Nocera Umbra, Diocese of

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 Catholics. It comprises 82 parishes, served by 98 diocesan priests and 40 religious priests, one seminary, 8 male and 17 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 290). The present designation—N. and Gualdo—dates from 2 January 1915, when the abbey church of S. Benedetto of Gualdo Tadino was elevated to the status of cathedral honoris tantum causa.

The present ecclesiastical jurisdiction dates back to the year

1006, when the see of N., following the destruction of the cities of Plestia, Tadino, Rosella and Usenti, absorbed the entire extreme northern part of the Duchy of Spoleto. This is documented by local historical sources written between the 13th and 14th centuries, including the Lozionario of S. Facondino of Gualdo (cod. Vat. 7853), the Chronicon Gualdense (cod. Vat. Ottob. lat. 2666), and the ancient list of the bishops of N., found, among other places, together with the Legenda maior B. Raynaldi, in cod. Vat. lat. 3921. Although no other sources are available concerning the episcopates in Usenti (the environs of N.) and Rosella (modern Sassoferrato), the existence of bishops in Plestia, Tadino and N. before 1000 is established.

Plestia, on the present-day Colfiorito plain (Municipality of Srevalle di Chienti), mentioned in various inscriptions from the imperial period and in two diplomas of Otto III, dated respectively 23 and 26 June 996, was one of the certain Umbrian episcopal sees at the end of the 5th century (L. Duchesne, Les ecèches d'Italie et l'invasion lombarde, in Mélanges d'arch. et hist., 23 [1903], p. 94). There was also a bishop in Tadino, a Roman city on the plain south of modern Gualdo Tadino, in the 5th and 6th centuries, as attested by the letter of Pope s. Gregory the Great, in July 599, to Bishop Gaudiosus of Gubbio, asking him to visit Tadino, whose episcopal see had been vacant for many years, and to arrange for the election of a new bishop.

N., a statio of the Romans on the Via Flaminia, was an episcopal see from the earliest Christian centuries. While it is not possible to identify with certainty the bishop Felice Episcopo Nuceriano to whom Pope Innocent I (401–17) wrote a celebrated letter, historians, by contrast, attribute to N. in Umbria that Aprilis Nucerinus who took part in the Roman Synods of 23 October 501 and 6 November 502. This conclusion is supported by the critical study of the sources concerning the Laurentian schism and the Synods under Pope Symmachus, such as the Liber Pontificalis, the Fragmentum Laurentianum by the same author, etc.

In the 9th century there was a Luitardo Episcopo Nucerense, whose name appears among the signatories of the Roman Council of 15 November 826, alongside 62 bishops who all belonged to the Exarchate of Ravenna, the Pentapolis, the Roman Duchy, Tuscia, or the Duchy of Spoleto. And among the 66 bishops, likewise all belonging to these same territories, who signed the Roman Synod of 8 December 853, there was a Racipertus Episcopus Nuceriensis (cf. MGH, Concilia Aevi Karolini, edited by A. Werminghoff, Hannover-Berlin 1904, see index).

The see had bishops distinguished for holiness and learning; noteworthy are s. Rinaldo, bishop and patron of the diocese (1218–22), and Varino Favorino, a celebrated humanist (1514–38). Other major saints of the diocese are: b. Angelo of Gualdo Tadino, a Camaldolese hermit, and s. Ugo of Sassoferrato, a Sylvestrine monk.