Perugia, Archdiocese of

PERUGIA, ARCIDIOCESI di. — City and archdiocese, capital of the province of the same name in Umbria.

It has an area of 1,600 sq. km., for the most part hilly, partly traversed by the Tiber and washed by the waters of Lake Trasimeno. It borders the dioceses of Assisi, Foligno, Todi, Orvieto, Città della Pieve, Cortona, Arezzo, Città di Castello, and Gubbio; it comprises the municipalities of P., Castiglion del Lago, Tuoro sul Trasimeno, Passignano, Lisciano Niccone, Magione, Torgiano, Marsciano, and Deruta. It has a population of 166,200, all Catholics, apart from a small Jewish minority. It has 194 parishes distributed among 16 rural vicariates, with 228 secular priests and 65 religious priests, one minor seminary, 19 houses of male religious institutes, and 49 of female religious institutes. It is the seat of the Regional Ecclesiastical Tribunal. The Cathedral is dedicated to the martyr s. Lorenzo.

In Umbria, given its proximity to Rome, Christian communities must have formed very early, and one of the localities to become a regularly established diocese at an early date was P. (Perusium). It too had its martyrs, among whom Costanzo is known, recorded in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (29 Jan.). Around his body, buried at the place where

(phot. Gab. fot. naz.)

PERUGIA, ARCIDIOCESI di — Cinerary urn with a griffin bringing down a man (1st century B.C.) — Perugia, hypogeum of the Volumni.

the church dedicated to him now stands, the particular veneration of the Perugini gathered, and they later proclaimed him patron of the city. It is a reliable tradition that s. Costanzo was bishop of P. (Lanzoni, I, p. 548 ff.).

Once the ecclesiastical authority of the bishop had been permanently defined within its limits, he also exercised those public powers that the later Roman legislation had recognized in him. During the Gothic War, while P. was being besieged by the army of Totila, Bishop Ercolano headed the city’s resistance. After the city was captured, following a long and exhausting siege, he was beheaded by Regoto on the walls from which he had inspired the defense. His body, later exhumed and solemnly buried, became almost a palladium of the city’s freedom and greatness; and Bishop Ercolano, venerated as a martyr, was adopted as another protector of the city, while the Perugini continued throughout the Middle Ages to show him particular devotion.

In the 5th century Christian worship was flourishing fully, including in its external expressions: this is attested by the church of S. Michele Arcangelo, still possessing its characteristic circular architectural plan, which arose outside the inhabited area, north of the city, beyond the Etrusco-Roman circuit within which P. was still enclosed; while to the south, likewise outside the walls, on Monte Capraro, at the site where the monastery of S. Pietro was later erected, stood the primitive Cathedral. This was transferred in the 10th century by Bishop Ruggeri to the hill of Porta Sole, at the center of the city, in the ancient church of S. Lorenzo; hence this saint too became one of the city’s protectors. There, in the 15th century, work began on the construction of the Duomo that exists today and is dedicated to him.

In P., the first administrative district of the Exarchate, after a brief Lombard interlude became a Byzantine Duchy, and with the fall of the Exarchate passed to the Church, while the bishop, until the establishment of the Comune, continued to intervene in civil affairs, even without governing the city, the episcopal residence must also have been a place of study and teaching. It has been inferred that law was still taught in the episcopal school from the fact that, from time immemorial, the Summa codicis, known by the name Summa Perusina, a legal compilation intended for forensic and also educational purposes, dating from before the year 1000, was found in the Chapter Archive together with the sacred texts. But the frequent visits of the pontiffs must also have contributed to increasing the importance and prestige of the Church of Perugia, beginning with the first historically attested visit, that of Pope Zaccaria, who, through the authority of his word, succeeded in having the siege laid to the city by the Lombard king Rachi lifted in 749.

P. is Guelph, not far from Rome, and in a secure position: the pontiffs willingly reside there; indeed, the Comune, while always jealous and watchful of its own freedom even in relation to the Church, makes entreaties and offers so that they might establish a permanent residence there. Conclaves were held at P. resulting in the election of Onorio III (1216), Clemente IV (1265), Onorio IV (1285), Celestino V (1294), and finally Clemente V (1305). The episcopal school has also been thought to have provided the first impetus for that civic cultural movement which led, in the 13th century, to the establishment of the University of Perugia, declared a Studium generale by Clemente V in 1308, to which Giovanni XXII added the right to confer doctorates in civil and canon law in 1318, and in medicine and the arts in 1321; while the Faculty of Theology was established there by Gregorio XI in 1371, and retained its name at the athenaeum even after the decline of the law faculty, which had already produced the great jurists Bartolo and Baldo.

