Pavia

PAVIA. - City and diocese, capital of the province of the same name in Lombardy.

Over an area of 290 sq km it has a population of 141,348 inhabitants, of whom 141,298 are Catholics, distributed in 98 parishes of which 15 are urban; it has 200 diocesan priests and 25 regular clergy, a seminary, 6 male religious communities and 73 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 313). It is a suffragan of Milan.

I. HISTORY

The origins of the city are owed to the Ligurian tribes of the Levi and the Marici, merged with incoming Gauls before the Roman conquest, which made it a "Municipium insigne" enrolled, in 23 B.C., in the Papiria tribe.

From the river Ticinus, the city was called Ticinum until the 7th century A.D., when it began to be called Papia.

Its Christian origins are traced back to the arrival of the first bishop, St. Syrus, whom a tradition sought to identify with the boy who offered Jesus the fishes and loaves of the multiplication; but that bishop is not earlier than the 4th century, and he was buried in the cemetery church of Sts. Gervasius and Protasius until the 9th century. In the 5th century St. Epiphanius, "pater patriae," brought luster to the see, as savior of the city when King Odoacer captured there the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus (476). During the Gothic dominion Ennodius was bishop (512-21), the poet-rector, while Severinus Boethius (v.), in the "ager Calventianus," composed in prison the De consolatione philosophiae and suffered the supreme punishment (525). Occupied by the Lombards (572), P. had for them an Arian bishop, the last of whom, Anastasius, became a Catholic; and toward the end of the 7th century Bishop Damianus promoted the reconciliation of the dissident Aquileians (cf. Carmen de synodo Ticineni: Fliche-Martin-Frutaz, V, p. 425). The city, which the Lombards made their capital, thanks also to its flourishing market, attained a high political and economic power, which grew under the Italic kings and the emperors of the Saxon house, when, with the ruins of the Hungarian invasion (624) repaired, it was the seat of diets, councils and royal coronations. In 825 it was a center of studies: "Secunda Roma" and "Mundi caput imperiale"; the bishop had the use of the pallium and of the raised cross, which he still retains, while he did not attain that political primacy which bishops obtained elsewhere. The popes themselves sometimes took part in the celebratory councils (John VIII, Gregory V, Benedict VIII, Leo IX).

After the royal palace was destroyed at the death of Henry II the Saint (1024), the communal government began slowly, and the bishop, who for centuries had hosted the meetings of the cives in his Curia ("Curia episcopi ubi Papienese faciunt contionem"), was recognized as having some power and issued diplomas of a certain feudal solemnity, so that this was, even within its modest limits, the greatest political power attained by the bishop in his city. In this period the diocese reached its widest boundaries in the Oltrepò, in conformity with those of the Ghibelline commune, which obtained from the Barbarossa a diploma of recognition that is, as it were, its "Magna Charta" (1164). To this period too may be referred the definitive redaction of the "Charta consuetudinum," which for centuries regulated the activity of the cathedral Chapter, rivaling in importance the distinguished one of the palatine basilica of S. Michele; and still, through donations from sovereigns, the power of the bishop, so limited within the city, extended instead to several lands in the Oltrepò, in the Piacenza and Milanese territories, which swore fidelity to him as to a lord. And finally, in these same centuries there is a flowering of churches in the new Lombard style, which in P. assumes a character entirely its own. Just as, in the city alone, there were a hundred churches between collegiate and parish churches in 1250, so hospitals arose for the poor sick and for travelers, since the city stood at the crossing of the great Roman state roads. However, as the commune became ever more firmly established and new needs of offense and defense against the neighboring cities arose, first among all Milan, the bishop saw the immunities of his clergy and of the monasteries increasingly contested and his very residence, bordering on the ever more imposing seat of the commune, disputed; whence the voluntary exile and death of Bishop St. Lanfranc (1198), and the severe admonitions to the Pavians of Innocent III (1208). For, if the political power of the bishop seems to revive at the beginning of the 13th century, with St. Fulco appointed head rector of a triumvirate over the city, it is of imperial origin, and therefore subject to the changes consequent upon the rapid decline of that authority in Italy, even in Ghibelline P. itself. In the fatal decline of the commune, and in the rise of the signoria, the city, first contested between the Marquis of Montferrat and the Langosco and Beccaria families, ends by falling under the Visconti, with whom, moreover, that early Renaissance begins, to which belong the origins of the Certosa and the Castle. In the early period, the overbearing of the marcabotta party (Ghibelline), favorable to Louis the Bavarian, over the fallabrina party (Guelph), provokes the indignation of John XXII, who launches the interdict upon the city (1327), which lasted a century and a half. Yet, despite these dissensions of a political nature, it does not appear that any of the thousand heretical movements of that time took root there, as indeed appears from a precious Descriptio Papiae, drawn up in 1330 by the Pavian Guelph priest Opicino de Canistris, a fugitive at Avignon at the court of John XXII, before whom he wishes to place his fellow citizens in a good light. To the incalculable damages of the wars of the end of the 15th century and the first decades of the 16th, culminating in the battle of P. of 1525 in which Francis I was taken prisoner, and in the sack of P. of 1527, were added the sad consequences of the non-residence lasting a century (1460-1560) of the bishops, one of whom was Card. Ascanio Sforza, who, with his brother Ludovico il Moro, laid the first stone of the present Cathedral (1488); another was Card. G. B. Del Monte, later Julius III. There arose then the S. Matteo hospital, most celebrated, founded in 1449 by fra' Domenico da Catalogna, of the Preachers, and the Monte di Pietà, founded in 1493 by the b. Bernardino da Feltre, of the Minors, against the usuries of the Jews.

