NOCERA UMBRA, DIOCESE OF
An ancient diocese in north-eastern Umbria. It is immediately subject to the Holy See. It has an area of 1,500 sq km with 60,320 inhabitants, all Catholic. It comprises 82 parishes served by 98 diocesan priests and 40 regular clergy, one seminary, 8 male and 17 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 290). The present name — Nocera and Gualdo — dates from 2 January 1915, when the abbatial church of St Benedict in Gualdo Tadino was elevated to the status of a cathedral honoris causa.
The current ecclesiastical jurisdiction dates back to the year 1006, when the see of Nocera absorbed the entire northern extremity of the Duchy of Spoleto following the destruction of the cities of Plestia, Tadino, Rosella and Usenti. This is documented by local historical sources written between the 13th and 14th centuries, including the Lectionary of St Facondinus of Gualdo (cod. Vat. 7853), the Chronicon Gualdense (cod. Vat. Ottob. lat. 2666) and the annotated chronology of the bishops of Nocera, found among other places together with the Legenda maior B. Raynaldi in cod. Vat. lat. 3921. Although there are no other sources regarding the episcopates in Usenti (near Nocera) and in Rosella (modern Sassoferrato), the existence of bishops in Plestia, Tadino and Nocera before the year 1000 is certain.
Plestia, on the present-day plain of Colfiorito (municipality of Serravalle di Chienti), mentioned in various imperial inscriptions and in two diplomas of Otto III dated 23 and 26 June 996 respectively, is among the certain Umbrian episcopal sees at the end of the 5th century (L. Duchesne, *Les évêches d'Italie et l'invasion lombarde*, in *Mélanges d'arch. et hist.*, 23 [1903], p. 94). In Tadino, a Roman city on the plain south of present-day Gualdo Tadino, there was also a bishop in the 5th and 6th centuries, as attested by a letter of Pope St Gregory the Great in July 599 to Bishop Gaudiosus of Gubbio instructing him to visit Tadino, whose episcopal see had been vacant for many years, and to arrange for the election of a new bishop.
Nocera, a Roman *statio* on the Via Flaminia, was an episcopal see from the earliest Christian centuries. While it is not possible to assign with certainty the bishop Felix Episcopus Nucerianus to whom Pope Innocent I (401–17) wrote a famous letter, historians attribute to Nocera in Umbria the Aprilius Nucerinus who attended the Roman synods of 23 October 501 and 6 November 502. This conclusion is reached through critical study of the sources on the Laurentian schism and the synods under Pope Symmachus, such as the *Liber Pontificalis* and the *Fragmentum Laurentianum*.
In the 9th century there is a Luitardus Episcopus Nucerensis who subscribed to the Roman Council of 15 November 826 among the 62 bishops who all belonged to the Exarchate of Ravenna, the Pentapolis, the Roman Duchy, Tuscany or the Duchy of Spoleto. And among the 66 bishops, also all belonging to the same territories, who subscribed to the Roman Synod of 8 December 853, there is a Racipertus Episcopus Nucerienis (cf. *MGH, Concilia Aevi Karolini*, ed. A. Werminghoff, Hanover-Berlin 1904, see index).
The see had illustrious bishops for holiness and learning; among them to be remembered are St Rinaldo, bishop and patron of the diocese (1218–22), and Varino Favorino, the celebrated humanist (1514–38). Other major saints of the diocese are the Blessed Angelo of Gualdo Tadino, a Camaldolese hermit, and St Hugh of Sassoferrato, a Sylvestrine monk.