OTRICOLI. — Ancient diocese in Umbria, in the province of Terni, situated along the route of the Via Flaminia on a hill overlooking the valley of the Tiber.
The Umbrian center of Ocriculum, after 308 B.C., is said by Livy to have become an ally of the Romans. From 220 it was a station on the Via Flaminia; during the Social War it sided with the Italians and was completely devastated; perhaps after this event it was transferred to the plain near the Tiber. It was a municipium of Region VI, enrolled in the Arnensis tribe, and enjoyed a certain prosperity during the Empire. According to Hydatius, in 413 a bloody battle is said to have taken place near O. between the troops of Honorius and Heraclian. In the Middle Ages the site of the Roman city was abandoned and the settlement was transferred once again to the hill where the Umbrian center had stood. After belonging to the Roman duchy, O. passed among the dominions of the Church; in 1433 it was occupied by Francesco Sforza; in 1547 G. B. Savelli was invested with II. Pius VI, between 1776 and 1786, had systematic excavations carried out there, which yielded numerous works of art for the Vatican Museums, including the celebrated bust of Jupiter.
The patron saint of O. is s. Vittore, whose feast is celebrated on 14 May. Also venerated there are the ss. Fulgenzio, Eleozamo, Nestorio, Leopardo, and Corona, whose relics were transferred in 1316 to the collegiate church of O., as well as s. Medico, whose body was discovered in 1611 in the Christian cemetery of S. Vittore.
O. was an ancient diocese; it is mentioned from the 5th century onward, and the bishops Ercole (487), Costantino (499), Domenico (595 and 601), and s. Fulgenzio are known. The latter occupied the see around the middle of the 6th century; passing through O., Totila first imprisoned him and then released him following a miraculous event recounted by s. Gregorio Magno. At the beginning of the 7th century, information about the diocese disappears; it was absorbed by that of Narni.
Downstream from modern O. there are notable remains of the Roman city, most of them to be assigned to the Augustan period: a theater, an amphitheater, a large arcaded structure, and the baths of L. Iulius Iuliius from the 2nd century A.D., from which the famous mosaic of the Vatican Rotunda comes. The collegiate church of S. Maria, mentioned from the middle of the 12th century, preserves the 6th-century inscription placed by s. Fulgenzio on the altar of S. Vittore.
The monastery of S. Vittore near the ruins of the Roman city (remains from the 11th–12th centuries) arose beside the church erected in the 6th century by s. Fulgenzio to house the body of that saint, which he had discovered. In 1232 Gregorio IX assigned this monastery to the bishop of Narni; it subsequently became, by right and in ownership, a possession of the Roman Church. An underground cemetery was attached to II. Recently, the remains of a Christian place of worship have appeared near the area where the Roman Basilica must have stood: an inscription placed by a Marcello (probably a presbyter) on the occasion of the construction of a baptistery, a votive inscription of a Mercurius (6th–7th century), and a bronze monogrammatic cross have been found there.