In the second half of the 16th century the diocese was governed by Card. Ippolito De Rossi, who erected the Seminary, and by St. Alessandro Sauli, both reformers in the light of the Council of Trent; religious life was purified; and the erection of two free colleges for university students, the "Borromeo" and the "Ghislieri," through the zeal of St. Charles and of St. Pius V, respectively (1564 and 1569), documents the reform of morals and the safeguarding of Catholic doctrine. An attempt to introduce heretical doctrines, due to Celio Secondo Curione, a lecturer at the University, had already been, after some resistance from the students, crushed. Alongside the Benedictines, the most ancient hosts, the Eremitani of St. Augustine, the Canons Lateranensi, the Dominicans, the Humiliati, the Minors, the more recent Orders established themselves: the Capuchins, the Barnabites; the Somaschi for orphans, under the direction of St. Jerome Emiliani himself and of the Pavian patricians Marco Gambarana and Vincenzo Trotti; the Jesuits for the schools. The long Spanish domination (1535-1714) saw the work of good bishops, such as Landriani, Francesco Biglia, distinguished for the victorious resistance to the Franco-Savoyards besieging in vain, in 1655, the city; Pertusati, Cardinal Durini, intent on applying the decrees of Trent and particularly on the development of the Schools of Christian Doctrine. Among the more recent bishops are remembered Monsignors Tosi, L. M. Parocchi (v.) later cardinal, G. Ballerini (v.) and Riboldi.

Austria, having succeeded Spain in Lombardy, brought the reforms of civil jurisdictionalism into the ecclesiastical field, with the typical creation of the General Seminary in which Joseph II wished the students of all the seminaries of Austrian Lombardy to be concentrated, under the professors Tamburini, Zola and lesser ones. This Seminary, which lasted only five years (1786-91), was of grave material prejudice to the diocese, which had had to erect, in that five-year period, another seminary beyond the Ticino, at Valenza di Alessandria, for its clerics who were subjects of the king of Sardinia, who did not tolerate their going to school in a foreign State where, moreover, the « germana thomistica doctrina » was not taught. As a consequence of the political events that had brought the Piedmontese borders precisely as far as the Ticino, the diocese, which extended as far as the Siccomario, the Lomellina, the Oltrepo almost to Bobbio, and into certain places in the territories of Asti, Acqui, Alessandria, Tortona, Piacenza, Lodi and Milan, comprising 187 parishes, was dismembered to the advantage especially of Vigevano and Tortona and reduced, on the southern side, within the borders marked by the Ticino and the Po. In the sack of 1796, renewing the horrors of 1527, the bishop Bertieri implored, together with the municipality, pardon from the angered Bonaparte for the wretched P., where a part of the citizens and of the peasants who had flocked there, having rebelled against the Jacobins, had held the French garrison at bay for some days.

