PORTO e SANTA RUFINA, DIOCESI di. — 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 covers an area of 2,000 sq. km., extending northwest of the Diocese of Rome, between the national roads Via Flaminia (as far as Castelnuovo di Porto), Via Cassia (as far as La Storta), and Via Aurelia (as far as S. Marinella). Its population of 48,937 inhabitants is distributed among 24 parishes, with 28 secular priests and 4 regular priests, and with 2 male and 19 female congregations. It has its episcopal curia in Rome and its 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 formerly the port of Ostia and formed a single entity with it; later it became the port of Rome and a city in its own right.
There is no doubt that Christianity penetrated P. in the pre-Constantinian age. The name of P. occurs in the Depositio martyrum of the Chronograph 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, in the sarcophagus of Nevius Zarista and Costantia, the Portuensian martyrs Taurinus and Herculanus are mentioned. The martyr Acontius had a church in P., mentioned in a document of the tenth century; Taurinus and Herculanus appear together with the title of martyrs in an inscription on an ancient sarcophagus from P.; Nonnus must be the same as the martyr Hippolytus, who in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum appears on 20 August and, on the 22nd of the same month, is clearly identified with Nonnus in the Bern codex: «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, and Ariates. The inscriptions and other Christian antiquities of P. have so far shed little light on the first three centuries. G. B. De Rossi thought that the diocese of P. 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 foreigners arriving by sea, for the poor, and for the sick. It is the oldest hospital known.
Since the diptychs have not survived, the Catalogue of the bishops of P. remains incomplete and uncertain. The church erected between Ostia and P. in honor of S. Hippolytus, and subsequently destroyed by the Vandals, apparently in 455, does not warrant placing the celebrated ecclesiastical writer among the bishops of P. and making him the first in the series; it establishes with certainty only the liturgical cult due to him, attested moreover, as has been said, by the Depositio martyrum. The first certainly known bishop of P. is Gregory, in 314.
In the Liber Pontificalis, besides the cathedral church of S. Hippolytus (Life of Leo III), a church of S. Nympha and another of S. Maria are mentioned (Life of Leo IV); in the time of Hadrian I, there existed at P. a monastery dedicated to S. Lawrence, and an inscription (CIL, XIV, n. 1937) attests the erection by Bishop Donatus of a basilica in honor of the saints Eutropius, Bonosa, and Zosima. In the Middle Ages, the bishops of P., through the benevolent concession of the Roman pontiffs, extended their jurisdiction also over the Trastevere district of Rome, including the Tiber Island, and established their episcopal residence in the church of S. Giovanni Calibita. In 1120, Callistus II, because of the changed conditions of the times, which had depopulated the neighboring diocese of S. R., united it with the Diocese of P., and from then on the bishop was called bishop of P. and S. R. It is not known when the Archive of the united diocese disappeared, from which Gregory IX had the privileges of his dioceses extracted and entered into his Registers in 1236. A parchment codex (2°, 292), in the Library of the University of Munich, preserves an inventory of books belonging to the Diocese of P. from the eleventh 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 were three sanctuaries of martyrs: the first of SS. Rufina and Secunda, the second of SS. Marius, Martha, Audifax, and Abachum, and the third of S. Basilides. The bishops of Lorium, later called bishops of «Sylva Candida» or of S. R., resided near the sanctuary of SS. Rufina and Secunda (v. LORIUM).
Besides the aforementioned sanctuaries, the Liber Pontificalis (Life of Leo IV) also mentions in S. R. another church dedicated to SS. Cosmas and Damian. In the eleventh century, the compliance of the Roman pontiffs extended the jurisdiction of the bishops of S. R. over churches in Rome: S. Martina in the Roman Forum and SS. Adalbert and Paulinus on the Tiber Island (today S. Bartolomeo); over the monasteries contained within the Leonine City; and over the oratory of SS. Rufina and Secunda in the Lateran Baptistery. In S. Bartolomeo on the Island, following the example of the bishops of P. at S. Giovanni Calibita, they established their episcopal residence. Moreover, the bishop of S. R. had the privilege of consecrating the Emperor and of celebrating all the other functions in S. Pietro when the Pope was impeded. Benedict IX had established that the bishop of S. R. should also be librarian of the Holy Roman Church; among those who held this office, Cardinals Humbert and Mainard are noteworthy. But the Benedictine privilege soon lapsed. Following the union of S. R. with P., the cardinal bishop combined in his person what are today the prerogatives of the cardinal vicar and of the cardinal archpriest of S. Pietro. These prerogatives gradually ceased in the fourteenth century, when the popes established their residence in the Vatican.
Within the present territory of P. and S. R. stood 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, in 1291 and 1302 respectively. There were also those who rose to the Roman pontificate, such as Giovanni XXII, Alessandro VI, Paolo III, Paolo IV, Alessandro VIII, and Benedetto XIII.
On 20 December 1825, Leo XII, by the bull De dominici gregis salute, raised the collegiate church of S. Francesco in Civitavecchia to cathedral status and united it with P. and S. R., together with certain parishes of the Diocese of Viterbo; on 3 July 1826, he appointed a suffragan bishop for II. At that time, the cardinal bishop, in addition to the title of P. and S. R., added that of Civitavecchia. In 1854, however, TARQUINI, CAMILLO (v.). In 1950, Cardinal Bishop Eugenio Tisserant completed 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.
The large necropolis, discovered by Calza at Isola Sacra in 1925 and 1930, was the burial place of the population of P. The scarcity of Christian finds (one tomb and three certainly Christian inscriptions [cf. reproduction under CIMITERI CRISTIANI ANTICHI, III, cols. 1617–1637] among more than 200 discovered) suggests that, for the inhabitants of Portus who had embraced the new religion, the area of Capo due Rami, so rich in Christian finds, must instead have served as a burial place. Among the finds from Calza’s excavation, a large sarcophagus discovered in the immediate vicinity of the necropolis deserves mention; although it has no immediate counterpart among Christian sarcophagi, typologically it approaches the Christian representations of the late third or early fourth century.
The Jewish population, although perhaps not organized into an established community like that of Ostia, was nevertheless numerous and had one or more synagogues; the thirty inscriptions discovered by Pacca in 1834 are all in Greek; a large Jewish necropolis was discovered on the Via Portuense.