Pozzuoli, Diocese of

POZZUOLI, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the province of Naples. It has an area of 77 sq km with a population of 153,364 inhabitants, of whom 152,307 are Catholics; it has 40 parishes served by 70 diocesan priests and 25 regulars; it has a seminary, a bishop's college, 5 male religious communities and 25 female communities. The diocese is a suffragan of Naples (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 328).

P., the Greek Dicearchia, the Roman Puteoli, situated in the gulf of Naples between Cape Posillipo and Cape Miseno, at the center of the volcanic zone of the Campi Flegrei, was founded around 529 B.C. by some political fugitives from Samos. Subject to Cumae, it followed its fortunes during the wars of the Etruscans and the Samnites. In 194 B.C. it became Roman territory and a colony was settled there. From then on began the commercial importance of its port, which kept growing until it had complete hegemony in the time of the Empire. All ships coming from the ports of the Mediterranean put in at P., and merchants from every country, flocking there, took up residence, banded together into national corporations and imported their religion along with their goods. Even the Jews, coming from the cities of the diaspora and particularly from Alexandria, had at P. their own commercial quarter, as Josephus attests (Antiq. Jud., XVII, 12). Under Augustus, because of the ever-growing activity of the port, the mole was rebuilt on 15 gigantic piles (opus pilarum) which, although they have almost entirely disappeared, remain "one of the fundamental monuments in the evolution of harbor engineering from antiquity to the present." Toward the end of the 1st century, when, with the reorganization of the port of Ostia, begun by Claudius in 42 A.D., maritime trade shifted toward the mouth of the Tiber, the commercial importance of P. declined until it disappeared entirely at the dawn of the Middle Ages. Of the monuments of the ancient Roman city there remain: the market, also called the temple of Serapis, famous for the phenomenon of bradyseism; the small amphitheater; the great Flavian amphitheater, where in 305 Januarius, bishop of Benevento, Sosius, deacon of Misenum, Festus the deacon, Desiderius the lector, Proculus the deacon of Puteoli and the laymen Eutyches and Acutius were condemned to the beasts, and then beheaded not far from the Solfatara; the columbaria and the burial grounds of the Via Campana; the baths and the ruins of the Roman villas scattered in the surroundings overlooking the sea.

Christianity arrived very early at P. and won converts among the numerous Jews, so that when in the spring of 61 Paul landed there in chains he found there already a Christian community which induced the Apostle to stay there seven days before continuing on to Rome (Acts 28:14). According to a very ancient tradition, the first evangelizer and bishop of P. would have been that Patrobas whom St. Paul mentions in Rom. 15:14; he was succeeded by St. Celsus and a certain John. In the Catalogue of the bishops of Puteoli, which appears interrupted between the 2nd and 4th centuries and between the 7th and 11th centuries, mention is made of Julian, who was legate of St. Leo the Great at the Council of Chalcedon (451) and bearer of the Epistola ad Flavianum.

The Cathedral, dedicated to the Puteolan martyr St. Proculus, rises on the ancient acropolis, where the temple of Augustus stood, changed, like the Cuman basilicas, into a Christian temple after the end of the persecutions. The architecture of the Augustan temple was respected by the primitive adaptation until the 11th century; afterward it underwent various modifications and rebuildings; in the 17th century the bishop Martino de León (1631-50) rebuilt the Cathedral on broader foundations and of the ancient temple left along the eastern facade six Corinthian columns with frieze and the inscription: Calpurnius L. F. Templum Augusto cum ornamentis D. D. S. D. Among the churches of P. worthy of mention is that of St. Januarius, also called that of the Capuchins, in which is preserved the stone that every year, at the renewal of the miracle of the blood of St. Januarius (Sept. 19), becomes stained with reddish spots.