II. SACRED MONUMENTS

The diocese of P. is rich in monuments notable for their antiquity and for their art.

1. Basilicas

Of the group of Lombard basilicas the first is St. Michael's, originally entirely in sandstone, with three naves, a Latin cross plan, and three facades laden with bas-reliefs. The interior, with matronea over the side naves, with a lantern tower on two-stage squinches, offers mosaics and a silver crucifix (9th or 11th century). Of the primitive Christian basilica, the present one, of the 11th and 12th centuries, preserves the memory of the royal coronations of the two Berengars, of Hugh and Lothair, of Arduin, of Henry the Saint and of Barbarossa. St. Peter in Ciel d'oro ("ad coelum aureum," from its golden ceiling) as the primitive one of the 5th or 6th century was already called, which the present one succeeded, consecrated by Innocent II (1132), is remembered by Dante (Par., X), by Petrarch (Sen., V), by Boccaccio (Dec., X, 9); it is in sandstone and brick, with three naves; in the crypt, a small marble ark in the Ravenna style guards the bones of Severinus Boethius, venerated as a martyr (d. 525). In the presbytery, the ark with the relics of St. Augustine, with the date 1362, probably the work of Campione masters influenced by the Pisans. St. Theodore's, entirely in terracotta, with three naves, of the late 12th century, offers frescoes by Bernardino Colombani (16th century) with stories of Sts. Theodore and Agnes, and a view of P., of 1522; the crypt extends also beneath the side naves. St. Lanfranc's, outside the city, with a Latin cross plan, in terracotta, of the 13th century, with the ark of St. Lanfranc, by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo (15th century), and a delightful 15th-century little cloister with terracottas, also by Amadeo. Noteworthy for their importance are the Gothic churches of the Carmine (14th century), entirely in terracotta, with rich Renaissance decoration; and of St. Francis (13th-14th centuries). On the outskirts, the basilica of the Savior, formerly a Benedictine abbey (15th century).

2. The Castle, the park and the Certosa

The Castle, or more properly the Visconti Palace, begun in 1360 by order of Galeazzo II Visconti, was rapidly completed under the direction of Bernardo da Venezia. The grandiose halls, of the Visconti and the Sforza, dukes of Milan and counts of P., today restored, are a worthy seat of the civic museums. At the northern end of the great park and crowning it, Gian Galeazzo Visconti began, on 27 Aug. 1396, dedicating it to the Virgin, the Certosa, in which he wished his burial to be. Begun in Gothic style with the apses, it ended, more than a century later, in the most elegant forms of the Renaissance, with the facade covered in polychrome marbles and bas-reliefs by Amadeo, the Mantegazza, and Briosco, true craftsmen of marble (15th-16th centuries). The interior is Gothic with three naves, by Guiniforte Solari (15th century), with clustered piers in grey stone of Angera. Among the painters of the 15th and early 16th centuries are Bergognone, who triumphs there with the decoration of the vaults and with three altarpieces; Perugino, Cristoforo de Motis, Macrino d'Alba, Andrea Solari, Bernardino Luini; among the 17th-century ones, Morazzone, Del Cairo, G. B. Crespi, Daniele Crespi, who frescoed the entire choir, and Camillo Procaccini. Among the sculptors of the 15th-16th centuries, Cristoforo Solari with the recumbent statues of Ludovico il Moro and Beatrice d'Este, Cristoforo Romano with the funeral aedicule of G. Galeazzo, Baldassarre degli Embriachi with the chryselephantine triptych; Maffiolo da Carrara; and the 17th-century Bussola, Rusnati, Volpino and Orsolino, with their altarpieces in bas-relief; the Sacchi family (18th century) worked the other altarpieces with inlays of hardstones. The wooden choir, also inlaid, is among the most splendid of the Renaissance. The decoration of the two cloisters, with exquisite terracottas, is by the Cremonese Rinaldo de Stauris. In the new sacristy, where an Assumption by Andrea Solari reigns, are arranged the 16th-century choir books (second half), the calligrapher being the Vallombrosan monk Benedetto da Corteregia, the illuminator Guarnerio Beretta, a native of Pavia. The Carthusians, expelled by the suppressive laws of 1866, readmitted by an agreement in 1932, left the monastery, in 1947, to the Discalced Carmelites; who now officiate the Church on feast days, for the convenience of the faithful.

