Porto and Santa Rufina, Diocese of

PORTO AND SANTA RUFINA, Diocese of. - In Latium, in the province of Rome, it is one of the seven suburbicarian sees held by a cardinal of the Order of Bishops. It measures an area of 2,000 sq km, which extends to the northwest of the diocese of Rome, bounded by the Via Flaminia (as far as Castelnuovo di Porto), the Via Cassia (as far as La Storta) and the Via Aurelia (as far as S. Marinella). The population of 48,937 inhabitants is divided among 24 parishes, with 28 secular priests and 4 regular priests, with 2 male congregations and 19 female ones. It has the episcopal Curia in Rome and the ordinary court of appeal at the vicariate of Rome (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 325).

P., situated at the mouth of the Tiber on the right bank, was in antiquity the port of Ostia and formed a single entity with it, then became the port of Rome and a city in its own right.

It is beyond doubt that Christianity penetrated into P. in the pre-Constantinian age. The name of P. is encountered in the Depositio martyrum of the Chronographer of 354, where under 5 September one reads: «Aconti, in Porto, et Nonni et Herculani et Taurini»: it recurs several times in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum. In the cloister of S. Paolo, on the sarcophagus of Naevius Zarista and Constantia, the martyrs of Porto Taurinus and Herculanus are named. The martyr Acontius had a church in P., mentioned by a document of the 10th century; Taurinus and Herculanus appear together with the title of martyrs in an inscription on an ancient sarcophagus of P.; Nonnus must be the same as the martyr Hippolytus, who appears in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum under 20 August, and under the 22nd of the same month, in the Bern codex, is clearly identified with Nonnus: «Et in Portu Urbis Romae Ippoliti qui dicitur Nonnus». The ancient Calendar of P. contained several anniversaries, but the most certain martyrs would be Eutropius, Zosima, Bonosa, Acontius, Herculanus, Taurinus, Ariates. The inscriptions and the other Christian antiquities of P. have so far shed little light for the first three centuries. G. B. De Rossi thought that the diocese of P. was earlier than that of Ostia (v.) and it is certainly probable that a Christian community was formed first at the port rather than in the city of Ostia. In 398 the Roman nobleman Pammachius founded at P. a hospital for strangers who arrived by sea, for the poor and for the sick. This is the most ancient hospital known.

Not possessing the diptychs, the Catalogue of the bishops of P. remains incomplete and uncertain. The church erected between Ostia and P. in honor of St. Hippolytus, and later destroyed by the Vandals, it seems, in 455, does not authorize placing the celebrated ecclesiastical writer among the bishops of P., opening the series, but with certainty states only the liturgical cult owed to him, attested moreover, as has been said, by the Depositio martyrum. The first bishop of P. certainly known is Gregory in 314.

In the Liber Pontificalis, besides the cathedral church of S. Ippolito (Life of Leo III), a church of S. Ninfa and another of S. Maria (Life of Leo IV) are mentioned; in the time of Adrian I there existed at P. a monastery dedicated to St. Lawrence, and an inscription (CIL, XIV, no. 1937) attests the erection, carried out by bishop Donatus, of a basilica in honor of Sts. Eutropius, Bonosa and Zosima. In the Middle Ages the bishops of P., by benign concession of the Roman pontiffs, extended their jurisdiction also to the Trastevere of Rome, including the Tiber Island, and in the church of S. Giovanni Calibita they established their episcopium. In 1120, Callixtus II, because of the changed conditions of the times, which had depopulated the neighboring diocese of S. R., united this to the diocese of P., and the bishop was called from then on of P. and S. R. It is not known when the Archive of the united diocese disappeared, from which Gregory IX in 1236 had the privileges of his dioceses extracted and inserted into his Registers. A parchment codex (2°, 292), of the Library of the University of Munich, preserves an inventory of books of the diocese of P. from the 11th century.

Twelve miles from Rome, on the Via Aurelia, there was an imperial villa called Lorium, between La Bottaccia and Castel di Guido. In its territory there were three sanctuaries of martyrs: the first of Sts. Rufina and Secunda, the second of Sts. Marius, Martha, Audiface and Abacuc, and the third of St. Basilides. Near the sanctuary of Sts. Rufina and Secunda resided the bishops of Lorium, later called of «Sylva Candida» or of S. R. (v. LORIUM).

