Nicosia, Diocese of

NICOSIA, Diocese of. - In Sicily (Enna), suffragan of Messina. Erected by Pius VII (17 March 1816), its first bishop, Gaetano M. Avarna, took possession of it in September 1818. The diocese has an area of 1,366.40 sq. km. with 120,000 inhabitants (117,600 Catholics) distributed among 12 municipalities and 2 hamlets, 140 churches, 30 parishes, 104 diocesan priests, 13 regular priests, 23 religious houses, 19 educational institutes. Patron: St. Nicholas of Myra.

N. (pop. 17,479), a hill town among the Nebrodi and the Madonie, rises near ancient Herbita. Evangelized by St. Philip of Agira, it was taken from the Saracens by the Norman count Roger, who fortified it, embellished it and enriched it with privileges. To Roger goes back the construction of the church of S. Maria della Scala and the settlement of a Norman-Lombard-Venetian colony. The newcomers introduced a dialect of the Gallo-Italic type, still spoken there, and gave impetus to a local devotion, raising at the foot of the Norman rock the little church of S. Nicola le Petit. On 7 April 1267 the pontifical legate Rodolfo, cardinal bishop of Albano, consecrated the church of S. Maria Maggiore. In the succession of foreign dominations N. developed, also enriching itself with sacred buildings. Flanking a thirteenth-century tower, later used as a bell tower, arose the first nucleus of the future cathedral (S. Nicolò del Piano), subsequently tampered with: thus the splendid fourteenth-century Aragonese portal was disfigured in the late sixteenth century with statues on the jambs and lions at the bases. To the two original stories of the tower a third was added in the fourteenth century, later closed by a conical spire. In the interior of the church, noteworthy are the wooden choir carved by Stefano and G. Battista Livolsi (17th cent.), one of the well-known Crucifixes of friar Umile (v.) Pinterno da Petralia, and the marble pulpit and baptistery by Antonello Gagini. By the latter are also the marble icon with scenes of the Virgin (1512) in the church of S. Maria Maggiore, rebuilt on the ancient Norman one after the landslide of 1757 that swept away part of the town (in the choir is preserved the stall on which Charles V sat during his passage through N. on his return from the Tunis expedition), and some statues in the suburban fifteenth-century church of S. Michele (a precious Gothic missal) and in that of the Carmine. In N. were born Pope St. Leo II, St. Luke Casale abbot of the monastery of S. Filippo d'Agira, the blessed Felice, a Capuchin layman, and Msgr. Francesco Testa archbishop of Monreale (d. 1773). Of the municipalities that form part of its territory, several times reshaped, currently delimited by the bull of 20 January 1844, mention should be made of: Agira, which preserves the precious mitre of St. Luke Casale (14th cent.) and an abbatial crozier, a masterpiece of Sicilian goldsmithing of the Middle Ages, and Troina, which possesses another valuable golden crozier of the late thirteenth century.

Enzo Navarra