3. The Cathedral

It is a magnificent monument of the Lombard Renaissance, and to its construction are linked the names of Bramante, of Leonardo and of Amadeo. Begun on 29 June 1488, on the site of the two most ancient Lombard cathedrals, the "female" and the "captive" one, it was completed on a Greek cross plan (85 × 85 m.) in 1933. The imposing interior, with a dome on galleries (95 m.), with a crypt of three naves in clear Bramantesque lines, has notable canvases by Daniele and G. B. Crespi, il Cerano (17th century), by Faruffini and Barbotti (19th century) and by Morgari (20th century); and sculptures by Tommaso Orsolino (17th century) adorning the altar of St. Syrus, whose bones are venerated in a precious urn. In the square, which was always called the "atrium of St. Syrus," is the equestrian statue of mysterious origins, recast in 1937, of the "Regisole," formerly the palladium of the city; the tower, of the 12th century, mindful of the glories of the Commune, with the late crowning of the

(phot. Enit)
PAVIA. - Visconti Castle (1360-65).

Pellegrini (16th century); and the episcopal Palace erected by Ippolito de Rossi (16th century) after the bishops had ceased to live behind the Cathedral, adjacent to the ancient seat of the commune, and in dispute with it.

4. The University of P

Its origins are thought to be connected with the Capitulary of Olona of the year 825. It began with the teaching of the Irish monk Dungal; made illustrious by Lanfranc, teacher of St. Anselm of Aosta, favored by papal privileges of the Avignon period, recognized by Charles IV (1361), it had in the bishop, for five centuries, its grand chancellor, who conferred the degrees. Among the ecclesiastics who taught there were also Tommaso Vio Caetano, Della Rovere (Sixtus IV), St. Alessandro Sauli, the Jesuit Gerolamo Saccheri and the blessed Contardo Ferrini. The present building by Piermarini and Pollack is also of the 18th century, when the University reached such splendor as to earn the city the name of "resurgent Insubrian Athens" (cf. G. Parini, La laurea). The "solemn porticoes" house marble memorials of the most distinguished masters (Baldo Perugino, Giasone del Maino, Andrea Alciato, Spallanzani, Mascheroni, Volta, Romagnosi, Foscolo, Bordoni). St. Charles was a student there, in the school of Francesco Alciato. The Library, whose oldest holdings consist of the book collections of suppressed monasteries, is rich in codices and rare editions.

The two colleges Borromeo and Ghislieri (both by the architecture of Pellegrini) house free of charge, through the munificence respectively of St. Charles and Pius V, more than a hundred students of disadvantaged condition. Lively frescoes by Zuccari and Nebbia (1603 and 1604) illustrate the glories of St. Charles in the Borromeo college, where the first student received was Federico Borromeo and the blessed Contardo Ferrini (v.), prince of the Romanists, was the greatest. A diocesan of P. was card. Maffi (v.). - See pl. LXXIII.

Faustino Gianani

III. COUNCIL OF PAVIA

In 1423 the five-year term set by the Council of Constance for a new council at P. was due to expire; Martin V, acceding to the urgings of the University of Paris, had it opened by his legates on April 23. On June 21 the Duke of Milan made it understood that the plague made it impossible for the few prelates present to stay at P., where no session had been held; therefore the legates transferred the Council to Siena, where it opened on July 21. Martin V did not take part in it, and disagreements of various kinds, including over the reform of the Church, prevented any profitable conclusion, so that on March 7, 1424 the Council was dissolved, determining that it would assemble at Basel in 1431.

Pio Paschini