PRATO, DIOCESE OF. – A city and diocese in Tuscany, united with Pistoia (v.). The diocese, established in 1653 by the division of part of the territory of the diocese of Pistoia, encompasses the Bisenzio valley and extends over the municipality of the city, as well as the commune of Vaiano. It borders the dioceses of Pistoia and Florence. In 1916, 12 parishes dismembered from the diocese of Florence and 28 from the diocese of Pistoia were aggregated to the diocese of Prato. It has 83,000 inhabitants, 49 parishes, 5 deaneries, 4 male religious houses, and 30 female religious houses. There are 62 secular priests and 31 regular priests. It has a seminary founded by Monsignor Gherardi in 1682; its first seat was the Abbey of Grignano, now occupying the ancient Abbey of St. Fabianus. The patron saint of the diocese is St. Stephen.
I. CIVIL HISTORY
Prato is situated on the banks of the Bisenzio. Originally, it was a small hamlet, Borgo al Cornio, like other localities in that valley under the rule of the Alberti counts. Later, it became a commune and had its own consuls. It was part of the Guelph league in Tuscany and followed its fortunes. However, from the mid-14th century, it became a possession of Florence and shared its history. When Florence endured the siege of imperial forces, Prato suffered a cruel sack by the Spanish in 1512. Today, it is a populous city, rich in industries and factories, which provide continuous grounds for expansion.II. RELIGIOUS HISTORY
The population inhabiting the locality that later took the name of Prato had its church dedicated to Sts. Stephen and Lawrence, at least since the 6th century, having received in 530 a plenary indulgence from Pope Felix for the feasts of the titular saints. In 1133, Pope Innocent II placed this church under apostolic protection; yet the clergy and people of Prato frequently showed insubordination to the bishop of Pistoia, their legitimate shepherd. At the beginning of the 15th century, a strong conflict arose between the provost of Prato and the bishop of Pistoia, the former, by notarial deed, contesting the latter’s right to display to the people a relic, then used for hunting and still venerated in Prato under the name of the Holy Girdle. To resolve this situation, the Signoria of Florence in 1409 asked Alexander V to elevate the Prato church to a cathedral. When this request was not granted, Pius II in 1460 withdrew the church of Prato from the jurisdiction of the bishop of Pistoia, constituting it as a prepositura nullius diocesis. As the territory had then greatly increased, Innocent X, by his bull of 22 September 1653, erected the Prato prepositura as a cathedral and raised the hamlet to the status of a city, separating it from the diocese of Pistoia and uniting it, as a new diocese, to it aequa principaliter. Since then, the religious history of Prato has been identical with that of Pistoia.III. ILLUSTRIOUS PERSONAGES
Besides Caterina de’ Ricci, a Florentine who illustrated the Dominican cloister of Prato with her sanctity, mention should be made of Cardinal Niccolò da Prato, who mediated between the Neri and Bianchi factions in Florence; Monsignor A. Martini, the noted translator of the Bible and archbishop of Florence; Monsignor Giovacchino Limberti, who rose from canon of his cathedral to become archbishop of Florence, consecrated by Pius IX himself. Among laymen, Cesare Guasti, whose name is well known in our literature, left a reputation for outstanding piety in the last century.IV. ART
Within its polygonal circuit of walls, pierced by five gates, Prato no longer presents the aspect of a turreted city that it still retained in the 18th century; yet, amid the remodeled and modern buildings erected to meet the needs of its active woolen industrial center, many monuments remain that bear witness to its past, reflecting for the most part the powerful and wealthy neighboring cities.
