Nicotera, Diocese of
### Physical and Statistical Data
Of an area of 1,366.40 sq. km., with 120,000 inhabitants (117,600 Catholics), divided among 12 communes and 2 hamlets, 140 churches, 30 parishes, 104 diocesan priests, 13 regular priests, 23 religious houses, and 19 educational institutes. Patron saint: St. Nicholas of Myra.
Nicotera (pop. 17,479), a rock-hewn town between the Nebrodi and Madonie ranges, stands near the site of ancient Herbita. Evangelized by St. Philip of Agira, it was wrested from the Saracens by the Norman count Roger, who fortified it, embellished it, and enriched it with privileges. To Roger is traced the construction of the church of S. Maria della Scala and the establishment of a Norman-Lombard-Venetian colony. The newcomers introduced a Gallo-Italic dialect, still spoken today, and fostered local devotion by erecting at the foot of the Norman rock the small church of S. Nicola le Petiti. On 7 April 1267, the papal legate Rodolfo, cardinal bishop of Albano, consecrated the church of S. Maria Maggiore. As foreign dominations succeeded one another, Nicotera developed and was enriched with sacred buildings. Adjoining a tower of the Dognato family, later converted into a bell tower, arose the first nucleus of the future cathedral (S. Nicolò del Piano), later altered: thus the splendid 14th-century Aragonese portal was defaced in the late 16th century with statues at its base and lions at the corners. To the tower’s original two floors a third was added in the 14th century, later closed by a conical spire. Inside the church, noteworthy are the carved wooden choir by Stefano and G. Battista Livolsi (17th century), one of the famous Crucifixes by Fra Umile Pintorno of Petralia (v.), the marble pulpit and baptistery by Antonello Gagini. Also by Gagini are the marble icon depicting events from the Virgin’s life (1512) in the church of S. Maria Maggiore, rebuilt after the 1757 landslide that engulfed part of the town (in the building is preserved the stall on which Charles V sat during his passage through Nicotera on his return from the Tunisian campaign), as well as several statues in the 15th-century suburban church of S. Michele (which houses a precious Gothic missal) and in that of the Carmine.
In Nicotera were born Pope St. Leo II, St. Luke Casale, abbot of the monastery of S. Filippo d’Agira, the Blessed Felix, a Capuchin layman, and Monsignor Francesco Testa, archbishop of Monreale (d. 1773). Among the communes now within its territory, repeatedly reshaped and currently delimited by the bull of 20 January 1844, are to be noted Agira, which preserves the precious mitre of St. Luke Casale (14th century) and an abbatial crozier, a masterpiece of Sicilian medieval goldwork, and Troina, which possesses another fine golden crozier from the late 13th century.
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Nicotera, Diocese of
City and diocese in the province of Catanzaro.
Together with the diocese of Tropea it has a population of 85,000, of whom 84,905 are Catholics. It comprises 74 parishes, with 122 secular and 15 regular priests, one seminary, 3 male and 14 female religious communities (*Annuario Pontificio*, 1951, p. 288).
It appears already as a *statio* under the name “Medma” in the *Itinerarium Antonini* (4th century). Christianity was introduced there in the early centuries and was doubtless influenced by the proximity of Tropea and Tauriano, two major Christian centers. An inscription from Tropea (4th–5th century) mentions a *conductrix massa Tropeas*, clearly referring to the patrimony of the Roman Church in Bruttium. At the time of St. Gregory the Great, a *massa Nicotera* also emerges, suggesting that the two *massa*, very close and bordering each other, originated at the same period, namely the 4th–5th century. However, as a bishopric Nicotera first appears in the *Registrum* of St. Gregory the Great, who found it necessary to punish Bishop Proclus for his negligence in administering his church. Later, the pope rehabilitated him and even made him arbiter in disputes between the bishop and the clergy of Reggio. Known thereafter are a Sergio, who took part in the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, and a Cesario, whom local tradition regards as a martyr, slain by the Saracens in 884 or 941. A long period of deep obscurity follows, during which the city, destroyed by the Saracens, appears to have lacked its bishop. Its restoration came about under the Normans toward the end of the 11th century. Yet the name of the first bishop, called Pellegrino, appears in a Greek diploma published by Trinchera in 1173; Ughelli, however, begins the series of bishops only in 1392. In that year, nonetheless, the diocese of Nicotera was reconstituted for a second time by Boniface IX, through the intercession of the feudal lord Enrico Sanseverino, after an interruption of ninety years following a sacrilegious attack on its bishop in 1304. At that time its territory had first been attached to Mileto (bull of Clement V, 27 May 1308, authorizing the erection of a Franciscan convent), and then to Reggio (bull of Boniface IX, 1392). The reconstituted diocese, however, always had a rather precarious existence because of its restricted territory, almost stifled by the neighboring dioceses of Mileto and Tropea, to which it was finally united *aeque principaliter* following the Concordat of 1818.
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