Otranto, Archdiocese of

OTRANTO, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - City and archdiocese in the province of Lecce. It has a population of 187,941 inhabitants, almost all Catholics, distributed in 59 parishes served by 142 diocesan priests and 30 regulars, a minor seminary, 7 male religious communities and 35 female ones (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 305). Its suffragans are Lecce, Gallipoli and Ugento. The Cathedral is dedicated to the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary.

I. HISTORY

The rebirth of O., after the decline of the Roman period at the hands of nearby Brindisi, is due to the desperate political conditions of Byzantium, which, reduced to the extreme offshoot of the Salento, elevated the city to the political, military and religious capital of the region of the same name. The diocese of Otranto is nevertheless earlier than the Byzantine age, and could be assigned to the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 5th century, when one considers the great authority with which the first historically known bishop appears invested, that Peter (595; Jaffé-Wattenbach, 1400), to whom Gregory the Great entrusted the task of visiting the vacant dioceses of Brindisi, Lecce and Gallipoli (595 and 601; op. cit., 1696; 1727; 1849) and of assisting at the election of the relevant prelates. There follow then: Andrew (649), who took part in the Lateran Council of Martin I, and John I (680), present at the Third Council of Agatho I held at Constantinople. In the 9th century, as has been said, the Church of Otranto entered the orbit of Constantinople and its see numbered schismatic bishops, of whom scarcely a few names are known. It is certain, however, that in this period O. acquired a decisive pre-eminence over all the neighbouring sees and accumulated rights and privileges that no one afterwards dared to revoke. It was certainly the patriarch of Constantinople who conferred the archiepiscopal dignity on the see of Otranto, but it is doubtful whether it was Mark (870), the most learned author of the Greek Lenten Office, who was the first to be invested with it. It seems more likely that this should be attributed, leaving aside any name of prelates, to the emperor Nicephorus Phocas, by whose order in the 10th century the patriarch Polyeuctus declared the see metropolitan, with jurisdiction over the neighbouring cities and over the dioceses of Acerenza, Gravina, Matera, Tricarico and Tursi. The archbishop of O. thus obtained the title of primas Salentinorum, the patriarchal Cross, the attribute of most serene and the right to prebends from the feudatories and barons. Only in the 11th century did O. return to the Church of Rome, but the Greek rite remained tenaciously alive for a long time. Among the most eminent prelates of these vicissitudes may be remembered Peter II (956), who bound his Church to Byzantium; Hugh (1068), who took part in the Council of bishops held at Salerno by Alexander II; William, who consecrated the Cathedral (1088); and Jonathan (1163), the first archbishop of the Latin rite, who commissioned the floor mosaic of the Cathedral.

Having returned to the orbit of Rome, the pontiffs confirmed to O. the pre-eminence it had acquired, detached the dioceses granted by Byzantium, assigning it instead those of Lecce, Gallipoli and Ugento, and conferred on its prelates the privilege of the pallium. In 1480 the Church of Otranto also had its martyrs for the Faith: the city having fallen into the hands of Mehmed II, the Saracens carried off women and children as slaves and savagely slaughtered all the 800 men who, together with the archbishop Stefano Pendinelli, had taken refuge in the Cathedral (v. ANTONIO PRIMALDO E COMP. B. M.). From that time on, the city, though laden with glory, declined wretchedly. Of the prelates who from that year governed the Cathedral of Otranto, only the following will be mentioned: Pietro Antonio De Capua (1536-79), who took part in the Council of Trent; Michele Orsi (1722-52), who founded the Seminary and adorned the Cathedral with marbles; Vincenzo M. Morelli (1792-1812), declared venerable by the Church. In 1818 Pius VII united Alessano also to Ugento and to O. in perpetuity the church of Castro.

