippon, who aligned himself with Mamercus of Catania, was harshly punished and the city had to submit to the hegemony first of Timoleon and then of Agathocles. Only after the death of the latter (289 B.C.) did the state of anarchy into which the city had fallen provide Rome with the pretext to intervene. It was captured and held permanently in 263 B.C., but obtained the status of a *civitas foederata*.
Thanks to its strategic position, it became the most important naval base of the Romans during the First Punic War; after the final victory (241 B.C.) it received from Rome a privileged position which enabled it to achieve unusual material prosperity. In the administrative reorganization that followed Augustus’ triumph, while the rest of Sicily was divided into *coloniae* and *municipia*, M. had the unique privilege of being counted among the *oppida civium Romanorum* (Pliny, *Hist. nat.*, III, 88).
After the fall of the Empire it shared the vicissitudes common to the whole of Sicily. Under the Goths it had a military garrison and a *comes civitatis* (Cassiodorus, *Variae*, VIII, 26, 27); it was captured by Belisarius in 547 and suffered the siege of Totila two years later (Procopius, *De bello Gotico*, III, 30, 39).
The Byzantines, however, succeeded in maintaining their dominion over the city and the rest of the island until the Muslim conquest (10th century).
The Christian origins of M., and especially of its hierarchy, are obscure. The passage of St Felix, bishop of Thibica (BHL, 2894-95), through M. is a late interpolation in the saint’s *Passio*. Nor is the *Passio* of SS Peter and Paul by Pseudo-Marcellus (BHL, 6657-62) reliable, according to which St Paul, on his journey from Syracuse to Rome, ordained the first bishop of M., named Bacchilus. As Pirri rightly observed (v. BIBLICA., p. 316), no bishop of M. is known before Eucarpus, who attended the Roman Synod held by Pope Symmachus in 502 (Mansi, VIII, p. 252), while another Eucarpus (558-60) was entrusted by Pope Pelagius with the visitation of Catania, which lacked its own ordinary (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 977, 982). Later, the Register of Gregory the Great reveals the existence of Felix (591-93) and Donus (595-603; Jaffé-Wattenbach, 1108, 1133, 1150, 1238, 1388, 1419, etc.). It is not, however, unfounded to suppose that M. already had a formed Christian community by the mid-3rd century.
Legend assigned to the Gothic period the martyrdom of Placidus, a disciple of St Benedict, a story fabricated by Peter the Deacon (cf. E. Caspar, *Petrus Diaconus und die Monte Cassiner Fälschungen*, Berlin 1909, pp. 47-72), who conflated him with the homonymous martyr mentioned in the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum* (Martyr. Hieron., p. 451), which is at least a century older.
Under the Isaurians, like the rest of Sicily, M. was subjected to the Byzantine patriarchate. Its bishops no longer appeared in Rome, as had happened in 649 under Pope Martin I (Mansi, X, pp. 865, 1164) and at the end of the 7th century under Pope Agatho (loc. cit., XI, p. 774), but in Constantinople. Thus at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, Gaudiosus is found among the compact group of Sicilian and Calabrian bishops (loc. cit., XIII, p. 139), while Gregorius is present at the Constantinopolitan Synod of 868 (loc. cit., XVI, p. 195). The third of the *Notitiae episcopatuum* (c. mid-8th century) lists M. among the 13 suffragans of Syracuse (ed. G. Parthey, Berlin 1866, p. 178); the same is true of the *Notitia* of the Armenian cleric Basil and the legislation of Leo VI the Wise (886-911) in its successive recensions. Meanwhile, the slow Muslim invasion, culminating in the fall of Syracuse (878), left the Byzantines only the extreme north-eastern tip of Sicily, stoutly defended by the Greeks until 965, when the fortress of Rametta fell. During this period M. was a refuge for Byzantine Christians, and despite the injuries suffered in the war, numerous Basilian monasteries continued to exist.
After falling into Norman hands (1060), it became the starting point for the conquest of Sicily. Almost depopulated on the arrival of the new conquerors (Amatus of Montecassino, *History of the Normans*, V, 10), a century later it was a thriving international city with a large population of about 70,000 inhabitants (cf. G. Pardi, *Storia demografica di M.*, in *Nuova rivista storica*, 5 [1921], pp. 31-37), predominantly Greek (Ugo Falcando, *Liber de regno Siciliae*, ed. G. B. Siracusa, Rome 1879, pp. 144, 148). The policy of Latinization pursued by the Normans soon led to the appointment of Latin bishops in M., such as Robert (1096), the first bishop, then William (c. 1123) and Hugh (1130). The diocese, established in 1096, transformed the bishops into sees of Troia, was immediately declared subject to the Holy See, and later made a metropolitan see by Alexander III (1166).
After the end of the Norman dynasty, relations between the city and the Swabians were not cordial. M. rebelled (1232), but the uprising was bloodily suppressed. Favourable to the Angevins, it did not move to defend the cause of Conradin.
The Church of M., which was the last to rise in the war of the Swabians (1282), was won over by Peter of Aragon to his cause and that of his successors, to whom it remained faithful, except for a brief period (1356-66).
The events of the last two centuries left their mark on the religious life of the diocese. Thus, during the struggle between Frederick II and Gregory IX, there were complaints about the interference of secular power in ecclesiastical administration and the vacancies of seats in the governance of the local church. A similar situation arose during the long conflict between the Angevins and the Aragonese. Archbishop Francesco Fontana, elected (1288) successor to Rinaldo da Lentini (1272–85), was unable to reach his see due to the war, which remained vacant until 1304, when Benedict XI appointed Guidotto de Tabiatis (1304–33) as his chaplain. The war physically devastated many monasteries, which fell into ruin and were abandoned by their occupants, as Nicholas IV noted in 1290. There was also a rapid decline in the Greek rite and clergy, still numerous at the end of the 13th century. After the Sicilian-Angevine war ended, further difficulties arose from the Great Western Schism; King Martin I sought to remain neutral amid the contenders, but the bishops of M. (Maggiolo Lampugnano: 1382–92; Filippo Crispo: 1392–1426) remained loyal to Urban VI and his immediate successors.
The history of M. in modern times is always linked to the thread of Spanish domination, first under the last Aragonese, then under the Habsburgs, who, in view of its strategic importance, granted it great privileges, later abolished when the city rebelled (1670) to side with France. This was followed by the reigns of Victor Amadeus II of Savoy (1713–18), Philip V of Bourbon (1718–19), Charles VI of Austria (1720–34), and the Bourbons of Naples (1734–1860); in 1860, M. became part of the Kingdom of Italy.
The first proposal to the Sicilian Parliament for the division of the archdiocese dates to 1799. Initial opposition was cut short by Pius VII in 1817, when, by erecting the new diocese of Nicosia, he annexed a third of Messina’s territory to II. A second division took place in 1824, when a further 24 inhabited centers were transferred to the diocese of Patti.