NARDÒ, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the province of Lecce.
It has an area of over 534 sq km, with a population of 140,000 inhabitants, all Catholics, distributed in 26 parishes, served by 94 diocesan priests and 26 regulars. It has a seminary, 5 male religious communities and 18 female ones (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 284).
HISTORY
The origin of the diocese is obscured by legends that flourished amid the turbulent events the city experienced in the years of the Middle Ages. A Byzantine possession since the fall of the Roman Empire, N. remained tenaciously Greek for a long time. Its episcopate already existed in the 8th century, when groups of Basilians arrived as exiles from Constantinople and in 761 managed to obtain from Paul I the suspension of the appointment of a new bishop and the transformation of the episcopate into a monastery with all the rights and revenues of the ceased episcopal see. From the 8th to the 11th century, the Greek priors governed the see of Nardò as a suffragan of Brindisi. In 1090 Urban II replaced them in the government of the diocese with the Benedictines, who, a short time later, obtained from his successor Paschal II the appointment of an abbot with episcopal jurisdiction. The granting of these rights generated long disputes with the neighboring bishops, in particular with Gallipoli and Brindisi, but always in vain: all the pontiffs confirmed the authority of the Benedictine abbot. The work of Latinization, begun with the Norman occupation (1055), received a decisive blow from the reform of Cardinal Rodolfo, sent as apostolic visitor in 1267 by Clement IV, following the disorders between the followers of the two rites. The most notable result was the institution of a double archpriesthood, Greek and Latin; the Latin archpriest took the title of maximus. The coexistence of the two rites lasted a long time in the church and in the territory of the diocese: during the Greek celebrations of the Epiphany or the Latin ones of Pentecost, now one group and now the other would assist at them. The harmony was disturbed by the schism of Clement VII, who in 1388 appointed as bishop of N. Matteo De Castells, deposed in 1401 by Boniface IX. The See, prey to disorders, was subjected to the archbishop of Otranto, who attempted several times, but in vain, to suppress the Greek rite, which nevertheless counted 16 colonies in the diocese. The Benedictines themselves contributed to thwarting all his efforts. In 1413 John XXIII finally restored the episcopal see and elected as first bishop Giovanni Epifani, the Benedictine abbot and defender of the Basilians, confirming the independence of the see and the privileges granted. Among his successors, Fabio Chigi (1634) is remembered, who later became Alexander VII. The see is immediately subject to the Holy See.
MONUMENTS
The most notable monument is the Cathedral dedicated to the B. V. M. Assumption, probably built in Norman times on the remains of a destroyed Basilian church. Rebuilt in 1230 after the earthquake, it was so extensively remodelled in 1725 by Bishop Sanfelice as to lose its primitive appearance entirely. Only the most recent restorations (1892-1900) have given it back its original Romanesque line. Worthy of note on the exterior are the series of small arches on the right side of the nave and the fourteenth-century apses; in the interior, the contrast between the Romanesque arches on the right and the Gothic ones on the left, the latter due to the restorations of the 13th century. Also of interest in the same church are: the composite pillars, adorned with fourteenth-century frescoes, in which tenacious Byzantine reminiscences survive; two canvases by Sanfelice; a St. Michael, perhaps by Solimena; and the black Crucifix, a cedar sculpture which a pious legend holds to have bled during the Saracen sack (901). The frescoes of the choir are by C. Maccari (1899-1900).
Of the other churches, mention is made of those of the Immacolata, of St. Teresa, and especially that of St. Dominic, sixteenth-century, whose facade, rebuilt after the earthquake of 1743, is a typical example of the sumptuous and paradoxical Baroque that flourished in the Lecce area in that century of artistic excesses. Finally, of interest is the Osanna, an octagonal aedicule, perhaps of 1603, with ogival arches supporting a small dome adorned with spires.