Besides the aforementioned sanctuaries, the Liber Pontificalis (Life of Leo IV) mentions in S. R. also another church dedicated to Sts. Cosmas and Damian. In the 11th century the complaisance of the Roman pontiffs extended the jurisdiction of the bishops of S. R. over the churches of Rome: S. Martina at the Roman Forum and Sts. Adalbert and Paulinus on the Tiber Island (today S. Bartolomeo), over the monasteries included within the Leonine City; over the oratory of Sts. Rufina and Secunda of the Lateran Baptistery. In S. Bartolomeo all'Isola, following the example of the bishops of P. for S. Giovanni Calibita, they established their episcopium. Moreover the bishop of S. R. had the privilege of consecrating the Emperor and of celebrating all the other functions in St. Peter's, when the Pope was prevented. Benedict IX had established that the bishop of S. R. should also be librarian of the Holy Roman Church, in which office the cardinals Humbert and Mainard are to be remembered. But almost immediately the Benedictine privilege lapsed. After the union of S. R. with P. took place, the Cardinal bishop combined in himself those prerogatives which today are those of the cardinal vicar and of the cardinal archpriest of St. Peter's. These prerogatives ceased in the 14th century with the residence that the popes established in the Vatican.

In the present territory of P. and S. R. there existed the ancient see of Caere (v. CERVETERI).

Among the bishops of P. and S. R. the figures of two Franciscan cardinals stand out, Matteo d'Acquasparta and Giovanni Minio, respectively in 1291 and 1302. There was no lack of those who ascended the Roman pontificate, such as John XXII, Alexander VI, Paul III, Paul IV, Alexander VIII and Benedict XIII.

On 20 December 1825 Leo XII, with the bull De dominici gregis salute, erected as cathedral the collegiate church of S. Francesco in Civitavecchia and, with certain parishes of the diocese of Viterbo, united it to P. and S. R.; deputing, on 3 July 1826, a suffragan bishop for the same. Then the cardinal bishop, to the title of P. and S. R., added that of Civitavecchia. But in 1854 Civitavecchia was united to Tarquinia (v.). In 1950 Cardinal bishop Eugène Tisserant brought to completion the church of La Storta, begun in 1922, and consecrated it as the cathedral church of the diocese of P. and S. R. - See pl. CXXIII.

Benedetto Pesci

ARCHAEOLOGY

Besides the remains of the ancient port of Trajan with its entire building complex, in 1830 Melchiorri rediscovered various tombs with remnants of structures along the whole canal (fossa Traiana), already seen and commented upon by Pope Pius II in 1461 (Comment., II, 143). Within the present Torlonia estate, incorporated into the ruins of the ancient city, the excavations of 1864-66 brought to light a Christian basilica 25 m. long, with a baptistery included in the building and with two superimposed semicircular apses, divided by a narrow corridor, architecturally analogous to the church of St. Stephen on the Via Latina. Annexed to the basilica was found a large building equipped with numerous small rooms and a broad porticoed atrium, identified by Lanciani and De Rossi as the xenodochium, founded in 398 by Pammachius, a friend of St. Jerome and several times mentioned by him (Epist. LXVI, 11: PL 22, 645; LXXVII, 10: ibid., 697). Numerous and rich utensils in silver and glass with Christian symbols, found in situ (today in the Vatican Library), confirm the Christian character of the place. Some whole and fragmentary Christian sarcophagi, now for the most part in the Lateran Museum, were published by Wilpert (Sarcofagi, pls. LXVII, 3; LXXXVI, 2; LXXXVIII, 3; CLXII, 3; CLXXI); others are walled into the courtyard of the episcopium of Porto. The numerous epigraphic records are gathered in CIL, XIV, and in Wickert's supplement. The text of the epitaphs is clearly distinct from that of the Chthonian ones.

The great necropolis, discovered by Calza at the Isola Sacra in 1925 and 1930, was the burial place for the population of Porto. The scarcity of Christian finds (one tomb and three certainly Christian inscriptions [cf. reproduction under the entry CIMITERI CRISTIANI ANTICHI, III, cols. 1617-1637] out of over 200 found) suggests that for the inhabitants of Porto who had embraced the new religion, the area of Capo due Rami, so rich in Christian finds, must instead have served as the burial place. Among the finds from Calza's excavation, a large sarcophagus, discovered in the immediate vicinity of the necropolis, is worthy of note and, although it finds no immediate parallel with Christian sarcophagi, it approaches typologically the Christian figurations of the late 3rd or early 4th century.

The Jewish population, although perhaps not united in an organic community like that of Ostia, was nevertheless numerous and had one or more synagogues; 30 inscriptions, rediscovered in 1834 by Pacca, are all in Greek; a large Jewish necropolis was discovered on the Via Portuense.

Raisa Calza