1. Architecture
The buildings anterior to 1200 have disappeared or survive only in scant remains (the remnants of the primitive circuit of walls, dating from the early 12th century; the church of the Abbey of St. Fabianus, dating from around 1000, whose façade displays one of the earliest examples of Tuscan polychrome decoration; the ruins of the church of St. Barnabas, incorporated into the Hospital). The oldest monuments of Prato may be considered the Cathedral and the Emperor’s Castle, both dating from the 13th century. The Emperor’s Castle, which legend attributes to Frederick II with the legacy of the Prato citizen Panfolio Dagomari, who died in 1233, is in fact a radical reconstruction, on the ruins of an earlier castle, ordered by Frederick of Antioch, natural son of Frederick II and royal vicar of Tuscany, around 1248. Quadrangular, reinforced by powerful towers at the corners and midway along the sides, it recalls in plan Castel Ursino in Catania and in its portal Castel del Monte near Andria, so that it seems likely that workers from the imperial workshops were involved.The Cathedral, existing since the 10th century under the name of Pieve of St. Stephen of Borgo al Cornio, took on its present construction in the first half of the 13th century, probably by the hand of Guido Bigarelli of Como, known as Guidetto. The original Romanesque appearance is still visible both on the southern flank, with its series of paired small arches in white Lunense marble and green Prato marble, and in the three longitudinal naves, separated by large two-tone arcades. Gothic art imparted a new aspect to the Cathedral (where the Prato citizen Michele Dagomari had deposited the Holy Girdle, renewed, according to legend, in the Holy Land). The construction of a chapel for the Holy Girdle within the first arcade led in 1365 to the erection of a new façade against the first one, still visible in the interstice that Niccolò d’Arezzo, called “Pela,” already known for his work on Santa Maria del Fiore, executed with a triple division of pilasters and two-tone bands. A similar fate befell the bell tower, originally a massive Romanesque tower with three tiers of biforas, later raised by two more tiers by Niccolò di Cecco del Mercia of Siena and his son. The 13th century also saw the construction of the fine cloister, of which only one side remains, incorporated into the Episcopal Palace.
Among the civil buildings, mention should be made of the Palazzo Pretorio, which since 1910 has housed the municipal art gallery, and the massive structure of the Pia Casa dei Ceppi, formerly the residence of the Prato merchant Francesco di Marco Datini, whose walls bear remnants of frescoes by Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, a rare example of external decoration on a fourteenth-century house. Among the religious buildings of the Gothic period are the churches of S. Francesco, from the second half of the 17th century but with a later Renaissance façade of two-tone stripes and a triangular pediment, and that of S. Domenico, begun in 1281, tall and grand, enriched on its left side by a series of tombs surmounted by Gothic arcades of Pisan and Florentine type. The Renaissance did not renew the appearance of the city, already shaped by the Gothic style, limiting itself to a few remodellings or the construction of a few palaces (Palazzo Pugliesi); but it created in Prato one of its purest architectural masterpieces, S. Maria delle Carceri, by Giuliano Giambetti da Sangallo. Built between 1485 and 1492, Sangallo’s building, in Greek cross form with two superimposed orders, clad in white and green marbles, reveals its descent from Brunelleschi. The interior, however, although repeating the forms and decorations of the Pazzi Chapel, already breathes the spirit of the sixteenth century in the amplitude of its proportions. The 18th century left its mark in the fine construction of the Cicognini national convent, built on the site of the Badia di Gragnano.
2. Sculpture
Most Romanesque and Gothic sculpture has been lost (though the Duomo still preserves the beautiful Madonna della Cintola [1317], the last work of Giovanni Pisano), the city reflects in its plastic decoration the style of the Florentine school of the 15th century.Projecting from the corner of the Duomo’s façade is the Pulpit of the Holy Girdle, built (1433–38) to display the relic, replacing the earlier Gothic pulpit by Niccolò di Cecco del Mercia, which had stood on the southern flank. This work is by Donatello, not without the collaboration of his assistant Michelozzo, in the balustrade adorned with dancing putti; while to Michelozzo belongs the harmonious baldachin and the bronze casting of the marvellous capital modelled by his great companion. Other works of the Florentine school adorn the Duomo: the exquisitely wrought grille of the Chapel of the Holy Girdle, by Bruno di Ser Lapo Mazzei of Florence and Pasquino di Matteo of Montepulciano; the pulpit by Mino da Fiesole and Antonio Rossellino (1473), conceived by the former as a large holy-water stoup; the fine Madonna of the Ulivo Tabernacle by Benedetto da Maiano (the brothers also built the Tabernacle and the Pietà on its base); and the inverted terracotta lunette by Andrea della Robbia above the portal (other works by the same artist are scattered in various churches of the city). Of the plastic decoration of later centuries, it will suffice to mention the Bacchus Fountain, now in the municipal art gallery, executed by Ferdinando Tacca (1657–1665) for the Piazza del Comune, where it has been replaced by a copy.