NORCIA. - City and diocese in the province of Perugia (Umbria). It is made up of 8 municipalities, 3 of which are in the province of Macerata (Castel S. Angelo, Ussita and Visso).
It extends over more than 110 sq km, with a population of 28,000 inhabitants, all Catholics, distributed in 102 parishes served by 85 diocesan priests and 11 regulars; it has a seminary, 3 male religious communities and 16 female ones.
A very ancient Sabine city; a Roman municipium from 292 B.C.; the homeland of the Flavii Vespasii, the Flavii Anicii, and of Sertorius. It was contested by the Goths, the Byzantines, the Lombards and the Franks and sacked by the Saracens; donated in 962 by Otto I to John XII, it became a republic in the age of the Communes, suffered the struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines; then the popes gave the government of the city to prelates who assumed the office of prefect. In 1798 it was subject to the department of Trasimeno; from 1809 to 1814 it belonged to the prefecture of Spoleto; it returned to papal government from 1814 to 1860, in which year it was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.
The first bishop is St. Stephen (ca. 495); from the 9th century it was annexed to the diocese of Spoleto; but reestablished in 1820 by Pius VII, and the first bishop was Msgr. C. Bonano. It is immediately subject to the Holy See. The bishop has the title of perpetual commendatory abbot of S. Eutizio.
The Cathedral, also called "S. Maria argentea," rises on the remains of a Romanesque building; it was rebuilt in the 13th century and demolished by the earthquake of 1328; the side portal belongs to the 14th century. It was redone in 1560 and again in the 18th century. The bell tower, demolished in the 18th century, was rebuilt in 1859. The interior has three naves. The episcopium arose in the ancient monastery annexed to the church, which has on its right side the portico called that of the Merchants, with the old measures for grain.
The church of S. Benedetto, which tradition holds was erected on the family house of Eupropius, father of Sts. Benedict and Scholastica, was built in the 6th century and belonged to the Benedictines of the abbey of S. Eutizio until 1280, in which year the abbot ceded it to the Friars Minor. Because of the disputes that arose, Pope Celestine V, in 1294, declared it immediately subject to the Holy See. Clement VI in 1344 placed it under the dependence of a monastery of Sulmona; in 1369 Urban V transferred it to Subiaco; Boniface IX in 1389 made it autonomous. The crypt is mentioned in the 9th century by the monk Adrevald of Fleury; it was modified in 1880 and then decorated (1910) by the Benedictine school of Beuron.
The "Castellina" was built by order of Pope Julius III, "to the praise of the glory of God, for the preservation of the ecclesiastical state, for the exaltation of the good, for the confusion and perpetual despair of the wicked"; so it reads on one of the plaques of the corner towers. Singular is the fortress built by Vignola on the site where the temple of Fortuna Argentea is believed to have stood, later transformed into a church and demolished in 1554 for the new building. Now state offices and the magistrate's court reside there. In the 14th century the Commune encircled the city with high walls; it was divided into eight districts.
The Municipal Palace was built in the 13th century; from that time there survives the portico with polygonal columns that leads to the notarial archive. In the Hall of the forty conservators of the peace is preserved a Latin funerary inscription of the Roman Sefius, aedile of the plebs of the 3rd century B.C. The council chamber, also called "Sertoriana," leads to the Secret Archive, which possesses documents from the beginning of the 13th century. In the mayor's office is preserved a precious reliquary of St. Benedict (1450).
Enrico Josi
THE ABBEY OF S. EUTIZIO
In Valcastoriana presso N. Le origini rimontano al sec. V; s. Gregorio Magno celebra nei Dialoghi i fasti gloriosi di s. Spes, s. Eutizio e s. Florenzo, che per primi vi esercitarono vita ascetica, attrassero al loro seguito numerosi imitatori e discepoli, e videro ben presto tutta la circostante plaga popolata di monasteri e di eremi, saliti in gran fama di santità.
The Congregation of St. Eutizio enjoyed its greatest splendor from the 9th to the 13th century. The former empress Ageltrude, widow of Guy of Spoleto, enriched it with possessions; Otto III (996) and Conrad II (1027), Gregory IX and Innocent IV furnished it with privileges; more than seventy parish churches and simple benefices depended on it; moreover the abbey held feudal dominion over various castles and surrounding villas. Nicholas V in 1451 gave it in commendam to Cardinal D. Capranica; and the latter restored the cloistered life there, which continued to flourish until well beyond the middle of the 16th century. Abbot Scaramellotti of Preci enriched the church with an elegant walnut choir, with carvings and inlays, by Antonio Seneca of Piedivalle (1519), and with a splendid marble ark for the relics of Sts. Spes and Eutizio (1514). It then passed into commendam, and Pius VII, having restored the diocese of N. in 1820, made its bishops "pro tempore" perpetual commendatory abbots. Many of the codices of St. Eutizio, through the good offices of St. Philip Neri, passed to the Vallicelliana Library in Rome and form its most precious nucleus. From the Eutizian Codex Vall. B 63 comes one of the oldest texts in the vernacular, the celebrated penitential formula of the early 11th century. Very probably the famous medical school of Preci, specializing in operations for stones and cataracts, also takes its origin from St. Eutizio. The ancient church, rebuilt by Abbot Teodino I and completed in 1190 by the marble-worker Master Pietro, was enlarged and embellished under Abbot Teodino II, who, among other things, in 1236 adorned its facade with a splendid rose window.
Bibliography13 works
Pietro Pirri