OPPIDO MAMERTINA, DIOCESI of. — Diocese and city in the province of Reggio Calabria, in a pleasant position on the northwestern slopes of the Aspromonte; a short distance from the sea, amid olive groves of considerable extent, it rises at some distance from the ancient O., entirely destroyed by the earthquake of 1783.
Over an area of 216 sq. km., it has 42,000 inhabitants, all Catholics, distributed among 20 parishes served by 47 secular priests (Ann. Pont., 1957, p. 297). The diocese is suffragan to Reggio Calabria.
For centuries it has been debated whether it is the heir of ancient Mamerium, as numerous local historians maintain, or whether it should be identified with Martirano, on the slopes of the Sila, in the valley of the Savuto, anciently called Sabatum.
The claim that O. was an episcopal see from the first centuries of the Church, making it the heir of Metauria or Miria, is unfounded. In reality, there is no information about the diocese of O. before the arrival of the Normans in Calabria; and, since no traces of it are found either in Greek or in Latin sources prior to that period, it is debated whether it was of Byzantine or Norman origin. Since O. was Greek from its foundation and remained faithful to the Greek rite until 1472, its foundation might be attributed to the Byzantines, who multiplied dioceses in Magna Graecia with excessive ease; alternatively, it might be held that the Normans, having Latinized the more important bishoprics of Calabria, found themselves obliged to establish the two tiny and insignificant dioceses of O. and Bova, in order to provide a certain satisfaction to the region’s numerous and turbulent Greek elements. Perhaps the Seraphinus seu Eterantinus, episcopus who appears at the Lateran Council of 1179 beside his metropolitan of Reggio may be attributed to O. In a Greek document of 1188, published by Trinchera, there also appears, though without a name, a piissimus episcopus Oppidi; the succeeding bishops are likewise anonymous, one of whom paid the tithe in 1282, as reported in the Vatican Registers, while another received from Charles II of Anjou an allocation of 8 gold tari in 1301 for having translated medical books from Greek. The latter, however, may have been the Stephen who is mentioned in the same Neapolitan Registers in 1295 and in the Annales Caunenses of 1299. He would therefore be the first bishop of O. whose name is authentically recorded.
It should be noted that one of its bishops, named Basil, together with his colleagues from Bova and Gerace, thwarted in 1334 an attempt by the papal legate to suppress the Greek rite in these dioceses. It was instead a genuine Greek, Athanasius Calceopilus, a native of Constantinople and formerly abbot of the Patirion, bishop of Gerace and subsequently also of O., who abolished the Greek rite and language in 1472. From that year O. remained united with Gerace until 1536, when it regained its autonomy under Paul III. During this period the two dioceses were almost always governed by “commendatory” cardinals, such as Bandinello Sauli, Francesco Armellino-Medici, and Alessandro Cesarini. Among the other most distinguished bishops, Teofilo Galluppi of Tropea should be remembered; Sigismondo Mangieruva, who held a synod; Antonio Cesonio; Giuseppe Perrimezzi of Paola, of the Order of Minims, who was a most prolific historical and ascetical writer, governed the diocese from 1714 to 1734, held a synod, and sought to restore ecclesiastical discipline; Ferdinando Mandarani; and finally Alessandro Tommasini of Reggio Calabria, who was the first bishop of the new O. and in 1818 went on to govern the metropolitan see of Reggio.
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