A critical study of the bishops of Perugia remains to be undertaken. Distinguished personalities have occupied the Perugian see, noted for their piety, their cultivation of scholarship, and their interest in the city’s monuments. Closer to our own times, mention should be made of Fulvio della Corgna, bishop in 1550 and later also raised to the cardinalate, who founded a seminary even before this was prescribed by the Council of Trent; Napoleone Comitoli, elected in 1591; Lucalberto Patrizi, an eminent jurist, elected in 1669; Anton Felice Marsigli, learned in law, letters, and the sciences,

(phot. Fotocciere, Turin)

PERUGIA, ARCIDIOCESI di — Fontana Maggiore, begun in 1275 to a design by fra' Bevignate da P. Reliefs by Nicola, Giovanni Pisano, and pupils (1278) — Perugia.

elected in 1701; and Gioacchino Pecci, later Pope Leone XIII, from 1846 to 1878, after having served there from 1841 to 1843 as apostolic delegate of the province of the Papal States. The seminary, which already possessed an illustrious humanistic tradition, having at its beginnings counted among its teachers Marco Antonio Bonciario—one of the major representatives of Perugian culture—whom it had previously had as a student, owed to Pecci, surrounded by highly cultured clergy, a revival of religious, philosophical, and literary studies. Pecci also made P., through the Accademia di S. Tommaso, a forerunner in the revival of Thomistic philosophy. At present, secondary-school studies are completed in the seminary; the students of philosophy and theology attend the regional seminary for Umbria in Assisi.

The diocese was elevated to an archiepiscopal see by Pope Leone XIII on 27 March 1882, without suffragan sees.

Through the work of Friar Raniero Fasani, the movement of the Disciplinati began in P., around 1260; from it arose numerous urban confraternities, to which so many charitable works and works of art are owed. Likewise, the beginnings of Italian theatre may be sought in their dramatic Laudi. In P., as its school of painting—entirely inspired by sacred themes—testifies, religious sentiments regained fervour through the preaching of s. Bernardino da Siena, who renewed laws and reformed public and private customs; and in his honour the city erected some of its finest artistic monuments. Even amid the sharpest political conflicts with the Papal States, into which the city and its territory were definitively absorbed in the 16th century and remained until 1860, the religious faith continued always to be active: in 1631, by decree of the city magistrate, the city was consecrated to the Virgin of the Rosary. Martyrs of the Roman period, hermits of the early Middle Ages, such as s. Bevignate, to whom a church also remains dedicated, and cenobites such as s. Pietro Vincioli, founder, in the 10th century, of the monastery of S. Pietro, as well as other citizens of P., attained sanctity. The figure of the b. Colomba remains particularly prominent in historical memory: although originally from Rieti, her life was entirely Perugian. Through her fervour and austerity, and through her peacemaking action among the city factions of the Oddi and the Baglioni, she followed the example of her great Sienese sister. In the presence of Alessandro VI she knew how to maintain a stern respect, neither rebellious nor accommodating; she nevertheless had to suffer from the malevolence of Lucrezia Borgia. She was the founder of the monastery of S. Caterina, of the Dominican Tertiaries known as the Colombe. She died at the age of 34, on 20 May 1501.

The Benedictine, Franciscan, and Dominican Orders, among others, built notable cenobies in P., places of study,

and monumental in appearance. The Benedictine abbey of S. Pietro was embellished over several centuries, in its church and cloisters, with artistic treasures; and on its extensive lands in the Tiber Valley it earned distinction through the agricultural reclamation of the region. The Friars Preacher, who came to P. in 1220, built the magnificent convent of S. Domenico, now used for the Civic Museums, with its church, still imposing even after its 17th-century rebuilding. The Friars Minor had two convents: that of the Conventuals of S. Francesco al Prato, whose church, now in ruins, was begun in the same year as the upper basilica of Assisi and had become the Pantheon of illustrious Perugians; and the other, belonging to the Observants of Monte Ripido, established on the hill where the b. Egidio d'Assisi had his hermitage and died. The Olivetans, too, built a majestic cenobium in the 18th century, designated by the Napoleonic government, and subsequently confirmed by Pius VII in 1815, as the seat of the University.

Within the diocese, among the shrines of the countryside toward which the devotion of the faithful is most strongly directed because of the miraculous events associated with their origin, those of Castel Rigone and Ponte della Pietra should be mentioned. For several centuries the cathedral of S. Lorenzo itself was a destination for pilgrimages, because it housed the Holy Ring, which tradition held to be the Virgin’s wedding ring. The religious sentiment of the city finds its most vibrant expression in the devotion to her under the title of the Graces, represented in the beautiful image by a pupil of Perugino preserved in the Duomo.

«STRAGI» di P. — The campaign against Austria and the consequent uprisings in the Legations and central Italy led, on 14 June 1859, to the establishment of a provisional government in P. as well.