II. MONUMENTS

The Cathedral, begun in 1080 through the munificence of the Norman duke Roger, was consecrated 8 years later by Archbishop William. Damaged by the Saracen assault, the following year it was restored by Archbishop Serafino da Squillace - who rests in the monument by M. Ferrando of Galatina (1481), perhaps the author of the portal on the left side of the church - and then rebuilt again poorly in Baroque forms in 1674 and in 1764. After the recent restoration work, its Romanesque line has reappeared, with the beautiful rose window of the facade built with gentle slopes, the ringed arches on the 14 granite columns, the bases and capitals of classical workmanship (a temple to Minerva stood nearby), and the three broad, luminous naves. The imposing crypt, with three apses and five small naves, belongs to the 12th century and is supported by 68 small columns adorned with valuable capitals, in which Byzantine, indigenous and ultramontane influences are discernible. The superb mosaic, which the priest Pantaleone composed (1163-66) to decorate the broad surface of the Cathedral floor, has suffered greatly from the ravages of time and of restorations. With the compositions of the small naves and of the apse lost, the panels of the main nave remain, in which is depicted an enormous tree that extends its branches to embrace scenes of every kind, bold and wild in design and execution. There are monsters and animals of every species, scenes of hunting and of triumph (Alexander ascending to heaven), biblical events (Noah in the ark, Jonah, etc.) and allegorical ones (the months), episodes of the New Testament

(the Protoparents, Cain and Abel) and legends of the Round Table. In short, there is the whole multiform world of the Middle Ages, which, quivering on the white ground of the vermiculatum, expresses a bizarre epic of symbols, fables and myths, in a chaotic tangle in which earthly reality spills over and becomes confused with fantasy.

The church of St. Peter (12th century), with a Greek cross plan and a cylindrical dome, preserves Romanesque frescoes and a heavy architecture with strongly curved arches on rough columns. In the surroundings, to the south of the city, rise the advance of the ancient abbey of S. Nicola, erected by the Basilians between the 7th and 8th centuries and remodeled in highly elegant Romanesque and Gothic forms. Destroyed by the Saracens, although it was restored, it definitively lost its prestige and fell into continual ruin. Another superb basilica, today reduced to a heap of crumbling ruins, was the so-called one of the Centoporte, from the number of its entrances. Nothing remains but a few arches, a few windows and the crypt buried by the ruins. - See pl. XXXI.

(phot. Alinari)

OTRANTO, ARCIDIOCESI di - Cattedrale. Particolare del musaico pavimentale (1166).

270; P.B. Gams, Series episcop., Ratisbona 1872, pp. 910-11; Moroni, L, pp. 61-65; Lanzoni, I, pp. 310-17; Eubci, I, pp. 279-80; II, 166; III, 212; D. Vendola, Rationes decimarum (Studi e testi, 84), Città del Vaticano 1939, pp. 107-10 e 372; Cottineau, II, col. 2154. - Opere particolari: W. Schultz, Denkmäler der Kunst in Unteritalien, I, Dresda 1860, pp. 260-67; S. Castromediano, La Commiss. conservatrice dei monum. stor. e di belle arti di Terra d'O., Lecce 1876, pp. 30-37; E. Aar, Gli studi storici in Terra d'O., Firenze 1888, p. 121 sgg.; L. G. De Simone, Terra d'O., Torino s. d.; anon., Illustraz. dei principali monum. di Terra d'O., Lecce 1889, pp. 19-23; L. Maggiulli, O., ivi 1893; Ch. Dichl, L'art byzantin dans l'Italie mérid., Parigi 1894, p. 170; A. Avena, Monum. dell'Italia merid., Roma 1907, p. 237; E. Bertaux, L'art dans l'Italie mérid., Parigi 1904, p. 448 sgg.; C. A. Garoli, Il pavimento a mosaico della cattedr. di O., in Studi medievali, 2 (1907), pp. 505-14; G. Gigli, Il tallone d'Italia, II, Gallipoli, O. e dintorni, Bergamo 1912, pp. 82-118; L. Maroccia, La cattedr. di O., Maglie 1912; P. Toesca, Stor. dell'arte it., II, Torino 1927, pp. 604, 1083 e passim; H. Teodoru, Eglises cruciformes dans l'Italie mérid. (S. Pietro d'O.), in Ephem. Ducoromana, 5 (1932), pp. 22-34.

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