OPPIDO MAMERTINA, DIOCESE. - Diocese and city in the province of Reggio Calabria, in a delightful position on the north-western spurs of the Aspromonte; a short distance from the sea, amid olive groves of considerable extent, it rises at some distance from the ancient O., which was 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 a suffragan of Reggio Calabria.
It has been debated for centuries whether it is the heir of the ancient Mamerium, as the numerous local historians maintain, or whether it is to be identified with Martirano, on the slopes of the Sila, in the valley of the Savuto, anciently called Sabatum.
The claim to see in O. an episcopal see from the first centuries of the Church, making it an heir of Metauria or of Miria, is unfounded. In reality, there is no record of the diocese of O. before the coming of the Normans to Calabria; and, since no traces of it are found either in Greek or in Latin sources prior to that era, it is debated whether it is of Byzantine or of Norman origin. Since O. was Greek from its origin and remained faithful to the Greek rite until 1472, its foundation could be attributed to the Byzantines, who in Magna Graecia multiplied dioceses with excessive ease, or it could be held that the Normans, having Latinized the more important bishoprics of Calabria, found themselves obliged to found the two tiny and insignificant dioceses of O. and of Bova, in order to give some satisfaction to the very numerous and turbulent Greek elements of the region. Perhaps there may be attributed to O. that Seraphinus seu Eterantinus, episcopus, who at the Lateran Council of 1179 appears alongside his metropolitan of Reggio. In a Greek document of 1188, published by Trinchera, there also appears, but without a name, a piissimus episcopus Oppidi, just as the succeeding bishops are likewise anonymous, one of whom paid the tithe in 1282, recorded by the Vatican Registers, and another received from Charles II of Anjou an assignment of 8 gold tari in 1301, for having translated books of medicine from the Greek. But this last might be that Stephen, who is mentioned in the same Neapolitan Registers of 1295 and in the Annales Caunenses of 1299. He would therefore be the first bishop of O. whose name is authentically established.
It should be noted that one of its bishops, by the name of Basil, together with his colleagues of Bova and of Gerace, in 1334 thwarted an attempt to suppress the Greek rite in these dioceses made by the papal legate. A genuine Greek, however, was Athanasius Calceopilus, a native of Constantinople and formerly abbot of the Patirion, bishop of Gerace and then also of O., who abolished the rite and the Greek language in 1472. From that year O. remained united with Gerace until 1536, when it regained its autonomy from Paul III. During this period the two dioceses were almost always governed by cardinal "commendatory" administrators, such as Bandinello Sauli, Francesco Armellino-Medici and Alessandro Cesarini. Among the other most deserving bishops are to be remembered Teofilo Galluppi of Tropea; Sigismondo Mangieruva, who held a synod; Antonio Cesonio; Giuseppe Perrimezzi of Paola, of the Order of the Minims, who was a most prolific historical and ascetic 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 passed to govern the metropolis of Reggio.
Bibliography11 works
Francesco Russo