POLICASTRO, DIOCESE OF. – A city and diocese in the province of Salerno; it has an area of 1,200 km² with a population of 70,000 inhabitants, all Catholic, distributed across 41 parishes served by 70 diocesan priests and 15 regular clergy; it has a seminary, 4 male religious communities, and 23 female ones (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 321). It is a suffragan of Salerno; the cathedral is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary Assumed.
History. – It is believed that P. inherited the episcopal see from the ancient Bussento (Buxentum), destroyed by Saracen invasions and raids; only a few prefer to identify ancient Buxentum with Pisciotta in the Valle di Novi. The first known prelate of Buxentum is Fuxstico, present at the Roman Council of 501; then a certain N., whose death in 592 prompted Gregory the Great to write to Felix, bishop of Acropolis, to visit Bussento together with Velia and Blanda, to restore order there, re-establish worship, and fill the gaps in the clergy with new ordinations (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 1195). The concern evident in the letter points to a grave situation, to which incursions and plundering of every kind—so frequent in that period—may not have been unrelated. The second known bishop is Sabbatius, who subscribed as “episcopus buxentinus” in 649 at the Lateran Council. After this prelate, the name of Buxentum disappears from history.
With the Byzantine conquest, the Greek rite must have been introduced among the populations of this region, as attested by the Greek communities of Rivello and the collegiate churches of S. Maria del Poggio and S. Nicolò, belonging to the diocese. The birth and development of P. must have occurred after the year 1000. From its origins, it was a stronghold of the Latin rite and sought by every means to prevail over the other. The appointment of Pietro Pappacarboni as bishop of P. in 1079 was intended both as a continuation and as a restoration of the dignity of Bussentum and marks the beginning of the series of prelates of the city. The life and virtues of this first bishop, a Salernitan patrician who in the same year abandoned the see to retire to his monastery at Cava, were so remarkable that he was raised to the honors of the altar. His successor, Arnaldo, known from a document of 1110, has left no other memory of himself, any more than all the other prelates up to that certain N., archpriest of Saponia de’ Marsi, for his election; nominated by the Chapter and confirmed in 1211 by Pope Innocent III, he replaced—following the papal annulment of the nomination—Giacomo, physician to Frederick II. Another contested election occurred at the death of Guglielmo de Licio, elected in 1222, when the archpriest chosen by the Chapter found himself replaced by N., imposed in 1237 by Gregory IX. With Giovanni Castellomata of Salerno, the continuous series of bishops begins without further disputes, he himself being confirmed in 1254 by Innocent IV. Among his successors are remembered: Pagano, mentioned in two Angevin documents of 1294; Gabriele Attilio, an expert Latinist, poet, and tutor to King Ferdinand of Naples (1471); Girolamo Almena (1485), a Dominican from Naples, created ambassador of the Kingdom to Alexander VI; Filippo Spinelli (1603–1605), a Neapolitan patrician, formerly nuncio to Vienna at the court of Emperor Rudolph II, created cardinal while still bishop of P.; Filippo Giacobi of Messina (1652), restorer of the episcopal palace, and Vincenzo de Sylva, a Dominican (1671), who vigorously defended the possessions of Torre Orsaia against Fabrizio Carafa and even laid an interdict upon him, revoked by his successor Tommaso de Rosa (1679), a worthy restorer of the cathedral.
Monuments. – The only one of note is the cathedral, built in 1177 but largely rebuilt at the end of the 17th century, which presents no particular interest. Worth noting in the diocese are the two ancient churches of S. Maria Greca and S. Maria dei Martiri at Roccagloriosa and the parish church of Maratea Superiore with the chapel of S. Biagio, containing relics of the saint and a ciborium from 1518.