Gennaro Auletta

Archaeology. - Concerning paleochristian P. the texts have left various indications, which today it is possible to determine only with difficulty and not always with certainty. A passage from the life of the martyr Artemas states precisely that his body was buried at P., in a place "qui ab accolis Campania dicitur" (Acta SS. Ianuarii, III, Paris 1863, 23, 1, 12), about 4.5 km distant from P. In the Greek life of St. Januarius mention is made of a cemetery called "arenaria," located near the Via Campana, that is, north of the city, in the Middle Ages called Campana and Campilione. This would be the cemetery mentioned, without other precise indications, in the Acta Artemae and in the Hieronymian Martyrology (BHL, I, 613-15). In truth, at P. no cemetery gallery has been discovered, and only at Naples (v.), in the catacombs of St. Severus and St. Januarius, are there frescoes with images of Puteolan martyrs.

After the 4th century (Acta SS. Septembris, VI, Antwerp 1757, pp. 784-85) began the translations of their bodies

(phot. Enit)

POZZUOLI, DIOCESE of - Aerial view of the amphitheater.

toward their cities of origin. At P. the three local martyrs Proculus, Acutius and Eutyches were placed "in praetorio Falcidi, quod coniungitur basilicae S. Stephani in contrivio ipso" (ibid., p. 869). This contrivio was the point of bifurcation of the Via Cella, coming from P., toward Capua on the left and Naples on the right. Here it seems the aforementioned "arenaria" is also to be located, and if it is true that in the centuries from the end of the Empire to the Middle Ages by praetorium was meant a suburban villa, the indication of the Acta would refer to the villa of a certain Falcidius, a name known from an inscription found at Rome in S. Vitale (CIL, VI, 1, 1944). This cemetery is supposed to be in the area of the property of that Falcidius, to which was annexed the church of St. Stephen, of which notable remains have come to light. The church, which would occupy an area of 36 sq m (G. De Criscio [v. bibl.], p. 8, n. 1) with its front facing east, was the first of P.; almost the whole of its floor remains, supported by an underground vault, and two chapels on the outer sides. Another basilica would have been recognized from the ruins existing a little farther off; these are the remains of a monumental complex of buildings that it is no longer possible to identify. But perhaps they are to be connected with a monastery that arose on the praetorium, mentioned by Gregory the Great (Ep., X, 6, 1: PL. 77, 1113) in a letter to the abbot Adeodatus, to whom he entrusts "monasterium Puteolis constitutum, quod Falcidis dicitur," left by the monks in such abandonment that not only "Dei illic opus minime celebretur," but "pene pro derelicto... habeatur." When this monastery was founded and when it was completely abandoned is not known. Of another basilica there is news from the Acta Vaticana (p. 86), in which it is affirmed that St. Januarius was buried in a place called Marcianus ad sulphurotariam (sic) where afterward (4th century?) a basilica worthy of the martyr was built. In its place there is now a convent of Capuchins, but of the old Basilica there is no trace. Of a mausoleum with the relics of St. Julian translated from Nicomedia (Acta SS. Februarii, II, Antwerp 1658, p. 870, chap. 4), after 304; the only indication remaining is that it stood "uno miliario a mari."

Very few of the inscriptions of P. are certainly Christian (CIL, X, 3300, 3303-4-5-6, 3309, 3313, 3315), and only two are dated: that of the Puteolan bishops Theodore and Misenus, of 435 and 511 respectively (CIL, X, 3298 and 3299). Notable is the marble slab (ibid. 3310), coming from the ancient cathedral of St. Stephen, in which it is said that, because of the untimely death of the little C. Nonius Flavianus, a "basilica," or cella, aedicula, or funerary oratory was erected by his parents in the church or adjoining the church.

Even rarer are the fragments of Christian sculpture: a) a reused stone with a Byzantine Cross, at whose sides are the figures of Christ and of the nimbed St. Peter; b) a pedestal 1.15 m. high, on whose faces are carved the apostles Peter and Paul with the Cross.

Pasquale Testini