NICOTERA, DIOCESE of. — City and diocese in the province of Catanzaro.
Together with the diocese of Tropea, it has a population of 85,000 inhabitants, of whom 84,905 are Catholics. It has 74 parishes, with 122 secular priests and 15 religious priests, one seminary, 3 male and 14 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 288).
It already appears as a statio and under the name «Medma» in the Itinerary of Antoninus (4th century). Christianity was introduced there from the earliest centuries, and it must have been influenced by the proximity of Tropea and Tauriano, two Christian centers of great importance. An inscription from Tropea dating from the 4th–5th century mentions a conductrix massae Tropeas, evidently referring to the patrimony of the Roman Church in Bruttium. At the time of s. Gregorio Magno, a massa nicoterana also comes to light; this suggests that the two massae, very close to and bordering one another, originated in the same period, namely the 4th–5th century. Nevertheless, as an episcopal see N. appears for the first time in the Register of s. Gregorio Magno, who was compelled to punish Bishop Proclus for the negligence with which he administered his church. He later rehabilitated him and also made him arbiter of the disputes between the bishop and clergy of Reggio. We also know of a Sergio, who took part in the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, and of a Cesario, whom local tradition regards as a martyr because he was killed by the Saracens in 884 or 941. A period of profound obscurity followed, during which it seems that the city, destroyed by the Saracens, no longer had its bishop. Its reconstitution was due to the Normans at the end of the 11th century. However, the name of the first bishop, called Pellegrino, appears in 1173 in a Greek diploma published by Trinchera; Ughelli, on the other hand, begins the series of bishops as late as 1392. In that year, however, the diocese of N. was reconstituted for a second time by Boniface IX, through the intervention of the feudal lord Enrico Sanseverino, after an interruption of 90 years, following a sacrilegious attack on its bishop in 1304. During that period its territory first remained attached to Mileto (bull of Clement V [27 May 1308] authorizing the establishment of a Franciscan convent), and then to Reggio (bull of Boniface IX of 1392). But the reconstituted diocese always led a rather precarious existence, because its territory was too restricted and almost stifled by the neighboring dioceses of Mileto and Tropea, to the latter of which it eventually became united aequae principaliter following the Concordat of 1818.