Its instigator had been the Sardinian dictator in Florence, Carlo Boncompagni, at the prompting of the marquis Filippo Gualterio, with the complicity of about one hundred local innovators and the assistance of approximately 800 well-armed Tuscan volunteers. The great majority of the urban and rural population remained, as usual, entirely uninvolved; but, owing to the scarcity of law-enforcement forces, the energetic apostolic delegate, mons. Luigi Giordani, was compelled to withdraw to Foligno. The cardinal archbishop Gioacchino Pecci, later Pope Leo XIII, remained at his post; since the preceding April he had repeatedly warned the Secretariat of State of what was being prepared.

From Foligno, following timely instructions from card. Antonelli, Giordani directed the operation to subdue the city, making use of 1,700 Swiss commanded by Colonel Antonio Schmidt, half a battery of artillery, and approximately 60 gendarmes and 30 finance guards. The Counsellor of State Luigi Lattanzi, another valuable witness, a person well known in P. for his uprightness and respected even by the innovators themselves, was sent in vain on 20 and 21 June to prevent a futile resistance. Thus, shortly after 3 p.m. on the 21st, the city was stormed, and the Swiss succeeded in overcoming the outer defences of the Frontone and the monastery of S. Pietro.

It was precisely then that the commander of the insurgents, Carlo Bruschi, fleeing with his colleagues from the provisional Junta toward the Tuscan border, entered the built-up area, loudly urging those who had taken up positions on the roofs and at the windows of the houses to continue the resistance to the last drop of blood, firing and throwing at the troops whatever came to hand, just as the white flag was being raised over the town hall.

PERUGIA, ABCIDIOCESI di - S. Francesco in glory among s. Ercolano, s. Antonio da Padova, s. Ludovico da Tolosa, s. Costanzo, Polyptych by Taddeo di Bartolo (ca. 1395) - Perugia, Pinacoteca.

This gave rise to a bloody mêlée in the streets and houses, and some innocent bystanders also fell victim to II. In three hours of fighting, the Papal troops had approximately 90 men put out of action, largely by treacherous shots; the innovators had approximately 70 dead, one hundred wounded, and 120 prisoners. The fatal misunderstanding of continuing the firing even after the signal of surrender—a misunderstanding attributable exclusively to the revolutionary leaders—together with the material damage imprudently suffered by the American Perkins family, lodged at the Storti inn, from whose roof shots had been fired at the soldiers, was widely and tendentiously exploited by Italian and foreign diplomacy and the liberal press; and the alleged « massacres » of P. constituted for many years one of the « strong points » of anticlerical polemic.

ARCHAEOLOGY. — The Archaeological Museum of P. preserves several Christian inscriptions originating from Roman cemeteries: one bears the date 364; but the most notable is that of a child, Eutychianus, which ends with « Dei Servus » (Ἰησοῦς γρᾶν Ἰχθύς; Fr. J. Dölger, Das Fischsymbol in frühchristlicher Zeit, Rome 1910, pp. 192–97, no. 4). A Christian sarcophagus of the 4th century was reused for the burial of b. Egidio of Assisi and found in S. Francesco in the 14th century. Known since the 18th century, it was published by G. B. De Rossi (Spicilegio d'archeol. crist. nell'Umbria, in Bull. di arch. christ., 2nd series, 2 [1871], p. 127 and pl. 8; G. Elisei, Di un sarcofago cristiano del sec. IV trovato a P. nel sec. XIV e servito di sepolcro al b. Egidio di Assisi, in N. Bull. di arch. crist., 4 [1898], pp. 9–23); it was reexamined by G. Wilpert (Beiträge zur christlichen Archäologie, in Römische Quartalschrift, 20 [1906], p. 1 ff., and in Sarcofagi, I, pp. 35, 126 and pl. 28, 3). It is divided by columns into seven compartments; G. Christ teaching is in the center, Saints at the sides, two scenes of Glory on the lid, and the inscription (15th century) on the titulus: « beati Egidi sepulchrum ».

In the eastern area of P., in 1717, a hoard was found among the ruins of a building, containing 61 gold coins of the emperor Justin and 77 gold coins of Justinian, together with fibulae, rings, and a silver disk bearing the inscription « De donis Dei et Domini Petri utere felix cum gaudio » (CIL, XI, 2089). G. B. De Rossi supposed that it was a gift offered by Pope Vigilius to Belisarius (Bull. arch. crist. cited, p. 147). In S. Prospero at P. there is a ciborium supported by four columns, dating from the end of the 8th century, with all four faces decorated with interlace and rosettes, and with a cross and two peacocks on the principal face. Inside was an altar with a mensa equipped with a cavity for receiving relics (Ph. Rohault de Fleury, La Messe, II, Paris 1883,

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Vedi pl. LXXXI. Enrico Josi