MONOPOLI, DIOCESE OF
City and diocese in the province of Bari, immediately subject to the Holy See.
It covers an area of 500 sq. km with a wholly Catholic population of 84,000; it has 17 parishes, 84 diocesan priests and 29 regular clergy (Annuario Pontificio, 1951, p. 274).
It is thought that the diocese of Monopoli, which arose in the 11th century as a suffragan of Brindisi and later of Bari, originated after the destruction of the famous Roman Egnatia, whose episcopate is attested from the early 5th century. The hypothesis, though logical, still requires historical proof. The first bishop of Monopoli was Adeodatus (1059), followed by Smaragdus (1067), Peter, who took part in the consecration of the church of Monte Cassino and subscribed to the bull of Alexander II (1071), and Romuald (1073), who laid the foundations of the new cathedral. In 1091 Urban II made the Church independent and declared it immediately subject to the Holy See. Several times in the diocese’s history the dispute between the Chapter and the Pope over the election of a new bishop flared up. In 1227, for example, Honorius III consecrated John, annulling the Chapter’s election of an abbot of S. Maria Amalfitana; and after the death of Julius (between 1271 and 1275) the Chapter itself split into two factions, one supporting a certain Hugh and the other a Guarino, archbishop of Brindisi. Martin IV then put an end to the long sede vacante by ordering the election to proceed, and Paschal was finally elected and confirmed by the Pope. Other disputes arose over the appointment of N. Boccasigni (1309) and F. Dionysius (1336), while Friar John of the Minors, elected in 1375, sided with the antipope Clement VII as confessor to Queen Joanna I. In 1818 Pius VII, after suppressing the episcopal see of Polignano, assigned it in perpetuity to Monopoli under Bishop L. Villani of Ugento.
MONUMENTS
Thanks to its natural harbour, Monopoli maintained close commercial ties with the leading maritime cities from antiquity and especially in the Middle Ages. Evidence of these links survives in the names of its finest monuments. The church of S. Maria Amalfitana, perhaps built by a colony of Amalfitans on a Byzantine cave-church at the end of the 11th or start of the 12th century, still preserves its fine three-aisled interior divided by composite piers with handsome Romanesque capitals and apses, the central one especially beautiful for its half-columns with grotesque corbels and a window enriched with Lombard elements. The façade is modestly Baroque; the basilican laura on which the church stands has also been rebuilt.
The cathedral, dedicated to St Mercurius, built in 1107, now displays the Baroque forms of its final remodelling (1742–70), but retains some fine paintings: a St Michael, perhaps by Palma the Younger, to whom are also attributed the Madonna in Glory and the SS Roch and Sebastian (others attribute these to Palma the Elder); a Circumcision by Marco da Siena, a St Jerome disputed between Gentile Bellini and L. Bastiani, and other works by F. De Mura, G. Bonito and P. Finoglio. Fragments of the ancient church survive in the sacristy, including two noteworthy archivolts and an arch: the first adorned with twelve busts of angels, the second with floral motifs, the third with rough sculpture strongly influenced by northern styles, depicting various scenes in low relief (Deposition; the Women at the Sepulchre; Harrowing of Hell, etc.). The archive contains some 307 parchments dating from 1180.