Nicastro, Diocese of

NICASTRO, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the province of Catanzaro; it lies on the slopes of the Sila at the edge of the plain of St. Euphemia, ancient Clampetia, through which flows the Sabatum, now the Savuto.

It has a population of 117,500 inhabitants, all Catholics. It has 56 parishes, served by 62 diocesan priests and 11 regulars; it has a seminary, 3 male religious communities and 20 female ones (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 287).

It does not appear in classical antiquity, there being insufficient grounds for identifying it with the ancient localities recorded by regional historians. The name itself betrays a medieval and Byzantine origin. Its strategic and fortified position attracted the attention of the Normans and the Swabians, especially of Frederick II, who declared it a crown domain, exchanging with Nocera Terinese half of the city, which was subject to the Benedictines of St. Euphemia. Local historians trace the episcopal see back to the very earliest apostolic times, even giving it names of bishops, such as a Guglielmo in 44, a Landulfo of N. in 65, a Giannantonio in the 5th year of Nero, which constitute an evident anachronism. Nor did St. Gregory the Great, in his letters to the prelates of Bruttium, nor the conciliar subscriptions prior to from the Norman era ever mention the bishop of N. Nevertheless, since it is mentioned as a suffragan of Reggio in the Notitiae graecae episcopatuum, datable to the time of the emperor Leo VI the Wise, it may be held to be of Byzantine institution of the 9th century. Yet nothing is known of the Byzantine period; indeed it is held that the Saracen incursions of the 10th and 11th centuries were so destructive as to reduce the city to ruin and consequently to destroy the bishopric there as well. Hence the necessity of reconstitution on the part of the Normans, through the work of Amburga, daughter of Count Drogo, who endowed N. with pious munificence and rebuilt there the Cathedral, dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul. Nevertheless the territory long preserved a Greek preponderance, at first contained and then overwhelmed by the Benedictine abbey of St. Euphemia, founded by Robert Guiscard around 1070. Among the Greek monasteries, those of St. Nicholas of Flaiano, of St. Mary de Carra and of St. Isidore, called of St. Sidero, were of great importance, and they remained flourishing until the time of Card. Bessarion.

Ughelli records the first bishop of N. in the person of Henry in 1094, while in the Greek documents edited by Trinchera a John occurs as early as 1084. Among the most deserving prelates are remembered Henry, who in 1094 took part in the consecration of the church of St. Mary of Torre, erected by St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusians; the Franciscan Pietro di Scalea, who obtained privileges from Robert of Anjou in 1323; the Cistercian Antonio De Paula, who after three years was transferred to Catanzaro, his native city; the Roman nobleman Paolo Capizucchi, who received many commissions from the Apostolic See; the cardinals Marcello Cervini and G. Antonio Facchinetti, who were respectively the popes Marcellus II and Innocent IX; the Rossano native G. Tommaso Perrone, who governed from 1639 to 1677 and rebuilt the Cathedral destroyed by the earthquake, inaugurated in 1650; Carlo Pellegrini da Longobardi, who died in the year in which the Concordat of 1818 was promulgated, which, among other things, assigned to N. the territory of the suppressed diocese of Martorano.

Francesco Russo